it. For the people were not yet prepared for this disclosure. His audiences, accustomed to the dry dialectics of the schools, were entranced by the teachings of one who applied the prophecies of the ancient records to living issues, and, with a heart warm from constant communion with his Father, appealed directly to the heart and to the conscience. They were proud of this Rabbi, whom they claimed as their own, and who had already acquired a metropolitan reputation.* They flocked to hear his new and striking interpretation of the ancient prophecies. He found ready entrance to all the synagogues. Wherever he went he was invited to read and expound the Scriptures. Wherever he spoke he was received with applause.

A single exception indicated how fickle were the populace, how frail this popularity, and how the developed doctrine of a Messianic kingdom, to which the Gentiles should be welcome subjects, was to be received. In the course of his ministry he went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. The lesson for the day was the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah. He read an extract from it, and sitting down, as was the custom of the Jewish Rabbi in expounding the Scriptures, proceeded to apply it to himself. "This day," said he, "is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. I have come to preach the Gospel to the poor; to heal the broken-hearted; to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind; to set at liberty them that are bound; to preach the acceptable year of the Lord."

The first impressions were favorable. But his quiet assumption of Messiahship offended some of the companions of his youth. They were piqued by his claims. "This the Messiah ?" said they. Is not this Joseph's son? They began to indicate their dissent. The synagogue meeting was conducted in a manner much more free than our modern religious services. The people were accustomed to interrupt-to interrogate the speaker; to express approval or dissent. Je* John iv., 45. † Matt. iv., 23; Mark i., 39. Luke iv., 15.

K

sus perceived an indication on their part to demand some miraculous proof of his claim. But, though he was accustomed to refer to his miracles as a testimony to the divinity of his mission, he never degraded himself to the rank of a mere wonder-worker by performing them on demand. Instead, therefore, of complying with their wish, he declared to them that he should be rejected of Israel that he might be preached to the Gentiles. He reminded them that the divine blessing of the despised heathen was no new or strange thing; that the God whose benefactions they imagined they monopolized had, in the days of Elijah, passed by the many widows of Israel to feed a woman of Sarepta, and had left unhealed many lepers in Israel to cure Naaman the Syrian. To have their own Scriptures turned against themselves was more than they could bear. Doubtless, to their prejudice, he seemed irreverently to pervert the Word of God to profane uses. Unable to answer him, they responded with the customary argument of falsehood-violence. They drove him out of the synagogue. They would have cast him down from a neighboring precipice but that, by an exercise of that moral power by which single men have sometimes quelled a mob, he passed unharmed through the midst of them and went his way.*

This incident, however, did nothing to abate the general popularity of Jesus. Rather the reverse. Other cities were not quick to follow the example of one which had so ill a reputation as Nazareth. Unsuccessful persecution usually promotes the popularity of a public teacher. The people were more anxious than ever to hear the man who had produced so great a commotion among the Nazarenes. Christ prepared to extend his ministry. He left the hill-country and took up his residence in Capernaum. The synagogues could no longer

evangelist of any miradoubt them when they

* Luke iv., 16-32. There is no assertion by the cle, and, following the Gospel narrative, we neither are described, nor assert them when they are not. If there was a miracle here, it would seem to be the only case where Jesus exercised miraculous power for his own benefit.

hold his audiences. The Sabbath day was inadequate for his instructions. Still continuing to expound the Scriptures in the synagogue on the Sabbath, he began from this time to add thereto field-preaching through the week.* Already his fan was in his hand. Already, by the simple presentation of the Gospel, he was beginning to separate the chaff from the wheat.

This popularity of Christ's preaching was not of that superficial character which attracts a crowd, but leaves unchanged the life of the individual. Christ did not sweep his hand across the wires of the heart merely to draw from the soul the music of a momentary emotion. The man who changes the current of being in a single life is more truly potent than he who charms, but leaves unchanged many thousands. That Jesus really laid hold of the secret forces of the character, and, smelting over the raw material, recast the soul and life in a new form, is indicated by a single significant incident that occurred almost immediately after his arrival at Caper

naum.

Walking out upon the shore of the Sea of Galilee, he came upon his old friends, Andrew, Simon Peter, James, and John. The father and brother of the latter were also with the party. Fishermen by trade, they had plied all night their avocation, unsuccessfully. They had left their boats, and were cleaning their nets upon the shore. They welcomed Jesus warmly, and, at his request, Simon left his work, and, getting into his boat, pushed it a little from the beach, that Jesus might make a pulpit of it from which to address the multitude 'who thronged about him. Christ's service, cheerfully undertaken, never entails loss. The discourse ended, Jesus proposed to Simon to push out into deep water for a draught. Unexpectant of success, he complied, and was rewarded with so great a quantity of fish that the net broke, and the overloaded boat began to sink. The sermon on repentance which Jesus had been preaching received in this incident new sanction. *Luke v., 1.

Peter expressed that conviction of sin which this pungent discourse had before produced; and, answering Christ's invitation to follow him and become fishers of men, these four companions left their boats, their nets, and their ingathered fish to Zebedee and his servants, to attach themselves henceforth indissolubly to Christ's person. It is no transient emotion of startled wonder that works such changes in life-plans as this, and we need no other evidence that the external miracle was but the outward sign of a moral power quite as marked and wondrous.*

Henceforth the house of Simon Peter afforded to Jesus his home, for he had none of his own. And of these four friends, three-Peter, James, and John-became his most intimate companions; witnesses alike of his transfigured glory and his night of grief,§ and filling in his heart the niches vacated by his unbelieving brethren.

*Matt. iv., 18-22; Luke v., 1-11.

+ Luke iv., 38.

Matt. viii., 20; Luke ix., 58. It seems evident that he did not live with his mother (Mark iii., 21, 31). § Matt. xvii., 1; xxvi., 37.

CHAPTER XII.

THE GREAT PHYSICIAN.

APERNAUM was chosen by Jesus, not as a delightful sylvan retreat, but as a centre for a life of the most intense activity. It was no rural village in a secluded dell. On the contrary, it

was one of the chief cities of Galilee, and in the very heart of the most populous district of all Palestine. For effect upon the nation and on other peoples, it was far better located than Jerusalem.

About thirty-five miles,* as the bee flies, south of Mount Hermon's snowy peak, lie the limpid waters of what would be called in New England a pond, but which, in a land whose entire territorial area is not equal to that of Vermont, rejoiced under the somewhat pretentious title of the Sea of Galilee. This lake, whose shores the feet of Jesus have made sacred to innumerable hearts, is in size and shape somewhat similar to Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, Loch Lomond in Scotland, or our own Winnipiseogee. Lying nearly seven hundred feet below the surface of the Mediterranean, in a valley excavated by volcanic action in the solid rock, and entirely sheltered by surrounding hills, its climate is and its productions were those of an almost tropical nature. The palm-tree flourished along its banks, and grapes and figs ripened in the warm sunlight ten months in the year. Even its fish are those of Central Africa. Upon the east the hills of

* Osborne's Palestine, p. 246.

It is thirteen miles in length, from four to six miles in width, and one hundred and sixty-five feet in depth in its deepest part.-Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 362; Osborne's Palestine, p. 248; Josephus, Wars, iii., 10, § 7.