Then He began a fresh assault upon their prejudices and narrow views—­their pet superstitions and bigotry.  He stripped from them their garb of hypocrisy and assumed piety, and showed them their naked souls in all their ugliness and moral uncleanliness.  He poured burning invective and vitriolic denunciations into their midst, and spared no terms that could properly be applied to them.  In a short time the congregation was beside itself with rage, and the pretended righteous indignation of a flock of hypocrites and formalists who had heard themselves described in disrespectful terms by one they regarded as an upstart young man from the lower classes of their virtuous community.  They felt that they had bestowed a flattering honor upon Him, as a mark of consideration for a young townsman upon His return from a foreign and domestic missionary tour.  And now to think that He had thus basely betrayed their courtesy and showed in how little esteem He really held them—­surely this was beyond human endurance.  And then the storm broke upon Him.

Leaving their seats in the synagogue, the congregation rushed upon the young preacher, and tearing Him from the platform, they pushed Him out of the building.  And then the jostling, hustling, pushing crowd carried Him before them along the village streets and out into the suburbs.  He resisted not, deeming it unworthy to struggle with them.  At last, however, He was compelled to defend Himself.  He perceived that it was the intention of the mob to push Him over a precipice that had been formed on the side of a hill just beyond the town limits.  He waited patiently until they had urged Him to the very brink of the decline, and until it needed but one strong push to press Him over its edge and into the gorge below.  And then He exerted His occult forces in a proper self-defense.  Not a blow struck He—­not a man did He smite with the wondrous occult power at His command, which would have paralyzed their muscles or even have stretched them lifeless at His feet.  No, he controlled Himself with a firm hand, and merely bent upon them a look.  But such a look!

A glance in which was concentrated the mighty Will developed by mystic knowledge and occult practice.  It was the Gaze of the Occult Master, the power of which ordinary men may not withstand.  And the mob, feeling its mighty force, experienced the sensation of abject fear and terror.  Their hair arose, their eyes started from their sockets, their knees shook under them, and then, with a wild shout of horror they began to scatter and fly, making a wide pathway for the Man of Mystery who now strode through their ranks with that awful gaze which seemed to pierce the veil of mortality and to peer at things ineffable and beyond human ken.  And with His eyes refusing to look again upon the familiar scenes of His youth, He departed from Nazareth, forsaking it forever as His home place.  Verily, indeed, the Prophet hath no honor in His own land.  Those who should have been His staunchest supporters were the first in His own land to threaten Him with violence.  The attempt of Nazareth was the prophecy of Calvary, and Jesus so knew it.  But He had set his feet upon The Path, and drew not back from it.