the people could not mistake such a teacher for a simple fulfiller of their ideas.  In this early sermon in effect, and later with increasing plainness, he set forth his doctrine of a kingdom of heaven coming not with observation, present actually among a people who knew it not, like a seed growing secretly in the earth, or leaven quietly leavening a lump of meal.  By word and deed, in sermon and by parable, he insisted on this simple and every-day conception of God’s rule among men.  With Pharisee, Zealot, and dreamer, he held that “the best is yet to be,” yet all three classes found their most cherished ideals set at nought by the new champion of the soul’s inner life in fellowship with the living God.  In all his teaching there was a claim of authority and a manifest independence which indicate certainty on his part concerning his own mission.  Yet so completely is the personal question retired for the time, that in his rebuke of the blasphemy of the Pharisees he took pains to declare that it was not because they had spoken against the Son of Man, that they were in danger, but because they had spoken against the Spirit of God, whose presence was manifest in his works.  He wished, primarily, to win disciples to the kingdom of God.

133.  Yet Jesus was not indifferent in Galilee to what the people thought about himself.  The question at Caesarea Philippi shows more fully the aim of his ministry.  During all the period of the preaching of the kingdom he never hesitated to assert himself whenever need for such self-assertion arose.  This was evident in his dealing with his pharisaic critics.  He rarely argued with them, and always assumed a tone of authority which was above challenge, asserting that the Son of Man had authority to forgive sins, was lord of the Sabbath, was greater than the temple or Jonah or Solomon.  Moreover, in his positive teaching of the new truth he assumed such an authoritative tone that any who thought upon it could but remark the extraordinary claim involved in his simple “I say unto you.”  He wished also to win disciples to himself.

134.  The key to the ministry in Galilee is furnished in Jesus’ answer to the message from John the Baptist.  John in prison had heard of the works of his successor.  Jesus did so much that promised a fulfilment of the Messianic hope, yet left so much undone, contradicting in so many ways the current idea of a Messiah by his studied avoidance of any demonstration, that the older prophet felt a momentary doubt of the correctness of his earlier conviction.  It is in no way strange that he experienced a reaction from that exalted moment of insight when he pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God, particularly after his restless activity had been caged within the walls of his prison.  Jesus showed that he did not count it strange, by his treatment of John’s quesestion and by his words about John after the messengers had gone.  Yet in his reply he gently suggested that the question