indescribable force of his personality had served hitherto to hold them to a hope that he would soon discard the perplexing role which he had chosen for the time to assume, and take up avowedly the proper work of the Messiah.  This last refusal to accept what seemed to them to be his evident duty caused a revulsion in the popular feeling, and “many of his disciples turned back and walked no more with him” (John vi. 66).  The time of sifting had come.  Jesus had known that such a rash determination to make him king was possible to the Galilean multitudes, and that whenever it should come it must be followed by a disillusionment.  Now the open ministry had run its course.  As the multitudes were turning back and walking no more with him, he turned to the twelve with the question, “Will ye also go away?” and found that with them his method had borne fruit.  They clung to him in spite of disillusionment, for in him they had found what was better than their preconceptions.

148.  It is the fourth gospel that shows clearly the critical significance of this event.  The others tell nothing of the sudden determination of the multitude, nor of the revulsion of feeling that followed Jesus’ refusal to yield to their will.  Yet these other gospels indicate in their narratives that from this time on Jesus avoided the scenes of his former labors, and show that when from time to time he returned to the neighborhood of Capernaum he was met by such a spirit of hostility that he withdrew again immediately to regions where he and his disciples could have time for quiet intercourse.

149.  The months of toil in Galilee show results hardly more significant than the grain of mustard seed or the little leaven.  Popular enthusiasm had risen, increased, reached its climax, and waned.  Official opposition had early been aroused, and had continued with a steadily deepened intensity.  The wonderful teaching with authority, and the signs wrought on them that were sick, had been as seed sown by the wayside or in thorny or in stony ground, except for the little handful of hearers who had felt the personal power of Jesus and had surrendered to it, ready henceforth to follow where he should lead, whether or not it should be in a path of their choice.  These, however, were the proof that those months had been a time of rewarded toil.

IV

The Ministry in Galilee—­The New Lesson

150.  With the crisis in Capernaum the ministry in Galilee may be said in one sense to have come to an end.  Yet Jesus did not immediately go up to Jerusalem.  Once and again he was found in or near Capernaum, while the time between these visits was spent in regions to the north and northwest.  In fact, the disciples were far from ready for the trial their loyalty was to meet before they had seen the end of the opposition to their Lord.  The time intervening between the collapse of popularity and Jesus’ final departure from Galilee may