153.  Within the limits of the Holy Land the faith of the disciples had been constantly tested by the increasing opposition between their master and their old leaders.  When the little company withdrew to Gentile regions, however, Jesus had regard for their Jewish feeling.  The time would come when he would send them forth to make disciples of all the nations.  For the present he made it his business to nurture their faith in him, and when appealed to for help by one of these foreigners, he refused to “take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs” (Mark vii. 27).  Jesus had assumed a different attitude to the Samaritans before the opening of his work in Galilee, and in general had shown ready sympathy for all in distress.  In fact it seems as if he welcomed the Syrophoenician woman’s great faith with a feeling of relief from a restriction that he had felt it wise to adopt for his work in Phoenicia.  It appears from his later attitude in the Gentile regions of the Decapolis (Mark vii. 31-37; Matt. xv. 21-31) that, having once shown his regard for the limitations of his disciples’ faith in the case of the Syrophoenician, he felt no longer obliged to check his natural readiness to help the needy who sought him out.  Although in one instance, for reasons no longer known to us, Jesus charged a man whom he had cured to keep it secret (Mark vii. 32-37), in general his work in these heathen regions seems, after the visit to Phoenicia, to have been quite unrestrained, and to have produced the same enthusiasm that had earlier brought the multitudes to him in Galilee (Mark viii. 1f.).

154.  This continued activity of healing must have served greatly to strengthen the determination of the disciples to cling to Jesus, let the leaders say what they would.  We can only conjecture what various teachings filled the days, and what personal fellowship the disciples had with him who spake as never man spake.  There was need for advance in the faith of these loyal friends.  Their enthusiastic declaration when the multitudes turned away could easily have been followed by reaction.  Each new exhibition of the irrevocableness of the break between Jesus and the leaders was a severe test of their loyalty.  These weeks of withdrawal were doubtless filled, therefore, with new proofs that Jesus had the words of eternal life.

155.  Before he put to his disciples the crucial question, he who knew what was in man (John ii. 25) was confident that they were ready for it.  It was after the rebuff in Galilee, when the unbelieving Pharisees had again demanded a sign of his authority, and after he had definitely warned the disciples against the influence of their leaders, that Jesus led his little company far to the north towards the slopes of Hermon.  There, near the recently built Caesarea Philippi, Jesus plainly asked his disciples what the people thought of him (Mark viii. 27-30).  We have seen how gradually sentiment in Galilee concerning the new teacher crystallized until, from thinking