him a prophet, the people, first timidly, then boldly, concluded that such a teacher and worker of signs must be the promised king.  We have seen also how the popular estimate changed when Jesus refused to be guided by the popular will.  Now, after the lapse of a few weeks, in answer to his inquiry concerning the common opinion of him, he is told that the people look on him as a prophet, in whom the spirit of the men of old had been revived; but not a whisper remains of the former readiness to hail him as the Messiah.  It was in the face of such a definite revulsion in the popular feeling, in the face, too, of the increasing hostility of all the great in the nation, that Peter answered for the twelve that they believed Jesus to be the Messiah, God’s appointed Deliverer of his people (Matt. xvi. 16 ff.).  In form this confession was no more than Nathanael had rendered on his first meeting with Jesus (John i. 49), and was practically the same as the report made by Andrew to Simon his brother, and by Philip to Nathanael (John i. 41, 45).  In both idea and expression the reply to Jesus’ question, “Will ye also go away?” (John vi. 68, 69), was virtually equivalent to this later confession of Peter.  Yet Jesus found in Peter’s answer at Caesarea Philippi something so significant and remarkable that he declared that the faith that could answer thus could spring only from a heavenly source (Matt. xvi. 17).  The early confessions were in fact no more than expressions of more or less intelligent expectation that Jesus would fulfil the confessor’s hopes.  The confession at Capernaum followed one of Jesus’ mightiest exhibitions of power, and was given before the disciples had had time to consider the extent of the defection from their Master.  Here at Caesarea Philippi, however, the word was spoken immediately after an acknowledgment that the people had no more thought of finding in Jesus their Messiah.  It was spoken after the disciples had had repeated evidence of the determined hostility of the leaders to Jesus.  All the disappointment he had given to their cherished ideas was emphasized by the isolation in which the little company now found itself.  One after another their ideas of how a Messiah should act and what he should be had received contradiction in what Jesus was and did.  Yet after the weeks of withdrawal from Galilee, Peter could only in effect assert anew what he had declared at Capernaum,—­that Jesus had the words of eternal life.  It was a faith chastened by perplexity, and taught at length to follow the Lord let him lead where he would.  It was an actual surrender to his mastery over thought and life.  Here at length Jesus had won what he had been seeking during all his work in Galilee,—­a corner-stone on which to build up the new community of the kingdom of God.  Peter was the first to confess openly to this simple surrender to the full mastery of Jesus.  He was the first stone in the foundation of the new “building of God.”