and the simple.  It is possible that Jesus looked also to another type of which he gained very little in his lifetime; for he speaks of “the scribe who has turned disciple again, and brings out of his treasure things new and old” (Matt. 13:52)—­the more complicated type of the trained scholar, full of old learning, but open to new views.  In the meantime he draws to him people with the warm heart—­yes, he says, but cultivate the cool head (cf.  Matt. 10:16).  Again and again he will have men “count the cost” (Luke 14:28)—­know what they are doing, be rid of delusions before they follow him (Mark 8:34).  What did they expect?  They had all sorts of dreams of the future.  When we first find them, there is friction among them, which is not unnatural in a group of men with ambitions (Mark 9:33. 10:37).  Even at the Last Supper their minds run on thrones (Luke 22:24).  They are haunted by taboos.  Peter long after boasts that nothing common or unclean has entered his lips (Acts 10:14).  They fail to understand him.  “Are ye also without understanding?” he asks, not without surprise (Mark 8:17, 21).  At the very end they run away.

There, then, is the group.  What is to be the method?  There is not much method.  As Harnack says about the spread of the early Church, “A living faith needs no special methods”—­a sentence worth remembering.  “Infinite love in ordinary intercourse” is another phrase of Harnack in describing the life of the early Church.  It began with Jesus.  He chose twelve, says Mark (3:14), “that they may be with him.”  That is all.  And they are with him under all sorts of circumstances.  “The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head” (Luke 9:58).  They saw him in privation, fatigued, exhausted.  With every chance to see weaknesses in his character, they did not find much amiss with him.  That is surely significant.  They lived with him all the time, in a genuine human friendship, a real and progressive intimacy.  They were with him in popularity and in unpopularity; they were with him in danger, when Herod tried to kill him and he went out of Herod’s territory.  But friendship depends not only on great moments; it means companionship in the trivial, too, it means idle hours together, partnership in commonplace things—­meals and garden—­chairs as well as books and crises.  Ordinary life, ordinary talk, gossip, chat, every kind of conversation about Herods and Roman governors, and the Zealots—­custom-house memories, tales of the fishermen’s life on the lake, stories of neighbours and home—­rumours about the Galileans who were murdered by Pilate (Luke 13:1-4)—­all the babbling talk of the bazaar is round Jesus and his group, and some of it breaks in on them; and his attitude to it all is to these men a constant revelation of character.  They are with him in the play of feelings, with him in the fluxes and refluxes of his thought—­learning his ways of mind without realizing it.  They slip into his mind and mood, by a series of surprises, when