in the highest degree with hope for the coming of the Messiah.  He was of the same age as Jesus, and the two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hatreds, were able to lend each other mutual support, Jesus recognizing John as his superior, and timidly developing his own individual genius.  John was soon cut short in his prophetic career, and cast into prison, from which, however, he still exercised a wide influence.

Jesus returned from the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea and the Jordan to Galilee, his true home, ripened by intercourse with a great man of very different nature, and having acquired full consciousness of his own originality.  From that time he preached with greater power and made the multitude feel his authority.  The persuasion that he was to make God reign upon earth took absolute possession of his spirit.  He looked upon himself as the universal reformer.  He aimed at founding the Kingdom of God, or, in other words, the Kingdom of the Soul.  Jesus was, in some respects, an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government.  He never showed any desire to put himself in the place of the rich and mighty.  The idea of being all-powerful by suffering and resignation, and of triumphing over force by purity of heart was his peculiar idea.  The founders of the Kingdom of God are the simple—­not the rich, not the learned, not the priests; but women, common folk, the humble, and the young.  He now boldly announced “the good tidings of the Kingdom of God,” and himself as that “Son of Man,” whom Daniel in his vision had beheld as the divine herald of the last and supreme revelation.

EARLY SUCCESSES

The success of the new prophet’s teaching was decisive.  A group of men and women, all characterised by the same spirit of childish frankness and simple innocence, adhered to him, and said, “Thou art the Messiah.”  The centre of his operations was the little town of Capernaum, on the shore of the Lake of Genesareth.  Jesus was much attached to the town and made it a second home.  He had attempted to begin the work at Nazareth, but without success.  The fact that his family, which was of humble rank, was known in the district lessened his authority too much; and it is moreover remarkable that his family were strongly opposed to him, and flatly declined to believe in his mission.  In Capernaum he was much more favourably received, and it became “his own city.”  These good Galileans had never heard preaching so well adapted to their cheerful imaginations.  They admired him, they encouraged him, they found that he spoke well, and that his reasons were convincing.  The almost poetical harmony of his discourses won their affections.  The authority of the young master increased day by day, and naturally the more that people believed in him the more he believed in himself.  Four or five large villages, lying at half an hour’s journey from one another, formed the little world of Jesus at this time.  Sometimes, however, he wandered beyond his favourite region, once in the direction of Tyre and Sidon, a country which must have been marvellously prosperous at that time.  But he returned always to his well-beloved shore of Genesareth.  The motherland of his thoughts was there; there he found faith and love.