Growing Faith.

Now we climb the hill where the disciples are.  The crowds are in the bottom-lands.  Many have started up the hill.  Jesus always woos men uphill.  You can always tell a man by where he is standing, bottom-land, hillside, higher-hill-slope, hilltop.  We turn now from the crowds that believed to those whose personal acceptance of Jesus drew them into the inner circle.

The first three incidents trace the beginnings of faith in those first close disciples who came to be numbered among the picked inner twelve.[61] The first story is one of the rarest of John’s many rare stories.  It is characteristic of the real thing of faith that beginning with two they quickly number five.  The attachment of the two to John, the Witness, reveals them as of the earnest inquiring sort, after the very best.  John never forgot that talk with Jesus in the gathering twilight by the Jordan.  It sends Andrew out for Peter, and John likely for James, while the Master gets Philip, and he in turn Nathaniel.  That reveals the real stuff of faith.  It has a mind whose questionings have been satisfied, a heart that catches fire, and feet that hasten out-of-doors for others.  That’s the real thing.

Their faith takes deeper root at Cana.  A new personal experience of Jesus’ power is a great deepener of faith, the great deepener.  This is the only pathway from faith to a deeper realer sturdier faith.  A man can get a deeper faith only by walking on his own feet where Jesus leads.

Their faith grows imperceptibly but by leaps and bounds.  It grows down deeper and so up stronger and out farther by their companionship with Jesus through those brief packed years.  What a school that was! the school of companionship with Jesus, with lessons daily, but the chiefest lesson the Teacher Himself.  What a school it is!  The only one for learning the real thing of faith:  still open:  pupils received at any time.

If we would shut our eyes and go with them as they company with Jesus through those wondrous days and events and experiences we may get some hold on how their faith grew.  They actually saw the handful of loaves and fishes grow in their hands until thousands were fed.  Their own eyes saw Jesus walking on the water.

It was out of their very hearts that they cry out through Peter’s lips in answer to Jesus’ pathetic pleading question and say, “To whom shall we go?  Thou hast the words of eternal life."[62] And without doubt Thomas acts as spokesman for all when Jesus announced His intention of returning to the danger zone, and Thomas sturdily says, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him."[63]

But you are thinking of that terrible break of theirs on the betrayal night, are you?  Well, perhaps if we call to mind with what an utter shock the events of that terrific twenty four hours came, intensified the more by the unexpectedness and the suddenness of it; and then if—­perhaps—­we may call to mind the more recent behaviour of some modern disciples who have had enormous advantages over them in regard to that terrific experience it may chasten our feelings a bit and soften the edge of our thought about them.