These resolute words pleased Him, and He said nothing of the enormous distance between Him and them.  They were too simple to understand that.  He only said:  “Leave that to Him who will show you your place.  For every ruler has rulers over him; One alone has no authority above Him.  Consider:  if a servant has worked hard and faithfully, he will not therefore in the evening sit at the upper end of the table and begin to eat before his master, but he will first prepare his master’s food, and place a footstool under his feet.  And so it is with you.  Whoso would be greatest must serve the others.  I, too, have come not to be ministered to but to minister, and to sacrifice Myself for others and to give My life a ransom for many.”

It alarmed them that He should speak more and more often of giving up His life.  What did it mean?  If he perished Himself how could He save others?  That might occur in saving people from fire or from drowning, but how could a man free a people and lead it to God by sacrificing his life?  True, the heathens had their human sacrifices.  Judas had his own ideas about the matter.  The Master was depressed by failure, or He merely wished to test His adherents, to find out if they had strength enough to follow Him through thick and thin.  If only He could be entirely sure of that, then He would hasten like the lightnings of heaven to annihilate the enemy and glorify His own adherents.  If, as He Himself had said, faith was so strong that it could remove mountains, it would be quite easy for Him to show His power at the propitious moment.

This firm belief of Judas made the disciple Thomas remember the Master’s actual words about faith:  Whosoever says to the mountain, Depart, and cast yourself into the sea, and does not doubt but believes that it happens, for him it will happen.  Mark, for him it will happen.  Whether others who do not believe will see the mountain fall into the sea He did not say.

“Then, brother Thomas,” said Bartholomew, “you think things that happen through faith happen only for him who believes.  They form only an inward experience, but real enough for him, because he sees them happen with his spiritual eye.  But they are not real for others.  If that’s the case, my friend, we should be lost.  Jesus may believe that the enemy fall, Jesus may see them fall; all the same they still live and live to destroy us.”

“That is cheap logic,” said the resolute Judas.  “Every one has seen how He made the lame to walk and the dead to live; even those who did not believe.  Take heed!  If only the Master would make some outward demonstration of His power you should see what He could do.”

Others were of that opinion, so they followed—­followed their Messiah.