"While He talked there was a murmuring all over the house against Him, because He said that He had come down from heaven. Your uncle Laban was there. I heard him say scornfully: 'Is not this the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How doth He now say, "I am come down out of heaven"?' Then he laughed a mocking little laugh, and nudged the man who stood next to him. There are many like him; I could feel a spirit of prejudice and persecution in the very air. Many who have professed to be His friends have turned against Him."
While Phineas was pouring out his anxious forebodings to his wife and Joel, the Master was going homeward with His chosen twelve.
"Would ye also go away?" He asked wistfully of His companions, as He noted the cold, disapproving looks of many who had only the day before been fed by Him, and who now openly turned their backs on Him.
Simon Peter gave a questioning glance into the faces of his companions; then he pressed a step nearer. "Lord, to whom shall we go?" he answered impulsively. "Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have believed, and know that Thou art the Holy One of God."
The others nodded their assent, all but one. Judas Iscariot clutched the money bags he held, and looked off across the lake, to avoid the searching eyes that were fixed upon him.
These honest Galileans were too simple to suspect others of dark designs, yet they had never felt altogether free with this stranger from Judea. He had never seemed entirely one of them. They did not see in his crafty quiet manners, the sheep's clothing that hid his wolfish nature; but they could feel his lack of sympathetic enthusiasm.
He had been one of those who followed only for the loaves and fishes of a temporal kingdom, and now, in his secret soul, he was sorry he had joined a cause in whose final success he was beginning to lose faith.
The sun went down suddenly that night behind a heavy cloud, as a gathering storm began to lash the Galilee and rock the little boats anchored at the landings.
The year of popularity was at an end.