Reverence for great men whom we have known, and the power of appreciating them, grow during absence. We may have been living so familiarly with one far above the common standard, that we may almost lose thought of his greatness; the little matters of common life, which come before us everyday, take more than their share of notice; and, as regards these, great men and smaller ones must be much alike. But when we are away from our guide, our recollections turn to what is distinctive of him—to the points in which he contrasts with everyday men: what he had in common with such disappears, and our mental portrait preserves what is characteristic, and gives us the individual more forcibly than our nearer view had done. We often first become aware of the true proportions of greatness, when we look back on it from a little way off. Out of a range of mountains, all, when seen from the valley, appearing much of a height, one is found to vastly out-top the rest when we mount the opposite hill-side.
We may suppose that some process like this was going on in the minds of Peter and Andrew and James and John during that summer spent in their fishers' work by the Sea of Galilee. Our Lord's image would, all the more, be kept alive in their minds because when they chanced to meet their talk would be of Him; and their Master's form would seem to rise before them when they sat beside one another, with their boats drawn up on the beach. We need not suppose that they saw into their Master's plans, far less into His nature; we do not know that they had heard from Him about the Kingdom of Heaven which the Baptist had told them was at hand; but the foundation for Faith was being laid in a capacity for intense personal devotion. First they learnt to love the Master whom they saw by their side; next, by thinking of Him while He was away, they learned how much they loved Him, and became aware that their affection for Him had in it something different from the common affections they knew. Shortly, as we shall presently see, a sense of shelter and of fostering protection mingled with this love, and grew into a trust, first in the Master who was with them, and afterwards in the Lord in Heaven. It is hardly too much to say that the germ of the new quality, which was to order the world afresh, was planted in men's hearts by the side of the Sea of Galilee in that summer of a.d. 28, and that then Faith—Faith as our Lord speaks of it—dawned upon the world.
Chapter VII. The Preaching To The Multitudes.
It was, as I believe, soon after that “feast of the Jews” lately mentioned (pp. [180] and [181] note), that the news of the apprehension of the Baptist by Herod reached our Lord at Jerusalem. At once He enters on His own Great Work[139] and [pg 189] goes straight into Galilee, preaching on the way that the Kingdom of God is come. The reasons for His holding back, came to an end together with the liberty of John. We lose now the guidance of St John, and we pass to the more continuous transcript of events which the Synoptists give.
Up to this time of His advent into Galilee our Lord was in part, as I have said, exploring the condition and the tempers of the people in quest of the fittest cradle for the Faith. It may possibly have been that our Lord in His visit to Jerusalem was giving the Holy City a last trial; but I see no ground to suppose that our Lord ever seriously contemplated any course different from that which He actually took. In any case, this outbreak of [pg 190] hostility on the part of the scribes settled the matter: for the kind of mental growth which our Lord wished to bring about in the disciples could not go on in the midst of party warfare.
Young men on the watch for attack are not in a state for fertilizing "seed thoughts" or for turning over hard matters in their minds, and care for the state of the recipient characterizes the teaching of Christ. Men are to take heed how they hear, as well as what they hear, and are to reach full growth and shape, not from outward moulding but by living process from within. Our Lord's eye is never off His pupils, and yet visible direction hardly ever appears; He sways them by an insensible touch. A great truth is brought to light by an incident of wonder, a pregnant word is let drop, a hard parable is delivered now and then; but between whiles the disciples are left to dwell on their own thoughts, as their fishing boat sails along, or as they follow their Master among the northern hills. Our Lord is ever bent on making men thoughtful and on calling out in each the inner life which is proper to the man, and for this, tranquillity, or at least frequent opportunity for quiet communing with their own thoughts, was absolutely required.
The antagonism at Jerusalem might have stopped short of violence and yet the wrangling spirit of the place might have had a very evil effect on the disciples. It was above all essential that they should have a single hearted love of truth; [pg 191] and this can hardly grow up when party is ranged against party and each tries to set the views and statements of the other in the most damaging light, and to dispose his own propositions in polemical order with a strategic view. As soon therefore as the hostility of the scribes was displayed, it became clear, that the schooling of the Apostles must be brought about elsewhere than in Judæa. But apart from this, Jerusalem was, for other reasons easy to perceive, ill-suited for the purpose. It was too Academical; the place was full of Rabbis, round whose feet a circle of pupils sat. Each school adopted its master's dicta with the undiscriminating loyalty of youth; and the scholars of other teachers, by steadily taking it for granted that Jesus of Nazareth was a teacher like the Rabbis they knew, would have half persuaded His followers that there was something in common between Him and the Doctors who expounded the Law.
The Rabbis gave their scholars something to show for their lessons—expositions of the Law and systematic doctrine—and their pupils would have said to the disciples, “Our master gives us this or that; what does your master give you?” This would have set them looking for what was intentionally withheld. Our Lord did not fill them with opinions or directions to be remembered, but He made them what He wanted them to be.