So many fell away that our Lord's company [pg 333] was reduced to a handful. He had expected, and probably intended, to thin it considerably, but the withdrawals among the disciples appear to have surprised Him, He says to the Apostles, “Will ye also go away?” Puzzled by our Lord's declarations no doubt they were, but of one thing they were sure: having known Christ they could follow no one else but Him. The mountain journey clenched their devotion and their faith.
“And from thence he arose, and went away into the borders of Tyre and Sidon. And he entered into a house, and would have no man know it: and he could not be hid.”[242]
Now at last does our Lord find for the Apostles the rest which He had desired to give them before. It is not a missionary journey, He does not preach to the people; and the miracles which He performs are no longer illustrations of God's Kingdom, but works of beneficence wrung from Him by the sight of suffering. The cures are wrought as privately as is possible. The Syro-Phœnician woman obtains what she desires by her exceptional openness to Divine impression: when He entered into a house “and would have no man know it,” she sought Him out. The man who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, is taken “aside from the multitude privately,” and our Lord charged the witnesses “that [pg 334] they should tell no man.”[243] So again with the blind man at Bethsaida (probably Bethsaida Julias at the head of the lake)[244] “He took hold of the blind man by the hand and brought him out of the village,” and at the end “He sent him away to his home, saying, Do not even enter into the village.”[245]
Our Lord appears to have returned southwards along the valley and down the eastern side of the Lake, where the miracle of the feeding of the four thousand took place.
This country on the east of the Sea of Galilee, contained a mixed population, of which only the smaller part were of Israelite descent. The four thousand had followed day after day seeking cures; but there was no fear of these men trying to make Jesus a King, for there was little nationalist feeling on that side the sea. Our Lord might therefore exert His beneficence without imprudence. It seems strange that the disciples should not have thought of the feeding of the five thousand; but they may have thought that it was out of the question that a miracle should be wrought for people who were mostly heathen; or it may have been one of those not uncommon cases in which a man has seen his mistake and supposes that he can never make it again, and yet when circumstances [pg 335] arise, similar except for some slight variation, he does exactly what he did before.
When the four thousand were sent away, our Lord takes boat and crosses the lake to Magada in “the parts of Dalmanutha.” Of this region we know nothing except that it must have been on the western side of the lake. Here our Lord again finds himself among the haunts of men, and, since wherever there was a town population Pharisees were to be found, these “came forth, and began to question with him, seeking of him a Sign from heaven, tempting him.”[246]
Perhaps they had heard of the feeding of the four thousand and wanted to put Him to what they considered a conclusive test. “Could He shew a Sign in Heaven?” This iterated cry shewed the poorness of the soil, they had nothing else to utter but a demand for credentials. If our Lord had worked a “Sign in Heaven” they would have examined it to find a flaw, and even if they had been driven to admit that it was valid, no change whatever would have ensued in the men themselves. Chronic evil requires, not a passing shock but a long continued reparative process for its cure. So, here, to those who have not nothing is given, indeed nothing could be given to any purpose, and they soon lose even what they had, viz. our Lord's presence, for He leaves them and goes elsewhere.
On the way across the Lake, while this circumstance [pg 336] is still in His mind, our Lord warns the Apostles against this Pharisaic spirit, the leaven of the Pharisees, which would kill all that is spiritual in religion by reducing every thing to matter of dry proof and dead authority. On the mistake of the disciples, “It is because we have no bread,” I have already spoken (p. [7]), it is to me a proof of the genuineness of the story. Who would have introduced it, and who has not met scores of people who would have clung to the literal sense of the words just as the Apostles did?
Our Lord and the band of apostles travel along the upper valley of the Jordan to the neighbourhood of Cæsarea Philippi. Most if not all of the outer disciples had by this time fallen away, and the opportunity for giving His higher inmost teaching had come.
Never yet, except to the woman of Samaria, had Our Lord spoken of Himself as the Messiah. The notions of the Jews about the Messiah varied greatly, but the notion of an era of material physical enjoyment was dominant in all, and this had the demoralising effect of leading men to regard sensuous well being as the supreme good. If our Lord had proclaimed Himself the Messiah, crowds would have rallied to his side, hoping to have found one who would give them what they desired. This would have been fatal to all spiritual growth. Our Lord's reticence about the Messiah and also about His own nature, is very significant: [pg 337] I think it means that truth absolute about heavenly things is not within the reach of man.