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CHAPTER I

THE EARLIER ACTIVITY OF JESUS

UR first volume brought events down

to the time when Jesus, at about thirty years of age, began his ministry. Still thrilling through and through with the burning words of John the Baptist, and the solemn refrain of his preaching, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," he began by repeating these words, and for the time he said no others.

But it was not at Nazareth that he was to preach what he already called the "gospel," -the good news, that is, the coming renovation of things, prepared for by a change in men's hearts and lives. In Nazareth he had no authority: he had been known there from childhood, and

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no man is a prophet in his own country." And, besides, he would there remain unknown. Nazareth is hidden away in the

hills; he needed a centre from which to radiate into the far distance. Therefore he chose Capernaum, deciding that this village should be the point of departure for his preaching, his calls to his people. The choice was, no doubt, the result of careful investigation on his part. He might have stationed himself elsewhere; but remaining in Galilee, giving up for the outset the idea of Jerusalem,1 he could be nowhere better placed than in Capernaum. He certainly knew this town and all the lake shore, and in his youth he had often taken the six or seven hours' walk which separated Nazareth from the Sea of Galilee.

He decided, therefore, to leave the place where he had always lived. The rupture was certainly painful. This village where he had grown up was entwined with memories not merely of his childhood, but of all his youth and his life up to the age of thirty. It is true that these memories were of mingled character. His mother did not understand him; his brothers dis

1 "For the outset," because his first attempts upon Jerusalem had not succeeded. See, further, Chapter VIII., "Journeys to Jerusalem."

approved of him; James especially, — the austere, strict, fastidious Jew, who was nearly of his own age, must have looked upon him as a prodigal son, and later, when he became aware of Jesus' breadth of view, his heresies, his violation of the Sabbath, would suspect him of madness. But this was of minor importance; for Jesus to leave Nazareth, to go away, was to break with all that he had dearest in the world.

On leaving Nazareth the road ascends, and the view opens more and more widely. The culminating point of the way is one of the highest in all Galilee. Jesus could see immense regions spread out around him, and in the distance Mount Hermon, eternally white, towering above the lower mountains, whose large undulations descend toward the Sea of Tiberias, still invisible, hidden behind its terraced hills. When at last it comes into view, it is a sheet of grayish blue, seen only in glimpses against the distant background, and gradually coming more clearly into view. From these high points might be seen on its banks cities, villages, white houses,

cubes of masonry in great number, far away and very low, as upon a map.

Galilee in that time was throbbing with intense life; and when one sees it to-day so gray and dead, the contrast is poignant. When Jesus from the top of the hills first saw the lake, he saw at the same time Tiberias, Magdala, Bethsaida, and numberless barks skimming the water. Into the midst of this simple and artless population, he was about to bring his new ideas,

the preaching of John the Baptist, and still other things; all that was fermenting in his soul, all that for eighteen years had been working in his mind and drawing him on, and all that he was shortly to add to this; for his thought was on the march, and every day some new horizon would open before him, and he would better understand the Father's will. His meat was to do that will, and thus to accomplish his work.

In going to Capernaum he did not take Tiberias in his way. This idolatrous or would-be idolatrous city, peopled with pagans and foreigners, inspired in him the aversion with which it inspired every loyal and patriotic Israelite. He went