clare his advent with a shout. How would he display his power? When would he begin his march? Would he drive out the faction of Annas? Would he sweep away the legions of Pilate? Not the least eager of those who put such questions to each other were the three young men from Galilee. Standing near to their Master, soon to be their Master no more, Andrew and John implored him to show them the man on whom he had seen the Dove come down; and as JESUS chanced to be then walking on the river bank, going home to his lodging, John pointed to him as he passed, saying:

"Behold the Lamb of God."

Andrew and John ran after JESUS, for if he were the Christ whom they had sought, he, and he only, was their Lord: the one desire of their hearts. Hearing these earnest feet behind him, JESUS turned round to the young men, saying:

"What seek ye?"

They asked him where he dwelt, and he bade them come home with him and see. So they walked home with him; probably to a booth of reeds and twigs, built under a palm-tree; a long way from the Ford it would appear, since it is noted as the tenth hour when they arrived; on which JESUS invited them to stay with him for the night. What words were spoken, what deeds were done, in that long April night, we have not been told; but we know that under the nodding palms and silent stars the two young fishermen from Galilee were that night chosen for the kingdom of God.

When it was day, Andrew ran for his brother Simon, crying: "We have found the Messiah!" on which Simon went back with him to the spot where JESUS dwelt. Seeing the third fisherman coming, the Master chose him also; giving him a new name, perhaps to distinguish him from his neighbour, Simon the Galilean:

"Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas."

Cephas was a Chaldaic word, meaning rock or stone: the same as Petros in Greek, Petrus in Latin, and Pierre in French. In English the name does not carry its symbolic sense: for the man's nature was like the basalt tumbled in heaps and lying in quarries about his native hill. And these three young men were the original members of the Christian church.

A declaration that the Son of God had come and was in their midst, unknown to them, would have placed the man of whom it was said in conflict with the laws as taught in the Great College and practised in Cæsar's court. A Messiah, true or false, was a man to be feared by those in place; by Annas as a rival priest, by Pilate as a pretender to the throne. Being proud and strong, such men might be slow to act, and when they acted would be sure to observe all legal forms. But as magistrates, they were bound to preserve order; the commons were hot and weak; and a tumult in the Baptist's camp might bring in from Jericho a sudden array of Roman troops, under the command of

captains less exalted and discreet. No man could yet guess that the new Messiah was to be of another nature than the old; most men hoped that he would be the same in kind, though higher in his degree of power. Pilate could not know that His words would be those of peace, His triumphs those of patience; and the Procurator of Judea, wise and fair as he seemed, had shown that he could be swift and in chastising disturbers of the public peace.

savage

JESUS needed to be wary in his steps. The movement around him was in some sort a plebeian secession from Jerusalem; the Jewish Mons Sacer being the Ford, the Jewish Virginius being John. He could not put himself at the head of a seceding body, of a fragment of a sect. Nor could he allow himself to be proclaimed their king. They had to come to him; but before they could call him Lord, they must be changed in heart, they must be born into a new life. The work which he had to do on earth was a work of time; to be done with individual men and not with crowds; in the house, in the workshop, in the vineyard, in the threshing-floor, among the duties and toils of life, not in a tumultuous company and a separated camp.

In his own beautiful Galilee, under the halfpagan rule of Antipas Herod, among the mixed population of Syrians, Greeks, and Jews, he would be free to teach in the synagogue, free to live among the people, free to lay the foundations of his Church in the hearts of men.

So the day after he had called Peter to himself, he set out from the Ford, going up by the caravan road beyond Jordan into the lake country, leaving the warlike Separatists clamouring for their king.

CHAPTER XXX.

Cana in Galilee.

FAR away from the Pharisees' camp, from the Sagan's palace, from the Procurator's court, the Messiah's reign, was beginning; his princes and captains being three poor fishermen from the lake of Galilee.

Still swarming into this fertile province, the Greek settlers and the Roman officers were raising cities in the strong places, launching ships on the canals and lakes, wedding towns and stations of imperial value by noble roads. One of their great roads ran through the province from west to east and north. Starting from Acre, a city called Accho in the days of Simeon, Ptolemais in those of Christ; touching at Sephoris, the old capital on the hill, a commanding post near the head of Esdraelon; dropping down the gorges of Hattin, where JESUS now preached his Sermon on the Mount; entering the gates of Tiberias on the lake; hugging the shore line from Tiberias to Magdala, Capernaum, and Bethsaida, where it crossed the Jordan by a bridge into the Greek city of Julias; this road sped along the base of Mount Hermon to Damascus: a work of noble art; paved like the Via Sacra; defended from Arab thieves by block houses, such as protect the present road from Jerusalem to the sea. Parts of