SECTION V.

THE FIRST WITHDRAWAL OF CHRIST BEFORE HIS ANTAGONISTS. THE INCREASING REVERENCE AND ENTHUSIASM OF THE PEOPLE FOR HIM. THE EXTENSION OF HIS SPHERE OF OPERATION, AND THE CHOOSING OF THE TWELVE APOSTLES.

(Mark. iii. 7-19.)

After these conflicts with His antagonists, Jesus withdrew to the sea. But the enmity of the Pharisees and Herodians was not as yet able to detach the people from Him. Their attachment to Him rather went on increasing in proportion as the enmity of His opponents came to maturity. So a great multitude now followed Him from Galilea, and from Judea, and from Jerusalem, and from Idumea and Perea, and they about Tyre and Sidon, a great multitude, composed of those who had heard what great things He did. He first took up His abode by the sea-shore; but the pressure around Him here was so great, that He said to His disciples that a small ship should wait on Him because of the multitude, lest they should throng Him. For He had healed many of them; and the consequence was, that they pressed upon Him to touch Him, as many as had plagues. And special excitement was manifested among the demoniacs. When the unclean spirits (in them) saw Him, they (running up to Him) fell down before Him and cried, 'Thou art the Son of God.' And He straitly charged them that they should not make Him known.

So He withdrew from this excessive pressure, first to the sea, and then to a mountain. And as on the sea He taught from the ship the people on the shore, so on the mountain He, by means of deputies, put Himself in connection with the mass of His adherents. He called unto Him whom He would; and they came unto Him. But He had a special object in view on this second withdrawal into solitude, namely, to choose the Twelve. They were appointed to be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach, and to have power to 'heal sicknesses, and to cast out devils. Simon, the first of the Twelve, He surnamed Peter; and James the son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James; and He surnamed¹ them Boanerges, which is, the sons of thunder (see above, vol. i. p. 227; and vol. ii. p. 174); and Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus, and Simon the Canaanite (Zelotes; see vol. ii. 176), and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him (as the last of the disciples, while the first of them denied Him, although only for a short time).

Thus the Lord surrounds Himself with the chosen Twelve in holy solitude on a mountain. Like a king He here collects them around Him as attendants to give evidence of His honour, as the messengers of His word to announce it as His deputies to the world, and as invested with His might to heal men of their sicknesses and to set them free from the unclean spirits of the nether world. The first names of this consecrated band are the man of rock and the sons of thunder. And the last among them, the traitor, must testify of His might, for Christ has committed it to him; and if Judas does not act in accordance with our Lord's loving thoughts, yet he cannot injure His work, but must, even at the very worst, be instrumental in advancing His victory. And even the power of darkness which was developed in the. last of the Twelve, testifies of the spiritual powers of this society, over which the Spirit of Christ bore kingly sway.

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