pretensions, and that he met with no success in his own district. Of the former, in addition to the negative evidence furnished by the fact that neither Mary nor the brothers of Jesus are mentioned among the believers, we have the positive evidence of John that his brothers did not believe (Jo. vii. 5), confirmed by the statement in the other Gospels that his family attempted to see him during the earlier part of his career, and that Jesus positively refused to have anything to do with them (Mk. iii. 31-35; Mt. xii. 46-50; Lu. viii. 19-21). This desire on the part of the family to confer with him, and the manner in which Jesus, disavowing all special ties, adopts all who "do the will of God" as mother, brother and sister, admits of but one construction. Mary and her other children were anxious to draw him away from the rash and foolish mode of life—as they deemed it—on which he had entered, and Jesus, understanding their design, avoided an unpleasant interview by simply declining to be troubled with them. And if, as is highly probable, it was they who thought him mad (Mk. iii. 21), we have further proof that neither his mother nor any of the other members of his family can be counted among his converts, at any rate during his life-time. The second circumstance, his complete failure in his own neighborhood, is attested by a saying of his own, recorded by all four Evangelists. A prophet, he is reported to have said, is without honor in his own country, among his own kin, and in his own house (Mk. vi. 4). To which it was added that he was unable to perform any work of power there, beyond curing a few sick people. And these cures evidently did not impress the skeptical Nazarenes, for we are told that "he marveled because of their unbelief" (Mk. vi. 5, 6).
Leaving, therefore, these hard-hearted neighbors, he proceeded to address the people of Galilee and Judea in discourses which excited great attention; sometimes inculcating moral truths in plain but eloquent language, sometimes preferring to illustrate them by little stories, the application of which he either made himself or left to his hearers to discover. Had these stood alone, they would have sufficed to give him a high reputation. But he did not depend on words alone for his success among the people. The peculiar condition of Palestine at this epoch gave him a favorable opportunity of supplementing
