Otherwise no appeal is made to the miracles in order to prove anything. That they were not understood to prove the Messiah ship of Jesus is clear from the insistent demand of the Pharisees for "a sign," by which they meant some portent which would, so they thought, make it impossible for men not to believe, e.g., casting Himself down from the pediment of the Temple. And when Jesus sternly refused to give such a sign, He made it clear that miracles were neither intended nor calculated to produce faith. There are indications that there came a point in His minis try when He became chary of healing indiscriminately. This is shown by a new emphasis on His "compassion" as the motive of particular miracles, or on "faith" as the condition of His per forming them. He may well have recognized that the popular enthusiasm due to the working of such miracles on a large scale, so far from furthering His mission, was only too likely to wreck it. And, further, that in too many cases those who were healed were satisfied with the physical boon and were indifferent to the higher gifts He had to give. They failed to show even that rudi mentary attachment to Himself which could deserve the name of faith; and He was "unable" to do any mighty works where He found that "faith" wholly wanting.
A miracle has been well defined as "the supremacy of the spir itual forces of the world to an extraordinary degree over the mere material." In our inability to measure such spiritual forces we dare not a priori set any limit to their efficacy, and the test of probability, for any particular miracle lies not in what we conceive to be its physical possibility, but in its moral significance and value. The Evangelists record the miracles of Jesus not as demonstrating His Messiahship or His divinity, but as spontane ous expressions of a personality filled with the Spirit of God and indications of a character wholly animated by sympathy for men.
To teaching and healing as characteristics of the ministry must be added companionship. Jesus was not only accessible to men and women of all types and classes ; He went forth to meet them, threw round them the compelling atmosphere of interest and care. Levi the tax-farmer, Simon the Zealot, Zacchaeus, Martha, Mary and Lazarus, Simon the Leper, these were typical instances. Many He drew into a wide circle of "followers," who accom panied Him in His circuit of Galilee ; some into a yet closer circle of professed "disciples." Twelve He selected "that they might be
with Him;" to these, who had shown a real initial receptivity He revealed "the mysteries of the Kingdom," and some of the depths of His own personality. These, when gathered into His fellowship (or "name") and to some extent imbued with His spirit He sent forth with power to cast out demons, to proclaim still more widely the coming Kingdom.
The earliest result of this ministry in Galilee was seen in a wave of popular interest and enthusiasm. "The common people heard Him gladly" (Mark xii. 37). They crowded the house where He was, the street where He walked, the beach to which His boat was moored. His fame spread through all Galilee and even "beyond Jordan," to Judaea and Idumaea. On the other hand opposition began to show itself. The religious authorities were alarmed at the independence of this unauthorized teacher, who ignored the traditionai rules by which they had fenced the law of the Sabbath, who encouraged His disciples to drop the practice of fasting, who dared even to reach back behind the law of Moses itself and proclaim on His own authority the wider principles on which that law rested. Alarm deepened into suspicion, suspicion into dislike and hostility, as attempts made by scribes and Phari sees to challenge Him in argument were met and worsted by Jesus. Already the Pharisees began to conspire with their tra ditional foes the court-party "how they might destroy him." At the same time it became only too clear that the popular enthusi asm was but fleeting. The parable of the Sower is probably a reading off of the disappointing experience. Much of the seed which He had sown had fallen either on stony ground or among thorns ; and even what sprouted had either withered away or been choked. Nazareth itself, His home town, showed conspicuously its contemptuous want of faith. Jesus withdrew from Galilee; H15 continuous ministry there came to an end. Through "the district of Tyre and Sidon" (where He broke through the barrier of Jewish exclusiveness by healing the daughter of a Gentile woman) He fetched a wide circuit by the valley of the upper Jordan, and after a brief visit to Galilee turned north again, to arrive at Caesarea Philippi at the southern base of Mount Hermon.