The Twelve Apostles.— For some time this condition of affairs had been anticipated, and Jesus had laid his plans and shaped his work accordingly. Since the Jewish people would have no such kingdom as he was about to establish, he had several months previously or ganized under the name of apostles agroup of 12 of his disciples, to whom he would impart himself, and on whom he would so far as pos sible stamp himself, that they in turn might repeat his activity in their relations to others. Although he retained the name kingdom, what he looked forward to establishing was not a political but a spiritual community or body.
After the choice of the apostles the dis courses of Jesus had been largely shaped for their special benefit; after his rejection of the offer of kingship from the unappreciative multitude, who in turn instantly deserted him when they saw that he would refuse to gratify their selfish hopes, his work was mainly for the benefit of the twelve, although he neglected no opportunity which came within his reach of trying to touch the soul of the nation or of individuals. Much of the last year of his life Jesus spent in seclusion. He made a journey, doubtless traveling in leisurely fashion, north west from Capernaum to Sidon, returning as it appears by a roundabout route through the Decapolis, and another journey northeast to Caesarea Philippi; some time was spent in Perea to the east of the Jordan; and though he seems more than once to have shown himself con spicuously in Jerusalem or its immediate neigh borhood, yet during most of the time which he spent in Judea he secluded himself in an ob scure village named Ephriam.
So far as the work of Jesus was concerned, the most significant event of the last year, if not of all the three years of his ministry, was the conversation with the. apostles near Caesarea Philippi as to the opinion of him which gener ally prevailed and as to their own convictions. While Jesus is reported at least once to have claimed to be the expected Messiah, and while this claim was necessarily implied in much that he had said of himself, and while some of the twelve had very early expressed the opinion that they had found the one of whom Moses and the prophets had spoken, yet this view had never found expression as their matured conviction. Such expression Jesus at last sought. His first question was as to the com mon sentiment concerning him, and the frank answer was that while he was generally recog nized as one far beyond the ordinary, he was not at all recognized as the Promised One. In face of this answer Jesus pressed the further question, 'What am I to you and the answer of Peter, one speaking for all, was that he was the Christ. This answer assured the ultimate
success of his mission, for these followers would win more. But he could not fail at the same time to foresee the irrepressible conflict between himself and the leaders of the nation, and so, relying on their faith in him as the Christ, he immediately began• to familiarize them with the fact of his death, though this only confused and offended them, and at the same time to add promises of resurrection which they do not seem to have grasped at all.
The apparent failure of the mission of Jesus which he thus foretold, culminating as it did in his rejection and death, was due alike to what he was, what he taught and what he demanded. He himself was devoted with ab solute singlemindedness to his work. sincere, unselfish, loving, beneficient, and pure with such perfect and manifest purity that only a few voices of detraction have ever been out of har mony with the almost unanimous recognition and assertion of the sinlessness of his whole life. His teaching, while not in all respects original in matter or form, was in spirit and effective ness such an advance on the Old Testament which he confirmed or the rabbis with whom he largely agreed that it seemed "a new teach ing.' He demanded of others the same per fection of sincerity. altruistic self-forgetfulness and supreme devotion to the will of God which he himself practised, and he as sternly de nounced hypocrites as he tenderly welcomed penitents. All his teaching came with a unique tone of authority and this was made more significant by the claims which he advanced for himself. He occasionally asserted and con stantly implied that he was a special messen ger from God and unique representative of Wmi, and from time to time he distinctly claimed divine attributes and powers. Thus he spoke; to confirm this he pointed to his miracles; as such he held himself up as the proper object of supreme and absolutely limitless devotion; the recognition of this supremacy he demanded of all and gladly accepted from his disciples, a self-assertion which in view of his sincerity and simplicity of soul is as significant as in view of his transparent honesty coupled with unsurpassed sensitiveness to evils is the absence of ever confessing a fault. Between such a one with such a message and such demands and the rulers of the nation at the time there was necessarily an irreconcilable antagonism which could end in no way but in his death.