B. THE GALILEAN PERIOD. Jesus' mission was to win men to God. In this Galilean period His mission entered upon its first stage, which was to arouse the attention of the people to the kingdom of God He announced. and to gather them to His personal following as that kingdom's representative. For the arousing of this atten tion and the gathering of this following. He di rected His work along two lines—the perform ance of miraculous deeds and the giving of in struction. The deeds were intended to be signs to the people which should give them to under stand that the kingdom of God was at hand. and lead them to Him as the divine representative of that kingdom: the instruction was intended to acquaint them with the nature of that king dom and the conditions of entering and remain ing in it. It is thus clear why He gave 'Himself at the very beginning of His Galilean work to the working of miracles, and why the miracles He selected were of beneficent character. These were not only to be proofs of His power. but.evi dences of the character of the rule He had come to establish on the earth—a rule which was founded upon the love of God for the world and the need of God to the world. This purpose was especially present in His casting out of demons, His healing of lepers. and His raising of the dead; for demoniac possessions were considered , as directly due to Satan, while leprosy was a recognized emblem of the corruption of sin. and death was looked upon as its punishment. in showing Himself master of these. Jesus not sim ply aroused attention to Himself as a prophet in Israel. but as a prophet who had a direct message to the religious life of the people. This message, however, would not have been under stood had His miracles been unaccompanied with instruction. As a matter of fact, it was poorly understood even then ; but slow to understand it as were the people to whom it was given, we can comprehend how it came that such portions of it as have been preserved to us in the com posite address known as the Sermon on the Mount, and in the group of parables delivered by the Sea of Galilee. are of the character they are. The atmosphere in which the .Jew had been religiously trained being that of ceremonial righteousness, it was necessary, from Jesus' point of view, to emphasize the higher character of the righteousness which His religion required, and yet its essential identity with the real right eousness demanded in the law. It was equally necessary to make clear the divisions and separa tions which such requirements would bring among men, and the judgment involved in such proc ess. The, character of this newer righteousness
is brought out in the Sermon on the Mount, de livered toward the beginning of his Galilean work, The judicial results involved in it are por trayed to a large extent in the parables which were uttered toward the close of that work.
With this purpose of announcing by deed and word the advent of God's kingdom in the world, Jesus carried on Ilis work from Capernaum as a centre. ilis method was apparently to make stated tours of the neighboring towns and vil lages, heralding the fact that the kingdom of God was at hand, and proclaiming flis authority in this announcement by miraculous deeds. Three of these tours are reported in the Synoptists dur ing this period of His Galilean work: (1) Mark i. 35-39, Matt. iv. 23-25. Luke iv. 42-44; (2) Luke viii. 1-3; (3) Mark vi. 6, Matt. ix. 35-38, xi. 1. But He did not confine His activity to Galilee. He went up to Jerusalem, the centre of the people's religious life, and there He wrought his miracles and carried on to some extent His instrnetion, suiting it to the character of the religious leaders in the city and the people who were under their control. We have the record of one such visit made at the time of an un named feast (generally now supposed to be either Pentecost, A.D 27, or Purim, A.D. 28. John v. I) ; the Passover of A.D. 28, which is referred to in .John vi. 4, 'Jesus apparently did not attend (John vii. 2). These tours in Galilee and jour neys to Jerusalem afforded .Jesus the opportunity He desired of coining widely in contact with the people of the country and bringing before them His message. With His presence among them in the streets and market-places. teaching and working miracles, with His company with them on their pilgrimages to and from the holy city. and His partieipation with them in their temple devo tions, there could be no ignorance of the fact that a prophet had arisen in Israel and a new mes sage had come to the people from ,Jehovah. As a result, Jesus secured to Himself a large follow ing, among the people, who became increasingly enthusiastic as the conviction that He might possibly he the national Messiah grew upon them. As this following increased in numbers, He organized it more formally by the selection of twelve of His disciples to a closer relationship to Himself. (See APOSTLE.) To these He in creasingly directed His instruction. with a view to the work He looked forward to their doing as His future representatives. We have a formal exhibition of such instruction in the discourse of Matthew x.