In this earthly paradise lived a population in perfect harmony with the land itself, active, honest, joyous, and tender of heart, and here Jesus became the centre of a little circle which adored him.  In this friendly group he evidently had his favourites.  Peter, for whom his affection was very deep, James, son of Zebedee, and John, his brother, formed a sort of privy council.  Jesus owed his conquests to the infinite charm of his personality and speech.  Everyone thought that he lived in a sphere higher than that of humanity.  The aristocracy of the group was represented by a customs-officer, and by the wife of one of Herod’s stewards.  The rest were fishermen and common folk.  Jesus lived with his disciples almost always in the open air, the faithful band leading a joyous wandering life, and gathering the inspirations of the Master in their first bloom.  His preaching was soft and gentle, inspired with a feeling for nature and the perfume of the fields.  It was above all in parable that the Master excelled.  There was nothing in Judaism to give him a model for this delightful feature.  He created it.  In freeing man from what he called “the cares of this world” Jesus might go to excess and injure the essential conditions of human society; but he founded that spiritual exaltation which for centuries has filled souls with joy in the midst of this vale of tears.  In our busy civilisation the memory of the free life of Galilee has been like perfume from another world, like the “dew of Hermon,” which has kept drought and grossness from entirely invading the fields of God.

A GOSPEL FOR THE POOR

Jesus very soon understood that the official world of his time would by no means lend its support to his kingdom.  He took his resolution with extreme daring.  Leaving the world, with its hard heart and narrow prejudices, on one side, he turned towards the simple.  A vast rearrangement of classes was to take place.  The Kingdom of God was made for children, and those like them; for the world’s outcasts, victims of that social arrogance which repulses the good but humble man; for heretics and schismatics, publicans, Samaritans, and the pagans of Tyre and Sidon.  That the reign of the poor is at hand was the doctrine of Jesus.  This exaggerated taste for poverty could not last very long, but although it quickly passed, poverty remained an ideal from which true descendants of Jesus were never afterwards separated.

Like all great men, Jesus was fond of common folk, and felt at his ease with them.  He particularly esteemed all those whom orthodox Judaism disdained.  Love of the people, pity for their powerlessness, the feeling of the democratic leader who has the spirit of the multitude quick within him, reveal themselves at every instant in his acts and sayings.  He had no external affection, and made no display of austerity.  He did not shun pleasure; but went willingly to marriage feasts.  His gentle gaiety found constant expression