Other thousands, though seeing, believed not. Some of His own nearest friends, not grasping His meaning, turned their backs and left Him. Do not even to-day many feel that He should have spoken plainer, or, is it that our few fragmentary stories of His life are misconceived, confused, misinterpreted, mistranslated--and in a sense falsified by two thousand years of time and change of methods of human thought? No one knows. The Master did not speak the language of the Bible, not even the language of the Jews. His was a Syrian dialect called Arimean. It was the tongue His mother spoke; the same dialect they talked, and laughed and sang in, that night of the marriage in Cana. Let us not ask too much of the Testament. Time and circumstances do strange things with human thought and speech. Despite mystery, and despite fragments, in the great story, enough is left clear to teach us the spirit of the Golden Rule. Christ said that was enough. The people who wrote the books of the Testament wrote wholly from memory, and some of them were now old men. John was ninety, and was then almost the last man on earth to have seen Jesus alive. Dates, deeds, times, places, words, are sometimes much confused in the Testament. Some things are omitted by one and told by another. Yet the spirit of each Testament book is the same--and all as authentic as writing from memory would permit. The Testament books are fragments only--yet piecing them together what a beautiful whole remains! Sometimes one wonders that just plain uncultured fishermen could write so beautifully. It would require a much larger book than this is intended to be to repeat all the tender stories, the touching words, of the Master that are portrayed by these inspired fishermen by the sea. Even they did not tell all. In every village in Galilee, on all the winding roads, along the dear lake, in every hamlet, synagogue, the feet of the Master went. Every hour saw miracles of healing, and every poor peasant heard words of kindness. What delightful little journeys they were in the beautiful land as the Prince of Peace passed, scattering blessings. To the happy little communities it must have sometimes seemed as if the new kingdom, the promised hour, was there already! Such crowds pressed to Him that time and again He would climb into a little boat on Galilee lake, ask His friends to push it a little from the shore, and there, from this improvised altar on the sea, talk to the crowds on the shore.