Jesus had left the city and climbed to a high ridge where he had loved to go as a boy. Now he looked down on the broad valley of Esdraelon, stretching south to the foothills of Samaria, where so many of the great battles of ancient Israel had been fought. Had he not always felt that someday he would be rejected by his own home town? Nevertheless, Jesus was not scorned by everyone in Nazareth. A few people remembered the place he loved and they came to him there. They were not rich people, and there were no elders from the synagogue among them. They were the sick and crippled; they were people for whom life was hard, and they believed the word which Jesus had spoken to them. The disciples found him teaching and healing these few. "These have heard my word," said Jesus to the followers. "To them the Kingdom is given." The disciples listened to Jesus telling the poorest folk of Nazareth the news of the Kingdom. When they left, Jesus spoke very plainly to the disciples. "Why are you so discouraged?" he asked. "Have we not preached the gospel of the Kingdom here?" "They turned us out!" burst out James. "They laughed at us! They tried to kill you!" Simon was bitter. "We should never come near this miserable village again. We might have been killed!" "If men are to enter the Kingdom of God, they must repent," answered Jesus. "It cuts them to the heart to confess that they have forgotten God and his righteousness. They hate us for teaching them the truth about themselves." The disciples sat in gloomy silence. Simon gazed out over the plains below. Here through many defeats in battle the Jews had paid the price of their sin--but Israel had not yet learned. Still the nation spurned the prophets whom God sent. Would the Kingdom never come? [Illustration] 5. WHO IS THIS CARPENTER? After their harsh experience at Nazareth, the disciples were prepared for other disappointments. Before they entered the next town on their journey through Galilee the men talked soberly, a little fearfully, about what might happen. But, one after another, the villages of Galilee welcomed Jesus. The common people listened eagerly to the news that he proclaimed, and many believed. The disciples began to forget that Jesus had been driven out of Nazareth. Late one Friday afternoon just before the Sabbath began, Jesus led the disciples into Chorazin, a town crowded in by the steep walls of a valley north of Capernaum. A full hour before sunset the hills to the west threw deep shadows over the village. It was cooler than Capernaum, thought Simon. Soon he would be home with his wife and children! But he was as glad as the others to rest in Chorazin over the Sabbath. They had traveled all week, pausing only to tell the good news in the towns they had passed through, and they were very tired.