We may suppose that some process like this was going on in the minds of Peter and Andrew and James and John during that summer spent in their fishers’ work by the Sea of Galilee. Our Lord’s image would, all the more, be kept alive in their minds because when they chanced to meet their talk would be of Him; and their Master’s form would seem to rise before them when they sat beside one another, with their boats drawn up on the beach. We need not suppose that they saw into their Master’s plans, far less into His nature; we do not know that they had heard _from Him_ about the Kingdom of Heaven which the Baptist had told them was at hand; but the foundation for Faith was being laid in a capacity for intense personal devotion. First they learnt to love the Master whom they saw by their side; next, by thinking of Him while He was away, they learned how much they loved Him, and became aware that their affection for Him had in it something different from the common affections they knew. Shortly, as we shall presently see, a sense of shelter and of fostering protection mingled with this love, and grew into a trust, first in the Master who was with them, and afterwards in the Lord in Heaven. It is hardly too much to say that the germ of the new quality, which was to order the world afresh, was planted in men’s hearts by the side of the Sea of Galilee in that summer of A.D. 28, and that then Faith—Faith as our Lord speaks of it—dawned upon the world. CHAPTER VII. THE PREACHING TO THE MULTITUDES. It was, as I believe, soon after that “feast of the Jews” lately mentioned (pp. 180 and 181 note), that the news of the apprehension of the Baptist by Herod reached our Lord at Jerusalem. At once He enters on His own Great Work(139) and goes straight into Galilee, preaching on the way that the Kingdom of God is come. The reasons for His holding back, came to an end together with the liberty of John. We lose now the guidance of St John, and we pass to the more continuous transcript of events which the Synoptists give. Up to this time of His advent into Galilee our Lord was in part, as I have said, exploring the condition and the tempers of the people in quest of the fittest cradle for the Faith. It may possibly have been that our Lord in His visit to Jerusalem was giving the Holy City a last trial; but I see no ground to suppose that our Lord ever seriously contemplated any course different from that which He actually took. In any case, this outbreak of hostility on the part of the scribes settled the matter: for the kind of mental growth which our Lord wished to bring about in the disciples could not go on in the midst of party warfare.