At the same time this regular occupation, though sufficient to prevent any evil spirit finding in them a corner “empty, swept and garnished,” yet was not absorbing or exhausting, it left their minds and wills free play; they could fall into groups as they chose, they could talk freely on the way, they could debate on the meaning of a parable, or on the nature and time of coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. After, what seems to have been a short mission journey, with the Twelve, into the villages of Gennesareth, which served to initiate them into their new life and to teach them confidence in their Master, our Lord came back to the Lake coast where a great crowd assembled, whom He addressed from a boat upon the Lake near the shore. The crowd that gathered there heard a teaching new to the world both in matter and in form; men who had listened to the Sermon on the Mount might scarcely believe that the speaker was the same; hitherto the lessons to the multitude had placed before them truths of life, moral and spiritual, put in such a way as to require no effort of the learner to be fully understood; the right or wrong about some matter, with which they had daily to deal, had been set before them in a light in which they had never seen it before. But what they heard now was not apopthegm, not precept, but, on the face of it, only a simple tale. “This” they would say “is all well, but how is it like the Kingdom of God?” Whether much more might not be learnt, even from these plain lessons, by turning them over a second time in the mind, was a question which only a few asked, and of these few the greater part were probably already among the disciples of Jesus. They were no longer given instruction in a condition ready for use, but only material from which they should extract it for themselves; and to do this they must both use their wits and have hearts alive to God. I shall speak, further on, of the principle on which our Lord acted in withdrawing from the mass the opportunities they had had before. He states it himself, in words I have many times cited, “to those who have shall be given”; words which we have not done with yet, but which it would draw me from my point to discuss now.