It would seem that such happiness as our Lord found on earth came from marking the affectionate fidelity of the Apostles and their growth in favour with God. “Ye are they,” says He to them, “who have continued with me in my temptations”(123) and He speaks of the “joy in heaven” and again of the “joy in the presence of the angels of God,” “over one sinner that repenteth;”(124) every one who turned to Him with a single heart brought Him gladness. This joyousness, we may believe, spread a gleam over the life of our Lord and of His disciples, until when near the end the shadow came. The disciples were always slow to understand His hints of coming sorrow; they could not conceive that the spiritual triumph was to be emphasised by being contrasted with bodily suffering; and He had no more the heart to break the whole sad truth to them, than He had to waken the sleepers at Gethsemane. Circumstances would teach the apostles all the truth in time, but even His plain words on the last journey(125) do not seem to have been taken literally. For reasons given in the chronological appendix I place the return of our Lord through Samaria early in May A.D. 28. Between the return through Samaria and the journey up to “the feast of the Jews,”(126) some months have to be accounted for. St John relates but a single incident, the cure of the nobleman’s son at Capernaum, as belonging to this time; but I would also place here the preaching in the synagogues in Galilee mentioned by St Luke. His words are— “And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and a fame went out concerning him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.”(127) This is parallel with St John’s statement, before discussed, “The Galilæans received Him, having seen all the things that He did at Jerusalem at the feast.”(128) I also refer to this period the preaching in the synagogue at Nazareth. The tone of this discourse as I have already observed (pp. 164, 165) tallies with the notion before advanced of a previous ill reception of our Lord at Nazareth. There is no mention of our Lord’s mother or brethren, they had left Nazareth (John ii. 12) and we do not hear of their return. At other places in Galilee, our Lord had been received with enthusiasm, but at Nazareth petty jealousies prevailed. He does not, in this sermon, speak like one returning with renown to a warm welcome in his own town. He has an air of expecting opposition, as if He had met with it before. He condemns the narrow localising spirit of His hearers, and goes so far as to impugn the exclusive claim of the people of Israel to be the recipients of the favour of God.