While Christ was upon the mountain with His more immediate followers, the excitement in the plain did not exhaust itself; for even when He entered into a house, the crowds prevented Him and His followers from taking necessary food. And when His friends heard of this, they judged Him as men who profess to have learned the lesson of His life still judge, too often, all whose devotion carries them beyond the boundaries of convention and of convenience. For there is a curious betrayal of the popular estimate of this world and the world to come, in the honour paid to those who cast away life in battle, or sap it slowly in pursuit of wealth or honours, and the contempt expressed for those who compromise it on behalf of souls, for which Christ died. Whenever by exertion in any unselfish cause health is broken, or fortune impaired, or influential friends estranged, the follower of Christ is called an enthusiast, a fanatic, or even more plainly a man of unsettled mind. He may be comforted by remembering that Jesus was said to be beside Himself when teaching and healing left Him not leisure even to eat. To this incessant and exhausting strain upon His energies and sympathies, St. Matthew applies the prophetic words, “Himself took our infirmities and bare our diseases” (viii. 17). And it is worth while to compare with that passage and the one before us, Renan’s assertion, that He traversed Galilee “in the midst of a perpetual fête,” and that “joyous Galilee celebrated in fêtes the approach of the well-beloved.” (_Vie de J._, pp. 197, 202). The contrast gives a fine illustration of the inaccurate shallowness of the Frenchman’s whole conception of the sacred life.