He did not know the Gentiles sufficiently to think of founding anything lasting upon their conversion. Galilee contained a great number of pagans, but, as it appears, no public and organized worship of false gods.[1] Jesus could see this worship displayed in all its splendor in the country of Tyre and Sidon, at Caesarea Philippi and in the Decapolis, but he paid little attention to it. We never find in him the wearisome pedantry of the Jews of his time, those declamations against idolatry, so familiar to his co-religionists from the time of Alexander, and which fill, for instance, the book of "Wisdom."[2] That which struck him in the pagans was not their idolatry, but their servility.[3] The young Jewish democrat agreeing on this point with Judas the Gaulonite, and admitting no master but God, was hurt at the honors with which they surrounded the persons of sovereigns, and the frequently mendacious titles given to them. With this exception, in the greater number of instances in which he comes in contact with pagans, he shows great indulgence to them; sometimes he professes to conceive more hope of them than of the Jews.[4] The kingdom of God would be transferred to them. "When the lord, therefore, of the vineyard cometh, what will he do unto these husbandmen? He will miserably destroy those wicked men, and will let out his vineyard unto other husbandmen, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons."[5] Jesus adhered so much the more to this idea, as the conversion of the Gentiles was, according to Jewish ideas, one of the surest signs of the advent of the Messiah.[6] In his kingdom of God he represents, as seated at a feast, by the side of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, men come from the four winds of heaven, whilst the lawful heirs of the kingdom are rejected.[7] Sometimes, it is true, there seems to be an entirely contrary tendency in the commands he gives to his disciples: he seems to recommend them only to preach salvation to the orthodox Jews,[8] he speaks of pagans in a manner conformable to the prejudices of the Jews.[9] But we must remember that the disciples, whose narrow minds did not share in this supreme indifference for the privileges of the sons of Abraham, may have given the instruction of their master the bent of their own ideas. Besides, it is very possible that Jesus may have varied on this point, just as Mahomet speaks of the Jews in the Koran, sometimes in the most honorable manner, sometimes with extreme harshness, as he had hope of winning their favor or otherwise. Tradition, in fact, attributes to Jesus two entirely opposite rules of proselytism, which he may have practised in turn: "He that is not against us is on our part." "He that is not with me, is against me."[10] Impassioned conflict involves almost necessarily this kind of contradictions.