147. This sudden determination on the part of the multitudes to force the hand of Jesus was probably due to the prevalence of an idea, found also in the later rabbinic writers, that the Messiah should feed his people as Moses had provided them manna in the desert. The rebuff which Jesus quietly gave them did not cool their ardor, until on the following day, in the synagogue in Capernaum, he plainly taught them that they had quite missed the significance of his miracle. They thought of loaves and material sustenance. He would have had them find in these a sign that he could also supply their spirits' need, and he insisted that this, and this alone, was his actual mission. From the first the popular enthusiasm had had to ignore many contradictions of its cherished notions. But his power and the indescribable force of his personality had served hitherto to hold them to a hope that he would soon discard the perplexing rôle which he had chosen for the time to assume, and take up avowedly the proper work of the Messiah. This last refusal to accept what seemed to them to be his evident duty caused a revulsion in the popular feeling, and "many of his disciples turned back and walked no more with him" (John vi. 66). The time of sifting had come. Jesus had known that such a rash determination to make him king was possible to the Galilean multitudes, and that whenever it should come it must be followed by a disillusionment. Now the open ministry had run its course. As the multitudes were turning back and walking no more with him, he turned to the twelve with the question, "Will ye also go away?" and found that with them his method had borne fruit. They clung to him in spite of disillusionment, for in him they had found what was better than their preconceptions. 148. It is the fourth gospel that shows clearly the critical significance of this event. The others tell nothing of the sudden determination of the multitude, nor of the revulsion of feeling that followed Jesus' refusal to yield to their will. Yet these other gospels indicate in their narratives that from this time on Jesus avoided the scenes of his former labors, and show that when from time to time he returned to the neighborhood of Capernaum he was met by such a spirit of hostility that he withdrew again immediately to regions where he and his disciples could have time for quiet intercourse.