149. The months of toil in Galilee show results hardly more significant than the grain of mustard seed or the little leaven. Popular enthusiasm had risen, increased, reached its climax, and waned. Official opposition had early been aroused, and had continued with a steadily deepened intensity. The wonderful teaching with authority, and the signs wrought on them that were sick, had been as seed sown by the wayside or in thorny or in stony ground, except for the little handful of hearers who had felt the personal power of Jesus and had surrendered to it, ready henceforth to follow where he should lead, whether or not it should be in a path of their choice. These, however, were the proof that those months had been a time of rewarded toil. IV The Ministry in Galilee--The New Lesson 150. With the crisis in Capernaum the ministry in Galilee may be said in one sense to have come to an end. Yet Jesus did not immediately go up to Jerusalem. Once and again he was found in or near Capernaum, while the time between these visits was spent in regions to the north and northwest. In fact, the disciples were far from ready for the trial their loyalty was to meet before they had seen the end of the opposition to their Lord. The time intervening between the collapse of popularity and Jesus' final departure from Galilee may well be thought of, then, as a time of further discipline of the faith of his followers and of added instruction concerning the truth for which their Master stood. The length of this supplementary period in Galilee is not definitely known. It extended from the Passover to about the feast of Tabernacles (April to October, see John vi. 4 and vii. 2). The record of what Jesus did and said in this time is meagre, only enough being reported to show that it was a time of repeated withdrawals from Galilee and of private instruction for the disciples. 151. The disciples were trained in faith by further exhibitions of the complete break between their Master and the leaders of the people. This break appeared most clearly, soon after the feeding of the multitudes, in his reply to a criticism of the disciples for disregard of pharisaic traditions concerning hand-washing (Mark vii. 1-23). The critics insisted on the sacredness of their traditions. Jesus in reply scored them for disregard for the plain demands of God's law, and with a word freed men from bondage to the whole ritual of ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness (Mark vii. 19), thus attacking Judaism in its citadel.