The Apostles apparently encouraged this enthusiasm, for which he constrains them into a ship, and sends them away before him. After rejoining them and rebuking their want of understanding and faith, he returns with them to the multitudes, and at once speaks of himself as the bread from heaven, in the discourse which offends many of his disciples, who from this time go back and walk no more with him. The brief season of triumphant progress is drawing to an end, during which he could rejoice in spirit in contemplating the human harvest which he and his disciples seem to be already successfully garnering. XXXII. The more carefully we study the long wrestle of Christ with the blind leaders of a doomed nation, the more we shall recognize the perfect truthfulness, and therefore the perfect courage, which marks his conduct of it. From beginning to end there is no word or act which can mislead friend or foe. The strife, though for life and death, has left no trace or stain on his nature. Fresh from the last and final conflict in the temple court, he can pause on the side of Olivet to weep over the city, the sight of which can still wring from him the pathetic yearnings of a soul purified from all taint of bitterness. It is this most tender and sensitive of the sons of men—with fibres answering to every touch and breath of human sympathy or human hate—who has borne with absolutely unshaken steadfastness the distrust and anger of kinsfolk, the ingratitude of converts, the blindness of disciples, the fitful and purblind worship and hatred, and fear, of the nation of the Jews. So far, we can estimate to some extent the burden and the strain, and realize the strength and beauty of the spirit which could bear it all. Beyond and behind lie depths into which we can but glance. For in those last hours of his life on earth the question was to be decided whether we men have in deed and truth a brotherhood, in a Son of Man, the head of humanity, who has united mankind to their Father, and can enable them to know him. XXXIII. It is around the life of the Son of Man and Son of God that the fiercest controversies of our time are raging. Is it not also becoming clearer every day that they will continue to rage more and more fiercely—that there can be no rest or peace possible for mankind—until all things are subdued to him, and brought into harmony with his life?