For a little while now He goes about His beautiful Galilee like a fairy prince, despite poverty and despite foes. He is so gentle, so kindly, so loving to the poor! He is the kind physician, the balm in Gilead. For a while He is met with hosannas; He has no riches, but every peasant's house is His welcome home. That transcendent smile, that low sweet voice, is His password to believing hearts. He must be the coming king, they think; still, they do not understand. He is so simple, so all-love. He tells them that they themselves are the kingdom; and again they do not understand. "Surely Thou art the Son of God," they cry, and the ground He walks on is sacred. Some call Him the "Son of God." Yet not _once_ did He call himself the "Son of God." It was the enthusiasts who called Him that. Often He referred to himself as the "Son of Man"; but, in his Syriac dialect, the word signified only man. After all it was only the village carpenter's son who was saying all these mysterious things!
In the days we are describing at Galilee just now, John the Baptist is still crying to the people of Jerusalem, and along the Jordan, to hurry to the river, to repent, and to be baptized. He has a school down there, and disciples of his own. They are greater extremists in their teaching than the quiet and lovable Galilean, who, till now, is hardly a public teacher at all. John is not only prophesying a speedy coming of a new king to the world, a Messiah, he is threatening an early destruction of almost everything, save the lives of the baptized and the repentant. He has alarmed all Palestine. A great moral and social earthquake is taking place. Nor is he backward about still condemning the king himself for his unlawful marriage. The court is becoming disturbed, and the doors of Machero prison in a little while will open to the great prophet and preacher. The alarm among the people everywhere continues very great. Thousands confess their sins, enter the sacred river, are baptized, and now await the coming of the end of the world.
The young carpenter is just now in Galilee, perhaps for a little while only, back again from a long absence of solitude in the desert. Louder and louder, nearer and nearer, comes to the youth at Galilee that cry of John. Full of interest to see and hear the great reformer, He, and a few of His friends, start for the Jordan river. It is nearly a hundred miles away, to where John is, and they go on foot.