From the moment that Jesus entered Capernaum he went to work to gather about him and train a band of helpers that would effect the great transformation. He did not make the mistake of many later social creators of trusting merely to external organization. He began by remaking men and by training individual citizens. He personally selected each of his helpers and first freed their bodies from disease, their minds from error and prejudice, and their hearts from hate and jealousy. In turn he filled their minds with a broad, practical philosophy of life and their hearts with faith and love and the desire to co-operate. After he had trained them by careful teaching and thorough apprenticeship, he sent them forth under his direction to become fishers of men--that is, to attract and train definite men and women, so that they also might be prepared to become worthy citizens in the fraternal community.
The plan was as simple as it was practical. It was in perfect accord with all the laws, natural, social, and psychological, that later scientific study has disclosed. That it met at once with partial success is an established historic fact, for of the five hundred disciples to whom Paul refers in 1 Corinthians 15:6, probably the great majority, if not all, belonged to the Capernaum community. But it is equally clear that Jesus' success at Capernaum was not commensurate with his hopes and that his relative failure was due to that which the Infinite has made a basic principle in the universe--the freedom of the human will. The convincing common sense, the radiant sympathy and love, and the attractive social plan of the Master Teacher were not able to conquer the fixed habits and prejudices and hatreds of a majority of the inhabitants of the greater Capernaum. The wooden orthodoxy and the narrow jealousy of the Pharisees led them to block and undermine, rather than support his work. The opposition of these acknowledged religious leaders confused the minds of the people. How electrical and far-reaching would Jesus' great social experiment have been, had it met with the immediate success he craved, only the imagination can picture. That from Capernaum might have gone forth mighty influences that would have quickly transformed human society as a whole is not beyond the realm of practical possibility, for the world was closely knit together in the first Christian century and nothing is more potent in society than practical demonstration. Even as it was, the social leaven that Jesus placed in greater Capernaum spread with remarkable rapidity, so that before the close of the first Christian century fraternal communities were found not only in Damascus, Cæsarea, and Antioch, but in all the great cities and even the remote provinces of the Roman Empire.