Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/212

 Three of their number—Simon, James, and John—stood towards him in an altogether special and peculiar relationship. They are far more prominent than any of the other nine. They were selected to accompany Jesus when others were left behind. They formed an inmost circle within the circle of his more constant companions. Them alone he is said to have distinguished by names of his own invention. On Simon he conferred the name of Peter. To James and John, the sons of Zebedee, he applied the familiar nickname of Boanerges, or sons of thunder, which seems to indicate that they were distinguished by the fervor of their zeal (Mk. iii. 16, 17).

The admirers of Jesus were scarcely, if at all, less numerous among the female than among the male sex. Indeed, he seems to have exercised a very marked fascination over women. When he went to Jerusalem, he was followed by many women from Galilee, who had been accustomed to contribute to his wants, and to give him that personal attention which kindly women know so well how to confer. Mary Magdalene whom he had healed of some mental ailment, Mary the mother of James, Salome the mother of the sons of thunder, were among the most devoted of these, while two sisters, Mary and Martha, Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, are also mentioned (Mk. xv. 40, 41; Lu. viii. 2, 3, x. 38, 39). If we may believe one of the Evangelists, who stands alone in this respect, the homage of women was particularly agreeable to Jesus, who received it with words of the highest praise (Lu. vii. 36-50 x. 38-42). That some among these many female followers were drawn to him by the sentiment of love is, at least, highly probable. Whether Jesus entertained any such feeling towards one of them it is impossible to guess, for the human side of his nature has been carefully suppressed in the extant legend.

Supported then by adherents of both sexes, Jesus entered upon his career of a public teacher. His own house was at Capernaum (Mt. iv. 13), but he wandered from place to place in the exercise of his vocation, staying, no doubt, with friends and disciples. It is not necessary to follow him in these peregrinations, of which only the vaguest accounts have been preserved by the Evangelists. But two remarkable circumstances deserve to be noted; namely, that his own family rejected his