d which has been
gathered instead of the fishes they sought.

[Illustration: JACOB'S WELL _From Photograph_ Page 91]

Meanwhile a multitude of people in the neighboring field is listening to
the Master. The fishermen may hear His voice, but their nets must not be
left in disorder; they must be put in readiness for another trial,
which, though they know it not, will be most abundantly rewarded.

They cannot go to Him, but He comes to them with a greeting and a
command, "Follow Me and I will make you fishers of men."

The time had come for Him to gather His first disciples more closely
about Him for instruction and preparation and service in His kingdom.
They had seen proofs of His Messiahship. They had been with Him long
enough to know something of His work and teachings, and what was
included in His call to follow Him. They understood it meant leaving
their boats and nets by which they had earned their daily bread, and
even leaving their homes, and going with Him wherever He went, trusting
Him for support, ready to do anything to which all this would lead them.
Their belief in Him, and their love for Him, were enough to secure
immediate obedience to the new command.

In their faithfulness in their duties in their former life, in the
carefulness in mending their nets, in the patience and perseverance
during the nights of fruitless toil, in their thoughtfulness, skill and
experience in catching fish--in such things Christ found likeness of
what He would make them to become--fishers of men. From their old
business He would teach them lessons about the new,--of His power, the
abundance of His store, and the great things they were to do for Him and
their fellow-men. Before they leave it, He makes Himself a kind of
partner with them. Having used Simon's boat for a pulpit for teaching,
He tells him to launch out into the deep and to let down his net. It
encloses a multitude of fishes. Andrew and James with their brothers
whom they had called to Jesus, the first company to follow Him from the
Jordan, are the first to do so in a new and fuller sense from the shores
of Gennesaret, where they first learned of Him.

There is something touching in the special reference to the call of the
sons of Salome, whose relation to Mary first interested us in them. It
is said of Jesus, "He saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother
and He called them. And they immediately left their father in the ship
with the hired servants. They