le company also wished to avoid for the time
the territory of the tyrant who had just put John to death, for Jesus was
not yet ready for the crisis of his own life. Such a desire for seclusion
would be intensified by the continued impetuous enthusiasm of the
multitudes who flocked about him again in Capernaum. In fact, so insistent
was their interest in Jesus that they would not allow him the quiet he
sought, but followed around the lake in great numbers when they learned
that he had taken ship for the other side. He who came not to be
ministered unto but to minister could not repel the crowds who came to
him, and he at once "welcomed them, and spake to them of the kingdom of
God, and them that had need of healing he healed" (Luke ix. 11). The day
having passed in this ministry, he multiplied the small store of bread and
fish brought by his disciples in order to feed the weary people. This work
of power seemed to some among the multitudes to be the last thing needed
to prove that Jesus was to be their promised deliverer, and they "were
about to come and take him by force and make him king" (John vi. 15), when
he withdrew from them and spent the night in prayer.

147. This sudden determination on the part of the multitudes to force the
hand of Jesus was probably due to the prevalence of an idea, found also in
the later rabbinic writers, that the Messiah should feed his people as
Moses had provided them manna in the desert. The rebuff which Jesus
quietly gave them did not cool their ardor, until on the following day, in
the synagogue in Capernaum, he plainly taught them that they had quite
missed the significance of his miracle. They thought of loaves and
material sustenance. He would have had them find in these a sign that he
could also supply their spirits' need, and he insisted that this, and this
alone, was his actual mission. From the first the popular enthusiasm had
had to ignore many contradictions of its cherished notions. But his power
and the indescribable force of his personality had served hitherto to hold
them to a hope that he would soon discard the perplexing role which he had
chosen for the time to assume, and take up avowedly the proper work of the
Messiah. This last refusal to accept what seemed to them to be his evident
duty caused a revulsion in the popular feeling, and "many of his disciples
turned back and walked no more with him" (John vi. 66). The time of
sifting had come. Jesus had known that such a