ween him and the Jewish leaders. The conversation of Jesus
with Peter served to show his clear consciousness of superiority, and was
a further summons to the disciples to choose between him and his
opponents.

153. Within the limits of the Holy Land the faith of the disciples had
been constantly tested by the increasing opposition between their master
and their old leaders. When the little company withdrew to Gentile
regions, however, Jesus had regard for their Jewish feeling. The time
would come when he would send them forth to make disciples of all the
nations. For the present he made it his business to nurture their faith in
him, and when appealed to for help by one of these foreigners, he refused
to "take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs" (Mark vii. 27).
Jesus had assumed a different attitude to the Samaritans before the
opening of his work in Galilee, and in general had shown ready sympathy
for all in distress. In fact it seems as if he welcomed the Syrophoenician
woman's great faith with a feeling of relief from a restriction that he
had felt it wise to adopt for his work in Phoenicia. It appears from his
later attitude in the Gentile regions of the Decapolis (Mark vii. 31-37;
Matt. xv. 21-31) that, having once shown his regard for the limitations of
his disciples' faith in the case of the Syrophoenician, he felt no longer
obliged to check his natural readiness to help the needy who sought him
out. Although in one instance, for reasons no longer known to us, Jesus
charged a man whom he had cured to keep it secret (Mark vii. 32-37), in
general his work in these heathen regions seems, after the visit to
Phoenicia, to have been quite unrestrained, and to have produced the same
enthusiasm that had earlier brought the multitudes to him in Galilee (Mark
viii. 1f.).

154. This continued activity of healing must have served greatly to
strengthen the determination of the disciples to cling to Jesus, let the
leaders say what they would. We can only conjecture what various teachings
filled the days, and what personal fellowship the disciples had with him
who spake as never man spake. There was need for advance in the faith of
these loyal friends. Their enthusiastic declaration when the multitudes
turned away could easily have been followed by reaction. Each new
exhibition of the irrevocableness of the break between Jesus and the
leaders was a severe test of their loyalty. These weeks of withdrawal were
doubtless