s conducted as the earlier work in Galilee had
been, both by teaching and healing, in which Jesus used his disciples even
more extensively than before. It proved that here as in Galilee the common
people were ready to hear him gladly, until he showed too radical a
disappointment of their hopes. In this new ministry to the people Jesus
spoke very frankly of the seriousness of the opposition which the leaders
of the people were manifesting, and of the need that those who would be
his disciples should count the cost of their allegiance (Luke xiii. 22-30;
xiv. 25-35; xii. 1-59). He did not hesitate to administer the most
scathing rebuke to the Pharisees for the superficiality and hypocrisy of
their religious life and teaching (Luke xi. 37-54),--a rebuke which is
emphasized by the parable in which, on another occasion, he taught God's
preference for a contrite sinner over a complacent saint (Luke xviii.
9-14). When reminded of Pilate's outrage upon certain Galilean
worshippers, he used the calamity to warn his hearers that personal
godliness was the only protection which could secure them against a more
serious outbreak of the hostility of the Roman power (Luke xiii. 1-9); and
it was probably in reply to such an appeal as accompanied this report of
Pilate's cruelty that Jesus spoke the parable of the Unjust Judge (Luke
xviii. 1-8), teaching that God's love may be trusted to be no less
regardful of his people's cry than a selfish man's love of ease would be.

176. The second of these tasks must not be held to be perfunctory, even
though each new effort for Jerusalem proved that genuine acceptance of its
saviour was increasingly improbable. As the denunciations of the older
prophets ever left open a way of escape _if _ Israel would return and seek
the Lord, so the anticipation of rejection and death which filled the
heart of Jesus does not banish a like _if_ from his own thought of
Jerusalem in his repeated efforts to "gather her children." The
combination of the new popular enthusiasm and the fresh proofs of the
hopelessness of winning Jerusalem made more important the third task,--the
founding of the faith of the disciples on the rock of personal certainty,
from which the rising floods of hatred and seeming ruin for the Master's
cause could not sweep it. It was for them that much of his instruction of
the multitudes was doubtless primarily intended; they needed above all
others to count the cost of discipleship (Luke xiv. 25-3