those first Passover crowds has not
reached the dependable stage.[58] He is never held back from showing the
red marks in the road to be trodden even though many of His disciples
balk at going farther on such a road, and some turn away to an easier
road,[59] so revealing an utter lack of the real thing. And even where
there's real faith of the sincere sort it is yet sometimes not of the
seasoned sort that can stand the storms.[60]

These crowds seem of close kin to more modern crowds. One touch of a
crowd rubs out centuries of difference and shows one family blood in us
all. Yet keep things poised. It was out of these crowds that there came
the disciples and close friends to whom we now turn. There's gold in the
crowds, finest twenty-four carat gold. It's all a matter of mining.
Skilful mining gets out the gold. This wondrous Lover used the
magnetic-current method of mining, the love-current. The strong warm
current, the fine personal spirit current, drew out to Him the fine
grains of gold in these human crowds.

Growing Faith.

Now we climb the hill where _the disciples_ are. The crowds are in the
bottom-lands. Many have started up the hill. Jesus always woos men
uphill. You can always tell a man by where he is standing, bottom-land,
hillside, higher-hill-slope, hilltop. We turn now from the crowds that
believed to those whose personal acceptance of Jesus drew them into the
inner circle.

The first three incidents trace the beginnings of faith in those first
close disciples who came to be numbered among the picked inner
twelve.[61] The first story is one of the rarest of John's many rare
stories. It is characteristic of the real thing of faith that beginning
with two they quickly number five. The attachment of the two to John,
the Witness, reveals them as of the earnest inquiring sort, after the
very best. John never forgot that talk with Jesus in the gathering
twilight by the Jordan. It sends Andrew out for Peter, and John likely
for James, while the Master gets Philip, and he in turn Nathaniel. That
reveals the real stuff of faith. It has a mind whose questionings have
been satisfied, a heart that catches fire, and feet that hasten
out-of-doors for others. That's the real thing.

Their faith takes deeper root at Cana. A new personal experience of
Jesus' power is a great deepener of faith, the great deepener. This is
the only pathway from faith to a deeper realer sturdier faith. A man can
get a deeper fai