Fleeing Through Northern Galilee

155:3.1Al­though Je­sus did no pub­lic work dur­ing this two weeks’ so­journ near Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi, the apos­tles held nu­mer­ous quiet evening meet­ings in the city, and many of the be­liev­ers came out to the camp to talk with the Mas­ter. Very few were added to the group of be­liev­ers as a re­sult of this visit. Je­sus talked with the apos­tles each day, and they more clearly dis­cerned that a new phase of the work of preach­ing the king­dom of heaven was now be­gin­ning. They were com­menc­ing to com­pre­hend that the “king­dom of heaven is not meat and drink but the re­al­iza­tion of the spir­i­tual joy of the ac­cep­tance of di­vine son­ship.”

155:3.2The so­journ at Cae­sarea-Phi­lippi was a real test to the eleven apos­tles; it was a dif­fi­cult two weeks for them to live through. They were well-nigh de­pressed, and they missed the pe­ri­odic stim­u­la­tion of Pe­ter’s en­thu­si­as­tic per­son­al­ity. In these times it was truly a great and test­ing ad­ven­ture to be­lieve in Je­sus and go forth to fol­low af­ter him. Though they made few con­verts dur­ing these two weeks, they did learn much that was highly prof­itable from their daily con­fer­ences with the Mas­ter.

155:3.3The apos­tles learned that the Jews were spir­i­tu­ally stag­nant and dy­ing be­cause they had crys­tal­lized truth into a creed; that when truth be­comes for­mu­lated as a bound­ary line of self-righ­teous ex­clu­sive­ness in­stead of serv­ing as sign­posts of spir­i­tual guid­ance and prog­ress, such teach­ings lose their cre­ative and life-giv­ing power and ul­ti­mately be­come merely preser­va­tive and fos­siliz­ing.

155:3.4In­creas­ingly they learned from Je­sus to look upon hu­man per­son­al­i­ties in terms of their pos­si­bil­i­ties in time and in eter­nity. They learned that many souls can best be led to love the un­seen God by be­ing first taught to love their breth­ren whom they can see. And it was in this con­nec­tion that new mean­ing be­came at­tached to the Mas­ter’s pro­nounce­ment con­cern­ing un­selfish ser­vice for one’s fel­lows: “Inas­much as you did it to one of the least of my breth­ren, you did it to me.”

155:3.5One of the great lessons of this so­journ at Cae­sarea had to do with the ori­gin of re­li­gious tra­di­tions, with the grave dan­ger of al­low­ing a sense of sa­cred­ness to be­come at­tached to non­sa­cred things, com­mon ideas, or ev­ery­day events. From one con­fer­ence they emerged with the teach­ing that true re­li­gion was man’s heart­felt loy­alty to his high­est and truest con­vic­tions.

155:3.6Je­sus warned his be­liev­ers that, if their re­li­gious long­ings were only ma­te­rial, in­creas­ing knowl­edge of na­ture would, by pro­gres­sive dis­place­ment of the sup­posed super­nat­u­ral ori­gin of things, ul­ti­mately de­prive them of their faith in God. But that, if their re­li­gion were spir­i­tual, never could the prog­ress of phys­i­cal sci­ence dis­turb their faith in eter­nal re­al­i­ties and di­vine val­ues.

155:3.7They learned that, when re­li­gion is wholly spir­i­tual in mo­tive, it makes all life more worth while, fill­ing it with high pur­poses, dig­ni­fy­ing it with tran­scen­dent val­ues, in­spir­ing it with su­perb mo­tives, all the while com­fort­ing the hu­man soul with a sub­lime and sus­tain­ing hope. True re­li­gion is de­signed to lessen the strain of ex­is­tence; it re­leases faith and cour­age for daily liv­ing and un­selfish serv­ing. Faith pro­motes spir­i­tual vi­tal­ity and righ­teous fruit­ful­ness.

155:3.8Je­sus re­peat­edly taught his apos­tles that no civ­i­liza­tion could long sur­vive the loss of the best in its re­li­gion. And he never grew weary of point­ing out to the twelve the great dan­ger of ac­cept­ing re­li­gious sym­bols and cer­e­monies in the place of re­li­gious ex­pe­ri­ence. His whole earth life was con­sis­tently de­voted to the mis­sion of thaw­ing out the frozen forms of re­li­gion into the liq­uid lib­er­ties of en­light­ened son­ship.