To stand by what our conscience witnesses for as truth, through evil
and good report, even against all opposition of those we love, and of
those whose judgment we look up to and should ordinarily prefer to
follow; to cut ourselves deliberately off from their love and sympathy
and respect, is surely one of the most severe trials to which we can be
put. A man has need to feel at such times that the Spirit of the Lord
is upon him in some measure, as it was upon Christ when he rose in the
synagogue of Nazareth and, selecting the passage of Isaiah which speaks
most directly of the Messiah, claimed that title for himself, and told
them that to-day this prophecy was fulfilled in him.
The fierce, hard, Jewish spirit is at once roused to fury. They would
kill him then and there, and so settle his claims once for all. He
passes through them, and away from the quiet home where he had been
brought up—alone, it would seem, so far as man could make him so, and
homeless for the remainder of his life. Yet not alone, for his Father
is with him; nor homeless for he has the only home of which man can be
sure, the home of his own heart shared with the Spirit of God.