The Making of an Apostle

Small Books on Great Subjects.—XI.
THE MAKING OF AN APOSTLE.
By R. J. Campbell.
LONDON: JAMES CLARKE & CO., 13 & 14, Fleet Street. 1898.
First Edition, October, 1898.
Contents.

The New Testament supplies us with little in the way of biography. Even from the Gospels themselves we do not gather much concerning the actual life of our Lord apart from His public ministry. It has been justly said that no person has ever influenced the history of the world on such a scale as Jesus of Nazareth, yet it would be impossible to write a chronological life of the Founder of Christianity. What is true of the Master is true of His followers. We know very little about the Apostles themselves; apart from their life-work of preaching Christ, the details of their circumstances and fortunes are most meagre. Yet it is worth while from such materials as we have to attempt to trace the influence of Jesus Christ upon those through whom He founded His Church upon earth. The choice of Apostles, for instance, is sometimes regarded as having been made in a very exceptional or semi-miraculous way, that Jesus summoned to His side individuals upon whom His gaze fell for the first time, and that these men forthwith became the instruments of His service. But from comparison of the Gospel narratives we discover that very interesting life-stories might be written concerning the men who stood closest to Jesus during His earthly ministry. We find, as we might have expected, that Jesus took in them an active personal interest, that their lives were shaped under His influence as clay in the hands of the potter, that He had a plan with each of them, and patiently worked at it, that He applied to them a discriminating treatment and placed upon each his own individual value. Is not the same process going forward even now? Does not the risen Lord still continue to issue His summonses to the souls of men? We feel that it were better to think so, and that He by whom the very hairs of our head are all numbered still gives to His servants in the world individual care, interest and attention, fashioning heroes and saints out of the most unpromising materials, and making apostles as in the days of old.