Certainly St Peter had a turn of mind which was specially his own. He arrived at steadfast conviction not by reasoning from step to step—this was a mental process rarely practised by Galilean fishers—but by inward intuition, after his own strong Hebrew sort. When an impulse seized on him it must have its way, and when his heart was full of a matter he must pour it out.
Of Matthew what I said (p. [215]) may stand in place of a notice here. His Gospel shews us from what side he looked on the work then being set afoot.
James and John the “Sons of Thunder” may be set down as representing energy and vehemence. They were not likely to follow a lead, or to fall in with a fantasy started by anyone else. Our notices of Thomas and Philip and Bartholomew, remind us of sketches, in which a few spirited pen-strokes present a figure which we can fancy we have seen. [pg 245] Though Thomas so loved our Lord that he was the first to propose to go with Him to Jerusalem that “they might die with Him,”[168] yet he will not take it on hearsay that Christ is risen. He knew how dearly the disciples longed to have their Master back, and he mistrusted their report because he feared that their impression might come of their strong desire. His doubts however like those of Nathanael, are those of an investigator, not of an assailant; like him he is “without guile” and is glad to accept the offer “Come and see.” Of Philip I have often spoken. His words, “Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us” lay his mind bare before us.
These three men last named were all inclined to be incredulous, they were matter of fact persons, looking without rather than within, and such are the most trustworthy witnesses to external fact. Of one Apostle, Simon, it is true we learn that he had been a “zealot,” that is, that he had once belonged to a band of men fired with fanatical devotion. But, when we hear of him, he had caught sight of a different kind of Divine Kingdom from any that he had thought of bringing about, and he was by degrees learning that “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”[169] Not one of these men had sufficient imagination—sufficient creative faculty—to embody his longings, even if he had such, in a vision so unexampled as that [pg 246] we have. That some of the eleven should have had one illusive fancy and some another would not have been improbable, but that all should have had the same would have been inordinately so. As a matter of fact the portraiture of the risen Lord given in our different memoirs is a conception singularly consistent, and one which the writers could not have drawn except from concurring traditions or personal knowledge of the facts.
There was one Apostle who did not witness the resurrection—Judas Iscariot. With all that has been written about him, the problems of his call and of the purpose of his treason remain unsolved. If, as many suppose, Judas came from some place in Judæa, Kerioth by name, he was, among the Apostles, the only one who was not a Galilæan. It is possible that he may have been one of those who attached themselves to our Lord at Jerusalem before His active ministry began. Our Lord did not “trust Himself”[170] with these as a body but one or two may have gone with Him through Samaria into Galilee. Judas may have been of a mind less simply receptive than the rest of the twelve. Perhaps he had aims for Israel, perhaps also for himself, the patriotic element may sometimes have been uppermost and sometimes the selfish one, and perhaps he wanted to hasten the Divine scheme and help it forward in His own way.
His presence among the disciples shews that [pg 247] our Lord did not confine his choice to those who were of one type, and that a man who had in him great possibilities, attracted his sympathy, although these possibilities might be turned to evil, and the things meant for his good might become an occasion of falling.
But while each individual of the Apostolic body had a specific character of his own, yet beneath this lay a generic condition common to them all. They all belonged to the lower middle class, living by labour but above want; they were able to read and write and some could probably talk Greek with the neighbouring Hellenists in the country to the north. The Apostles were plain and homely in their minds and in their talk. In what they heard they saw little beyond the meaning that lay on the surface of the words. This literal mindedness does not belong to one Apostle or two, but characterizes them all, and it appears in St John's Gospel as frequently as in the other three. The Evangelists relate these displays of simplicity without ever dreaming that they throw thereby any disparagement on the Apostles: such they expected them to be, and such they note that they were.
When men have the wants of the day full in view every morning of their lives, and must supply these wants by the labour of their hands, their thoughts naturally take a practical turn. Now this we note as a signal trait in the behaviour of the Apostles and it is exactly what would characterize [pg 248] men brought up as they had been. They always look first to what under the circumstances has to be done; like seafaring men, they are prompt in resource. When the five thousand stay till nightfall on the mountain side far from any place where food could be got, the thought of the Apostles is, “How are they to be fed?” They take it on them to advise that the crowd be sent away while there was still daylight enough for them to reach the villages. In the little daily business of common life they act as if matters of service fell within their own sphere and on them they had a right to speak. I have already spoken of their pressing our Lord to take food on the journey through Samaria. Again, when the three Apostles are with our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter evidently supposes that they have entered a new and heavenly country where they are to stay, and his first thought is to be of service. People, he supposes, will want abiding places in the new country as well as in the old land they had left, so he proposes to build huts as if they had been camping in the hills. An Alpine guide would have spoken much in the same way. These little distinctive characteristics are carefully preserved, and the instinctive thought of the attendant Apostles for their Master in their little acts of personal service is true to nature in a rare and delicate way.
Such men are good witnesses for they have eyes for everything. I contend then, first that the [pg 249] Apostles were singularly adapted for affording the testimony required, and next, that, if men were especially picked out on account of their qualifications as witnesses, then our Lord must have had in view some great event for which witnesses were required. In the selection of these plain men to found the church we light upon the first hint of the distinctive feature of the Christian revelation mentioned above, viz. that it was to be centred, not in notions but in a stupendous Fact (p. [230]).
When the gospel had to be preached to Greeks who sought after a methodical system, and the need came for doctrine, the work was given to St Paul. But twelve St Pauls as witnesses to fact would not have carried as much weight as the Apostles did; for though the most truthful of men, yet the world of his own thoughts was nearly as present to him as the world without, and it was not always perfectly clear when he was speaking of one and when of the other. The minds of the Apostles, on the other hand, were quite limpid; they received all “as little children,” registering truly what came from without, and declaring it just as their five senses set it before them.