Pastor Pastorum; Or, The Schooling of the Apostles by Our Lord

by Henry Latham

I have said (l.c.) that the Apostles were not the men whom the Founder of a policy or a school would have chosen to win men over to his views. Our Lord does not choose his successors for their power of attracting crowds. He does not teach them to argue or to preach. They prevailed by [pg 250] what they were and what they did, more than by what they said. They had not the art of kindling enthusiasm and leading captive the minds of men. They do not possess the magic which masters the will. Their success comes of what they had to say, not of the way in which they said it. They were indeed to be the promulgators of the religion which was to grow up around the person of Christ, they were to “teach all nations,”[171] but they are not to dominate men and bear them down by impetuous oratory. This is too near akin to delusion and tyranny for teachers of the freemen whom “the truth makes free.” Nor were they to rate their success by the multitude of those they baptized. The truths revealed in Christ's life and death were given to the world to be part of its possessions through all time, and whether they were generally accepted a little sooner or a little later was of small account.

It may be remarked here what a small part in the Divine economy, the gift of eloquence plays. Moses had no utterance, the speech of Paul was contemptible, and the Apostles can, indeed, say what needs saying, but have not the gift, so infinitely valued by the Greek, of leading men captive by persuasive words.

But though to have been witnesses of the Resurrection was the great glory of the Apostles, yet they were something more than witnesses; they were also the first guardians and propagators of [pg 251] the Faith that transformed the world. They were the depositories of the leaven which gradually set up its working through the minds of men.

For this other function of their office they were also singularly qualified in various external ways.

The social position of the Apostles was advantageous for the promulgating of a Faith which was to become universal. They belonged to the stratum in which the Centre of Gravity of Humanity lay. The small land owners and handicraftsmen in Galilee were in contact with people in different stations of life; they could talk with the rich and they could feel with the poor; they were on the border land between the learned and the ignorant, and had just enough knowledge to be able to get more when they wanted it. There was one truth, essential and vital to a Faith which was to exalt and dignify all mankind, which in the class from which the Apostles came was found growing with especial vigour as on its native soil. This truth was the surpassing value of a man as man,—the sanctity which clothes a human being who is made in the image of God. The sense of this truth is much keener among the poor than among the rich; it is the poor who are most scandalised if a human being is treated like a brute. The rich have wealth, dignities and the like, on which their thoughts rest with satisfaction. But when the poor man takes account of his condition he finds but one item on the credit side, and he makes the most of it: it is [pg 252] that “He too is a Man.” The upper class in Palestine had little mind for anything wider than a philosophical or political sect, and they treated the poor as if they had no souls. Christianity therefore could not have made its cradle with them, and the lowest class had little intelligence and no power of combination and would have been at once trodden under foot. Unless the Church had taken root in the lower middle class, it could hardly have spread as it did. That its earliest promulgators belonged to this class I will not suppose to have been a matter of mere chance.

To proceed with the course of events. Our Lord having called to Him “whom He Himself would” and chosen the twelve, assigns to them their name. They are “Apostles,” men sent forth to preach. But it was not till the risen Christ appeared to the eleven in that upper chamber and said, “Peace be unto you; as my Father hath sent me even so send I you,” that they saw all that was meant by this name; viz. that Christ was the Apostle of His Father and that they were the Apostles of Christ.

Our Lord on coming down with the Twelve from the mountain found a great gathering of people waiting for Him on a spot of level ground.

St Luke's account is this.

“And he came down with them, and stood on a level place, and a great multitude of his disciples, and a great number of the people from all Judæa and Jerusalem, and the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear [pg 253] him, and to be healed of their diseases; and they that were troubled with unclean spirits were healed. And all the multitude sought to touch him: for power came forth from him, and healed them all.”[172]

The address to the newly chosen Apostles which follows this passage in St Luke's gospel has been incorporated by St Matthew with the Sermon on the Mount. The portions belonging to it may there be recognised by the absence both of allusions to the Law and of the opposed phrases, “It was said to those of old time” and “But I say unto you,” phrases which point the contrast which forms the main theme of the earlier address.