the opposite extremes of priests and rationalists. The one school
makes it the depository of exclusive supernatural powers; the other
regards it as a master-stroke of organisation, to which the early
rapid growth of Christianity was largely due. The facts seem to show
that it was neither.

I. The first thought which this peculiar and unexpected silence
suggests is of the True Worker in the Church's progress.

The way in which the New Testament drops these apostles is of a piece
with the whole tone of the Bible. Throughout, men are introduced into
its narratives and allowed to slip out with well-marked indifference.
Nowhere do we get more vivid, penetrating portraiture, but nowhere do
we see such carelessness about following the fortunes or completing the
biographies even of those who have filled the largest space in its pages.

Recall, for example, the way in which the New Testament deals with
'the very chiefest' apostles, the illustrious triad of Peter, James,
and John. The first escapes from prison; we see him hammering at
Mary's door in the grey of the morning, and after brief, eager talk
with his friends he vanishes to hide in 'another place,' and is no
more heard of, except for a moment in the great council, held in
Jerusalem, about the admission of Gentiles to the Church. The second
of the three is killed off in a parenthesis. The third is only seen
twice in the Book of the Acts, as a silent companion of Peter at a
miracle and before the Sanhedrim. Remember how Paul is left in his
own hired house, within sight of trial and sentence, and neither the
original writer of the book nor any later hand thought it worth
while to add three lines to tell the world what became of him. A
strange way to write history, and a most imperfect narrative, surely!