Before choosing the Apostles our Lord spent the night alone on the mountain in prayer; on one other occasion only did He do the same.(154) If we regard only the duties expressly laid upon the Twelve at their call,(155) and the immediate services expected from them, our Lord’s concern about them may seem more intense than the circumstances explain. But if we regard them as the heirs of His work, as those by whom the fire kindled by Him on earth was to be kept alive and spread, then our Lord’s keen anxiety about them is accounted for. He looked to an early death, and when this death came it would depend on their constancy to carry the cause through the moment of dismay; and it would depend on the trust they commanded among men, whether it should be believed or not, that He had risen in triumph from the dead. If we should find that the Apostles were, as a body, specially qualified to fulfil particular functions, and that these very functions it fell afterwards to them to discharge; then, surely, it is not unreasonable to suppose that our Lord, in choosing the Twelve, was guided by His foreknowledge of the situation in which they would be placed, and of the particular kind of work which they would be wanted to perform. It will be shewn that the Apostles were qualified to be trustworthy witnesses of fact. If the course of events had been such that there had been no fact to witness, this capacity of theirs would have found no sphere; it would have been provided and never employed; but, as it was, the transcendent Fact that Christ died and rose again took place before their eyes. The knowledge of this Fact was to be the most precious possession of the human race. How then was it to be preserved and transmitted? A fact only subsists for a future time in the relation of witnesses. So the greatest care is taken to provide for this Fact witnesses who would command belief. Some hearers will soonest trust one kind of witness and some another; witnesses therefore of different kinds are provided, that every man might be likely to find one in whom he could confide: but all these witnesses have this in common—they are all convinced of the reality of what they relate, and are not men to be easily carried away by their fancy or their feelings. If the religion had depended on the promulgating of theological doctrines which needed subtle expositors, then the Apostles would not have been the right men for the work; but being founded as it was upon the facts of Christ’s life and death, what was wanted was, that credible witnesses should be present when these facts occurred and should remain to tell the tale. This want was supplied with a completeness which to my mind testifies of design. To proceed with the history. During this winter of A.D. 28-29, our Lord, keeping Capernaum for his place of abode, made excursions to the neighbouring towns, preaching as he went, and shewing by His miraculous cures that the Divine power was working through His hands.