Nothing carries more weight with a jury than the impression that the witness has an intense belief in the truth of what he says. Such an impression the Apostles conveyed; the possibility that they should themselves doubt in the slightest about any fact to which they speak never occurs to their mind; all through the Acts and the Epistles the atmosphere is one of certainty, settled and serene. The Apostles had not been always so assured; we find them in the Gospels impatient for clearer statements and more decisive signs: “Now speakest thou plainly and speakest no parable” they regard as high praise. But after the Resurrection all this is changed, they are then quite certain of the fact that Christ is Divine, and they have given up trying to understand the ways and forms in which the Divine power might show itself. They had probably, once thought, like Naaman, that it must operate something after the fashion which absolute power uses upon earth. They have got past this when we meet with them in the Acts. I have spoken of the difference of character among the Apostles for this reason. That eleven men, and a _particular_ eleven, should all have agreed in an account of what they said they had seen, when by so doing they gained none of the objects of human desire, is hard to explain unless we suppose that they were convinced of the truth of their report. If, however, these men had but one mind among them, either because one or two master spirits controlled the rest, or because they had been so carefully drilled into uniformity that they could not help judging alike, then the value of this unanimity would disappear, for the eleven would become, virtually, only one or two. Now that the Apostles were men of independent minds is clear from what we hear of their disputings by the way, and from the offence taken at James and John when they ask for seats on the right and left at their Master’s side; and, indeed, the Gospel portraiture of all the Apostles leaves on us the impression that they were of different types of character and had personalities that were strongly marked. 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.