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. 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 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.