There was one Apostle who did not witness the resurrection—Judas Iscariot. With all that has been written about him, the problems of his call and of the purpose of his treason remain unsolved. If, as many suppose, Judas came from some place in Judæa, Kerioth by name, he was, among the Apostles, the only one who was not a Galilæan. It is possible that he may have been one of those who attached themselves to our Lord at Jerusalem before His active ministry began. Our Lord did not “trust Himself”(170) with these as a body but one or two may have gone with Him through Samaria into Galilee. Judas may have been of a mind less simply receptive than the rest of the twelve. Perhaps he had aims for Israel, perhaps also for himself, the patriotic element may sometimes have been uppermost and sometimes the selfish one, and perhaps he wanted to hasten the Divine scheme and help it forward in His own way. His presence among the disciples shews that our Lord did not confine his choice to those who were of one type, and that a man who had in him great possibilities, attracted his sympathy, although these possibilities might be turned to evil, and the things meant for his good might become an occasion of falling. But while each individual of the Apostolic body had a specific character of his own, yet beneath this lay a generic condition common to them all. They all belonged to the lower middle class, living by labour but above want; they were able to read and write and some could probably talk Greek with the neighbouring Hellenists in the country to the north. The Apostles were plain and homely in their minds and in their talk. In what they heard they saw little beyond the meaning that lay on the surface of the words. This literal mindedness does not belong to one Apostle or two, but characterizes them all, and it appears in St John’s Gospel as frequently as in the other three. The Evangelists relate these displays of simplicity without ever dreaming that they throw thereby any disparagement on the Apostles: such they expected them to be, and such they note that they were.