When men have the wants of the day full in view every morning of their lives, and must supply these wants by the labour of their hands, their thoughts naturally take a practical turn. Now this we note as a signal trait in the behaviour of the Apostles and it is exactly what would characterize men brought up as they had been. They always look first to what under the circumstances has to be _done_; like seafaring men, they are prompt in resource. When the five thousand stay till nightfall on the mountain side far from any place where food could be got, the thought of the Apostles is, “How are they to be fed?” They take it on them to advise that the crowd be sent away while there was still daylight enough for them to reach the villages. In the little daily business of common life they act as if matters of service fell within their own sphere and on them they had a right to speak. I have already spoken of their pressing our Lord to take food on the journey through Samaria. Again, when the three Apostles are with our Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter evidently supposes that they have entered a new and heavenly country where they are to stay, and his first thought is to be of service. People, he supposes, will want abiding places in the new country as well as in the old land they had left, so he proposes to build huts as if they had been camping in the hills. An Alpine guide would have spoken much in the same way. These little distinctive characteristics are carefully preserved, and the instinctive thought of the attendant Apostles for their Master in their little acts of personal service is true to nature in a rare and delicate way. Such men are good witnesses for they have eyes for everything. I contend then, first that the Apostles were singularly adapted for affording the testimony required, and next, that, if men were especially picked out on account of their qualifications as witnesses, then our Lord must have had in view some great event for which witnesses were required. In the selection of these plain men to found the church we light upon the first hint of the distinctive feature of the Christian revelation mentioned above, viz. that it was to be centred, not in _notions_ but in a stupendous Fact (p. 230). When the gospel had to be preached to Greeks who sought after a methodical system, and the need came for doctrine, the work was given to St Paul. But twelve St Pauls as witnesses to fact would not have carried as much weight as the Apostles did; for though the most truthful of men, yet the world of his own thoughts was nearly as present to him as the world without, and it was not always perfectly clear when he was speaking of one and when of the other. The minds of the Apostles, on the other hand, were quite limpid; they received all “as little children,” registering truly what came from without, and declaring it just as their five senses set it before them.