From the very first we have seen indications that our Lord was divining the natures of men, selecting them with a forecast to their coming work, and fitting them to receive and promulgate His revelation of God. But this inner purpose, which, until the Twelve are called, has lain underground, now crops out on the surface and forces itself into view; and we feel bound to ask of every subsequent incident in the sacred History, “How was the Apostles’ character influenced by this?” I have spoken of the “Schooling of the Apostles” for want of a better phrase, but the mental changes wrought in the disciples by their Master’s company constitute a very different sort of schooling from what commonly goes by the name. They receive no doctrinal instruction in dogmatic form, they obtain nothing which they can display, they are shewn no new system for dealing with the problems of life, nor are they given fresh views about the Messiah. Those who come asking “What they are to do?” are always told that they already know, or should know, this very well of themselves. Among the great Teachers of the world there is hardly one, whose chosen pupils have received so few tenets in a formulated shape as those of Christ; and yet the Apostles at the time of the Ascension have undergone a transformation, compared with what they were when our Lord first found them, greater than was ever wrought in men in the same time before. One special function was assigned to the Apostles which sets them apart from all other men. In them was engendered a new quality belonging to spiritual life; they were the trustees of mankind for a new capacity; they were the depositaries of the faculty for realising “the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things not seen.”(187) In them Faith, which elsewhere existed only in the germ, was brought to perfection and bore fruit, and scattered seed. Their progress in this quality proceeds by certain steps; these are roughly indicated in the first chapter of this book (pp. 8, 9), but I will name them here again.