The data for the history of that Passover season of A.D. 30 must have been furnished by the Apostles, yet we find in it scarcely any mention of themselves; all personal thought was driven from their minds; the narrators, like ourselves, had eyes for the Saviour alone. From the hour of cockcrow on the Thursday night to the time when it “began to dawn toward the first day of the week” all that we hear of the Apostles, and that comes out incidentally, is that John stood at the foot of the Cross. There is not a word to explain their flight at Gethsemane, they do not tell us, that they stood in the crowd or followed to Golgotha; neither have we, what for my purpose would be invaluable, any word of how they passed that Sabbath day of enforced inaction, which—in accordance with our Lord’s way of letting intervals of quiet alternate with times of stress and strain—followed on the violent perturbation and intense dismay of the Crucifixion. The Apostles could not be perfected for the part that awaited them, unless they encountered some great desolation of soul. Acute suffering, which searches the innermost nature, works after the law which has become so trite to my readers, it gives to those who have. There are some who under its pangs learn that they possess a kind of strength of which they did not know, and find that when some, seemingly more robust, break down in trouble, resource and tenacity are still left in them. This kind of strength the Apostles possessed; they stood the test of being apparently forsaken and were the better for it. Each individual after the trial felt surer that he could rely on himself than he had been before, and each then knew for certain that he could rely on the rest. They might, as soon as the Sabbath was over, have taken their northward journey, going every man to his own; and, as they did not feel safe where they were—for they had to close their doors for fear of the Jews—and must have been grievously bewildered, this is what some out of the eleven at any rate might have been expected to do. It is the steadfastness of _the whole number_ that is so surprising. The trial to which the Apostles were subjected, during those six and thirty hours, was excessively severe. They were left as sheep without a shepherd, with no rallying point, no organised rule; and not only were they in the deepest anguish, owing to their personal affection for their Master, but the lodestar of their lives, the hope of the Restoration of the Kingdom to Israel, seemed suddenly and totally withdrawn.