I spoke casually just now of the joy which, as appears by the Book of Acts, illumined the Apostles’ lives. This came greatly of Love; not merely from the affection of the brethren for each other, but from a general Lovingness, a capacity for Love, which, on coming into action, made them look differently on all they saw. This, like their Faith, had grown up from their being in their Master’s company. They felt how He loved them; and if ever one among them was disposed to think lightly or unkindly of a brother disciple, he might recollect how dear that brother—faults and all—was to Christ; and then he could hardly help feeling that if his Master bore with him he might do so too. They marked also Christ’s beneficence, His eagerness to render kindness, His readiness to use His wondrous power for the good of those who had no claim upon Him, His gentleness in rebuke, His never recurring to a bygone fault. And this sense of being beloved, this living in an atmosphere of affection, generated in them the capacity for Loving, just as the Home Love that is round a child, not only awakens in it affection to those who shew affection towards it, but teaches it what Love is; and engenders in it a great outcome of Lovingness which it strews broadcast, and bestows, not on persons only, but on animals, and even on inanimate things. We have had sight of the Apostles at a time when this Love was only half fledged among them, and did not understand itself. It was yet in this state in St Peter when he asked: How often he must forgive the brother who sinned against him.(345) Love with him was then only unfolding in his mind, it was still a thing of bounds and measures; later on he learnt—and his Master’s sacrifice crowned the lesson—that it is in essence infinite. By the time when the Apostles had to stand alone and labour for their charge, they had learnt what Love was. From that came the unity and harmony of which I have spoken above. A common interest or even common devotion to a cause would not have gone deep enough down to have quenched all rivalries. Even if paramount interests had put self out of sight for a while, it would still have been there, ready to reappear when opportunity came. Impatience would have come out now and then. It is Love only which brings others as close to a man as his own self. This lesson of Love was perfected, for the Apostles, by their witnessing Christ’s death upon the cross—a death not for friends, not for those under His protection, but for men “while they were yet sinners.”(346) They saw, too, that when He rose from the dead in absolute might Divine, He breathed not a word shewing that He remembered His wrongs, but quietly put the past away. All this filled the Apostles’ hearts with Lovingness; they could not have gone on with their work, with so little return to shew, unless they had loved the brethren and the converts. The joy which we note in the Apostles, resting