That this fashioning of the disciples should have been a very principal object with our Lord is easy to conceive. For what, except His followers, did He leave behind as the visible outcome of His work? He had founded no institution and had left no writings as a possession for after time. The Apostles were the salt to season and preserve the world, and if they had not savour whence could help be sought? Is it not then likely that the best means would be employed for choosing and shaping instruments for the work; and can we do better than mark the Divine wisdom so engaged? On many sides the work of Christ stretches away into infinity. God’s purpose in having created the world, and put free intelligences into it, as well as the changes which Christ’s death may have wrought in the relation of men’s souls to God, belong to that infinite side of things, which we cannot explore. But we _can_ follow the treatment by which Christ moulded the disciples, because the changes are not wrought in them by a magical transformation, but come about gradually as the result of what they saw and heard and did. Changes are brought about in the disciples by an education, superhuman indeed in its wisdom, superhuman in its insight into the habits of mind which were wanted, and into the modes by which such habits might be fostered, but not superhuman in the means employed. We can analyse the influences which are brought to bear, judge what they were likely to effect, and estimate fairly well what they did effect, because they were the same in kind as we now find working in the world. Christ’s ways, therefore, in this province of His work fall within the range of our understanding. The learners are taught less by what they are told than by what they see and do. They are trained not only by listening, but by following and—what was above all—by being suffered, as in the mission to the cities of Israel, to take part in their Master’s work. They are altered by their companionship with our Lord, insensibly, just as we see the complexion of a man’s character alter by his being thrown into the constant society of a stronger nature. But Christ works on them no magical change. Our Lord never transforms men so as to obliterate their old nature, and substitute a new one; new powers and a new life spring up from contact with Him, but the powers work through the old organs, and the life flows through the old channels; they would not be the same men, or preserve their individual responsibility if it were otherwise. God’s grace works with men, it is true, but it uses the organization it finds; and as much cultivation and shaping of the disposition is required for turning God’s Grace to account, as for making the most of any other good gift.