Athens,
to whom nothing that was not new was interesting.

This dogmatic equipment was but one side, however, of the Apostolic
training for their future work, a training to which the finishing
touches, so to say, were put during the Forty Days. The other side of
the training was the impression upon them of the Personality of our
Lord, the effect of their close association with Him. This has an
importance that dwarfs all other influences of the time; and we feel all
through the Gospel that it was what our Lord himself counted upon in
forming them for their mission. In the beginning "He chose twelve to be
with Him," and their day by day association with Him was constantly
changing their point of view and reforming their character. It was not
the teaching, the explanation of parables, or the sight of the miracles;
it was the silent effect of a personality that was in contact with them
constantly and was constantly presenting to them an ideal of life, an
ideal of absolute submission to the will of the Father and of utter
consecration to the, mission that had been committed to Him.

We all know this silent pressure of life upon life. We have most of us,
I suppose, experienced it either from our parents or from friends in
later life; and we can through that experience of ours attempt the
explanation of our Lord's influence on the Apostles. There were not only
the hours of formal teaching--they, in a way, were perhaps the less
important from our present point of view. We have more in mind the
informal talks that would go on as they went from village to village in
Galilee, or as they gathered about the door of some cottage in the
evening or sat in the shelter of some grove during the noon-day heat. It
was just talk arising naturally out of the incidents of the day, but it
was always talk guided by Jesus--talk in which Jesus was constantly
revealing Himself to them, impressing upon them His point of view,
making plain his own judgment upon life. And when we turn to His formal
teaching we realise how revolutionary was His point of view in regard to
life, how He swept aside the customary conventions by which they were
accustomed to guide life, and substituted the radical principles that
they have left on record in the Sermon on the Mount for the perplexity
of a world yet far from understanding them. Evidently the Apostles would
find their accustomed values tossed aside and a wholly new set of values
presented to them.

I suppo