Chapter 3

Literature.—Omitting the Christian fathers as remote from the present day, we recognize as works of genius Pascal’sPenséesand Butler’sAnalogy, to which we might add J.R. Seeley’sEcce Homo(1865). The philosophical, Platonist, or Idealist line of Christian defence is represented among recent writers by J.R. Illingworth [Anglican], inPersonality, Human and Divine(1894),Divine Immanence(1898),Reason and Revelation(1902), who at times seems rather to presuppose the Thomist compromise, and A.M. Fairbairn [Congregationalist], inPlace of Christ in Modern Theology(1893),Philosophy of the Christian Religion(1902). The appeal to ethical or Christian experience—“internal evidence”—is found especially in E.A. Abbott [Christianity supernatural and divine, but not miraculous],Through Nature to Christ(1877),The Kernel and the Husk(1886),The Spirit on the Waters(1897), &c., or A.B. Bruce,Chief End of Revelation(1881),The Miraculous Element in the Gospels(1886),Apologetics(1892), and other works; Bruce’s posthumous article, “Jesus” inEncyc. Bib., was understood by some as exchanging Christian orthodoxy for bare theism, but probably its tone of aloofness is due to the attempt to keep well within the limits of what the author considered pure scientific history. Scholarly and apologetic discussion on the gospels and life of Jesus is further represented by the writings of W. Sanday or (earlier) of J.B. Lightfoot. Much American work of merit on the character of Christ is headed by W. E Channing, and by H. Bushnell (inNature and the Supernatural). For defence of Christ’s resurrection, reference may be made to H. Latham’sThe Risen Lordand R. Mackintosh’sFirst Primer of Apologetics. For modification in light of recent scholarship of argument from prophecy, to Riehm’sMessianic Prophecy, Stanton’sJewish and Christian Messiah, and Woods’sHope of Israel. Roman Catholic apologetics—of necessity, Thomist—is well represented by Professor Schanz of Tübingen. The whole Ritschl movement is apologetic in spirit; best English account in A.E. Garvie’sRitschlian Theology(1899). See also the chief church histories or histories of doctrine (Harnack; Loofs; Hagenbach; Shedd); A.S. Farrar’sCritical History of Free(i.e.anti-Christian)Thought(Bampton Lectures, 1862); R.C. Trench’s Introduction toNotes on the Miracles, and F.W. Macran’sEnglish Apologetic Theology(1905). For the 18th century, G.V. Lechler’sGeschichte des englischen Deismus(1841); Mark Pattison inEssays and Reviews(1860); Leslie Stephen’sEnglish Thought in 18th Century(agnostic); John Hunt,Religious Thought in England(3 vols., 1870-1873).

(R. Ma.)

1While these writings are of great historical value, they do not, of course, represent the Christian argument as conceived to-day. The Church of Rome prefers medieval or modern statements of its position; Protestantism can use only modern statements.

APOLOGUE(from the Gr.ἀπόλογος, a statement or account), a short fable or allegorical story, meant to serve as a pleasant vehicle for some moral doctrine or to convey some useful lesson. One of the best known is that of Jotham in the Book of Judges (ix. 7-15); others are “The City Rat and Field Rat,” by Horace, “The Belly and its Members,” by the patrician Menenius Agrippa in the second book of Livy, and perhaps most famous of all, those of Aesop. The term is applied more particularly to a story in which the actors or speakers are taken from the brute creation or inanimate nature. An apologue is distinguished from a fable in that there is always some moral sense present, which there need not be in a fable. It is generally dramatic, and has been defined as “a satire in action.” It differs from a parable in several respects. A parable is equally an ingenious tale intended to correct manners, but it can betrue, while an apologue, with its introduction of animals and plants, to which it lends our ideas and language and emotions, is necessarily devoid of real truth, and even of all probability. The parable reaches heights to which the apologue cannot aspire, for the points in which brutes and inanimate nature present analogies to man are principally those of his lower nature, and the lessons taught by the apologue seldom therefore reach beyond prudential morality, whereas the parable aims at representing the relations between man and God. It finds its framework in the world of nature as it actually is, and not in any grotesque parody of it, and it exhibits real and not fanciful analogies. The apologue seizes on that which man has in common with creatures below him, and the parable on that which he has in common with God. Still, in spite of the difference of moral level, Martin Luther thought so highly of apologues as counsellors of virtue that he edited and revised Aesop and wrote a characteristic preface to the volume. The origin of the apologue is extremely ancient and comes from the East, which is the natural fatherland of everything connected with allegory, metaphor and imagination. Veiled truth was often necessary in the East, particularly with the slaves, who dared not reveal their minds too openly. It is noteworthy that the two fathers of apologue in the West were slaves, namely Aesop and Phaedrus. La Fontaine in France; Gay and Dodsley in England; Gellert, Lessing and Hagedorn in Germany; Tomas de Iriarte in Spain, and Krilov in Russia, are leading modern writers of apologues. Length is not an essential matter in the definition of an apologue. Those of La Fontaine are often very short, as, for example, “Le Coque et la Perle.” On the other hand, in the romances of Reynard the Fox we have medieval apologues arranged in cycles, and attaining epical dimensions. An Italian fabulist, Corti, is said to have developed an apologue of “The Talking Animals” to the bulk of twenty-six cantos. La Motte, writing at a time when this species of literature was universally admired, attributes its popularity to the fact that itménage et flatte l’amour-propreby inculcating virtue in an amusing manner without seeming to dictate or insist. This was the ordinary 18th-century view of the matter, but Rousseau contested the educational value of instruction given in this indirect form.

A work by P. Soullé,La Fontaine et ses devanciers(1866), is a history of the apologue from the earliest times until its final triumph in France.

APOLOGY(from Gr.ἀπολογία, defence), in its usual sense, an expression of regret for something which has been wrongfully said or done; a withdrawal or retraction of some charge or imputation which is false. In an action for libel, the fact that an apology has been promptly and fully made is a plea in mitigation of damages. The apology should have the same form of publicity as the original charge. If made publicly, the proper form is an advertisement in a newspaper; if made within the hearing of a few only, a letter of apology, which may be read to those who have heard what was said, should be sufficient. By the English Libel Act 1843, s. 2, it was enacted that in an action for libel contained in a newspaper it is a defence for the defendant to plead that the libel was inserted without actual malice and without gross negligence, and that before the commencement of the action and at the earliest opportunity afterwards he inserted in the newspaper a full apology for the libel, or, where the newspaper in which the libel appeared was published at intervals exceeding one week, he offered to publish the apology in any newspaper selected by the plaintiff. The apology must be full and must be printed in as conspicuous a place and manner as the libel was.

The word “apology” or “apologia” is also used in the sense of defence or vindication, the only meaning of the Greekἀπολογία, especially of the defence of a doctrine or system, or of religious or other beliefs, &c.,e.g.Justin Martyr’sApologyor J.H. Newman’sApologia pro vita sua. (SeeApologetics.)

APONEUROSIS(ἀπο, away, andνεῦρον, a sinew), in anatomy, a membrane separating muscles from each other.

APOPHTHEGM(from theἀπόφθεγμα), a short and pointed utterance. The usual spelling up to Johnson’s day wasapothegm, which Webster and Worcester still prefer; it indicates the pronunciation—i.e.“apothem”—better than the other, which, however, is more usual in England and follows the derivation. Such sententious remarks as “Knowledge is Power” are apophthegms. They become “proverbs” by age and acceptance. Plutarch made a famous collection in hisApophthegmata Laconica.

APOPHYGE(Gr.ἀποφυγή, a flying off), in architecture, the lowest part of the shaft of an Ionic or Corinthian column, or the highest member of its base if the column be considered as a whole. The apophyge is the inverted cavetto or concave sweep, on the upper edge of which the diminishing shaft rests.

APOPHYLLITE,a mineral often classed with the zeolites, since it behaves like these when heated before the blowpipe and has the same mode of occurrence; it differs, however, from the zeolites proper in containing no aluminium. It is a hydrous potassium and calcium silicate, H7KCa4(SiO3)8+ 4½(H2O). A small amount of fluorine is often present, and it is one of the few minerals in which ammonium has been detected. The temperature at which the water is expelled is higher than is usually the case with zeolites; none is given off below 200°, and only about half at 250°; this is slowly reabsorbed again from moist air, and is therefore regarded as water of crystallization, the remainder being water of constitution. When heated before the blowpipe, the mineral exfoliates, owing to loss of water, and on this account was named apophyllite by R.J. Haüy in 1806, from the Greekἀπο, from, andφύλλον, a leaf.

Apophyllite always occurs as distinct crystals, which belong to the tetragonal system. The form is either a square prism terminated by the basal planes (fig. 2), or an acute pyramid (fig. 1). A prominent feature of the mineral is its perfect basal cleavage, on which the lustre is markedly pearly, presenting, in white crystals, somewhat the appearance of the eye of a fish after boiling, hence the old name fish-eye-stone or ichthyophthalmite for the mineral. On other surfaces the lustre is vitreous. The crystals are usually transparent and colourless, sometimes with a greenish or rose-red tint. Opaque white crystals of cubic habit have been called albine; xylochlore is an olive-green variety. The hardness is 4½, and the specific gravity 2.35.

The optical characters of the mineral are of special interest, and have been much studied. The sign of the double refraction may be either positive or negative, and some crystals are divided into optically biaxial sectors. The variety known as leucocyclite shows, when examined in convergent polarized light, a peculiar interference figure, the rings being alternately white and violet-black and not coloured as in a normal figure seen in white light.

Apophyllite is a mineral of secondary origin, commonly occurring, in association with other zeolites, in amygdaloidal cavities in basalt and melaphyre. Magnificent groups of greenish and colourless tabular crystals, the crystals several inches across, were found, with flesh-red stilbite, in the Deccan traps of the Western Gháts, near Bombay, during the construction of the Great Indian Peninsular railway. Groups of crystals of a beautiful pink colour have been found in the silver veins of Andreasberg in the Harz and of Guanaxuato in Mexico. Crystals of recent formation have been detected in the Roman remains at the hot springs of Plombières in France.

(L. J. S.)

APOPHYSIS(Gr.ἀπόφυσις, offshoot), a bony protuberance, in human physiology; also a botanical term for the swelling of the spore-case in certain mosses.

APOPLEXY(Gr.ἀποπληξία, fromἀποπλήσσειν, to strike down, to stun), the term employed by Galen to designate the “sudden loss of feeling and movement of the whole body, with the exception of respiration,” to which, after the time of Harvey, was added “and with the exception of the circulation.” Although the term is occasionally employed in medicine with other significations, yet in its general acceptation apoplexy may be defined as a sudden loss of consciousness, of sensibility, and of movement without anyessentialmodification of the respiratory and circulatory functions occasioned by some brain disease. It was discovered that the majority of the cases of apoplexy were due to cerebral haemorrhage, and what looked like cerebral haemorrhage, red softening; and the idea for a long time prevailed that apoplexy and cerebral haemorrhage could be employed as synonymous terms, and that an individual who, in popular parlance, “had an apoplectic stroke,” had necessarily suffered from haemorrhage into his brain. A small haemorrhage may not, however, cause an apoplectic fit, nor is an apoplectic fit always caused by haemorrhage; it may be due to sudden blocking of a large vessel by a clot from a distant part (embolism), or by a sudden clotting of the blood in the vessel itself (thrombosis). Owing to the prevailing idea in former times that cerebral haemorrhage and apoplexy were synonymous terms, the word apoplexy was applied to haemorrhage into other organs than the brain; thus the terms pulmonary apoplexy, retinal apoplexy and splenic apoplexy were used.

The term “apoplexy” is now used in clinical medicine to denote that form of coma or deep state of unconsciousness which is due to sudden disturbance of the cerebral circulation occasioned by a local cause within the cranial cavity, as distinct from the loss of consciousness due to sudden failure of the heart’s action (syncope) or the coma of narcotic or alcoholic poisoning, ofstatus epilepticus, of uraemia or of head injury.

The sudden coma of sunstroke and heat-stroke might be included, although owing to the suddenness with which a person may be struck down, the termheat apoplexyis frequently used, and, from an etymological point of view, quite justifiably. The older writers use the termsimple apoplexyfor a sudden attack which could not be explained by any visible disease. Again,congestive apoplexywas applied to those cases of coma where, at the autopsy, nothing was found to account for the coma and death except engorgement of the vessels of the brain and its membranes. In senile dementia and in general paralysis the brain is shrunken and the convolutions atrophied, the increased space in the ventricles and between the convolutions being filled up with the cerebro-spinal fluid. In these diseases apoplectic states may arise, terminating fatally; the excess of fluid found in such cases was formerly thought to be the cause of the symptoms, consequently the condition was calledserous apoplexy. Such terms are no longer used, owing to the better knowledge of the pathology of brain disease.

Having thus narrowed down the application of the term “apoplexy,” we are in a position to consider its chief features, and the mechanism by which it is produced. Apoplexy may be rapidly fatal, but it is very seldominstantlyfatal. The onset is usually sudden, and sometimes the individual may be struck down in an instant, senseless and motionless, “warranting those epithets, which the ancients applied to the victims of this disease, ofattonitiandsiderati, as if they were thunder-stricken or planet-struck” (Sir Thomas Watson). The attack, however, may be less sudden and, not infrequently, attended by a convulsion; while occasionally, in the condition termedingravescent apoplexy, the coma is gradual in its onset, occupying hours in its development. Although unexpected, various warning symptoms, sometimes slight, sometimes pronounced, occur in the majority of cases. Such are, fulness in the head, headache, giddiness, noises in the ears, mental confusion, slight lapses of consciousness, numbness or tingling in the limbs. A characteristic apoplectic attack presents the following phenomena: the individual falls down suddenly and lies without sense or motion, except that his pulse keeps beating and his breathing continues. He appears to be in a deep sleep, from which he cannot be roused; the breathing is laboured and stertorous, and is accompanied with puffing out of the cheeks; the pulse may be beating more strongly than natural, and the face is often flushed and turgid. The reflexes are abolished. Although apoplexy may occur without paralysis, and paralysis without apoplexy, the two, owning the same cause, very frequently co-exist, or happen in immediate sequence and connexion; consequently there is in most cases definite evidence of paralysis affecting usually one side of the body in addition to the coma. Thus the pupils are unequal; there may be asymmetry of the face, or the limbs may be more rigid or flaccid on one side than on the other. These signs of localized disease enable a distinction to be made from the comaof narcotic poisoning and alcoholic intoxication. It must be borne in mind that a person smelling strongly of liquor and found lying in the street in a comatose state may be suffering from apoplexy, and the error of sending a dying man to a police cell may be avoided by this knowledge.

If the fit is only moderately severe, the reflexes soon return, and the patient may in a few hours show indications of returning consciousness by making some movements or opening his eyes when spoken to, although later it may be found that he is unable to speak, or may be paralysed or mentally afflicted (seeParalysis). In severe cases the coma deepens and the patient dies, usually from interference with the breathing, or, less commonly, from arrest of the heart’s action.

The mechanism by which apoplexy is produced has been a matter of much dispute; the condition was formerly ascribed to the pressure exerted by the clot on the rest of the brain, but there is no increase of intracranial pressure in an apoplectic fit occurring as a result of the sudden closure of a large vessel by embolism or thrombosis. Suddenness of the lesion appears to be, then, the essential element common to all cases of apoplexy from organic brain disease. It is the sudden shock to the delicate mechanism that produces the unconsciousness; but seeing that the coma is usually deeper and more prolonged in cerebral haemorrhage than when occasioned by vascular occlusion, and that an ingravescent apoplexy coma gradually develops and deepens as the amount of haemorrhage increases, we may presume that increase of intracranial pressure does play an important part in the degree and intensity of the coma caused by the rupture of a vessel. Apoplexy seldom occurs under forty years of age, but owing to the fact that disease of the cerebral vessels may exist at any age, from causes which are fully explained in the articleNeuropathology, no period of life is exempt; consequently cases of true apoplexy are not wanting even in very young children. Recognizing that there are two causes of apoplexy in advanced life, viz. (1) sudden rupture of a diseased vessel usually associated with high arterial pressure, enlarged, powerfully acting heart and chronic renal disease, and (2) the sudden clotting of blood in a large diseased vessel favoured by a low arterial pressure due to a weak-acting heart, it is obvious that the character of the pulse forms a good guide to the diagnosis of the cause, the prevention and warding off of an attack, and the treatment of such should it occur.

Anything which tends directly or indirectly to increase arterial pressure within the cerebral blood-vessels may bring on an attack of cerebral haemorrhage; and although the identification of an apoplectic habit of body with a stout build, a short neck and florid complexion is now generally discredited, it being admitted that apoplexy occurs as frequently in thin and spare persons who present no such peculiarity of conformation, yet a plethoric habit of body, occasioned by immoderate eating or drinking associated with the gouty diathesis, leads to a general arterio-sclerosis and high arterial pressure. All conditions which can give rise to a local intracranial or a general bodily increase of the arterial pressure,i.e.severe exertion of body and mind, violent emotions, much stooping, overheated rooms, exposure to the sun, sudden shocks to the body, constipation and straining at stool, may, by suddenly increasing the strain on the wall of a diseased vessel, lead to its rupture.

The outlook of apoplexy is generally unfavourable in cases where the coma is profound; death may take place at different intervals after the onset. If the patient, after recovering from the initial coma, suffers with continual headache and lapses into a drowsy state, the result is likely to be serious; for such a condition probably indicates that an inflammatory change has taken place about the clot or in the area of softening.

Treatment.—The patient should be placed in the recumbent position with the head and shoulders slightly raised. He should be moved as little as possible from the place where the attack occurred. The medical man who is summoned will probably give the following directions: an ice-bag to be applied to the head; a few grains of calomel or a drop of croton oil in butter to be placed on the tongue, or an enema of castor oil to be administered. He may find it necessary to draw off the water with a catheter. The practice of blood-letting, once so common in this disease, is seldom resorted to, although in some cases, where there is very high arterial tension and a general state of plethora, it might be beneficial. Depletives are not employed where there is evidence of failure of the heart’s action; indeed the cautious administration of stimulants may be necessary, either subcutaneously or by the mouth (if there exist a power of swallowing), together with warm applications to the surface of the body; a water-bed may be required, and careful nursing, is essential to prevent complications, especially the formation of bedsores.

(F. W. Mo.)

APOROSE(from Gr.ἀ, without, andπόρος, passage), a biological term meaning imperforate, or not porous: there is a group of corals calledAporosa.

APOSIOPESIS(the Greek for “becoming silent”), a rhetorical device by which the speaker or writer stops short and leaves something unexpressed, but yet obvious, to be supplied by the imagination. The classical example is the threat, “Quos ego——!” of Neptune (in Virgil,Aen.i. 135).

APOSTASY(ἀπόστασις, in classical Greek a defection or revolt from a military commander), a term generally employed to describe a complete renunciation of the Christian faith, or even an exchange of one form of it for another, especially if the motive be unworthy. In the first centuries of the Christian era, apostasy was most commonly induced by persecution, and was indicated by some outward act, such as offering incense to a heathen deity or blaspheming the name of Christ.1In the Roman Catholic Church the word is also applied to the renunciation of monastic vows (apostasis a monachatu), and to the abandonment of the clerical profession for the life of the world (apostasis a clericatu). Such defection was formerly often punished severely.

1The readmission of such apostates to the church was a matter that occasioned serious controversy. The emperor Julian’s “Apostasy” is discussed underJulian.

APOSTIL,orApostille(possibly connected with Lat.appositum, placed near), a marginal note made by a commentator.

APOSTLE(ἀπόστολος, one sent forth on a mission, an envoy, as in Is. xviii. 2; Symmachus,ἀποστέλλειν ἀποστόλους; Aquila,πρεσβευτάς), a technical term used in the New Testament and in Christian literature generally for a special envoy of Jesus Christ. How far it had any similar use in Judaism in Christ’s day is uncertain; but in the 4th centuryA.D., at any rate, it denoted responsible envoys from the central Jewish authority, especially for the collection of religious funds. In its first and simplest Christian form, the idea is present already in Mark iii. 14 f., where from the general circle of his disciples Jesus “made twelve (‘whom he also named apostles,’ Luke vi. 13, but doubtful in Mark), that they should be with him, and that he might from time to time send them forth (ἵνα ἀποστέλλῃ) to preach and to have authority to cast out demons.” Later on (vi. 6 ff.), in connexion with systematic preaching among the villages of Galilee, Jesus begins actually to “send forth” the twelve, two by two; and on their return from this mission (vi. 30) they are for the first time described as “apostles” or missionary envoys. Matthew (x. 1 ff.) blends the calling of the twelve with their actual sending forth, while Luke (vi. 13) makes Jesus himself call them “apostles” (for Luke’s usage cf. xi. 49, “prophets and apostles,” where Matthew, xxiii. 34, has “prophets and wise men and scribes”). But it is doubtful whether Jesus ever used the term for the Twelve, in relation to their temporary missions, any more than for the “seventy others” whom he “sent forth” later (Luke x. 1). Even the Fourth Gospel never so describes them. It simply has “a servant is not greater than his lord, neither an apostle (envoy) greater than he that sent him” (xiii. 16); and applies the idea of “mission” alike to Jesus (cf. Heb. iii. 1, “Jesus, the apostle ... of our profession”) and to his disciples, generally, as represented by the Twelve (xvii. 18, with 3, 6 ff.). But while ideally all Christ’s disciples were “sent” with the Father’s Name in charge, there were different degrees in which thisapplied in practice; and so we find “apostle” used in several senses, once it emerges as a technical term.

1. In the Apostolic age itself, “apostle” often denotes simply an “envoy,” commissioned by Jesus Christ to be a primary witness and preacher of the Messianic Kingdom. This wide sense was shown by Lightfoot (in his commentary onGalatians, 1865) to exist in the New Testament,e.g.in 1 Cor. xii. 28 f., Eph. iv. ii, Rom. xvi. 7; and his view has since been emphasized1by the discovery of theTeaching of the Twelve Apostles(seeDidache), with its itinerant order of “apostles,” who, together with “prophets” (cf. Eph. ii. 20, iii. 5) and “teachers,” constituted acharismaticand seemingly unordained ministry of the Word, in some part of the Church (in Syria?) during the early sub-apostolic age. Paul is our earliest witness, as just cited; also in 1 Cor. xv. 5 ff., where he seems to quote the language of Palestinian tradition, in saying that Christ “appeared to Cephas; then to the Twelve; then ... to James; then to the apostles one and all (τοῖς ἀποστόλοις πᾶσιν); and last of all ... to me also.” The appearance to “allthe Apostles” must refer to the final commission given by the risen Christ to certain assembled disciples (Acts i. 6 ff., cf. Luke xxiv. 33), including not only the Twelve and the Lord’s brethren (i. 13 f.), but also some at least of the Seventy. Of this wider circle of witnesses, taken from among personal disciples during Jesus’s earthly ministry, we get a further glimpse in the election of one from their number to fill Judas’s place among the Twelve (i. 21 ff.), as the primary official witnesses of Messiah and his resurrection. Many of the 120 then present (Acts i. 15), and not only the two set forward for final choice, must have been personal disciples, who by the recent commission had been made “apostles.” Among such we may perhaps name Judas Barsabbas and Silas (Acts xv. 22, cf. i. 23), if not also Barnabas (1 Cor. ix. 6) and Andronicus and Junia (Rom. xvi. 7).

So far, then, we gather that the original Palestinian type of apostleship meant simply (a) personal mission from the risen Christ (cf. I Cor. ix. i), following on (b) some preliminary intercourse with Jesus in his earthly ministry. It was pre-eminence in the latter qualification that gave the Twelve their special status among apostles (Acts i. 26, ii. 14, vi. 2; in Acts generally they are simply “the apostles”). Conversely, it was Paul’s lack in this respect which lay at the root of his difficulties as an apostle.

It is possible, though not certain, that even those Judaizing missionaries at Corinth whom Paul styles “false-apostles” or, ironically, “the superlative apostles” (2 Cor. xi. 5, 13; xii. 11), rested part of their claim to superiority over Paul on (b), possibly even as having done service to Christ when on earth (2 Cor. xi. 18, 23). There is no sign in 2 Cor. that they laid claim to (a). If this be so, they were “Christ’s apostles” only indirectly, “through men” (as some had alleged touching Paul, cf. Gal. i. 1),i.e.as sent forth on mission work by certain Jerusalem leaders with letters of introduction (2 Cor. iii. 1; E. von Dobschutz,Problems der apost. Zeitalters, p. 106).

2.The Twelve.—When Jesus selected an inner circle of disciples for continuous training by personal intercourse, his choice of “twelve” had direct reference to the tribes of Israel (Matt. xix. 28; Luke xxii. 30). This gave them a symbolic or representative character as a closed body (cf. Rev. xxi. 14), marking them off as the primary religious authority (cf. Acts ii. 42, “the apostles’ teaching”) among the “disciples” or “brethren,” when these began to assume the form of a community or church. The relationship which other “apostles” had enjoyed with the Master had been uncertain;theyhad been his recognized intimates, and that as a body. Naturally, then, they took the lead, collectively—in form at least, though really the initiative lay with one or two of their own number, Peter in particular. The process of practical differentiation from their fellow apostles was furthered by the concentration of the Twelve, or at least of its most marked representatives, in Jerusalem, for a considerable period (Acts viii. 1, cf. xii. 1 ff.; an early tradition specifies twelve years). Other apostles soon went forth on their mission to “the cities of Israel” (cf. Acts ix. 31), and so exercised but little influence on the central policy of the Church. Hence their shadowy existence in the New Testament, though the actual wording of Matt. x. 5-42, read in the light of theDidachi, may help us to conceive their work in its main features.

3. “Pillar”Apostles.—But in fact differentiation between apostles existed among the Twelve also. There were “pillars,” like Peter and John (and his brother James until his death), who really determined matters of grave moment, as in the conference with Paul in Gal. ii. 9—a conference which laid the basis of the latter’s status as an apostle even in the eyes of Jewish Christians. Such pre-eminence was but the sequel of personal distinctions visible even in the preparatory days of discipleship, and it warns us against viewing the primitive facts touching apostles in the official light of later times.

Consciousness of such personal pre-eminence has left its marks on the lists of the Twelve in the New Testament. Thus (1) Peter, James, John, Andrew, always appear as the first four, though the order varies, Mark representing relative prominence during Christ’s ministry, and Acts actual influence in the Apostolic Church (cf. Luke viii. 51, ix. 28). (2) The others also stand in groups of four, the first name in each being constant, while the order of the rest varies.

The same lesson emerges when we note that one such apostolic “pillar” stood outside the Twelve altogether, viz. James, the Lord’s brother (Gal. ii. 9, cf. i. 19); and further, that “the Lord’s brethren” seem to have ranked above “apostles” generally, being named between them and Peter in 1 Cor. ix. 5. That is, they too were apostles with the addition of a certain personal distinction.

4.Paul, the“Apostle of the Gentiles.”—So far apostles are only of the Palestinian type, taken from among actual hearers of the Messiah and with a mission primarily to Jews—apostles “of the circumcision” (Gal. ii. 7-9). Now, however, emerges a new apostleship, that to the Gentiles; and with the change of mission goes also some change in the type of missionary or apostle. Of this type Paul was the first, and he remained its primary, and in some senses its only, example. Though he could claim, on occasion, to satisfy the old test of having seen the risen Lord (1 Cor. ix. 1, cf. xv. 8), he himself laid stress not on this, but on the revelation within his own soul of Jesus as God’s Son, and of the Gospel latent therein (Gal. i. 16). This was his divine call as “apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. xi. 13); here lay both his qualification and his credentials, once the fruits of the divine inworking were manifest in the success of his missionary work (Gal. ii. 8 f.; 1 Cor. xi. 1 f.; 2 Cor. in. 2 f., xii. 12). But this new criterion of apostleship was capable of wider application, one dispensing altogether with vision of the risen Lord—which could not even in Paul’s case be proved so fully as in the case of the original apostles—but appealing to the “signs of an apostle” (1 Cor. ix. 2; 2 Cor. xii. 12), the tokens of spiritual gift visible in work done, and particularly in the planting of the Gospel in fresh fields (2 Cor. x. 14-18). It may be in this wide charismatic sense that Paul uses the term in 1 Cor. xii. 28 f., Eph. ii. 20, iii. 5, iv. 11, and especially in Rom. xvi. 7, “men of mark among the apostles” (cf. 2 Cor. xi. 13, “pseudo-apostles” masquerading as “apostles of Christ,” and perhaps 1 Thess. ii, 6, of himself and Silas). That he used it in senses differing with the context is proved by 1 Cor. xv. 9, where he styles himself “the least of apostles,” although in other connexions he claims the very highest rank, co-ordinate even with the Twelve as a body (Gal. ii. 7 ff.), in virtue of his distinctive Gospel.

This point of view was not widely shared even in circles appreciative of his actual work. To most he seemed but a fruitful worker within lines determined by “the twelve apostles of the Lamb” as a body (Rev. xxi. 14). So we read of “the plant (Church) which the twelve apostles of the Beloved shall plant” (Ascension of Isaiah, iv. 3); “those who preached the Gospel to us (especially Gentiles)... unto whom He gave authority over the Gospel, being twelve for a witness to the tribes” (Barn. viii. 3, cf. v. 9); and the going forth of theTwelve, after twelve years, beyond Palestine “into the world,” to give it a chance to hear (Preaching of Peter, in Clem. Alex.Strom.vi. 5.43; 6.48). Later on, however, his own claim told on the Church’s mind, when his epistles were read in church as a collection styled simply “the Apostle.”

As the primary medium of the Gentile Gospel (Gal. i. 16, cf. i. 8, ii. 2) Paul had no peers as an “apostle of the Gentiles” (Rom. xi. 13, cf. XV. 15-20, and see 1 Cor. xv. 8, “last of all to me”), unless it were Barnabas who shares with him the title “apostle” in Acts xiv. 4, 14—possibly with reference to the special “work” on which they had recently been “sent forth by the Spirit” (xiii. 2, 4). Yet such as shared the spiritual gift (charisma) of missionary power in sufficient degree, were in fact apostles of Christ in the Spirit (1 Cor. xii. 28, II). Such a secondary type of apostolate—answering to “apostolic missionaries” of later times (cf. the use ofἱεραπόστολοςin this sense by the Orthodox Eastern Church to-day)—would help to account for the apostolic claims of the missionaries censured in Rev. ii. 2, as also for the “apostles” of the second generation implied in the Didachē.

In thesub-apostolic age, however, the class of “missionaries” enjoying acharismasuch as was conceived to convey apostolic commission through the Spirit, soon became distinguished from “apostles” (cf. Hennas,Sim.ix. 15.4, “the apostles and teachers of the message of the Son of God,” so 25.2; in 17.1 the apostles are reckoned as twelve), as the title became more and more confined by usage to the original apostles, particularly the Twelve as a body (e.g.Ascension of Isaiahand thePreaching of Peter), or to them and Paul (e.g.in Clement and Ignatius), and as reverence for these latter grew in connexion with their story in the Gospels and in Acts.2Thus Eusebius describes as “evangelists” (cf. Philip the Evangelist in Acts xxi. 8, also Eph. iv. 11, 2 Tim. iv. 5) those who “occupied the first rank in the succession to the Apostles” in missionary work (Hist. Eccl.iii. 37, cf. v. 10). Yet the wider sense of “apostle” did not at once die out even in the third and fourth generations. It lingered on as applied to the Seventy3—by Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement and Origen— and even to Clement of Rome, by Clem. Alex. (? as a “fellow-worker” of Paul, Phil. iv. 3); while the adjective “apostolic” was applied to men like Polycarp (in his contemporaryActs of Martyrdom) and the Phrygian, Alexander, martyred at Lyons inA.D.177 (Eus. v. 1), who was “not without share of apostoliccharisma.”

Theauthorityattaching to apostles was essentially spiritual in character and in the conditions of its exercise. Anything like autocracy among his followers was alien to Jesus’s own teaching (Matt, xxiii. 6-11). All Christians were “brethren,” and the basis of pre-eminence among them was relative ability for service. But the personal relation of the original Palestinian apostles to Jesus himself as Master gave them a unique fitness as authorized witnesses, from which flowed naturally, by sheer spiritual influence, such special forms of authority as they came gradually to exercise in the early Church. “There is no trace in Scripture of a formal commission of authority for government from Christ Himself” (Hort,Chr. Eccl.p. 84) given to apostles, save as representing the brethren in their collective action. Even the “resolutions” (δόγματα) of the Jerusalem conference were not set forth by the apostles present simply in their own name, nor asipso factobinding on the conscience of the Antiochene Church. They expressed “a claim to deference rather than a right to be obeyed” (Hort,op. cit.81-85). Such was the kind of authority attaching to apostles, whether collectively or individually. It was not a fixed notion, but varied in quantity and quality with the growing maturity of converts. This is how Paul, from whom we gather most on the point, conceives the matter. The exercise of his spiritual authority is not absolute, lest he “lord it over their faith”; consent of conscience or of “faith” is ever requisite (2 Cor. i. 24; cf. Rom. xiv. 23). But the principle was elastic in application, and would take more patriarchal forms in Palestine than in the Greek world. The case was essentially the same as on the various mission-fields to-day, where the position of the “missionary” is at first one of great spiritual initiative and authority, limited only by his own sense of the fitness of things, in the light of local usages. So the notion of formal or constitutional authority attaching to the apostolate, in its various senses, is an anachronism for the apostolic age. The tendency, however, was for their authority to be conceived more and more on formal lines, and, particularly after their deaths, as absolute.

The authority attaching to apostles as writers, which led gradually to the formation of a New Testament Canon—“the Apostles” side by side with “the Books” of the Old Testament (so 2 Clement xiv.,c.A.D.120-140)—is a subject by itself (seeBible).

This change of conception helped to further the notion of a certain devolution of apostolic powers to successors constituted by act of ordination. The earliest idea of anapostolical successionmeant simply the re-emergence in others of the apostolic spirit of missionary enthusiasm. “The first rank in the succession of the apostles” consisted of men eminent as disciples of theirs, and so fitted to continue their labours (Euseb. iii. 37); and even under Commodus (A.D.180-193) there were “evangelists of the word” possessed of “inspired zeal to emulate apostles” (v. 10). Such were perhaps the “apostles” of theDidachē. Of the notion of apostolic succession in ministerial grace conferred by ordination, there is little or no trace before Irenaeus. The famous passage in Clement of Rome (xliv. 2) refers simply to the succession of one set of men to another in an office of apostolic institution. The grace that makes Polycarp “an apostolic and prophetic teacher” (Mart. Polyc.16) is peculiar to him personally. But Irenaeus holds, apparently ona priorigrounds, that “elders” who stand in orderly succession to the apostolic founders of the true tradition in the churches, have, “along with the succession of oversight,” also an “assured gift of (insight into) truth” by the Father’s good pleasure (“cum episcopatus successione charisma veritatis certum secundum placitum Patris acceperunt”), in contrast to heretics who wilfully stand outside this approved line of transmission (adv. Haer.iv. 26. 2). So far, indeed, the succession is not limited to the monarchical episcopate as distinct from the presbyteral order to which it belonged (cf. “presbyterii ordo, principalis consessio” in the same context, and see iii. 14. 2), though the bishops of apostolic churches, as capable of being traced individually (iii. 3. 1), are specially appealed to as witnesses (cf. iv. 33. 8, v. 19. 2)—as earlier by Hegesippus (Euseb. iv. 22). Nor is there mention of sacerdotal grace attaching to the succession in apostolic truth.4But once the idea of supernatural grace going along with office as such (of which we have already a trace in the Ignatian bishop, though without the notion of actual apostolic succession) arose in connexion withsuccessio ab apostolis, the full development of the doctrine was but a matter of time.5

Literature.—In England the modern treatment of the subject dates from J.B. Lightfoot’s dissertation in hisCommentary on Galatians, to which Dr F.J.A. Hort’sThe Christian Ecclesiaadded elements of value; see also T.M. Lindsay,The Church and the Ministry, and articles in Hastings’Dictionary of the Bibleand theEncy. Biblica; A. Harnack,Die Lehre der Apostel, pp. 93 ff., andDogmengeschichte(3rd ed.), i. 153 ff.; E. Haupt,Zum Verstandnis d. Apostolats in NT.(Halle, 1896); and especially H. Monnier,La Notion de l’apostolat, des origines à Irénée(Paris, 1903). The later legends and their sources are examined by T. Schermann,Propheten- und Apostellegenden(Leipzig, 1907).

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