II.  The King’s mandate summoning His servants.  The call of the first four disciples is so told as to make prominent these points:  the brotherhood of the two pairs; their occupation at the moment of their call; the brief, authoritative word of Christ; His investiture of them with new functions, which yet in some sense were the prolongation of the old; their unhesitating, instantaneous obedience and willing abandonment of their all.  These points all help the impression of regal power, and do something to explain the nature of the kingdom and the heart of the King.  Matthew does not seem to have known of the previous intercourse of the four with Jesus, as recorded In John 1.  His narrative, taken alone, would lay stress on the strange influence wielded by Jesus over these busy fishermen.  But that influence is no less remarkable, and becomes more explicable, on taking John’s supplemental account into consideration.  It tells us that one brother of each pair—­namely Andrew, and probably John—­had sought Jesus on the Baptist’s testimony, and in that never-to-be-forgotten night had acquired the conviction that He was the King of Israel.  It tells us, too, that Andrew first found his own brother, Simon; from which we may infer that the other one of the two next found his brother James, and that each brought his own brother to Jesus.  The bond of discipleship was then riveted.  But apparently, when Jesus went up to Jerusalem on that first journey recorded only in John’s Gospel, the four went back to their fishing, and waited for His further call.  It came in the manner which Matthew describes.  The background, which John enables us to fill in, shows us that their following was no sudden blind impulse, but the deliberate surrender of men who knew well what they were doing, though they had not fathomed the whole truth as to His kingdom and their place in it.  They knew, at any rate, that He was the Messiah and that they were called by a voice, which they ought to obey, to be His soldiers and partisans.  They could not but know that the call meant danger, hardship, conflict.  They rallied to the call, as soldiers might when the commander honours them by reading out their names, as picked for leaders of the storming-party.

Was this the same incident which St. Luke narrates as following the first miraculous draught of fishes?  That is one of the difficulties in harmonising the synoptic narratives which will always divide opinions.  On the whole, I incline to think it most natural to answer ‘no.’  The reasons would take us too far afield.  But accepting that view, we may note through how many stages Jesus led this group of His disciples before they were fully recognised as apostles.  First there was their attachment to Him as disciples, which in no degree interfered with their trade.  Then came this call to more close attendance on Him, which, however, was probably still somewhat intermittent.  Then followed the call recorded by Luke, which finally tore them from