their homes; and, last of all, their appointment as apostles.  At each stage they ’might have had opportunity to have returned.’  Their vocation in the kingdom dawns on them slowly.  They and we are led on, by little and little and little, to posts and tasks of which we do not dream at the beginning.  Duty opens before the docile heart bit by bit.  Abram is led to Harran, and only there learns his ultimate destination.  Obedience is rewarded by the summons to more complete surrender, which is also fuller possession of Him for whom the surrender is made.

‘The word of a king is with power.’  Christ’s call is authoritative in its brevity.  All duty lies in ‘Come ye after Me.’  He does not need to use arguments.  From the very first this meek and lowly man assumes a tone which on other lips we call arrogant.  His style is royal.  His mouth is autocratic.  He knows that He has the right to command.  And, strangely enough, the world admits the right, and finds nothing unworthy of His meekness—­a meekness of which He was fully conscious, which is another paradox—­in this unconditional claim of absolute submission to his curt orders.  What is the explanation of this tone of authority?  How comes it that the kingdom which is liberty is, from its very foundation, an absolute despotism?  That same peremptory summons reaches beyond these four fishermen to us all.  They were the first to hear it, and continued to hold pre-eminence among the disciples, for they make up the first group of the three quaternions into which the list of the apostles is always divided.  But the very same voice speaks to us, and we are as truly summoned by the King to be His servants and soldiers as were they.

Their prompt self-surrendering response is the witness of the power over their hearts which Jesus had won.  The one pair of brothers left their nets floating in the water; the other left their father with the mesh and the twine in his old hands.  It was not much wealth to leave.  But he surrenders much who surrenders all, however little that all may be; and he surrenders nothing who keeps back anything.  One sweet portion of their earthly happiness He left them to enjoy, heightened by discipleship, for each had his brother by his side, and natural affection was ennobled by common faith and service.  If Zebedee was left, John still had James.  True, Herod’s sword cut their union asunder, and James died first, and John last, of the twelve; but years of happy brotherhood were to come before then.  So both the surrender which outwardly gives up possessions or friends, and that which keeps them, sanctified by being held and used as for and from Him, were exemplified in the swift obedience of these four to the call of the King.