What then were the apostles? It is plain from the divine record that they were men immediately commissioned by Christ to make a full and authoritative revelation of His religion; to organize the church; to furnish it with officers and laws, and to start it on its career of conquest through the world... The apostles, the twelve, stand out just as conspicuous as an isolated body in the history of the church, without predecessors, and without successors, as Christ Himself does. They disappear from history. The title, the thing itself, the gifts, the functions, all ceased when John, the last of the twelve, ascended to heaven.
Charles Hodge

The Bridge

The Bridge

The Bridge

An old man going a lone highway
Came at the evening cold and gray
To a chasm vast and deep and wide;

The old man crossed in the twilight dim; The sullen stream had no fears for him
But he turned when safe on the other side And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near

“You are wasting your time with building here. You never again will pass this way
Your journey will end with the closing day; You have crossed the chasm deep and wide;

Why build you this bridge at eventide?” The builder lifted his old gray head
“Good friend in the way that I’ve come”, he said,

“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way,
This stream that has been as naught to me To the fair-haired youth might a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim: Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

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