It seems impossible to deny that the music of "The Apostles" represents in many important respects an advance upon the earlier oratorio. The poetic theme of the whole work is incomparably more ambitious, and the musical invention is in more respects than one of greater power. In regard to this point the obvious case to take is Mr. Jaeger's example 3 (Novello's edition), "Christ, the Man of Sorrows," that being the _motif_ of which more frequent and varied use is made than any other. Here we find unmistakable progress. In its simplest form the theme is more intense and more profound in feeling than any in "Gerontius," and furthermore the manner in which the significance of it develops throughout the work, up to the Ascension phrase, where it occurs in its most expanded form, though not for the last time, shows a great advance in the composer's art. Again, the interest of the "Apostles" music is much more varied. All the symbolism having reference to Christ in solitude makes a most powerful appeal to the imagination; and the opening of the Temple gates at dawn is a scene of astonishingly graphic force and bold design. In the second part the tragedy of the Passion is given in four scenes of tremendous intensity, and then, in the section headed "At the Sepulchre," we begin to become aware of the spirit which is Elgar's most rare and wonderful possession. "And very early in the morning," says the text, "they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun." Thereupon are heard the watchers singing an echo of the music from the great sunrise scene at the beginning. After a dozen bars the fluting notes of a celestial chorus begin gliding in, and then we have an example of that _naïf_ mediævalism at which the second part of "Gerontius" here and there hints. A kind of unearthly exhilaration begins to sound in the music. The Resurrection has brought a new fact into a sorrowful world. It is a sublime adventure, at news of which heaven and earth bubble into song. Throughout all the rest of the work the composer creates that sense of the multitudinous which belongs to parts of the hymn "Praise to the Holiest" in the earlier oratorio. But the angelic rapture that accompanies the Resurrection and Ascension in the "Apostles" is far greater and more wonderful. The heavenly strain is repeated in so many different ways that the air seems to be full of it, and it never loses the angelic character by becoming militant or assertive. It remains to the end an efflorescence of song--the sinless, strifeless, untiring, sweetly fluting rapture of the heavenly choir, mixing or alternating with the more substantial tones of holy men and women on earth. Elgar can also render for us the grief of angels. This he does in a page of unparalleled beauty, describing how Peter, after denying his Master, went out and wept bitterly. This page alone might well save the composition from ever being forgotten.