the history and the prophecy, shall to such an extent coincide, that whilst the Divine wisdom of the prophecy speaks for itself, our attention is fixed on its Divine power by the history. Its true spiritual import stretches into the remotest future, but its first historical fulfilment is to be found in the life of Peter. It is needless to repeat what has been already said on this point at sufficient length in the Sermon, especially as it would also in part anticipate what is yet to come in the exposition of the remaining passages. Yet it may not be irrelevant to justify more at length than was there possible the great importance attached to Peter's acts, and their consequent correspondence with the greatness of the promise.

In the first place, we must recollect the extremely scanty materials from which our knowledge of Peter's life is derived. The ten first chapters of the Acts comprise it all. Where so much is left untold, it is probably that what is told has been preserved and recorded from the deep impression which it had made on those amongst whom it occurred, and which it was intended to make on those who were to read of it. Had there been a hundred speeches handed down of the different Apostles during the first years of their residence at Jerusalem, the two speeches of Peter which remain to us might have been comparatively insignificant. But when these two alone are preserved, it is evident that the very fact of their preservation is a guarantee of their great importance. What is not told becomes to us more expressive than what is told.

Accordingly, though it would be rash to say that either the history or the prophecy were recorded one for the sake of the other, it certainly does seem as if it was the same prominence which occasioned the selection of the general traits of St. Peter's character in the one, and the selection of the particular facts of his life in the

other. When for example we reflect on the all but entire extinction to which the first disciples were exposed during the first days or months succeeding to the Ascension, it surely was most natural that in the one man who then stood at their head, and by whose preaching took place the first great increase of their numbers, which in fact converted them from an insignificant handful of individuals into a formidable and extensive society, they should realize the image of the foundation-rock, and in his wonderful escapes from death and imprisonment should acknowledge the baffled attempts of the powers of the grave to destroy him. Or again, if ever there was a time when the keys of heaven might be said to be wielded with more than ordinary sway, it was in the crisis which has been described in the Sermon as taking place at the conversion of Cornelius. Nothing but our own complete acquiescence in what then seemed the most startling of paradoxes could blind our eyes to the immense importance which that journey from Joppa to Cæsarea must have assumed in the eyes of those to whom it was the one absorbing question of the times, and the greatness of the consequences which it involved for all future generations.

And lastly, if there could be any doubt as to the correctness of the view above given of the power of "binding " and loosing," and the reality or significance of such a gift in the early Church, nothing could so effectually dispel it as a view of the unquestioned exercise of it by St. Peter, as recorded in the Acts. "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay," was the injunction to strict veracity put forward as we know on the very front of the earliest Christian Church at Jerusalem as a mark of the new society, and the more remarkable from its collision with the besetting sin of all the nations of the east. What more terrible proof could be given that what the Apostles had thus bound on

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y James v. 12.

earth was bound in heaven than in the death of Ananias and Sapphira at the word of St. Peter? "The pure and un"defiled service of God"," such was another maxim now asserted in the churches of Judæa, "is to visit the fatherless " and the widows, and to keep oneself unspotted from the "world." What more consoling proof could be given to the outward senses that this was truly the service which God approved, than when Peter raised from the bed of death, "the woman who was full of good works and alms"deeds which she did," and over whose body "all the widows "stood weeping, shewing the coats and garments which "Dorcas had made when she was with thema?" And if from the peculiar failings or excellencies of the Church of Palestine, we ascend to the record of the more general questions which agitated the Church at large, it is still no exaggeration to say that here also the "binding and loosing" of the Christian conscience which was doubtless exercised in a measure, and subsequently perhaps in a greater measure, by the other Apostles, was in the first instance exercised preeminently by St. Peter. In the great dispute which was, so to say, the source of all the casuistry of the first period of the apostolical age, it was Peter whose decision on the lawfulness of associating with Gentiles both at the conversion of Cornelius and in the assembly at Jerusalem was confirmed by the descent of the Spirit, and the whole subsequent order of Providence". In the daring attempt of the second period of the earliest heresies to claim the sanction of Christianity for their own wild and revolutionary doctrines, it was Peter whose decision on the unlawfulness of " using the liberty of Christians for a cloak of malicious"ness," was, as has been in part shewn already and will be more fully shewn hereafter, the chief human instrument of their overthrow.

z James i. 27.

b Acts x. 45; xv. 28.

a Acts ix. 36, 39.

c 1 Pet. ii. 16.

II. THE PROMISES TO PETER IN JOHN XXI. 15—23.

The difficulties of the passage which has just been discussed arise in great measure from the strongly prophetic and Hebrew character of its expressions; but its general import could never have occasioned so much dispute if it had been measured by the more simple language of the passages in the two remaining Gospels, which treat of the same subject, and which, though touching upon it only incidentally, are in one respect doubly valuable on that account, because they afford a remarkable proof that the record of the promise in St. Matthew cannot be ascribed merely to the reverence of the Palestine Church for its great Apostle, but that it agrees substantially with other speeches of our Lord, for the preservation or invention of which there existed no similar motive.

We now pass to that contained in John xxi. 15—23. The chapter in which these words occur, occupies, as is well known, a remarkable position in St. John's Gospel. That it is an appendix, so to speak, to the general narrative, which had already been closed with the solemn scene of the confession of Thomas, can hardly be doubted; and there are not wanting indications that the actual composition is by another hand than that of the Evangelist himself. But these difficulties in the outward details of this chapter are not incompatible with the belief that we have, if not the very words, at least the last recollections of the beloved Disciple; taken down it may be from his mouth, or written immediately after his death by the Ephesian disciples, but still substantially his own.

There can be little doubt that the immediate object of recording the scene must have been the contradiction of the expectation of John's immortality. With this it closes;

d See Lücke's Commentary on John xxi.

to this it tends throughout; and on this the chief stress is laid by the writer. But it would almost seem as if in the statement of the real saying of our Lord, on which the false rumour had been founded, the whole scene had come back so vividly to the Apostle's mind-not merely the Divine prediction, but also his own early companions, employments, and haunts-that either he delighted to record, or the enquiring disciples would not pause in their questions till they had received, the whole account even down to the minutest outward details, elsewhere so unusual in St. John's Gospel, and especially those which related to that early friend of their own beloved teacher, the ancient Apostle of a bygone age, of whose latter days and dreadful death the recollection was still fresh in the minds even of the eastern Christians. And thus were touched so many chords of the earlier narrative of the Gospel history, the names of the five disciples, the miraculous draught, the leaping into the sea, it may be the older promises to Peter,-that it appeared then, as it has appeared since, no unfitting conclusion to the last teaching of St. John. With this preliminary view of the general spirit and object with which the account was given, we may now, as far as may be, endeavour to conceive the immediate scene and circumstances when it represents the words to have been spoken.

It was the early dawn upon the sea of Galilee; the fishing vessel with its little crew, headed by Peter, was once again, after a long interval, on the waters of the lake; and now again, as once before, the long night had passed away in useless toil. Then it was that there came the

e If we admit some such explanation as is here given of the minuteness of the details, it obviates the necessity of introducing into the narrative a lengthened allegory, such as that adopted by St. Augustine, wholly uncongenial to the usual spirit of St. John's Gospel.

"I almost seem to see the whole Gospel in it."-Arnold.