coming within the lifetime of those who heard Him. The only difference would be that what is there spoken in general terms of the existing generation is here concentred in the person of John; a concentration, to which the natural feeling of the early Church towards the sole surviving representative of the original Apostles would at once respond, and which is no less familiar to later ages from the connexion of his name with the book which is written in express expectation of Him who "comes quickly, " and whose reward is with Him to give to every man as "his work shall be," (Rev. xxii. 12.)

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But this sense of our Lord's words did not satisfy the feeling of the Church, after this first coming was past and gone and John still remained alive. Of the belief which arose in consequence that he should never die, there will be occasion to speak hereafter, (see Essay on the Traditions respecting St. John.) We are here concerned not with their false interpretation, but with what we may conceive to be the true interpretation still remaining, after the words had received their first and historical fulfilment. The coming of the Lord," as we know from the variety of passages in which it occurs, expresses any such epoch or "crisis" in the world's history as may be considered in some sense a foreshadowing of its final end and judgment. Sometimes it may be marked with "fearful sights and great signs," as in the fall of Jerusalem and of Rome, (Luke xxi. 11,) sometimes "coming not with observation, "with no man saying 'Lo here' or 'Lo there,' for behold "the kingdom of God is within us.” (Luke xvii. 21.) Such a coming as the last of these two modes was the close of the apostolical age at the end of the first century; to ordinary observers imperceptible, gradually passing away with the last sands in the hour-glass of one enfeebled, speechless, solitary old man; yet withal a crisis which even more than the fall of Jerusalem or of Rome marked off the end of

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that generation from all which preceded it, inasmuch as it marked on the one hand the extinction of the last reflected ray of the Divine Presence which had illuminated the whole of that period with a preternatural intensity of light; but on the other hand the beginning of that great society, which, as now left to itself, and its indwelling Spirit, was now what we call in its ordinary sense the Christian Church, "the holy city, coming down from God out "of heaven, prepared as a bride to meet her husband." This crisis, the point of transition between the miraculous and the natural, between the age of the Apostles and the age of the Church, between the times of the earthly and the times of the spiritual Jerusalem, St. John lived to see and in this sense may truly be said to have waited till his Lord came to call him to Himself. One remaining and still higher sense there is in which those words may have been in part fulfilled, in the work which is still left and always will be left to be performed till the end of all things, by the spirit of John, whether in his own writings, or in the still more living monuments of his earthly likenesses. But for this so much more fitting a place will be found in the Sermon upon St. John that it need not be further pursued here.

It may be allowed in conclusion to call attention to the striking example which this passage affords of "inspiration," or whatever else we may call the characteristic difference between ordinary writings and those in the Sacred Volume. Here is a chapter, of which it might be alleged that the peculiarities of its style and composition suggest the probability of its having passed through other hands than the Apostle himself; an interpretation of our Lord's words is spoken of as generally current in the Church; an interpretation which actually laid so great a hold of the existing generation that it has required nearly * See Züllig's Introduction to the Apocalypse, p. 67.

seventeen centuries to shake it entirely off; an interpretation too, which from its definiteness and precision would in some respects have exactly suited the mind which so loved to trace the fulfilment of the Lord's words in particular specific events. And yet, thus hovering as it does on the very confines of the sacred writings, thus seeming even to demand admission, it is rejected. The Evangelist goes to the very verge; he mentions it; he does not even declare it to be false; he contents himself with stating the real saying on which it professed to rest. But, as if by an infallible instinct, he there pauses; and the New Testament is relieved from having given the slightest sanction to a belief, which however natural and even beautiful in itself, was yet sure to degenerate into wild superstition, and which even in its simplest form was incompatible with the stern plainness of Christian history.

III. THE PROMISES TO PETER IN LUKE V. 1-10;
xxii. 31, 32.

The compilatory character of St. Luke's Gospel precludes the possibility of fixing on the intention of any particular narrative in it with as much precision as is attainable in the others. Still there is a general purpose running throughout, however much obscured by incidental causes. That the universal diffusion of Christianity as a fact is the chief object of that "second treatise" which we now call "the Acts of the Apostles" no one will doubt, and it seems probable, that in like manner the universal applicability of Christianity even to the lowest and most degraded states of humanity is the prevailing characteristic of his "first "treatise," now called his "Gospel." Such at least is the tenor of most of those parts which are peculiar to it, and y As stated in the Preface to the Gospel (Luke i. 1—5).

such apparently the occasion of the insertion of the two passages now before us. The prominent feature in each of the two transactions is the contrast between the struggles and weaknesses of Peter's human nature, and the gracious assurance of his Divine Master. The great Jewish Apostle, as in St. Matthew, the passionate and eager friend, as in St. John, are here put out of sight. It is only the man Simon that is set before us, in whose life, as in the prodigal son, the woman who was a sinner, the weeping women of Jerusalem, and all the other characters peculiarly brought out in this Gospel, a lesson may be read to the desponding minds whom it was intended especially to console.

It is therefore from a wholly new point of view that we now approach the promises to Peter; their substance is the same, but their form, their context, their intention is entirely different. "Fear not, for henceforth thou shalt "catch men," (Luke v. 10,) conveys no doubt the same truth as was expressed in St. Matthew by the Rock, and in St. John by the Shepherd; it is but the image which would be most naturally used in the first call of the Apostles to that higher life of which their common occupations furnished so ready a likeness: as in that higher life it would also bring back to their minds the humble origin from which they had risen to it. But it would seem as though the words were here recorded not so much as an augury of the future greatness of the Galilean "Fisherman," but rather as an answer of comforting reassurance to the feeling of conscious sin, which, as in our first parents, so in the first Apostle, shrunk from the presence of Divinity and vented itself in the despairing cry "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." "Fear "not to approach, it is for thee and such as thee that these mighty wonders are wrought. The presence of Christ, "divine though it be, will not be death to thee, but life; "and if thou followest Him, thou shalt perform wonders far greater than that which thou now seest; not the mute

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"unconscious creatures of the deep, but living human beings shall henceforth be thy spoil."

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So again the address at the Last Supper, Luke xxii. 31, 32, was doubtless fulfilled when the wavering resolutions of the early Church were "strengthened" by the reviving energy of Peter at the election of Matthias, at the day of Pentecost, before the Sanhedrin; in the council, and in the first and second Epistle. But all these mighty works of the great Apostle lay far in the remote horizon of that awful evening. All the nearer prospect was overclouded,-doubt,-betrayal -sorrow even unto death-desperate declarations of fidelity, which by their very vehemence proved their fickleness;such were the thoughts and words which brooded over the closing meal. It was amidst associations such as these that the chief Apostle was singled out to receive his Master's warning. Again, in the repetition of the name "Simon, "Simon," we recognise the same solemn form, as in the earlier and later address, but it is now not in allusion to what he was about to be, but to what he actually was; the vision set before him is not of the future, but of the present and the past, not clothed in the imagery of the national prophecies, but of that book which above all others in the Old Testament speaks of the struggles and temptations of the individual man in the presence of his Maker. It is the opening of the book of Job that furnishes the medium through which the inward and spiritual contest is represented to the outward sense. As in a previous occasion, peculiar to this same Gospel, it had been said on the return of the Seventy", "I beheld Satan fall from heaven like lightning," as if the court of heaven had been opened, before Him, and at the triumph of good the Accuser had visibly fallen from his wonted place amongst the sons of God; so here the same scene is again displayed, but with its brightness overcast by the coming on of the "hour of

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z Luke x. 18.