Peter the apostle

Preface

IN the volume now presented to the public, the author has attempted to do for a prominent New Testament character what he has done in former works for such Old Testament worthies as David and Elijah.

There are many treatises — some of them of surpassing excellence — on the life of Paul ; yet few have undertaken to set forth in order the incidents and lessons of the history of Peter ; and in looking for a subject from the Christian Scriptures, the author was led mainly by that fact to the selection of the Apostle of the Circumcision.

As he has prosecuted his work, he has grown in his love of the warm-hearted, impulsive, and often blundering apostle, and in his appreciation of the incalculable service rendered by him to the Church and to the world.

He has looked at Peter as a brother man, having the same infirmities as the rest of us ; and he has sought to bring from his errors, as well as from his excellencies, lessons that may be helpful to Christians generally amidst the trials and temptations of modern life.

It has been a joy to him to find that he has had to keep close company with the Master, in order to do justice to the disciple ; and his prayer is, that every reader may be stimulated and strengthened by his words.

New York, December, 1876.

Contents

Page

I. The Ministry of John the Baptist 7

II. Finding and Bringing 21

I. The Ministry Of John The Baptist

John i., 19-39.

T was the dark hour before the dawn, and the pall of ruin seemed to have spread over the Land of Palestine. The sceptre of David had passed out of Jewish hands, and the civil authority had come to be exercised by those who were the puppets of the Roman emperor. Even the office of the high-priest had lost its prestige, and men were promoted to it for no other reason than that they were the favorites of princes or the masters of intrigue. Crime was rampant, and cruelty was common. " Judea," as Josephus says, "was full of robberies;" and the same historian affirms "that at no time of their history, not even after their return from exile, had the nation been more wretched."*

The religion of the people had degenerated, on the one hand, into a cold and dreary formalism, which seemed to consider that a punctilious attention to all traditional requirements secured an indulgence for the commission of every sort of iniquity ; and, on the other, into a cynical skepticism, which, by denying or disbelieving the reality of the unseen and the future, destroyed the eternal sanctions of the divine law, and left the man at liberty to indulge in sin without fear of retribution ; while some, disgusted with society, withdrew into the desert, and in the practice of asceticism learned, alas ! only to exchange their hatred of the world for the deification of themselves.

Thirty years before, the dying embers of the nation's hope had been stirred for a season by the story which the Bethlehem shepherds told, and the rumor of some singular words uttered by two venerable saints within the temple courts. But these had long since been forgotten by all save that one thoughtful woman of Nazareth, in whose heart they were still cherished ; and now, throughout the length and breadth of the land, there was the silence and the darkness of spiritual death. " When the tale of bricks is doubled, then comes Moses •" and it was at this time of deepest national degradation that a voice was heard calling the people to awake, and telling them that the morning was at hand.

Faint at first, and feeble, like the notes of the earliest bird, came to the cities the rumor of the appearance, on the edge of the wilderness of Judea, of a wonderful preacher of righteousness. Then, as the song of the bird is taken up and repeated by all the tenants of the grove, that report was caught up and re-echoed by the people, until, in eager curiosity, they trooped out by thousands to listen to his words. When they reached his encampment, they found no vulgar ascetic, no common Essene, who made a merit of his misery, but indeed a thoughtful man, who had pondered long in solitude over the problems of life ; and who, with eyes that God had opened, descried the coming of a kingdom, for which he called on men, with thrilling earnestness, to prepare.

In dress like their favorite prophet Elijah, he had also the grand old Tishbite's peculiar power. He knew neither fear nor fawning. He called things by their right names ; and though he had dwelt so long in the desert, he let his hearers feel that he had not forgotten the evils which he had seen practiced in the cities. He aimed right at their consciences, and spoke in plain and unmistakable terms of the sins with which they were chargeable. He knew nothing of that simpering propriety, all begloved and sleek, which has chloroformed so many modern preachers ; but he exposed, in words as unadorned as his own camlet robe, the iniquities of his hearers, and called on them, there and then, to repent.

Nor in his lips was repentance a mere thing of word profession. He made men feel that, to be genuine, penitence must bring forth appropriate fruits. And among these fruits it is remarkable that he made no mention of his own hermit-like life. He did not say to the crowds that thronged around his tent, " If you would prepare for the coming kingdom of heaven, then leave the busy haunts of men, as I have done, and withdraw from all participation in the engagements of your fellows." But he bade them return to their homes and their callings, to practice there the principles of righteousness which he inculcated. He did not command the Roman soldier to desert his legion, and seek another sphere for serving God ; but he exhorted him to remain in the ranks, and conquer there, himself. He did not condemn the publican for gathering taxes, or inveigh against the honor and respectability of his occupation ; but he sent him back to his work, to be honest in it, saying, " Exact no more than that which is appointed you." He did not pamper the pride of his fellow-countrymen by alleging that, because they were Abraham's children, there was no fear of them ; but he set them all face to face with the law of God, and bade each one measure himself with its requirements. And, though men were thus condemned by his words, and made to tremble under his rebukes, there was such a fascination exerted by him that they could not stay away from his ministrations.

io Peter, the Apostle.

His very fidelity attracted them. He held them by the stern earnestness of his "glittering eye ;" so that, wherever he moved along the Jordan, the cities emptied themselves into his audience.

In connection with his withering exposure of prevailing sins, and giving to that much of its power to produce immediate results, he made proclamation of the near approach of that kingdom to which all the prophets of the nation had borne witness ; and he seems to have had clearer views of its nature than had been obtained by any of them. He was far, indeed, from having gained such a perception of the character of Messiah's mission as that which was afterward enjoyed by Paul. In this respect, the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Yet he was as much in advance of the prophets of the Old Testament, as the morning-star is brighter than the other luminaries in the train of night. To him the Prince of the new kingdom was no mere earthly monarch who was to wield the sword of the world, and outrival all Roman renown, but he was a heavenly visitant, who was to " baptize men with the Holy Ghost and with fire." He was the herald, thus, not of an external revolution, but of an internal and spiritual regeneration, to be accomplished through the mission of the coming deliverer, and the descent of the Holy Spirit into men's hearts.

As a symbol of this purification which the great expected one was to make, and as a pledge that on his coming they would submit themselves to his spiritual ablution, he called upon his hearers to receive baptism by water from his hands. The Lord was at hand ! And, as when he went into the Holy of Holies, the high-priest was careful to sanctify himself, so he would have them prepare to meet the Messiah by a change of life and conduct, of which the fitting emblem was the washing of their bodies with water. Hence at Bethabara, the ford of Jordan, where, as was supposed, the tribes had

The Ministry of John the Baptist. ii

crossed under Joshua, and where the waters were parted by Elijah's mantle, there was a constant stream of penitents seeking to observe this new and striking ordinance.

But among these there were some who were drawn into closer fellowship with the preacher than others. Their hearts were stirred more deeply than those of others by his words. New ideals were set before them by his instructions. Their consciences were quickened by his appeals, so that they became almost his constant attendants, and had for him that romantic affection which a youth always conceives for the teacher who has first awakened him to intellectual and spiritual life.

In this inner circle of the Baptist's disciples, there were two young men belonging to the fishing village of Bethsaida, on the Lake of Galilee, who had been attracted to him most probably in one of his Galilean tours, and had remained with him so long as the season kept them from their usual labors ; and it was while they were with him that he gave, to the official deputation who came to ask him who he was, that remarkable answer which we read in the first chapter of the fourth gospel. " He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias." And when they inquired again why he baptized, if he were not the Christ, he replied, " I baptize with water : but there standeth one among you, whom ye know not : he it is, who coming after me, is preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy to unloose."

It seems certain, from these words, that Jesus Christ was at the moment among the crowd that stood around the speaker; but in any case, on the following day, the Baptist seeing Jesus, pointed him out to his disciples, saying, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world !" On the same occasion he told them how, when Jesus presented himself for baptism at his hands, he had the assurance of his identity given to him, by the sight of the Holy Spirit descending with dove-like motion upon him, and remaining with him, and by the hearing of a voice from the excellent glory, which said, " This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." This statement, we may be sure, was full of interest to all who heard it; but it produced a deep impression on the two fishermen to whom we have alluded ; for when, the day after, pointing to the same stranger, John said, " Behold the Lamb of God !" they followed him to his home, and, after spending the night with him, and becoming convinced that he was indeed the promised Messiah, they enrolled themselves among his disciples.

In these two Galilean peasants we see the nucleus of the Christian Church ; and John, having in them introduced the Bride to the Bridegroom, had virtually fulfilled his course. From that hour onward his brightness waned, but only as the lustre of the morning-star is paled by the light of opening day; and so there was not a shade of either envy or jealousy in his heart. " He must increase, but I must decrease " — these were his noble words; "This therefore my joy is fulfilled " — that was his noble sentiment ; and when, for his unflinching reproof of iniquity in Herod's household, he was cruelly put to death, his disciples showed that they had imbibed their master's spirit, for they " took up his body and buried it ;" and, as the most appropriate thing to do next, "they went and told Jesus."

Such were the main features of the ministry of John the Baptist. The circumstances connected with his birth, and the tragic character of his death, lent a special interest to his history ; but it was the character of the man himself that gave him, under God, his power. He was, as one has said, " not merely a prophet ; he was ancient prophecy personified in the last of its representatives, and appearing on the threshold of the Gospel history, to own and hail the Messiah, of whom in all ages it had spoken."* He wrote no book ; he sung no songs. His book was himself; his sermons were his songs ; and he who preached repentance was himself the sincerest penitent, even as he who proclaimed Messiah's approach was the first to recognize him when he came.

Yet, unflinching as he was in courage, and unwavering, for the most part, as he was in his convictions, he was, after all, only a man. Like Elijah in so many other respects, he was like him also in this, that he had his "juniper- tree," beneath which he lay, in the sadness of despondency. Haply he, too, like his great prototype, expected that immediate regeneration of all things was to follow on the appearance of the Lord, and so, when he discovered that things went on much as before, he was discouraged, and sent to ask Jesus, "Art thou, indeed, he that should come, or must we still look for another?" But that was only a momentary eclipse. In a little time the darkness passed ; and though, like Moses, he died within sight of the promised land, he was soon to reap in gladness the harvest of those fields which he had sowed in tears.

The Sabbath-school child of to-day knows really more concerning Jesus and his work than John did. Yet none the less was he the pioneer of the Gospel. He stood on the lookout in the laboring ship, as she crossed the troubled ocean, and was the first to cry " Land ahead !" But he left the continent itself unexplored. Yet it were as absurd to depreciate him for that as it would be to reproach Columbus because he did not add the geography of America to its discovery. Truly has the poet said :

" John, than which man, a sadder or a greater Not till this day has been of woman born ; John, like some iron peak, by the Creator Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.

* Pressense, "Jesus Christ : his Life and Times," p. 213.

This, when the sun shall rise and overcome it, Stands in his shining desolate and bare ;

Yet not the less the inexorable summit Flamed him his signal to the happier air."*

And so his " well done " has been already pronounced by the Judge ere yet he has mounted the judgment-seat ; for Jesus said, " He was a burning and a shining light."

But now, ere we turn away from John, to enter upon the history of that wayward and impulsive apostle, whose brother was one of these whom the Baptist introduced to Christ, let us see if we can carry with us some lessons from this remarkable ministry, which may be valuable to us in our present circumstances.

We may learn, in the first place, that when Jesus is about to visit a community in his saving power, his coming is generally preceded by loud calls to repentance. It was the special mission of the Baptist to unfold the majesty of the divine law, and call men up to its unerring standard. Thereby they discovered how sinful they had become, and how helpless they were to regenerate themselves. Their attempts at reformation revealed to them their spiritual impotence, and made them ready to welcome that Divine Redeemer whose special gift was the baptism of the Holy Ghost. The law went before the Gospel ; for the knowledge of sin must precede the appreciation of salvation ; and as it was in the case of the two dispensations, so is it yet in those instances of genuine revival which at intervals have come to nations or to neighborhoods.

In some form or other still, John the Baptist comes always to foreherald Christ. Now, he takes the form of a Luther, a Latimer, or a Knox, and with scathing eloquence, or plain,

* Frederick W. H. Myers, quoted by H. R. Reynolds, D.D., in " John the Baptist."

blunt sense or dauntless courage, he exposes prevalent evils both in Church and State, until men's hearts fail them for fear, and they cry, " What must we do to be saved ?" Again, he comes in no human shape, but takes the form of some terrible calamity — a money panic, like that which swept over this city in 1857 ; an epidemic of cholera or yellow fever; or some destructive dispensation of Providence, that throws men out of themselves, and sets them, all uncovered and open, before the eyes of Him with whom they have to do. I may misread greatly the signs of the times, yet I think I recognize John the Baptist among us now. We can not take up a respectable newspaper without reading in it some call to repentance. The demand it makes is for honesty, for truth, for righteousness. Its most pungent political articles read only like so many variations of John's sermons to the soldiers, to the tax-gatherers, and to the Scribes and Pharisees. Nay, even the political orator is calling upon the occupants of our pulpits to speak plainly to their fellow-men about the duties of every day, that they may become the conservators of the republic. What does it all mean ? It surely means that John the Baptist is abroad, and that he is anew the herald of a coming Christian revival. Let it go on, then ; for this cry for reformation is an aspiration inspired by God himself, and is the assurance that regeneration is at hand.

We may learn, in the second place, that when Jesus comes to a place in saving power, his presence is recognized by the descent of the Holy Spirit. John knew that Jesus was the coming deliverer when he saw the Holy Ghost like a dove coming down upon him, and remaining with him. Nor was this all : the Saviour himself was, so far, at least, as his human nature was concerned, prepared for his ministry of service and of sacrifice by the reception of the Spirit. As Neander says, " The quiet flight and the resting dove betokened no sudden seizure of the Spirit, but a uniform unfolding of the life of God ; the loftiness, yet the calm repose of a nature itself divine ; the indwelling of the Spirit, so that he could impart it to others, and fill them completely with it, not as a prophet merely, but as a Creator."*

Now, as the descent of the Spirit upon the body of Christ was the token that he was the Messiah, so the sight of his body, the Church, revived by the power and effusion of the Spirit, will be the sign to the world that its wished-for regeneration is to come through its instrumentality. Revival in the Church must precede the regeneration of the world. Men are crying out for a return to uprightness and truth ; but they will not acknowledge that this is to be effected through the Church until they behold a revival of these same qualities in professedly Christian people. That which is needed to leaven the nation, is not the pseudo principle, which is, alas ! too common in the Church, but the real Spirit of Christ living and working in the believer.

I think it would be easy to make it appear that in all times, when skepticism has been rampant, and morality low outside of the Church, there has been little else than a cold, negative orthodoxy within the Church itself. It was so in England just before the Wesleys came forth preaching repentance; and if to-day there is a revival of skepticism, and an increase of iniquity, one cause may be found in the Phariseeism and formality that are so prevalent among those who "profess and call themselves Christians." So, if we wish a blessing for the nation, we must cry for a fresh descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Church. Oh, for that baptism of fire, which shall impart to our hearts its own flaming energy, and consume within them every particle of sinful chaff, while it consecrates all their powers to the service of the Lord! Let

* Neander's " Life of Christ," Bonn's edition, p. 71.

the Church rise to its highest tidal mark in purity, in prayer, in self-sacrifice, and in devotion, and the blessing will overflow the nation too.

When revival is mentioned, we who believe ourselves to be Christians are too apt to think of others, and to look for the appearance of quickening in them. But that is beginning at the wrong end. When Christ himself went forth to his ministry of salvation, the first thing he did was to open his soul for the reception of the descending Spirit. Pentecost began by the descent of the Holy Ghost on the disciples in the upper room ; and if we are to have a revival now, it will come only when you, and I, and all the members of our churches, are willing to be ourselves revived by the acceptance of this burning baptism. Ay, this burning baptism j for it burns wherever it purifies : it brings a discipline, as well as imparts an energy ; and he who would possess its power must submit himself to its scorching flame. Are you willing, my brother? That is the question which for you lies at the root of all revival.

We may learn, in the third place, that they who would experience Christ's saving power must accept him as a sacrifice for sin. When John saw Jesus, he said, " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world !" and as he was not only a Jew brought up under the Mosaic law, but a priest, or at least the son of a priest who officiated at the altar, this language in his lips could have but one meaning. It indicated that Jesus Christ was to be the great antetype of the lamb of sacrifice; and that what was only figurative in the case of the animal was real and true in his offering of himself for human sin. This is the distinctive doctrine of the Gospel ; this is the grand significance of the cross of Christ ; and he who would really experience the salvation which is in Jesus with exceeding joy, must regard him as the great voluntary victim who took upon himself the burden of the world's sin, and nailed it to his cross.

If we are to have revival, this is what our ministers must preach, and this is what the people must believe ; for the secret of evangelical success is not so much in the qualities of the preacher as in the matter which he preaches. Doubtless Luther was a great man. Yet, in his day there were other men as largely dowered with intellectual gifts as he ; but none of them performed the work he did, because none of them preached the sacrificial character of the death of Christ as he proclaimed it. Read his "Lectures on the Galatians," and you will find that he sets forth the doctrine of Christ's substitution in the room of the sinner in the most objective form ; and iterates and reiterates the truth, that he was made sin for us " who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

Glance over the sermons of Whitefield and the Wesleys, and you will be struck with the fact, that they also most emphatically insisted on the sacrificial character of the death of Christ. The same thing is seen in all the discourses of Mr. Spurgeon, and still more recently in the addresses of Mr. Moody. And is not an induction of particulars like these warrant enough for the inference, that in this particular presentation of the cross of Christ lies the secret of its power? It was when Andrew and John heard of Jesus as the lamb of sacrifice that they followed him to his abode ; and wherever this aspect of Christ's death is fairly and fully set before men, multitudes yet will be stimulated to become his disciples.

That was a strange confession which an influential Unitarian layman made a few months ago in Liverpool, when, at a meeting of the Domestic Mission of the church to which he belonged, he said, " that though he had little sympathy with the methods they adopted, disliked the bad taste which they evinced, and could not at all agree with the doctrines which they preached, yet he felt bound to confess that Mr. Moody and Mr. Sankey had in one short month effected more among the masses of that town, in the way of reclaiming drunkards and reforming prodigals, than he and those who labored with him had accomplished in all the years during which they had been at work." Alas ! he did not see that the secret of the power of these men was their preaching of Christ and him crucified, in that very sense in which he and those who acted with him had repudiated the doctrine. Let us be assured, therefore, that if we wish revival we must obtain it, not by the ventilation of novelties in religion, but by the rebrightening of the old truth, that "Jesus died, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God."

Let us learn, finally, that wherever Christ is present in his saving power, there will be a disposition among men to merge themselves in him. John would not let any one put him into the Master's place ; and even when some came to him seeking to make him jealous by telling him of the popularity of Christ, he said, " He must increase, but I must decrease." He was quite willing to be put into the shade by Jesus. Nay, that is far from being a right way of expressing it. His one desire was to give prominence to Christ, and to point him out to others. And in this respect he was like-minded with the Christian apostles ; for Paul's ambition was that Christ should be magnified, no matter what became of him.

Brethren, wherever Christ is faithfully preached thus, revival is sure to come, sooner or later ; and when our ministers shall cease to strive after eloquence as an end in itself, and determine only to hold up Christ before men's eyes, then they shall be both eloquent and successful ; for true oratory comes when self is forgotten in the eager desire of the heart to bring souls to salvation.

The perfection of John's wish was secured when thus he succeeded in destroying self. That is the lesson of John's ministry for the pulpit of to-day; and as we rise from the study of his career, we can not forbear joining Keble, in his exclamation :

" Where is the lore the Baptist taught —

The soul unswerving, and the fearless tongue ?

The much enduring wisdom sought, By lonely prayer the haunted rocks among ?

Who counts it gain his light should wane, So the whole world to Jesus throng.

" Thou Spirit, who the Church didst lend

Her eagle wings, to shelter in the wild, We pray thee, ere the Judge descend

With flames like these, all bright and undefiled, Her watch-fires light, to guide aright

Our weary souls, by earth beguiled.

" So glorious let thy pastors shine,

That by their speaking lives the world may learn First filial duty, then divine ;

That sons to parents, all to thee, may turn : And ready prove, in fires of love

At sight of thee, for aye to burn !"

II. Finding And Bringing

GREAT things, alike in nature and in history, have come out of very small beginnings. In the Mariposa grove, the traveler looks on trees three hundred feet in height, yet each of these sprung from a seed no bigger than a grain of wheat ; and the noble river, which at its union with the sea is broad enough and deep enough to float the navy of a nation on its waters, is at its source a tiny rivulet over which a child might stride. Similarly, the germs of some of those movements which have been mightiest for good or evil among men, have been wrapped up in some apparently trivial thing. What, for example, in the view of most men of that day, could have been more unimportant than the interview which two fishermen from the Lake of Galilee had with one who for years had been known as a carpenter at Nazareth ? Yet in that conference we have the earthly origin of the Christian Church. Here is the seed of that tree which has filled the nations with its branches, and which is destined yet to bless the world with its beneficent fruits. Nor need we wonder at the proportions to which it has attained, for one of these three was the " Word " who " was God," and " became flesh," that he might deliver men from the curse and power of sin.