Peter the Emboldened

There is no figure in the New Testament Gallery which presents to the eye such a mixture of simplicity and enigma as that of Simon Peter. To outward appearance his character may be read on the surface. He is not a theologian like John the Baptist; he is not a mystic like John the Evangelist; he is a plain, blunt man that speaks the language of the common day and breathes the wants of the passing hour. He is more like an open book than is any other figure in the Gallery. We feel that we have met him often, that we shall meet him many times again. He is one of those men who on a superficial view promise to offer a very easy subject of study. And yet the promise is a delusion. Among the spectators of that Gallery there has

been probably more disagreement about the char-

88 acter of Simon Peter than about the character oi any other representative of New Testament life. It very often happens that the men and women we meet in this world who seem most open and above-board are precisely those who prove the most difficult to read. Simon Peter is one of these. He not only seems, but he is, above-board. There is nothing sinister, nothing secret, nothing underhand; his words and deeds convey exactly the meaning he intends them to convey. Yet at the close of our inspection we find ourselves entangled in what appears to be a web of inconsistencies from which there is no hope of extrication. We seem to be confronted by a life of opposing qualities — sometimes touching the heavens, at others coming perilously near the nether world — now in the heights of ecstasy, anon in the depths of despair — to-day winning our admiration, to-morrow exciting a feeling akin to repulsion. The life, in fact, alternates between cowardice and bravery. These are the poles betwixt which he wavers. Every great thing he does comes from a moment of bravery; every mean act to which he stoops comes from a mO’ ment of cowardice. The most cursory examination will make this clear.

The symbol of his whole life is the sea-walking. That is in miniature the picture of his entire character. We see him for an instant on the top of the wave, daring a deed which none of his compeers could have dared; the next he is shrieking with abject terror, ‘Lord, save me! ‘And the picture gives no outward cause for this. We see no increase of the storm. The wind has not heightened; the waves have not swollen; the sea does not look more scowling than when he planted his foot upon its bosom. It is a struggle pure and simple between bravery in his own breast and cowardice in his own breast. And this picture, as I have said, is the keynote to every incident of his life. He makes professions of loyalty to Jesus far beyond those of his brethren; in an hour of real danger he shows the courage to maintain them — he draws a sword in the garden against heavy odds. Yet within a few hours this man quails before the question of a servant -girl, and denies the Lord whom he loves! I see again no adequate cause for the change; it must have come from a tremor in his own soul. Once more. He was one of the first to recognise the claims of the Gentiles. Bravely did he stand forth as the champion of Gentile freedom at a time when the thought was exciting deep animosities. For ventilating that thought Stephen had paid the penalty with his life. For ventilating that thought the convert Paul had been forced to retire into temporary exile. It was at such a moment that Peter’s voice was raised in courageous vindication of a universal Gospel. Yet, within a few brief years, this same man goes down to Antioch, and in the face of far less danger keeps aloof from the Gentile converts! Again I say I fail to recognise an adequate outward cause for the change. The cause, whatever it is, is within the man. His soul is a battlefield between bravery and cowardice; and here contend for the mastery of his heart the two most opposite things in life — the heroism of the soldier and the abjectness of the poltroon.

Here, then, is a subject for the psychologist.

We want to know why it was that within the soul of this man there could dwell such conflicting elements. We can understand a mixture of doubt and faith, we can imagine a union of weakness and strength, we can comprehend the existence of a natural placidness side by side with the possibility of flashing fire; but the co-existence of bravery and cowardice, the union of the hero and the faint-heart — that is something which challenges the philosopher and calls for explanation.

Let me begin by giving the popular explanation. It is this: ‘Peter is set forth as an example of the principle, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” He is a monument of the fact that men are liable to fail in their strongest qualities unless periodically renewed by Divine Grace. Peter was by nature a brave man. He possessed a soul of fire which made him forget his own limitations, which drove him instantaneously into work beyond his power. He lived by confidence in his own strength, and he overrated his own strength. He was one of those men to whom preliminary success is necessary. If his first charge were successful, he would carry all before him. But if checked in the assault, he would sink suddenly, utterly, ignominiously. All his courage would desert him. A great reaction would come, in which the once powerful heart would become prostrate, in which the spirit ready to dare all things would bow itself to the dust — conveying the moral to all self-confident souls that the highest human gift needs to be supported from above.’

Now, without for a moment disputing the truth of the moral, this is not my view of the character of Simon Peter as delineated in the Gospel Gallery. I must repeat that this Gallery is a record of transformations, in which each man passes from a lower into a higher self. But the view here adduced would make Peter’s higher self the original element and his later self the decline. The whole picture, as I take it, is based upon an opposite conception. Instead of being by nature the courageous man we portray, the Peter of the Gallery is introduced to us as a man of extreme timidity — one of those trembling, shrinking souls that suggest rather the girl than the youth. We shall go wrong, in my opinion, if we do not start from this basis. I admit that we are dealing with an inconsistent character; but let us not mistake the nature of the inconsistency. The inconsistency of Peter lies in his strength and not in his weakness. The inconsistency is the Divine thing about him — the thing that brings him nearest to his Master. It lies not in the fact that a brave man periodically becomes a coward, but that a cowardly man periodically becomes brave. It is as if a miser were suddenly to give an enormous subscription to a charitable institution; the subscription, and not the miserliness, is the thing to be accounted for. Our wonder should begin, not where Peter sinks, but where he stands upon the wave — not where he denies his Lord, but where he vows to die with Him. To take such a view is not only more consonant with the picture, it is really more just to Peter. It places his character on a higher level. To fall from an original eminence implies a moral stain; but to rise to a height which you have not yet acquired the adequate strength to maintain — this is but a sign of weakness, and ought to be a ground of sympathy.

From this point of view I should be disposed to divide the life of Peter into three periods. The first is the time when timidity reigns supreme. The second is the stage in which there begins a struggle between timidity and a new principle — courage. The third is that period in which the new principle vanquishes the old and courage becomes the dominant note of his life.

First, then. Peter originally appears in an attitude of constitutional timidity. You say. Was he not a fisherman — one who is supposed to buffet the winds and the waves and look with scorn upon the elements of danger! Yes; and has it never struck you with surprise that the earliest instance of timidity we meet in the Gospels is just among Christ’s little band of fishermen — of whom Peter was one! I have often marvelled that when that squall burst upon the bark on the Sea of Galilee these men manifested such abject trepidation. Fancy a company of Engliah sailors overtaken by a sudden gale and giving vent to their feelings in a simultaneous shriek of terror — ‘Save us, we perish!’ But it is precisely such a fancy that explains the mystery. For, these men are not English; they are at the opposite remove from the Englishman. The fishermen of England, the mariners of England, the very tourists of England, have become so endeared to the sea that even its storms bring a sense of exhilaration. But to the son of Judah the sea was always a horror. Jonah was no exceptional case when he ran to sea to escape the presence of the Lord God. It was to all his countrymen the one region where the presence of the Lord God could not be traced. Although the exigencies of daily life demanded from the men of Galilee the prevalence of the fisherman’s calling, I do not think it was for them a voluntary profession. I think the fishermen were the most timid set of the community — as the shepherds were the bravest. I have no doubt they went out into the deep with fear and trembling, inquired anxiously the signs of the sky, experienced during the voyage all the palpitations of the shrinking heart, and thanked God fervently when they encountered no gale. ‘We have left all, and followed Thee,’ said Peter to the Lord, speaking for himself and his fellow-fishermen. But in truth neither he nor they had made any sacrifice. They were very glad to get rid of their calling on the chance of something else. That ‘something else’ was precarious; but the sea was more precarious still. We err if we imagine that these men left a comfortable living. They left a struggling, and, to their mind, a dangerous mode of subsistence — a life which heredity had made full of unpleasant associations, and which the national instinct shrank from. It is written of Christ that He once ‘’constrained His disciples to get into a ship’; that is what life’s struggle always did to the men of Galilee.

Peter carried his lack of courage into the kingdom. He left his boat behind him, but he left not behind him his timidity. Christ took men into His kingdom with their old garments on; the ring and the robe were an after-consideration. He let them come with all the elements

of their imperfection clinging round them — with 7 the hand unringed, with the feet unshod, with the vesture unadorned. Within His holy temple the votaries again and again revealed traces of old culture — the remains of a former day. There are incidents in Peter’s life which are commonly attributed to bold presumption, but which, to my mind, suggest only the survival of this primitive culture — the spirit of extreme timidity. Take that memorable occasion on which the Master broke to His disciples the tidings of His approaching death and when Peter exclaimed with hot repudiation, ‘Be it far from Thee, Lord; this will not be unto Thee! ‘It is commonly set down to his impertinent forwardness. I think it was the voice of shrinking fear. No doubt devotion to Jesus counted for something; but they were all devoted as well as Peter. We have to find a reason why Peter was the spokesman. And I think that reason lay, not in his being the most impertinent, but in his being the most timid. He shrank from the thought of danger. He sought to figure a brighter destiny. With a sailor’s superstition, he cried out against the omen as if he would avert it, bear it down. He is an object rather for compassion than for recrimination. Will it be said that the sternness of Christ’s reproof, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan! ’ is at variance with such a view.^ But to whom was that reproof administered.? To Peter.’’ No — to Satan — to the tempter of the wilderness. We are told that after the temptation Satan left Him ‘for a season.’ This implies that he was to come back. He had come back now, and he had come back with the old temptation — to reject the cross for the crown, to choose the purple instead of the poverty, to sway by law in place of stooping by love. It was not to Peter that Christ administered the rebuke. It was not Peter that He saw before Him; it was the tempter once more — that tempter whom He had already similarly and summarily dismissed. The disciple who had just been commended for having a revelation which flesh and blood had not communicated would never have been addressed by the name of * Satan ‘!

There is another incident commonly attributed to the presumption of Peter which I think has loo THE REPRESENTATIVE MEN

its source in his timidity. I allude to that moment on the Mount of Transfiguration when he exclaimed, ‘Methinks it is good to be here; and let us make three tabernacles — one for Thee and one for Moses and one for Elias!’ The dictation of a plan to Jesus is startling enough; but I think it was really a cry of fear. The refrain of that death-prophecy was still ringing in his ears. He attributed to Jesus the dream of a Messianic conquest. He thought, if that dream could be dispelled, the death and danger prefigured would melt away. If, instead of battling with the rude world, the Son of Man would pitch His tabernacle on a height, if He would establish His seat on the top of the mountain far from the din and strife of men, if He would sit there till suppliants came to Him and descend not Himself into the lists of human competition, it seemed to Peter that the new regime would cease to be one of storm and stress, of difficulty and danger, of sorrow and sacrifice, but would become a haven of peace, a home of tranquillity, a place where body and soul could alike find repose. It was his constitutional shrinking from peril that made him wish to remain on the hill.

But, all this time, there was growing up in Simon Peter a new and higher life. Even amid the survivals of his old culture the second stage of his spiritual history had already opened. That second period is one of struggle — the struggle between the original timidity and a new principle which stimulated to courage. Jacob had begun to wrestle with his angel and, though baffled oft, had refused to let him go. Whence came this element of bravery.-’ It was born of love. There is no mystery about it; you may see the same thing every day. I have seen a soul of extraordinary timidity kindled into a courage which Caesar might have envied; the iire came from love. One who all through life had shrunk from the slightest hint of danger I have known to rush into a burning house to save her infant from the flames. And yet it does not follow that at this moment the constitutional timidity was dead. The rain may still fall when the sun is shining. Doubtless, where the element of love was absent, this woman would for many a day subside into her old cowardice in the ordinary trifles of life, and to the eye of friends and companions would reveal no spiritual change. None the less the spiritual change would be there, and sooner or later it would leaven the whole nature; for love to one creates love to all, and the courage inspired by my single pure affection will at last become my courage for every danger of my brother-man.

Now, there had come to Peter one great love. He had met with a life which peculiarly dominated him. It dominated him by stilling him, calming him. The very timidity of Peter made Christ to him a special rest; in that tabernacle his trembling spirit could repose. And in his devotion to Jesus he had moments of a new experience — courage. At first it came only in thought. He fought battles for Christ in the imagination, stood with Him in vision on the stormy sea, died with Him in the realms of fancy. Let no one say that this profited nothing. All virtue, all vice, begins in thinking. The man who has fought a successful moral battle in his imagination, is already more than half vietorious, for it is in imagination that Sin looks brightest and virtue seems most hard to win. He may fail betimes in the actual struggle; fancy may drop her lamp for a moment; he may turn his eyes from the Christ to the sea and the winds raging. But let him faint not. Success is coming. The battle in the soul is the real test. The victory in fancy has guaranteed the triumph in fact; and he who has conquered in the spirit will not long be worsted in the flesh.

There came to Simon Peter such a time of absolute victory. There came a time when the struggle with his angel ceased and when he glowed in the unclouded sun of Peniel. The final stage of his spiritual experience is that of unbroken courage. Timidity vanishes altogether, and in its room there comes a calm and habitual fearlessness — not the spasmodic burst of confidence which marked his earliest days, but a fixed and abiding bravery pervading all his life and directing all his way.

How do we know that this was the final stage of Simon Peter.’’ Because we have in our pessession a letter written in his mature life which embodies precisely this spirit. I think the letters of the New Testament have each a special characteristic, a quality which distinguishes them from beginning to end. The Epistle to the Romans has the quality of reasoning. The Epistle to the Galatians is a letter of self-defence. The Epistle to the Ephesians is a eulogy on Christ’s imperialism. The Epistle to the Philippians is in praise of Christian sacrifice. The Epistles to Timothy are a note of exhortation. The Epistles of John are calls to brotherhood. The Epistle of James is a plea for practical religion. What is the Epistle of Peter.-’ — I mean his first, or more undisputed, epistle. What is its characteristic y Can we put our hand upon any chord which pervades all its utterances .■” I think we can. To my mind there is one theme which runs through this letter as clearly as an air runs through the variations in a piece of music. That theme is courage. Peter has taken for his subject the counterpart of his former self. More than any document of the New Testament this letter is the Epistle of Courage. Other things are accidental; this is its essence, its glory, its crown. In every note, in every bar, in every cadence, we find the man stepping over his dead self and revealing the newness of life; the Peter on the top of the wave looks down upon the Peter sinking in the depths and cries, ‘You were wrong! ‘The very first key struck is one of reversal, ‘Blessed be God, who has begotten us into a lively hope’ — a hope pervading the life — not coming periodically in fits and starts, but taking up its abode within the soul. Listen again! — * We are redeemed by the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. ‘Where is now the rebuke, ‘Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee ‘! — the thing from which he recoiled has become ‘precious.’ Again — ‘The God of all grace, after ye have suffered awhile, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. ‘What a comment on his own experience! To be no longer spasmodic, fitful, wayward, but * stablished,” settled ’ — it was the realisation of all his wants, and therefore it seemed to him the crown of all perfection. And then, notice the boldness of the wish that we should not be made perfect till after we have * suffered awhile ‘! What a note of autobiography is here! Where is now the call for the three tabernacles that he might be free, from the troubles of the plain! To him in his retrospect these troubles have become the glorious things. It is the ’ trial of faith ’ which he declares to be ’ more precious than gold. ‘In looking back he has such a reverence for the crosses of his life that he would not value perfection without them. The suffering is to him part of the privilege — ‘Count it all joy! ’ he cries. He claims the cloud as essential to the clearness, the night as instrumental to the noon. The evening and not the morning is Peter’s golden hour. The morning was leaden and grey; the evening is light and glorious. The morning made faint with fear; the evening makes strong with sanguineness. The morning saw his spirit crouch in a coward’s lair; the evening leads him forth to dwell in the path of danger. The motto of his maturity is this: * Forasmuch as Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same mind. ’

1 THANK Thee, O Lord, that there is waiting for each of us a courage in reserve. This man when he started was quite unfit for the work that lay before him; he had not nerve to face hfe’s storm. But it all came — came with the day and with the hour; it was reserved in heaven till the crisis moment. I too, Lord, am unfit for the struggle of life; if I attempt to walk upon its sea I shall inevitably sink and perish. I have not the courage to contemplate the winds and the waves; I am tempted to fly to the mountain and build a tabernacle there. But in the light of this man’s experience I will not. What know I but that my courage may be sleeping beside the sea, waiting till I come up and claim it! What know I but that my treasure may be hid in the very field which seems so desolate and lonely! Hast Thou not said even of Thyself, ‘My hour is not yet come ‘! I may bear a cross on Friday which I could not have borne on the past Monday. If I cannot bear it on Monday shall I say to my soul, * Flee as a bird to your mountain ‘! Nay, my Christ, for there may be potent powers of courage sleeping in the folds of Friday. There are angels in the wilderness who only show themselves in the fasting hour. There are angels in Gethsemane who only reveal themselves amid my crying and tears. Shall I wait for the breaking of the cloud before I face the rain! Nay, for my chariot may be in the cloud. I shall come without strength to the storm; I shall go without weapons to the wilderness; I shall repair without guarantee to the Garden; I shall journey without courage to the Cross. My shining will come with the shadow; my power will wake with the pain; my courage will rise with the conflict; my fortitude will dawn with the fire; my nerve will be strengthened with the need; my resource will be ready with the rain-cloud; my boldness will be born with the breeze. I shall walk with Thee by faith till the fulness of the time.