CHAPTER XV.

PETER AND JAMES.

THE poetry of Peter lies more in his character than in his writings, although both display its unequivocal presence. His impetuosity, his forwardness, his outspoken utterance, his mistakes. and blunders, his want of tact, his familiarity with his master, his warm-heartedness, his simplicity of character, render him the Oliver Goldsmith of the New Testament. It was owing to the child-like temperament of genius, blended with peculiar warmth of heart, that he on one occasion took Jesus aside, and began to rebuke him-that he said, on another," thou shalt never wash my feet;" but added immediately, on being told what it imported, "Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head" -that he muttered on the Mount of the Transfiguration, the supremely absurd words, spoken as if through a dream, "Let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, one for Moses, and one for Elias"-that he drew his sword, and cut off the ear of Malchus-that he adventured on the water where Christ was walking that he was the spokesman of the twelve, always ready, whether with sense or with kindly nonsense--and that his affectionate nature was grieved when Christ asked at him the third time, "Lovest thou me ?" With this temperament consort his faults; his boldness breaks down when danger appears, as has often happened with men of the poetical temperament; even in his denial of Christ, we see the fervor of the man —it is with oaths and curses, for his very sin has an emphasis with it. And in fine keeping, too, with this, are the tears produced by Christ's look (Christ knew that for Peter a look was

enough)--fast, fiery, bitter, and renewed, it is said, whenever he heard the cock crow, till his dying day.

The change produced on Peter after the resurrection is very singular. We can scarce at first recognize the blunderer on Transfiguration Hill, the sleep in Gethsemane, the gravelystupid and unconsciously impudent rebuker of Jesus, the openmouthed, grown-up child, in the solemn president of Pentecost, the bold declaimer at the "gate called Beautiful," the dignified captive sisted before the rulers and the high-priests, the minister of divine justice standing with the javelin of death over Ananias and Sapphira, the thaumaturgist, whose long evening shadow swept and cured sick streets, and before whom an angel opened the prison-doors, or the first embassador to the Gentile world. But such a change has often been exemplified in persons of remarkable character, under the pressure of peculiar circumstances, or through the force of great excitement. The story of the first Brutus, although probably a mythic fable, contains in it a wide truth, inclosing a hundred facts within it. "Call no man happy, till he is dead." Call no man stupid, till he be dead. Give the god within the man fair play, feed him with food convenient for him, and he may in due time produce a divine progeny. The Atlantean burden will often awaken the Atlantean strength to bear it. In Peter-the forward, the rash, but the loving, the sincere, and the simple-minded-there slumbered a wisdom and sagacity, a fervor and an eloquence, which the first touch of the fiery tongue of Pentecost aroused into an undying flame, to become a light, a glory, and a defense around the infant Church. "Desertion," which Foster has recorded as one grand ally to "decision of character," did its wonted work on him. Left by Christ foremost in the gap, a portion of Christ's spirit was bestowed on him, and his native faculty-great but uncultured -was effectually stirred up. Remorse, too, had wrung his heart; tears had been his burning baptism—and let those who have experienced tell how high the soul sometimes springs to the sting of woe. The new birth of intellect, like the natural birth of man, and the new birth of God's Spirit, is fre

quently through pangs, as dear on reflection as they are dreadful in endurance. Nor had Peter not profited by his intercourse with Christ, during his stay on earth after the resurrection-the most interesting portion of which recorded, is indeed a pathetic. interview between the forgiven denier and his appeased and loving Lord.

A more wonderful contrast than this, between Peter before and Peter after the resurrection, would be presented, did we accept the monstrous pre-eminence given to him by the Roman Catholic Church. We refer our readers, for a confutation of this error, to Isaac Barrow's unanswered and unanswerable treatise. But, besides, we confess that we can not, without ludicrous emotions, think of poor, talking, imprudent, noble-hearted Peter of Galilee, as the predecessor of the many proud, ambitious, scheming, mendacious, lewd, and thoroughly worldly and selfish Popes; and are disposed to laugh still more loudly, when we find his escapades, his rash, unthinking words, his want of reticence and common sense, paraded by Papists (because in all these things he was first), as evidences that even then he had laid the foundation for his universal sway. Besides, did his one denial form a precedent for the infinite series of falsehoods that Church has since palmed on the world? Did his one stream of curses create that deep river of blasphemy, which has run down collaterally with the progress of the Roman Catholic faith? And how could the intrepid fisherman, with his "coat off”—the humble married man-recognize his successors in the pampered and purple-clad prelates—many of whom would have been ready to fling the price of all purgatory into their courtezan's lap.

Great, unquestionably, as the change was upon Peter, after he had fallen and Christ had departed, much of his former character remained. His language before his judges breathes not a little of the unceremonious fisherman, although his attitude has become more dignified, and his eye be shining with a pentecostal fire. In his impetuous mission to the Gentiles, and in his sensitive and shrinking conduct when reproached for it-in

all that line of action, for which Paul rebuked him to the facewe see the old man of warmth and weakness, ardent in temperament and narrow in views, rapid in advance and hasty in retreat. But that any jealousy for Paul ever entered Peter's mind, we can not believe, or, if it did, it must have been the transient feeling of a child, who this moment weeps because her sister has received a prettier plaything than she, and is the next fondling her in her arms, and the next asleep in her bosom.

Another change still was before Peter. His nature must at once soften and sublimate into its final shape-the shape in which his letters reveal and leave him. And that is a form as lovely as it is majestic. The weakness of his youth is all gone, but its warmth remains. The Jewish prejudice, which survived his early days, and seemed somehow to befit the "apostle of the circumcision," has been exchanged for a catholic charity. On his brow, now overhung by silver hair, there meet the glories of the "holy mount," and those of the day of his departure, when he shall again see and embrace his Lord. A tearful sublimity, as of a sun setting amid rainy clouds; a yearning affection; a fullness of evangelical statement; an earnestness of practical admonition; a perpetual and lingering reference to Christ; a soft shade of sadness, at the prospect of the speedy disappearance of all earthly things, brightly relieved, however, by glimpses of his Lord's appearance-these, with some shadowy hints as to the intermediate state, and one picture of the Sodom-like sins of his day, form the constituent fea tures of the two Epistles addressed by Peter to the "strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, and to those who have obtained like precious faith with us." Their style, like their spirit, is mild and sweet. Gravity, dignity, and grace-how unlike his hurried words of yore !-distinguish every line. Perhaps only in one passage do we see the old fire of the fisherman, unsoftened and unsubdued by trial, experience, or time. We speak of the tremendous invective, contained in the second chapter of the Second Epistle, against the false teachers of the time-one of four or M*

five "burning coals of juniper," which, as if carried from the conflagrations of the old prophets, are thrown down here and there amid the more placid pages of the New Testament. Such are Christ's denunciation of the Pharisees, Paul's account of the heathen world; and beside, and almost identical with, Peter's invective, is the Epistle of Jude. That, indeed, is but one red ray from the "wrath of the Lamb." But in Jude, as well as in Peter, poetry blends with, strangely beautifies, and clearly discovers the solemn purpose and terror of the prophetic strain. Behold the dreary cluster of metaphors, like a grove of various trees, all withered into the unity of death, of which Peter begins, and Jude closes, the collection. "These," says Peter, "are wells without water-clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved forever." "Clouds,"

says the yet sterner Jude, "they are without water, carried about of winds; trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots; raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame; wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." If this is imitation, it is the imitation of one animated by a kindred spirit, and possessing a still stronger and darker fancy.

We have already defended such denunciations of sin, which are proper to both Testaments, although more frequently found in the Old, because they express, not private, but public resentment. While hearing them, we should say, "It is the voice of a God, and not of a man." Indeed, their divinity is proved by their grandeur and daring. They are as beautiful as terrible. They are "winged with red lightning and impetuous rage." Passion there is in them, but it is sublimed, transfigured, purified; approaching, in its power and justice, to that wrath on which the sun never goes down, and expressing, not the malignity of earth, but the "malison of Heaven." Had we seen Paul, Peter, or Jude, inscribing those words of doom, or had we witnessed Christ's face darkening into the divinest sorrow, or heard his voice trembling in grief, as well as anger, we should have felt in a higher degree, the emotion of the skeptic who had been