To be at study of of man's necessary religion, that his self-education, by the 12. To approach to the harmony of diversity set before us tained by in the body of Christ, we have chiefly to work towards uniformity. All are to have one object of faith, Christ Jesus. The process of our following after unity of faith is not by the his torical Christ. repression, eradication, starving of our diverse natural affections or propensities of thought, but by unity of study of the Son of God, which is the meaning of unity of knowledge of Him-by bringing those diverse living capabilities or propensities of our spirit into captivity to obey Him. In contemplating Him-having Him ever before the mind-the things of His nature and love taken and shown to the soul-every diversity of impulsive whole-heartedness, steady caution, holy zeal, holy sorrow, unfearing courage, or depression under burdens of trial, will find, besides its needed sympathy, its needed guidance and sanctifying correction. In Him dwelt all the fulness of innocent manhood as well as of Godheadall perfectness of the diverse human temperaments, which mankind possess not in such harmony, as well as all fulness of that divine grace which every varying needer of His sympathy could cleave to. And in contemplating Him perfect in man's nature, and perfected in experience of man's conditions, each will find the correspondence with and understanding of his case which he needs; as Peter did in his time of seeming greatest removal from likeness to his faithful Master, and, in the depth of selfreproach for his own untrustworthiness, was able to say to Him, "Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest thatI love thee." of propen 13. This correction of subjective differences bringing diver- Correction sity into harmony we find illustrated in the same cases of our sities. Lord's personal disciples, which gave so full exemplification of diversity of natural propensity. John, for whatever reason he was the disciple whom Jesus John. loved, was, as all his writing shows, distinguished among the attendants of the Lord by his love of Him personally. He has been called the φιλοιησους, as Peter was the φιλοχριστος, seeing the person as the other saw the mission of his Lord dominantly. The corrective influence which that constant contemplation had on his natural ways of thinking was very apparent. John was not in those first years the gentle disciple we call him now —his and his brother's spirit was vehement. They were Sons of Thunder. They asked for the highest places in the kingdom of their Master, ready to drink of His cup, and to be baptised. Peter. with even His baptism of suffering. They rebuked one who cast out devils in their Lord's name, because he was not one of their company. They sought to call down fire, "as Elijah did," to destroy a Samaritan village, merely for inhospitality shown to Him. How corrected and harmonised with the spirit of Jesus became those strong human propensities of soul in John by the time he wrote his Gospel and Epistles! There his strong love looks with increased absorption of thoughts upon the person of the only-begotten well-beloved Son of God; but he has come to speak of himself and his fellow-believers in Jesus, to whom he writes, as little children now, and not ambitious, strong, striving men. Amidst the propagation of philosophical theories explaining away the historical character of the Christ, he is the strong uncompromising asserter that it was a true person, a real individual, the Son of God, and God Himself, who came in the flesh. But the early rebuker of a different manner of following Christ from his own is now no polemic nor controversialist, even against heresy. He but sets forth in its own strength the proved truth of Jesus' declaration of Himself and the divinely moral teaching of His faith, and lets these condemn the heresy; as His Master had let His works show Him to men, and demanded their faith upon that ground alone. He who before the Samaritan village knew not what spirit he was of, in Patmos knew his own spirit, "the Spirit He hath given us" (1 John iii. 24); and the vindictive avenger came to think and write habitually of self-sacrifice for the brethren, and said, "He that hateth his brother is a murderer," "he that loveth dwelleth in God," "if any man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" "we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren." John's dissimilar fellow-disciple and afterwards companionapostle, Peter, associated with him in that so common attraction of differing temperaments which seems to indicate that diversity is a law of human progress to perfection through mutually-sought complement, is another example of natural temperament adopted into the new life through a correcting process effected by the contemplation of the things of Christ. Peter's ultimate moral character was announced by Jesus when his brother Andrew brought him into His presence, and He said, “Thou shalt be called the Rock" (John i. 42). Peter's natural propensities and capabilities were akin in some particulars to that coming steadfastness in the faith. He was rough and stubborn; but he was not stable as yet. By union with the living Rock, the Rock of Salvation to him, the union of constant contemplation producing its promised change into the same likeness, he became firm and immovable unto the end-the "power" which he "received from on high" perfecting in good his own constitutional tendencies, which had before shown the natural risk of unsanctified affections to take a turn to evil. Peter, rudely presumptuous, rebuking his Master for speaking of His humiliation, stubbornly self-confident in the upper room, violently courageous in the garden, totally overthrown in the judgment-hall, to the loss of all courage, fidelity, and self-respect, was the selfsame Peter who afterwards, with modesty and firmness equalling one another, held fast his faithfulness against the browbeating of the Sanhedrim, and under Herod's imprisonment of him with the prospect of death hanging over him after the slaughter of James. It was the same rock of offence to his Master, who afterwards became the rock of stability to the early church, "strengthening the brethren" (Luke xxii. 32). There is all Peter's early faithfulness, but none of his forwardness, in his and John's answer to the high priest, "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye; for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." The former earthly-mindedness of both, and their views of discipleship, were in like manner gone when they went out from the presence of the council after they had been beaten and forbidden to preach Jesus Christ. "They rejoiced that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His sake." The hastiness which was the sometimes faulty character of Peter's early declarations of his belief in Jesus and his fidelity to Him-which produced these confessions conspicuous for their early manifestation of faith in the dignity of Jesus and appreciation of His needed work, "Thou art the Christ of God;" "To whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life "—but which produced also the rash self-ignorant walking on the water, and the profession of fidelity unaccepted by the Lord on the night of the betrayal-that hastiness to profess and to act counting no cost, estimating no difficulty in himself, became in his training not hastiness of promise but preparedness for confession and promptness in obedience. The two periods of Peter's moral life were made parts of one whole by the faithfulness which was the rock of his nature. Peter never did anything like merely professing; in his rashest time his ebullitions were true manifestations of the inner man. His humble, grieving, almost remonstrating words at that mid point of his life, when the discipleship was ending and the apostleship was to begin, "Lord, thou knowest all things, thou knowest that I love thee," asserted a consciousness of integrity which belonged to him before as well as after. The peculiarity of Peter's line of Christian thought, in which he is compared with John and called the pλoxgoros, while John was the phonous, distinguished the apostle as markedly as the disciple. The Messiahship of Jesus was Peter's distinguishing early confession. It was he who recognised the meetness of the association of Jesus with Moses and Elias in the Transfiguration, and he who answered in these words expressing the only hope and refuge of man, "To whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life" (John vi. 68). It is the same human spirit who, of all the teachers of the church, sets before the earthly life of disciples so brightly, as its hope, stimulus, and upholding, the work of Christ - His atonement, His example of enduring suffering on earth, and the "exceeding great and precious promises, the inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and unending," which His prepared heaven holds forth. Christ's work, Christ's example, and Christ's heaven, are in Peter's teaching not distant things in human contemplation or influential expectancy, but made to bear on the lives of His servants. Travelling Zionwards by these thoughts, Peter's disciples converge to the same state of spirits of just men made perfect as John's, and minds congenial taking his guidance, are approaching by another line of thought — the |