5; and probably 1 Pet. v. 13), and an interesting and not incredible tradition makes her the companion of his martyrdom.

The preaching of the Baptist drew three at least of the friends to take their place among the multitudes who came to him on the banks of the Jordan confessing their sins. Two of the four, Andrew and John, were present when he pointed to One whom they knew as Jesus, the son of the carpenter of Nazareth, as He returned from the Temptation in the Wilderness, with the words, "Behold the Lamb of God" (John i. 36). Their belief in their teacher led them to follow Him who was thus designated, and the interview which followed, the “gracious words" that came from His lips (Luke iv. 22), the authority with which He spoke (Matt. vii. 29), induced them, prior to any attestation of His claim by signs and wonders, to accept Him as the long-expected Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed of the Lord. Each apparently started in quest, the one of his brother and the other of his friend, to whom they knew that the tidings would be welcome, and Andrew was the first to find him and to bring him to the Teacher whom they had thus owned. As he drew near, the Rabbi whom he was henceforth to know as his Lord and Master, looked on him, and, as reading the latent possibilities of his character and determining his future work, addressed him in words which gave him the name that was afterwards to supersede that which he had received in infancy, "Thou art Simon, the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas" (John i. 40-42). The use of the Aramaic form seems to imply that the Lord spoke to him in that language, but the familiarity of the Galileans with Greek made the equivalent Peter the more familiar name, even during our Lord's ministry and still more afterwards1. It is probable that, as in the changes of name in the Old Testament, Abram into Abraham (Gen. xvii. 5), Jacob

1 "Cephas," however, appears to have retained its hold, as "Symeon" did, on the Church of Jerusalem, and was therefore adopted by those who looked to him as their leader in the parties at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 12), and is used of him by St Paul in writing to that Church (1 Cor. ix. 5, xv. 5). The Hebrew word, which meets us in Job xxx. 6, Jer. iv. 29, has the meaning of a projecting cliff or rock, and has affinities in nonSemitic languages, as in Sanscrit kap-ala, Greek кep-aλŋ, Latin caput, German Kopf and Gipfel.

into Israel (Gen. xxxii. 28), both names were significant. He had been Simeon, a hearer only (comp. Gen. xxix. 33), knowing God as "by the hearing of the ear" (Job xlii. 5), Bar-Jona, the "son of Jehovah's Grace:" now he was to be as a "rock-man," a "stone" in the Temple of God, built up with other living stones (so he came afterwards to understand the mystic meanings of the name) upon Him who now spoke to him as the true rock, the firm and sure foundation (1 Pet. ii. 4, 5). (See Watkins' Note on John i. 42, in Bishop Ellicott's New Testament Commentary.) To the company of the four friends thus united in the fellowship of a new faith were added two others, probably already within the circle of companionship, Philip, of the same town as the sons of Jona, and his friend Nathanael or Bartholomew of Cana1. With them we may believe, though he is not specially named, Peter was present at the marriage feast of Cana (John ii. 2), at the Passover feast in Jerusalem that followed shortly on it (John ii. 17), and in Judæa (John iii. 22), and in the journey through Samaria (John iv. 8). There is no trace, however, of their presence in the next visit of the Lord Jesus to Jerusalem at the unnamed feast of John v. 1, and it was probably during His absence from Galilee on that occasion and because of it, that the four partners returned to their old calling on the Sea of Galilee, not that their faith in Him had grown weaker, but that they waited till He should declare Himself. In the meantime He went from Jerusalem to Nazareth (Luke iv. 14), and from Nazareth to Capernaum (Luke iv. 31), which was now the home of one of them, and possibly of all four. They had been fishing during the night, and without success. Their boats were drawn up to the shore that they might rest for the day. Two, Simeon and Andrew, were making a final attempt with the net, which they cast more cautiously into the water near the shore. The others

1 The assumption of identity rests on the facts (1) that the name Nathanael does not appear in the Synoptic Gospels nor Bartholomew in St John; (2) that the names of Philip and Bartholomew appear in the list of the Twelve in Matt. x. 3, Mark iii. 18, Luke vi. 14 in close combination, as if there were some special bonds of intimacy uniting them; (3) that Bar-tholomæus is, like Bar-jona and Bar-timæus, an obvious patronymic.

were cleaning and mending their nets on the assumption that the day's work was over. The Teacher stepped into Peter's boat and taught the people, preaching, we may believe, the Gospel of repentance and forgiveness. Then followed the command to put out once again for another venture, and the draught of a great multitude of fishes, in which he could but see the working of a supernatural power; and the awe-stricken disciple, penetrated with a deeper consciousness of his own evil than he had felt even under the preaching of the Baptist, threw himself at the feet of Jesus with the cry, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." It was met, as all utterances of true repentance are met, with the assuring words, "Fear not;" with the announcement of a new life-work which was to take the place of the old, and of which that older work was to be as a parable full of meaning, "From henceforth thou shalt catch men." He and his friends were to be "fishers of men" in the world's stormy seas (Matt. iv. 18-22; Mark i. 16—20; Luke v I-II)1. From that time he forsook all and followed Christ.

It was in almost immediate sequence to the call that the house in which he and Andrew and his wife and her mother dwelt was honoured by the presence of his Lord, and he witnessed, in the healing of the last-named and of many others, the "signs and wonders" to which he appeals in Acts ii. 22 as an attestation that Jesus of Nazareth was "a man approved of God." He and they learnt also what was the secret of that power to heal, how the life of daily ministration was sustained by the night of secret communing with God (Mark i. 35-39). The work to which he had been called went on. As contemplating a wider extension which should, symbolically at least, include all the families of Israel, the Twelve were chosen, after another night spent by the Lord Jesus on the mountain height in solitary prayer (Mark iii. 13; Luke vi. 12); and, if we may take the unvarying order of the names in all the four lists

1 I have written on the assumption that the three Evangelists report the same incident. If the variations in St Luke's record lead to the conclusion that he speaks of a different call, we must infer that the disciples again returned to their employment after that narrated by the other Evangelists.

given in the New Testament as indicating an actual priority, the son of Jona found himself chosen as the Coryphæus of the chosen band who were, though not as yet sent forth, chosen for the office of Envoys or Apostles of the King of Israel (Mark iii. 7-19). Confining our attention to the facts in which his name appears associated with some characteristic word or act, we note his presence with the two sons of Zebedee in the deathchamber of the daughter of Jairus (Mark v. 37; Luke viii. 51); the mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, not as yet to the Gentiles or the Samaritans (Matt. x. 5), in which, as the Apostles were sent two and two together (Mark vi. 7), it is natural to infer from their earlier and later companionship (John xx. 3, xxi. 7, 20; Acts iii. 1, viii. 14) that he was associated with the beloved disciple; the intensity of faith which led him, after the feeding of the Five Thousand, when he saw his Lord's form drawing near the boat, walking in the darkness of the stormy night on the water of the sea of Galilee, to trust himself, at his Lord's bidding, to the tempestuous waves; the weakness of that faith which shewed itself when he began to sink and called forth the cry "Lord, save me" (Matt. xiv. 28-33). The memory of that deliverance was, we may believe, still fresh in his mind when, after the hard sayings in the synagogue at Capernaum which had repelled many of the disciples, he met his Lord's appeal, "Will ye also go away?" with the question, "Lord, to whom shall we go?", with the confession "Thou hast the words of eternal life; and we have believed and have known that Thou art the Holy One of God1" (John vi. 66-71). The signs and wonders that followed, the healing of the Syro-Phoenician maiden (Matt. xv. 21-28; Mark vii. 24--30), of the blind man in the Apostle's own city of Bethsaida (Mark viii. 22-26), the feeding of the four thousand (Matt. xv. 32-38; Mark viii. 1—9), deepened the faith which had been thus uttered. The disciples had been led beyond the limits of the chosen land, and of their usual work as preachers, through the regions of Tyre and Sidon, through the latter city itself

I follow the reading of the better MSS. rather than that of the Received Text.

(Mark vii. 31 in the best MSS.), and were returning by the slopes of Hermon to the district round Cæsarea Philippi. The question was put to them by their Lord, as if to test what they thought of the floating rumours that had met their ears in every town and village, "Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?" They reproduced those rumours. Some said that He was John the Baptist, and some that He was Elias, and some that He was Jeremiah, and some, more vaguely, that one of the old Prophets was risen from the dead. It was given to Peter to make, in answer to the question that followed, "But whom say ye that I am?", a fuller confession of his faith than had yet been uttered, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. xvi. 13-19).

The words that followed on that confession have been the battlefield of endless controversies between Romish and Protestant theologians. To discuss these lies outside our scope, but the promise thus made to him is too closely connected with the development of the Apostle's spiritual life, and, it may be added, with that spiritual life as seen in the teaching of the Epistle, to be altogether passed over. "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven." The words reminded him of the manner in which he had been received on his first call to the discipleship. Now, as then, it was not through any merely human influence ("flesh and blood"), the testimony of the Baptist, or his brother, or his friends, that he had been led to this confession. The "Father in Heaven," to whom his Master had taught him to pray (Matt. vi. 9), had brought that direct immediate conviction to his soul. One who had the "words of eternal life" could not be other than the Christ in all the fulness of the significance which that title had acquired.

And now he was to see the meaning of the new name Cephas, or Petros, that had been then given him. He was a stone, one with that rock with which he was now joined by an indissoluble union. As with the like utterance in John ii., "Destroy this temple," the words were either left to interpret themselves to the minds that thought over them, or were emphasized by