Within the most holy place of this vast sanctuary,——beneath the very center of that wonderful dome, which rises in such unequaled vastness above it, redounding far more to the glory of the man who reared it, than of the God whose altar it covers,——in the vaulted crypt which lies below the pavement, is a shrine, before which a hundred lamps are constantly burning, and over which the prayers of thousands are daily rising. This is called the tomb of the saint to whom the whole pile is dedicated, and from whom the great high priest of that temple draws his claim to the keys of the kingdom of heaven, with the power to bind and loose, and the assurance of heaven’s sanction on his decrees. But what a contrast is all this “pride, pomp and circumstance,” to the bare purity of the faith and character of the simple man whose life and conduct are recorded on these pages! If any thing whatever may be drawn as a well-authorized conclusion from the details that have been given of his actions and motives, it is that Simon Peter was a “plain, blunt” man, laboring devotedly for the object to which he had been called by Jesus, and with no other view whatever, than the advancement of the kingdom of his Master,——the inculcation of a pure spiritual faith, which should seek no support, nor the slightest aid, from the circumstances which charm the eye and ear, and win the soul through the mere delight impressed upon the senses, as the idolatrous priests who now claim his name and ashes, maintain their dominion in the hearts of millions of worse than pagan worshipers. His whole life and labors were pointed at the very extirpation of forms and ceremonies,——the erection of a pure, rational, spiritual dominion in the hearts of mankind, so that the blessings of a glorious faith, which for two thousand years before had been confined to the limits of a ceremonial system, might now, disenthralled from all the bonds of sense, and exalted above the details of tedious forms, of natural distinctions, and of antique rituals,——spread over a field as wide as humanity. For this he lived and toiled, and in the clear hope of a triumphant fulfilment of that plan, he died. And if, from his forgotten, unknown grave, among the ashes of the Chaldean Babylon, and from the holy rest which is for the blessed, the now glorified apostle could be called to the renewal of breathing, earthly life, and see the results of his energetic, simple-minded devotion,——what wonder, what joy, what grief, what glory, what shame, would not the revelation of these mighty changes move within him! The simple, pure gospel which he had preached in humble, faithful obedience to the divine command, without a thought of glory or reward, now exalted in the idolatrous reverence of hundreds of millions,——but where appreciated in its simplicity and truth? The cross on which his Master was doomed to ignominy, now exalted as the sign of salvation, and the seal of God’s love to the world!——(a spectacle as strange to a Roman or Jewish eye, as to a modern would be the gallows, similarly consecrated,) but who burning with that devotion which led him of old to bear that shameful burden? His own humble name raised to a place above the brightest of Roman, of Grecian, of Hebrew, or Chaldean story! but made, alas! the supporter of a tyranny over souls, far more grinding and remorseless than any which he labored to overthrow. The fabled spot of his grave, housed in a temple to which the noblest shrine of ancient heathenism “was but a cell!” but in which are celebrated, under the sanction of his sainted name, the rites of an idolatry, than which that of Rome, or Greece, or Egypt would seem more spiritual,——and of tedious, unmeaning ceremonies, compared with which the whole formalities of the Levitical ritual might be pronounced simple and practical!
These would be the first sights that would meet the eye of the disentombed apostle, if he should rise over the spot which claims the honors of his martyr-tomb, and the consecration of his commission. How mournfully would he turn from all the mighty honors of that idolatrous worship,——from the deified glories of that sublimest of shrines that ever rose over the earth! How earnestly would he long for the high temple of one humble, pure heart, that knew and felt the simplicity of the truth as it was in Jesus! How joyfully would he hail the manifestations of that active evangelizing spirit that consecrated and fitted him for his great missionary enterprise! His amazed and grieved soul would doubtless here and there feel its new view rewarded, in the sight of much that was accordant with the holy feeling that inspired the apostolic band. All over Christendom, might he find scattered the occasional lights of a purer devotion, and on many lands he would see the truth pouring, in something of the clear splendor for which he hoped and labored. But of the countless souls that owned Jesus as Lord and Savior, millions on millions,——and vast numbers too, even in the lands of a reformed faith,——would be found still clinging to the vain support of forms, and names, and observances,——and but a few, a precious few, who had learned what that means——“I will have mercy and not sacrifice”——works and not words,——deeds and not creeds,——high, simple, active, energetic, enterprising devotion, and not cloistered reverence,——chanceled worship,——or soul-wearying rituals. Would not the apostle, sickened with the revelations of such a resurrection, and more appalled than delighted, call on the power that brought him up from the peaceful rest of the blessed, to give him again the calm repose of those who die in the Lord, rather than the idolatrous honors of such an apotheosis, or the strange sight of the results of such an evangelization?——“Let me enter again the gates of Hades, but not the portals of these temples of superstition. Let me lie down with the souls of the humble, but not in the shrine of this heathenish pile. Leave me once more to rest from my labors, with my works still following; and call me not from this repose till the labors I left on earth unachieved, have been better done. We did not follow these cunningly-devised fables, when we made known to men the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the simple eye-witness story of his majesty. We had a surer word of prophecy; and well would it have been, if these had turned their wandering eyes to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, and kept that steady beacon in view, through the stormy gloom of ages, until the day dawn and the day-star arise in their hearts. These are not the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, for which we looked, according to God’s promise. Those must the faithful still look for, believing that Jehovah, with whom a thousand years are as one day, is not slack concerning his promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me.”
What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low, laborious business,——living with hardly a hope above the beasts that perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who, with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows, through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all, lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,——lying, and utterly faithless in the promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so lately a cowardly disowner of his Master’s name, now, with a courageous martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting Galilean,——henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes, bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession of new faculties,——intellectual as well as moral. This was the spirit which raised him from the humble task of a fisherman, to that of drawing men and nations within the compass of the gospel, and to a glory which not all the gods of ancient superstition ever attained.
Most empty honors! Why hew down the marble mountains, and rear them into walls as massive and as lasting? Why raise the solemn arches and the lofty towers to overtop the everlasting hills with their heavenward heads? Or lift the skiey dome into the middle heaven, almost outswelling the blue vault itself? Why task the soul of art for new creations to line the long-drawn aisles, and gem the fretted roof? There is a glory that shall outlast all
“The cloud-capped towers,——the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples,——the great globe itself,——
Yea all which it inherit;”
——a glory far beyond the brightest things of earth in its brightest day; for “they that be wise shall shine as the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars, for ever and ever.” Yet in this the apostle rejoices not;——not that adoring millions lift his name in prayers, and thanksgivings, and songs, and incense, from the noblest piles of man’s creation, to the glory of a God,——not even that over all the earth, in all ages, till the perpetual hills shall bow with time,——till “eternity grows gray,” the pure in heart will yield him the highest human honors of the faith, on which nations, continents and worlds hang their hopes of salvation;——he “rejoices not that the spirits” of angels or men “are subject to him,——but that HIS NAME IS WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.”