It shewed that he was altogether free from that kind of stubbornness which is born of self-regard, and that he did not attach a sanctity to an opinion or a resolve, merely because it was his. He learnt from this miracle that it was best to trust to Christ. He might say to himself, “I never felt more convinced that we should take nothing by letting down the nets, than I did on that morning on the lake, but I let them down and found I was wrong.” A memorable act is not done with, educationally, when it is over. The recollection of it is an attendant monitor always pointing the same way; and so this miracle may have done much towards accustoming [pg 201] Peter to look to the Lord's prompting, and to be ready at His word to give up that about which he felt most sure. It may well have helped him to that openness of mind, which stood the Church in good stead, years after at Joppa, when the envoys of Cornelius were knocking at Peter's door.
This miracle has been called a miracle of coincidence, meaning that the marvel lay in the passing of the shoal at the moment when the net was cast; it might not be a miracle at all, because the chances against its being a natural phenomenon, though enormous, are not absolutely infinite. It is not one which would appal ordinary beholders: the boatmen, we may suppose, thought chiefly of securing the fish. Our Lord is now testing the capacity of men for discerning God, and He therefore performs miracles of a less striking order first; these impress those only who have their eyes open for the manifestation of what is spiritual; and those who are found to possess this “vision and faculty Divine” are afterwards shewn “greater things than these.”
Simon had no doubt seen our Lord work cures, but this mastery of our Lord over the creation comes more home to him than His power over disease, and his feelings break forth. It is characteristic of him, that what is in him must come out at once; whether it be an objection that occurs to him, or a motion of indignation or of [pg 202] elation, or of the panic to which Orientals are subject—out it must come; this is the point in which the identity of his character is most visibly preserved in all our narratives. Here he is mastered by the emotions of the moment and must give them outward show; and along with his gush of feeling comes the sense of his unworthiness, the impression of his being wholly unequal to the duty and position thrust upon him; an impression not uncommon with men in such junctures; though biographies abundantly show that those who feel it most very often acquit themselves admirably when the trial comes. Touched by this, Simon throws himself at his Master's feet and says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”[145]
We go back now to the course of the narrative in St Mark's Gospel, and there we find that the first thing which struck the hearers of our Lord was the authority with which He spoke.
“And they were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as having authority, and not as the scribes.”[146]
We saw in the last chapter, that men bowed to the authority in the air of our Lord when He purged the Temple of Jerusalem: this authority now passed into His words, and it swayed the hearts of men. It is the special instinct of a crowd that it quickly discerns those whom it must hear, and [pg 203] this multitude saw that our Lord had something to tell them and that, not of tradition, but out of His own very self. Here was a genuine authority coming of nature or of God, by the side of which the stated legal authority of the officiating scribes paled away out of sight.
In what ways was it, we may ask, that this authority of Christ shone out now, and took such hold of men? First of all, I would answer, He brought to the birth, within men, thoughts which were lying in embryo in their own hearts. This, which was also Socrates' way, I have spoken of in the Introductory Chapter and once or twice since. Our Lord wakened within men the perception of truths which they seemed to have once known and forgotten; especially that God was the Father, not only of Israel as a nation, but of every particular man in it. The common people had been told by the learned that they were not worth God's notice, and when Christ asserted the dignity of each individual soul they said to themselves “we always thought it must be so; and so it is.” The beatitudes in like manner commended themselves to men's hearts; they felt that if there was a God in the world, it ought to be as our Lord said it was.
Secondly, our Lord not only told men that they were the children of God, that they should strive after their Father's likeness, and that they might approach nearer and nearer to being perfect as He is perfect: but, what was more than this, in every [pg 204] word He spake,—whether of teaching, or reproof, or expostulation, or in His passing words to those who received His mercies—He treated them as God's children. Man, as man, has in His eyes a right to respect. Anger we find with our Lord often, as also surprise at slowness of heart, indignation at hypocrisy and at the Rabbinical evasions of the Law; but never in our Lord's words or looks do we find personal disdain. Towards no human being does He shew contempt. The scribe would have trodden the rabble out of existence; but there is no such thing as rabble in our Lord's eyes. The master, in the parable, asks concerning the tree, which is unproductively exhausting the soil, why cumbers it the ground; but it is not to be rooted up, till all has been tried. There it stands, and mere existence gives it claims, for all that exists is the Father's. This notion, that every thing belonged to God, and was therefore to be reverently regarded, lay very deep in the hearts of the children of Israel, even the poorest in Galilee; and when the Lord brought it to light, men listened to Him with breathless respect.
Thirdly. If a scribe spoke to the people, he bethought himself of topics within their comprehension: he had a double self; one he showed to them and one he kept for his equals: he was afraid of talking over his hearers' heads, so he took them on the side of what he supposed they might understand, of their interests, for example, and spoke [pg 205] of the advantages of good repute, or, at the highest, of the blessings which God brought on His servants in this life and hereafter, and of the ill fate which awaited offenders. All this implied, “We who speak to you, of course, have for ourselves higher principles and purer motives than those we have named, but these are quite good enough for you.” Now there is nothing that men, young or old, so surely detect, as whether a man serves them with the same thoughts that he gives to himself and his friends.
The people, moreover, are always grateful for being supposed capable of higher sentiments than mere hope of gain and fear of loss, and for the appreciation shewn in taking them on higher ground; they seldom fail the speaker who boldly addresses their consciences; they are eager to justify his trust in them: “He has treated us as men,” they say, “and men he shall find we are.” Above all they feel the compliment of being not flattered, but supposed reasonable enough to hear the truth about themselves and shewn their failings; and we feel sure that men went away from the Sermon on the Mount confident of Christ's respect and regard for them, without His telling them of it in so many words. He talks to them quite naturally of their Father who is also His Father, just as men speak of any common tie: and this took hold of their hearts.