So far Peter's self-assertion had ended in failure, but further humiliation was yet to come. He could not bear to remain in ignorance of the fate of a Master whom he really and truly loved; so, checking his flight, when he saw the procession move off he followed it at a safe distance. His friend and partner, John, who appears to have had friends in the house of Caiaphas, obtained admission for him and he waited therein, as Matthew says, "to see the end." All his bravery had now deserted him; he was in a strange city where men of his province were despised and ridiculed. He was only a humble fisherman, and stricken with fear by finding himself in the power of authorities ecclesiastical and secular. Humanly speaking, his next mistake was one that might have been prophesied. He was discovered and questioned; in his bewilderment and terror all the coarseness of his old Galilean life returned upon him, and, forgetful of everything but the desire of saving himself, he denied his Master, with cursing and swearing. Jesus directed upon him a second reproach, this time a mute one. He "turned and looked upon Peter," but that look was enough. It brought him to his senses, laid bare his miserable failure, ingratitude, cowardice and broken promises. He saw how completely he had fallen beneath himself by over-confidence in himself. The Peter of that moment was not the real Peter, after all. He did love his Master, and had run the risk of arrest and death to get near Him again, but his humiliation was complete and his self-abasement intense. "He went out and wept bitterly." Shall we say that the experience of the next few days was the greatest crisis in his career? From this depth of humiliation he rose qualified to become an ambassador and a saviour.
IX.
The Power of the Resurrection.
We know nothing of Peter's history during the anguished hours that intervened between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, but we may believe that his shame and contrition continued until Jesus Himself breathed in his ear words of forgiveness and hope. We may infer indirectly that Peter must have been humbled by the recollection of his own self-confident boasting in the presence of the other apostles, for we find him still in association with them. The little company seems to have held together to mourn their lost Master and to assist each other with a common sympathy. That Peter must have been with them is clear from the fact that he was mentioned by name to the women who visited the tomb on the first day of the week. "Go, tell His disciples and Peter, He goeth before you into Galilee." When we consider that Peter still associated with those who had listened to his self-confident assumption of superiority to themselves we can discern something more than remorse in his demeanour. There is evidence of a new humility, and yet at the same time a continuance of tender affection for the Lord whom he fully believed he should never see again.
There is one incident in which Jesus was concerned after the Resurrection of which there is no record—there could be none. It is the first interview between Jesus and Peter after the Resurrection. The disciples in the upper room were informed that the Lord had appeared unto Simon. What took place at that first meeting we can never imagine; it must have been a season of such sacredness and solemnity that Peter would not be likely to say much about it to his brethren. The loving thoughtfulness of Jesus bade Him seek out His humiliated and sorrow-stricken follower that He might assure him of forgiveness and restoration. Very intense and holy must their intercourse have been. From this moment Peter became a great and noble character; his discipline has not been for nothing, his self-seeking is at an end; ambition has no place in his mind for the future; arrogance and self-confidence thenceforth must have given place to a lowliness born of the remembrance of his cowardice and wretched failure. When in after days he wrote for the guidance of the saints he was writing from the depths of his own experience: "Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility to serve one another, for God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble" (1 Peter v. 5).
The appearance of genuineness rests upon this New Testament story. In its idyllic simplicity and faithfulness to the facts of human nature it stands in marked contrast to the spurious and unauthorised legends about Jesus and His Apostles with which the sub-apostolic age abounded. The Church has not lost much, in all probability, by the oblivion in which these lesser gospels have been buried. To unearth them now would, no doubt, be of service in throwing light upon critical problems in regard to the existing New Testament texts, but they could add nothing to the sweet and natural accounts of the spiritual history of the men who guided the early Church. We know Peter better from the pages of the four Gospels than we do from legendary accounts. Indirectly this faithfulness of the evangelic records is of great assistance in establishing their historicity. Nothing is concealed, or toned down, that we ought to know, nothing that would tend to represent the Apostles as superhuman or exceptional in their lofty character is thrust upon our notice; we are permitted to see Peter as he really was, a man made noble by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What he was, we are. Ambition, self-seeking, self-confidence, have throughout the history of Christendom been the most serious defects of the strongest characters. Sometimes these vices have been displayed upon a grand scale, oftener their scope has been petty and mean. The sins of the Catholic Church, as painted by a Bernard or a Catherine of Siena, are to be found in many a little Bethel in the Protestant England of our day. Simony is not unknown amongst the ministers of Christ, even in the ranks of Non-conformity. Not unfrequently these sinful tendencies are to be found allied with a true and earnest desire to serve the Master. All the same, they are a serious hindrance, not only to Christian character, but to the effect of Christian service; the spirit in which a man does his work has the profoundest influence upon the good result of that work. Where a man is sincere in his wish to do good, and yet at the same time in any degree the victim of his own self-confidence or self-seeking, he is sooner or later brought to the point where he must choose between his wish and his practice. In nearly every case the necessity for this choice is revealed to him by a sharp discipline. Peter's case is repeated again and again in the lives of the servants of God. It is hard to dislodge self from its vantage-ground in the region of human motives. It would be hard to find a church in which selfishness or jealousy had neither place nor influence, and it is uncommonly difficult, even for a good and true man, not to feel elated by admiration or depressed by being surpassed. But surely the cure for this kind of feeling is included in the very nature of Christian service. There is absolutely no relation between moral excellence and worldly recognition of it. We have conceded something to the world when we stop to think of its applause as an object of desire. It is easier to go without such applause and to labour in obscurity than it is to remain unaffected by it once it has been bestowed. Still harder is it for a man to retire from a position and a duty in which he has done nobly and well, and then to see his bishopric taken by another. Sooner or later this experience falls to the lot of most of God's heroes; it were well, therefore, that they should recognise it in advance, count the cost, know their own minds, and render unnecessary the sharp discipline which accompanies self-discovery. When God means to use us, as He meant to use Peter, He never spares us. Jesus could not afford to allow Peter to go his own way, and therefore it was that the prince of the Apostles became an instrument for good, yet so as by fire.