betake himself to his old resources of nature. He has foregone these, and must carry through what he has begun, or fail at his peril. 6 6 But Peter has to do with One who will not let him greatly fall. His experience shall be that of the Psalmist: When I said, My foot slippeth, thy mercy, O Lord, held me up.'' His Lord, save me,' is answered at once. Immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him.' And then how gracious the rebuke! "O thou of little faith!' not "O thou of none!' and 'Wherefore didst thou doubt ?' notWherefore didst thou come?' not checking, as He then would have done, the future impulses of his servant's boldness, but encouraging them rather; showing him how he could do all things through Christ strengthening him, and that his fault lay, not in having undertaken too much, but in having too little relied upon the strength that would have upheld him in his undertaking. And not until by that sustaining hand He has restored confidence to the fearful one, and made him feel that he can indeed tread under foot those waves of the unquiet sea, does He speak even this word of a gentle rebuke. The courage of the disciple has already returned, so that the Master speaks of his doubt as of something which is already past: "Wherefore didst thou doubt? Before the doubt arose in thy heart, thou didst walk on these waves, and now that thy faith has returned, thou dost walk on them again; thou seest that it is not impossible, that it lies but in thy faithful will; that all things are possible to him that believeth.' 2 We must look at this episode of the miracle as itself also symbolic. Peter is here the example of all the faithful of all times, in the seasons of their unfaithfulness and fear. So long as they are strong in faith, they are able to tread under 1 Augustine very beautifully brings together those words of the Psalmist and this incident, making them mutually to illustrate one another (Enarr. in Ps. xciii. 18). 2 Bengel: Non reprehenditur quod exierit e navi, sed quod non manserit in firmitate fidei. foot all the most turbulent agitations of an unquiet world; but when they are afraid, when, instead of looking unto Jesus,' they look at the stormy winds and waters, then these prevail against them, and they begin to sink, and were it not for Christ's sustaining hand, which is stretched out in answer to their cry, they would be wholly overwhelmed and swallowed up.1 6 And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased.' Those on the watch for disagreements between one Evangelist and another are pleased here to discover such, between St. Matthew and St. Mark on one side, and St. John on the other. If, they say, we are to believe the former, the Lord did now with his disciple go up into the ship; if, on the contrary, we accept the authority of St. John, we must then suppose that the disciples were willing to receive Him; but did not so in fact, the ship being rapidly, and, as would seem, with miraculous swiftness, brought to the land. The whole question turns on the words which we translate, and I have no doubt rightly as regards the circumstance which actually took place, they willingly received Him into the ship.' It is quite true they would be more literally rendered, they were willing to receive Him into the ship;' but with the implicit understanding that what they were willing to do, they actually did. Those who a little before were terrified and 1 Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. xxxix. 6): Calca mare, ne mergaris in mari. And again (Serm. lxxxvi. 6): Attendite seculum quasi mare, ventus validus et magna tempestas. Unicuique sua cupiditas, tempestas est. Amas Deum, ambulas super mare: sub pedibus tuis est seculi tumor. Amas seculum, absorbebit te. Amatores suos vorare novit, non portare. Sed cum fluctuat cupiditate cor tuum, ut vincas tuam cupiditatem, invoca Christi divinitatem. . . . Et si motus est pes tuus, si titubas, si aliqua non superas, si mergi incipis, dic, Domine, pereo, libera me. Dic, Domine, pereo, ne pereas. Solus enim a morte carnis liberat te, quí mortuus est in carne pro te. And again: Titubatio ista, fratres, quasi mors fidei fuit. Sed ubi exclamavit, fides iterum resurrexit. Non ambularet, nisi crederet, sed nec mergeretur, nisi dubitaret. In Petro itaque communis omnium nostrûm consideranda conditio, ut si nos in aliquo tentationum ventus conatur subvertere, vel unda submergere, clamemus ad Christum. Cf. De Cant. Novo, 2. U 2 dreaded his approach, as though it had been a spirit, were now glad to receive Him in their midst, and did so receive Him; and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.'s St. Mark, as is so often his wont, describes to us how this and all which they had witnessed called forth the infinite astonishment of his disciples: they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered;' while from 1 Grotius: Non quod non receperunt, sed quod cupide admodum, ut Syrus indicat. 2 Our Translators would have done better if, following the earlier English Versions, they had so rendered tλov λaßriv aurór. Probably to Beza's influence we owe the change. For voluerunt recipere eum of the Vulgate he substitutes volente animo receperunt eum, and defends the translation thus: Itaque verbum 70λov opponitur ei quod ante dixerat, eos videlicet fuisse perterritos: ex quo intelligitur ipsos initio fuisse eum aversatos, nunc vero agnitâ ejus voce et mutatis animis eum quem fugiebant, cupide accepisse in navem. This is perfectly true; yet had the passage been left, they were willing to receive Him,' none reading this Gospel of St. John in the light of the other two, could doubt that this willingness, which, now when they recognized their Master, they felt, issued in the actual receiving of Him: and none could accuse our Translators of going out of their way to produce a harmony, which in the original did not so evidently exist. That iλ means often to wish to do a thing and to do it, hardly needs proof. Thus Matt. xviii. 23, a king desired to take account (@noe ovvāpai Xóyor) with his servants, and, as we know from the sequel, did so; again, John i. 43, Jesus desired to go forth into Galilee (40λnoεv ¡EελOsi»), and, as we learn ii. 2, actually went; the Scribes desire to walk in long robes (Mark xii. 38) and do so. The word may quite as well imply an accomplished, as a baulked, desire; cf. Luke xx. 46; 1 Cor. x. 27; Col. ii. 8. It is of this passage that a recent assailant of the credibility of our Gospels has written, By the irreconcilable contradiction between John and the synoptic Evangelists in the matter of receiving Christ into the ship, one or other account must be given up.' To be sure he does his best to make a contradiction, if he cannot find one; affirming that kai in the second clause of ver. 21 must be taken adversativè, -they were willing to receive Him into the ship, but straightway the ship was at the land;' and De Wette, Aber alsbald war das Schiff am Lande. Ewald in like manner sees in St. John's a rectification, and not a confirmation, of the account given by the earlier Evangelists; but Baumlein, the latest commentator on St. John, and one not troubled with any particular anxiety to make the Evangelists agree together, rightly: Dass εὐθέως ἐγένετο ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς als Folge seines Einsteigens, ist wohl nicht zu bezweifeln. 3 Καὶ ὡδήγησεν αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ λιμένα θελήματος αὐτῶν are the beautiful words with which that which may be called an Old Testament prophecy of this scene concludes (Ps. cvii. 23-30). St. Matthew we learn that the impression was not confined to them alone; but they that were in the ship,' others who were sailing with them,' caught a momentary glimpse of the greatness of Him in whose presence they stood; and 'came and worshipped Him, saying, Of a truth Thou art the Son of God' (cf. John i. 49). They felt more or less clearly that here was one who must stand in wonderful relation with HIM of whom it is written, Thy way is in the sea, and thy path in the great waters, and thy footsteps are not known' (Ps. lxxvii. 19); Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses, through the heap of great waters' (Hab. iii. 15); Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of the sea' (Job ix. 82). It is a docetic3 view of the person of Christ, which conceives of his body as permanently exempt from the law of gravitation, and in this way explains the miracle; a hard and mechanical view, which places the seat of the miracle in the waters rendered solid under his feet. Rather was it the will of Christ, which bore Him triumphantly above those waters; even as it was the will of Peter, that will, indeed, made in the highest degree active and potential by faith on the Son of 1 Jerome: Nautæ atque vectores. 2 Ὁ περιπατῶν, ὡς ἐπ ̓ ἐδάφους, ἐπὶ θαλάσσης. Eusebius (Dem. Evang. ix. 12) finds a special fulfilment of these words in this miracle, as also in these waves the symbol of a mightier and wilder sea, even that of sin and death, which Christ trod under his feet when He, in a far higher sense than that in which the words were first spoken, metus omnes et inexorabile fatum Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque Acherontis avari; and he quotes Ps. lxxiv. 13, 14: Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength, Thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters; Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest them to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness;' and Job xxxviii. 16, 17, where the Almighty says to man: Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth? Have the gates of death been opened unto thee, and hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?' that is, 'Hast thou done this, as I have done?' The Cathari, a Gnostic sect of the Middle Ages, actually appealed to this miracle in confirmation of their errors concerning the body of Christ, as a heavenly, and not a truly human, body (Neander, Kirch. Gesch, vol. v. p. 1126). God, which should in like manner have enabled him to walk on the great deep, and, though with partial and transient failure, did so enable him. It has been already observed that the miracle, according to its true idea, is not the violation, nor yet the suspension of law, but the incoming of a higher, law, as of a spiritual in the midst of natural laws, and the momentary assertion, for that higher law, of the predominance which it was intended to have, and but for man's fall it would always have had, over the lower; and with this a prophetic anticipation of the abiding prevalence which it shall one day recover. Exactly thus was there here a sign of the lordship of man's will, when that will is in absolute harmony with God's will, over external nature. In regard of this very law of gravitation, a feeble, and for the most part unconsciously possessed, remnant of his power survives to man in the well-attested fact that his body is lighter when he is awake than sleeping; a fact which every nurse who has carried a child can attest. From this we conclude that the human consciousness, as an inner centre, works as an opposing force to the attraction of the earth and the centripetal force of gravity, however unable now to overbear it.2 1 It was noticed long ago by Pliny, H. N. vii. 18. 2 Prudentius (Apotheosis, 655) has some sounding lines upon this miracle: Ipse super fluidas plantis nitentibus undas |