mentioned by St. John, had returned to their ordinary occupations, and only at this later period attached themselves finally and fully to him, following him whithersoever he went; *this miracle most likely being, as indeed seems intimated, (ver. 8,) that which stirred the very depths of their hearts, which gave them such new insights into the glory of Christ's person, as prepared them to yield themselves without reserve unto him. Consistently with this view, the whole transaction bears the stamp of being between those who have not met now for the first time. So far from their betraying no previous familiarity, as some have said, Peter calls Jesus "Master," and his saying "Nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net," implies a previous acquaintance of the Lord, from which he had already received impressions of his power and of the weight of his words. Moreover, that there should thus have been the two callings seems quite in the manner of a divine teacher; who would hasten nothing, who was content to leave spiritual processes to advance as do the natural; who could bide his time, and did not expect the full corn in the ear the day after he had sown the seed in the ground. On that former occasion the Lord cast his word in the hearts of Andrew and Peter, and then left it to take root downward and spring upward: and not in vain, for he now returned and found it ready to bear the ripe fruits of faith. Yet it is not that we need therefore presume so gradual a process in all. But as some statues are cast at once, others only little by little hewn and polished, according as the material, metal or stone, suits the one or the other process, so are there, to use an expression of Donne's, "fusile apostles" like St. Paul, whom one and the same word from heaven, as a lightning flash, at once melts and moulds; and others by more gradual degrees shaped and polished into the perfect image of what the Lord, the great master-sculptor, would have them to be.

But to enter something more into the miracle itself,—our Lord, who had found his future apostles engaged in washing their nets,† had been enabled, through Peter's ready compliance with his request, to teach the people, unhindered by the pressure of their multitudes. And

* It is often said that the other was Vocatio ad notitiam et familiaritatem, or, ad fidem; this, ad apostolatum. See the remarks of Scultetus, Crit. Sac., v. 6, p. 1956.

It has been ingeniously and usefully remarked by a mystic writer of the middle ages, that this their washing and repairing (Matt. iv. 21) of their nets, after they had used them, ought ever to be imitated by all "fishers of men," after they have cast in their nets for a draught; meaning by this that they should seek carefully to purify and cleanse themselves from aught which in that very act they may have gathered of sin, impurities of vanity, of self-elation, or of any other kind; and that this they must do, if they would use their nets effectually for a future draught.

having now left speaking, he bade him to put out his boat a little. further into the deeper, and therefore the likelier, waters, and to let down his nets for a draught, designing himself, the meanwhile, to take the fisherman in his net. For he whose purpose it was by the weak things of the world to confound the strong, who meant to draw em perors to himself by fishermen, and not fishermen by emperors, lest his Church should even seem to stand in the wisdom and power of men, rather than in the wisdom and power of God-he saw in these unlearned fishermen of the Galilæan lake the fittest instruments for his work. To this exhortation of his future Lord, Simon Peter replied, that during all the night, in other words, during all the period opportunest for the capture of fish,§ they had been laboring, and their labor had been utterly without success; but, with the beginnings of no weak faith already working in him, adds, "Nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net." For these may not be interpreted as the words of one half despairing of the issue: as though he for himself expected nothing, but to satisfy the Master, and to prove to him the fruitlessness of further efforts, would comply with his desire. On the contrary, they are spoken more in the spirit of the Psalmist, when he exclaimed,

* Here it is more generally díkrvov, probably from dixɛiv, to throw; but at Matt. iv. 18; Mark i. 16, it is specialized as the duoiß2norpov (= dμpißo2n) the casting net, as its derivation from dμpißú22 plainly shows; in Latin, funda or jaculum. It would naturally be circular, and were there any doubt about its shape, the account in Herodotus (1. 2, c. 95) of the manner in which the Egyptian fishermen protected themselves at night from the mosquitoes, namely, by suspending their net (ảμpí37no-pov) in the form of a tent over the place where they slept, would be decisive, (See the Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Antt., s. v. Rete, p. 822.)

With the history of this calling, more especially as it appears in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark, the call of Amos, as he himself records it, will supply an interesting parallel: "I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's son, but I was an herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit, and the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, prophesy unto my people Israel." (Amos vii. 14, 15. Cf. 1 Kin. xix. 19.)

See AUGUSTINE, Serm. 381.

§ See LAMPE (Comm. in Joh., v. 3, p. 727) for passages in proof of this, which indeed is familiar to us all. This passage from Pliny (H. N., 1. 9, c. 23) may be added to his quotations: Vagantur gregatim ferè cujusque generis squamosi. Capiuntur ante solis ortum: tum maximè piscium fallitur visus. Noctibus, quies: et illustribus æquè, quàm die, cernunt Aiunt et si teratur gurges, interesse capturæ: itaque plures secundo tractu capi, quàm primo.

Maldonatus: Non desperatione felicioris jactûs hoc dicit Petrus, aut quod Christo vel non credat, vel obedire nolit: sed potius ut majorem in Christo fidem declaret; quod cùm totâ nocte laborantes nihil prehendisset, tamen ejus confidens verbis, iterum retia laxaret.

"Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." (Ps. cxxvii. 1.) It is as though he would say, "We have done nothing during all the night, and had quite lost hope of doing any thing; yet at thy word and bidding we will readily renew our efforts, which we are sure will be no longer in vain." And his act of faith was abundantly rewarded; They inclosed a great multitude of fishes," so many indeed, that "their net brake."

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It was not merely that Christ, by his omniscience, knew that now there were fishes in that spot; we may not thus extenuate the miracle; but rather we are to contemplate him as the Lord of nature, who by the secret, yet mighty magic of his will, was able to wield and guide even the unconscious creatures to his aims. Yet since the power that drew the fish to that spot is the same that at all times guides their periodic migrations, which, wondrous as it is, we yet cannot call miraculous, there is plainly something that differences this miracle and the other of like kind, (John xxi. 6,) with that no less of the stater in the fish's mouth, (Matt. xvii. 27,) from Christ's other miracles,-in that these three are not comings in of a new and hitherto unwonted power into the region of nature; but they are coincidences, divinely brought about, between words of Christ and facts in that world of nature. An immense haul of fishes, or a piece of money in the mouth of one, are themselves no miracles; but the miracle lies in the falling in of these with a word of Christ's, which has beforehand pledged itself that it shall be so. The natural is lifted up into the miraculous by the manner in which it is timed, by the ends which it is made to serve.t Christ here appears as the ideal man, the second Adam of the 8th Psalm, "Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet. . . . . the fowl of the air, and the fish of the sea, and whatsoever passeth through the paths of the sea." (ver. 6, 8.)

....

When by the assistance of their partners in the other ship, whom they beckoned to their assistance, the fishes were at length hauled in,

*Thus Yarrell (Hist. of British Fishes, v. 1. p. 125): At Brighton in June, 1808, the shoal of mackerel was so great, that one of the boats had the meshes of her net so completely occupied by them that it was impossible to drag them in. The fish and nets therefore in the end sunk together.

† See page 19.

On the nets breaking now, and not breaking, as it is expressly said they did not on occasion of the second miraculous draught of fishes, (John xxi. 11,) and the mystical meaning which has been found in this, I would refer the reader to what there will be said.

they were so many as to threaten to sink* the ship. And now Peter, while taking others, is himself taken; while drawing the multitudes of fishes into his net, he has himself fallen into the net of Christ; one of the first to discover that to be taken in that net is to be taken for life.† "Admire," exclaims Chrysostom, "the dispensation of the Lord, how he draws each by the art which is most familiar and natural to him—as the Magians by a star, so the fisherman by fish"-a thought which Donne in a sermon on this text enlarges thus: "The Holy Ghost speaks in such forms and such phrases as may most work upon them to whom he speaks. Of David, that was a shepherd before, God says, he took him to feed his people. To those Magi of the East, who were given to the study of the stars, God gave a star to be their guide to Christ at Bethlehem. To those who followed him to Capernaum for meat, Christ took occasion by that to preach to them of the spiritual food of their souls. To the Samaritan woman whom he found at the well, he preached of the water of life. To these men in our text, accustomed to a joy and gladness when they took great store of fish, he presents his comforts agreeably to their taste, they should be fishers still. Christ makes heaven all things to all men, that he might gain all." And Peter, astonished at the strange success of his cast, the same that he ever afterwards appears, as impetuous, yielding as freely to the impulse of the moment, with the beginnings of the same quick spiritual eye which made him the first to see the highest glory of the Saviour, even his eternal Sonship, and to confess it, could no longer, in the deep feeling of his own unholiness, endure the nearness of an altogether Holy One, but "fell down at Jesus' knees, crying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." At moments like these all that is merely conventional is swept away, and the deep heart of man speaks out, and the deepest things that are in that heart come forth to the light. And this is the deepest thing that is in man's heart under the law; gulf of separation that is between him and God.

this sense of the "Let not God speak

people to Moses, as

with us lest we die;" this was the voice of the "they removed and stood afar off." (Exod. xx. 18, 19.) "We shall surely die, because we have seen God." (Judg. xiii. 22; cf. vi. 22, 23; Dan. x. 17; Isai. vi. 5.) Below this is the utterly profane state, in which there is no contrast, no contradiction felt between the holy and

* Bvbíleobai. The word occurs once besides, but then in a tropical sense. (1 Tim. vi. 9.)

The author of a striking sermon, numbered 205, in the Benedictine Appendix to St. Augustine: Dum insidiatur Petrus gregibus æquoris, ipse in retia incidit Salvatoris. Fit de prædone præda, de piscatore piscatio, de piratâ captivitas.

+ Solere Christum capere suâ quemque arte, magos stellâ, piscatores piscibus.

the unholy, between God and man. Above it is the state, which is that of grace, in which all the contradiction is felt, the deep gulf perceived which divides between sinful man and a holy God; yet is it felt at the same time that this gulf is bridged over, that it is possible for the two to meet, that in One who is sharer with both they have already been brought together. Into this higher state Christ now invites Peter, not taking him at his word and leaving him as he desired, but bidding him to lay aside his fears, and to accept a function and a work from him. For though his was indeed the presence of God, yet of him with his glory veiled and hidden, so that even sinful men might endure to be near it, and dwelling in that nearness, might step by step be prepared for the ultimate seeing of God as he is; which, though it must be death to the mere sinner, yet would be the highest blessedness to him who had been trained and fitted for it by beholding for a while his mitigated splendor in the person of the Incarnate Word, even such a beholding as would more and more have wrought holiness and purity in him.

And hereupon follow the reassuring words, "Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men," from the lips of Jesus; words which were properly the inauguration of Peter and his fellows to the great work whereunto they were about to be sent. For we see continually for them that are called to some signal work in the kingdom of God, an inauguration, not formal, not always the same in its outward accidents; but always the same in this, that in it the earthly grows pale before the heavenly; the man recognizes his nothingness, his vileness, and recognizes it in a way which he never had done before, that so the work in him may be altogether God's and not man's, may not henceforward be spoiled by self intermingling with it. The true parallels to this passage, contemplated as such an inauguration as this, are Exod. iv. 10—17; Isai. vi.; Jer. i. 4-10; Judg. vi. 11-23; Acts ix. 3-9; and more remotely Dan. x., which, with many points of resemblance, is yet unlike in this, that it is not the first sending forth of one to his work in the kingdom of God.

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Henceforth thou shalt catch men," or, in the words of the other Evangelists, "I will make you fishers of men." Christ clothes the promise in forms of that art which was familiar to Peter; the fisherman is to catch men, as David, the shepherd, taken from among the sheepfolds, was to feed them. (Ps. lxxviii. 71, 72.) There is in these words a double magnifying of Peter's future function as compared with his past; that it is men and not poor fishes henceforth which he shall take, and that he shall take them for life, and not as he had taken his meaner prey, only for death. For no less than this is involved in the original word by which the catching is expressed, a word which thus supplies with a singular hap