piness an answer to the malignant sneer of Julian,* who observed that the Galilæan did indeed most aptly term his apostles "fishers;" for as the fisherman draws out the fish from waters where they were free and happy, to an element in which they cannot breathe, but must presently perish, so did these. But the expression used singularly excludes such a turn;—“ Thou shalt take men, and take them for life, not for death; those that were wandering at random through the salt-sea waves of the

* His words, quoted by Theophanes, (Hom. 5,) are the following: Zwǹ pèv roic ἐνύδροις τὸ ὕδωρ, θάνατος δὲ ὁ ἀὴρ· εἰ δὴ τοῦτό ἐστιν ἀλήθες, οἱ μαθηταὶ ἄρα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ἀγρεύοντες διὰ τοῦ κηρύγματος, τῇ ἀπωλείᾳ καὶ τῷ θανάτῳ, ὡς τοὺς ixbías, napadidóaoi. See SUICER's Thes., s. v. dievs, for the reply of Theophanes.— At Ezek. xxix. 4, 5, the dragging forth of the dragon of Egypt from the waters is the expression of a great calamity, the prophecy of a certain doom, but here the drawing forth is exactly the contrary.-It was probably, as Origen supposes, (Con. Cels., 1. 1, c. 62,) from a confused remembrance of this passage that Celsus contemptuously styled the apostles "publicans and sailors" (vaúras). But this inexactness is only of a piece with his ignorance even of the number of the apostles; which was singular enough in one who undertook a formal refutation of Christianity.

There is indeed an aspect in which the death of the fish, which follows on its being drawn out of the waters, has its analogy in the higher spiritual world. The man, drawn forth by these Gospel nets from the worldly sinful element in which before he lived and moved, does die to sin, die to the world; but only that out of this death he may rise to a higher life in Christ. This is brought out with much beauty by Origen (Hom. 16 in Jerem.): Ἐκεῖνοι οἱ ἰχθύες οἱ ἄλογοι ἀνελθόντες ἐν ταῖς σαγήναις ἀποθέ νήσκουσι θάνατον, οὐχὶ διαδεχομένης ζωῆς τὸν θάνατον· ὁ δὲ συλληφθεὶς ὑπὸ τῶν ἁλιέων Ἰησοῦ, καὶ ἀνελθὼν ἀπὸ τῆς θαλάσσης, καὶ αὐτὸς μὲν ἀποθνήσκει, ἀποθνήσκει δὲ τῷ κόσμῳ, ἀποθνήσκει τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, καὶ μετὰ τὸ ἀποθανειν τῷ κόσμῳ καὶ τῇ ἁμαρτίᾳ, ζωο ποιεῖται ὑπὸ τοῦ λόγοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ ἀναλαμβάνει ἄλλην ζωήν.

‡ Zwypŵv, from Çwós, and ¿ypévw, to take alive: and so used repeatedly in the Septuagint, (Num. xxxi. 15; Deut. xx. 16; Josh. ii. 13;) and in like manner Swypɛíɑ, the prey which is saved alive. (Num. xxi. 35; Deut. ii. 24.) Cf. HOMER, Iliad, 5, ver. 46, where one pleading for his life, exclaims,

Ζώγρει, Ατρεός υἱὲ, σὺ δ' ἄξια δέξαι άποινα.

The same nice accuracy in the use of the word is observable 2 Tim. ii. 26, which when rightly understood is a parallel to this in more than the single word. The avrov and the exɛívov there can scarcely refer to the same person, and probably neither of them to the Devil in the clause before, but αὐτοῦ to the δοῦλος Κυρίου, ver. 24, and ἐκείνου to cos, ver. 25; and the sense will then be, that the servant of the Lord is to teach with this patience, to the end that they who are caught in the snare of the Devil, may be by him (Un'auroù) taken alive (¿wypŋμévoi) out of his power, and preserved to the will of God (eis Tò EKεívov 0λnua), " may prove fit instruments for his service," in Hammond's words, who in part agrees with this interpretation, as does Theophylact. See SUICER'S Thes., s. v. Swypew.-It appears as if the old Italic version took wypéw in its other derivation, (from Gwn and dyɛipo,) for we find the passage quoted by St. Ambrose and other early fathers, Eris vivificans homines; but in the Vulgate, Homines eris capiens.

world, among its deep unquiet waters, full of whirlpools and fears, the smaller of them falling a prey to the greater,* and all with the weary sense as of a vast prison, thou shalt gather into one, embracing them all within the same folds and recesses of the Gospel net ;f which if they break not through, nor leap over, they shall at length be drawn up to shore, out of the dark gloomy waters into the bright clear light of day, and shall there and then be collected into vessels for eternal life." (Matt. xiii. 48.)

Another point of resemblance is the ignorance on the part of the fisher of what fish he will gather in, whether many or few, or whether any at all will reward his labors. He casts in his net, knowing that the success must be from above; and it is not otherwise with the preaching of the Word. There are yet other peculiar fitnesses in the image drawn from the occupation of the fisher, rather, for instance, than in one borrowed from the nearly allied pursuits of the hunter. The fisher does more often take his prey alive; he draws it to him, does not drive it from him; and not merely to himself, but draws all which he

* Augustine (Enarr. in Ps. lxiv. 6): Mare enim in figurâ dicitur seculum hoc, falsitate amarum, procellis turbulentum: ubi homines cupiditatibus perversis et pravis facti sunt velut pisces invicem se devorantes. Ambrose: Et bene apostolica instrumenta piscandi retia sunt; quæ non captos perimunt, sed reservant, et de profundo ad lumen extrahunt, et fluctuantes de infernis ad superna perducunt.

Augustine (Serm. 59, Serm. Inedd.): Nam sicut rete quos continet vagari non patitur, ita et fides errare, quos colligit, non permittit: et sicut ibi captos sinu quodam perducit ad navim, ita et hic congregatos gremio quodam deducit ad requiem. Yet this title of "fishers" itself also fails in part, and does not set out the whole character of the Christian ministry; indeed only two moments of it with any strength, the first and the last,-the bringing into the Church, as the inclosing within the net, and the bringing safely to the final kingdom, as the landing of the net with its contents upon the shore. (Matt. xiii. 48.) All which is between it leaves unexpressed, and yields therefore in fitness and completeness, as in frequency of use, to the image borrowed from the work of the shepherd; in testimony of which it has given us no such names as "pastor" and "flock" to enrich our Christian language. That of "shepherd" expresses exactly all which the term "fisher" leaves untouched, the habitual daily care for the members of Christ, his peculium in every sense, after they are brought into the fellowship of his Church. This title of "fisher" sets forth the work more of the ingathering of souls, the missionary activity; that of shepherd more the tending and nourishing of souls that have thus been ingathered. This, therefore, fitly comes the first it was said to Peter, "Thou shalt catch men," before it was said to him, "Feed my sheep ;" and each time a different commission, or at least a different side of the commission, is expressed; he shall be both evangelist and pastor.

Spanheim (Dub. Evang., v. 3, p. 350): Non venatores Dominus vocatos voluit, sed piscatores, non homines abigentes à se prædam, sed colligentes: and many other points of comparison between the fisher and the minister of Christ, he brings out. Yet the image still remains, even in the New Testament, open to the other use; thus in the ¿çελKÓμevoç Kai deλeacóuevos of Jam. i. 14, are doubtless allusions to the fish drawn from

has taken to one another, even as the Church brings together the divided hearts, the fathers to the children, gathers into one fellowship the scattered tribes of men. Again, the work of the fisher is rather a work of art and skill than of force and violence ;* so that Tertulliant finds in this miracle a commencing fulfilment of Jer. xvi. 16, "Behold, I will send for many fishers, saith the Lord, and they shall fish them;" though indeed it may very well be a question whether in those words there lies not rather a threat than a promise. It is, however, quite in the spirit of the New Covenant to take a threatening of the Old, and fulfil it, yet so to transform it in the fulfilling that it shall be no longer what it was, a curse, but a blessing. Thus, to fall into the hands of the Lord, would have been in the old time a woe, but it may now be the chiefest blessing; and in this manner his application of the words may at any

its safe hiding places, and enticed by the tempting bait (déheap) to its destruction. Cf. Hab. i. 14—17.

* So Ovid (Halieut.): Noster in arte labor positus. Cf. 2 Cor. xii. 16, vπáрxwv avouрyos, dóλ vμûç thaßov. And Augustine (De Util. Jejun., c. 9,) brings out the difference between the fisher and the hunter: Quare Apostoli neminem coëgerunt, neminem impulerunt? Quia piscator est, retia mittit in mare, quod incurrerit, trahit. Venator autem sylvas cingit, sentes excutit; terroribus undique multiplicatis cogit in retia. Ne hac eat, ne illic eat: inde occurre, inde cæde, inde terre; non exeat, non effugiat. Thus hunting is most often an image used in malam partem: the oppressions of the ungodly are often.described under images borrowed from thence. (Ps. x. 9; xxxv. 7.) Nimrod is "a mighty hunter before the Lord,” (Gen. x. 9,) where to think of any other hunting but a tyrannous driving of men before him is idle. Augustine has given the right meaning of the words (De Civ. Dei, l. 16, c. 4): Quid significatur hoc nomine quod est venator, nisi animalium terrigenarum deceptor, oppressor, extinctor? Luther, in one of his Letters, speaks of a hunting party at which he was present: "Much it pitied me to think of the mystery and emblems which lieth beneath it. For what does this symbol signify, but that the Devil, through his godless huntsmen and dogs, the bishops and theologians to wit, doth privily chase and snatch the innocent poor little beasts! Ah, the simple and credulous souls came thereby far too plain before my eyes." Yet it is characteristic that the hunting, in which is the greatest coming out of power, should of men be regarded as the noblest occupation: and thus we find it even in Plato who (De Legg., p. 823) approves of it, while fishing he would willingly forbid as an άργὸς θήρα and ἔρως οὐ σφόδρα ἐλευθέριος. (BECKER's Charicles, v. 1, p. 437.) † Ado. Marc., L. 4, c. 9: De tot generibus operum quid utique ad piscaturam respexit, ut ab illâ in Apostolos sumeret Simonem et filios Zebedæi? Non enim simplex factum videri potest, de quo argumentum processurum erat, dicens Petro trepidanti de copiosâ indagine piscium: Ne time, abhinc enim homines eris capiens. Hoc enim dicto, intellectum illis suggerebat adimpletæ prophetiæ; se eum esse qui per Hierimiam pronuntiarat, Ecce ego mittam piscatores multos, et piscabuntur illos. Denique relictis naviculis sequuti sunt eum; ipsum intelligentes, qui cœperat facere quod edixerat. Cf. Cyril of Alexandria, in CRAMER's Catena, who makes the same application of that verse from Jeremiah.

rate be justified. There is now a captivity which is blessed, blessed because it is deliverance from a freedom which is full of woe,—a “being made free from sin and becoming servants to God," that so we may have our "fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." (Rom. vi. 20.) But the present passage might be brought with a more unquestionable propriety in relation with Ezek. xlvii. 9, 10, and the prophecy there of the fishers that should stand on Engedi, and the great multitude of fish that should be in the healed waters.

And as the ministers of Christ are fishers, so the faithful are aptly likened to fish. The comparison, which was so great a favorite in the early Church, probably did not derive its first impulse from these words of our Lord; but rather from the fact that it was the waters of baptism through which men were brought into life,* and that only by abiding in that element into which they were introduced they continued to draw a true life so that the two images cannot stand at the same time, excluding as they mutually do one another; for in one the blessedness is to remain in the waters, as in the vivifying element, in the other to be drawn forth from them into the purer and clearer air. In one Christ is the Fish, in the other the chief Fisherman,-addressed therefore in that grand Orphic hymn attributed to the Alexandrian Clement, in words which may thus be translated,

Fisher of mortal men,

All that the savéd are,
Ever the holy fish,

From the fierce oceán

Of the world's sea of sin

By thy sweet life those enticest away.

And bringing their ships to shore, "they forsook all, and followed him." But what was that "all" which "they forsook" ask some,

* Tertullian, (De Bapt., c. 1): Sed nos pisciculi secundùm ix0v nostrum Jesum Christum in aquâ nascimur; nec aliter quàm in aquâ permanendo salvi sumus. And Chrysostom on these words, "I will make you fishers of men," exclaims, "Truly, a new method of fishing! for the fishers draw out the fishes from the waters, and kill those that they have taken. But we fling into the waters, and those that are taken are made alive."

† Augustine (De Civ. Dei, l. 18, c. 23,) giving the well-known Greek anagram of 'IXOYE, adds: In quo nomine mysticè intelligitur Christus, eò quod in hujus mortalitatis abysso, velut in aquarum profunditate vivus, hoc est, sine peccato esse potuerit. In the chasing away of the evil spirit by the fish's gall, (Tob. viii. 2, 3,) a type was often found in the early Church, of the manner in which, when Christ is near, the works of the Devil are destroyed. Thus Prosper of Aquitaine: Christus....piscis in suâ passione decoctus, cujus ex interioribus remediis quotidie illuminamur et pascimur.

that they should afterwards seem to make so much of it, saying, "Behold we have forsaken all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?" (Matt. xix. 27.) It was their all, and therefore, though it might have been but a few poor boats and nets, it was much. And the forsaking consists not in the more or less that is forsaken, but in the spirit in which it is left. A man may be holden by love to a miserable hovel with as fast bands as to a sumptuous palace; for it is the worldly affection which holds him, and not the world: just as we gather from the warnings scattered through the ascetic books of the middle ages how they who had renounced, it may be, great possessions in the world, would now, if they did not earnestly watch against it, come to cling to their hood, their breviary, the scanty furniture of their bare cell, with the same feelings of property as they once exercised in ampler matters, so witnessing that they had no more succeeded in curing themselves of worldly affections, than a man would succeed in curing himself of covetousness by putting out the eye which in times past had been often the inlet of desire. These apostles might have left little, when they left their possessions, but they left much, when they left their desires.*

A word or two here in conclusion may find place generally upon the symbolic acts of our Lord, whereof, according to his own distinct assurance, we here have one. The desire of the human mind to set forth the truth which it deeply feels in acts rather than by words, or it may be by blended act and word, has a very deep root in our nature, which always strives after the concrete; and it manifests itself not merely in the institution of fixed symbolic acts, as the anointing of kings, or the casting earth into a grave; but more strikingly yet, in acts that are the free and momentary products of some creative mind, which has more to utter than it can find words to be the bearers of, or would utter it in a more expressive manner than these permit. This manner of teaching, however frequent in Scripture, (1 Kin. ii. 30, 31; xxii. 11; Acts xiii. 51,) yet belongs not to Scripture only, nor is it even peculiar to the East, although there it is most frequent, and most entirely at home; but every

* Augustine (Enarr. 3a in Ps. ciii. 17): Multum dimisit, fratres mei, multum dimisit, qui non solùm dimisit quidquid habebat, sed etiam quidquid habere cupiebat. Quis enim pauper non turgescit in spem sæculi hujus? quis non quotidie cupit augere quod habet? Ista cupiditas præcisa est. Prorsus totum mundum dimisit Petrus, et totum mundum Petrus accipiebat. And Gregory the Great, following in the same line (Hom. 5 in Evang.): Multum ergo Petrus et Andreas dimisit, quando uterque etiam desideria habendi dereliquit. Multum dimisit, qui cum re possessâ etiam concupiscentis renuntiavit. A sequentibus ergo tanta dimissa sunt, quanta à non sequentibus concupisci potuerunt. Cf. Clemens of Alexandria, Quis Dives

Salvus? c. 20, v. 2, p. 946, Potter's ed.