So Simon Peter stood before his risen Lord; and three times that awful inquisition tore its way, like a relentless search light, through the shadows and failures of his life: Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me? What could he say? Could he appeal to his record, and offer it in evidence as a demonstration of his love? Ah! Should he try to speak of this, the memory of his own failures would choke him, the stains of his record would silence him. For he had as his portion a full share of the bitter memories of an undisciplined character and immature professions of fidelity, neutralized over and over again by unbalanced words; by jealous, presumptuous, unspiritual deeds; and upon him is even now the fresh blight of that immeasurable error, when unmanned by excitement his very life as he stood in the high priest's palace had seemed to break up under him, as the ice breaks up in the springtime. Then, heedless of consequences, and lost to honor, he had repudiated his Master in the open presence of men.
Yes, what could he say, as the searchlight of the Savior's inquisition ploughs its way through the shadows of his life: Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me? Could he appeal to his companions to speak for him, and testify on his behalf? Had they not known all the weak-
ness of the undisciplined past, the lapse from faith when called by his Lord to walk on the water of the Sea of Galilee; the jealous contention over who should be the greatest; the presumptuous, unseemly rebuke spoken to Jesus just before the Last Supper; the drowsy failure in Gethsemane, when the one request of the agonizing Jesus went unheeded, and sleep destroyed the vigil of sympathy for which Christ longed? Had they not known the story of the last desertion, its desperate, threefold, insistence, its cowardice, its profanity? How then could he ask them to testify, when so much in the open story of his life spoke against his love for Jesus?
"Yet, in the face of these memories of an undisciplined character which forbade the appeal to his record and the appeal to his friends, this man has still a refuge, for he is a lover of Christ. The Savior's question does not convict this man of insincerity; however, it may convict him of inconsistency and pierce him with penitence. Do you love me? The words, in themselves so gentle, are keen as a surgeon's knife, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, laying bare the thoughts and intents of the heart; but, like the surgeon's knife upon the living subject, the pain they cause shows there is life and not death. Do you love me? It is an appeal, not to his record or to his witnesses, but to himself; and the appeal is answered in the depths of the man's self-consciousness. He cannot deny his record; there it stands, fraught with inconsistencies, failures, weaknesses. He cannot overcome the prejudice in the minds of others which these inconsistencies, failures, weaknesses may have excited against him; but in those depths of self-consciousness, where he knows himself as no fellow-man can know him, there is that which meets the question of Jesus, Do you love me? with an unfaltering Yes.
But how shall he substantiate and prove that love? He cannot prove it from his blemished record; he cannot prove it from the vouchers of his friends, for they know too well how repeatedly he has been weighed in the balance of trial and been found wanting. He cannot prove it by plaintive attempts to apologize for or to minimize past failures. An intuition tells him that this would only weaken his case, not strengthen it. Nevertheless, he cannot deny himself; he cannot discredit his own self-consciousness. In his self-consciousness, he knows that he loves Christ. And to prove that love he has still one refuge, one appeal left - the appeal to Him before whom he now stands face to face, and from whom has come the question, Do you love me more than these? So his love leaps to its heroic ultimatum, and discarding arguments, apologies, and refuges of words, appeals to Him to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: You know all things, you know that I love you." (To be continued) J.J. Blackburn