Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/113

 by keeping it in form with his disciples, he directed his two most confidential apostles, Peter and John, to get ready the entertainment for them in the city, by an arrangement made with a man already expecting to receive them. This commission they faithfully executed, and Jesus accordingly ate with his disciples the feast of the first day of the passover, in Jerusalem, with those who sought his life so near him. After the supper was over, he determined to use the brief remnant of time for the purpose of uprooting that low feeling of jealous ambition which had already made so much trouble among them, in their anxious discussions as to who should be accounted the greatest, and should rank as the ruler of the twelve. To impress the right view upon their minds most effectually, he chose the oriental mode of a ceremony which should strike their senses, and thus secure a regard and remembrance for his words which they might fail in attaining if they were delivered in the simple manner of trite and oft spoken oral truisms. He therefore rose after supper, and leaving his place at the head of the table, he laid aside his upper garments, which, though appropriate and becoming him as a teacher in his hours of public instruction, or social communion, were yet inconvenient in any active exertion which needed the free use of the limbs. Being thus disrobed, he took the position and character of a menial upon him, and girding himself with a towel, he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet in it, wiping them with his towel. He accordingly comes to Simon Peter, in the discharge of his servile office; but Peter, whose ideas of the majesty and ripening honors of his Master were shocked at this extraordinary action, positively refused to be even the passive instrument of such an indignity to one so great and good,—first inquiring "Lord, dost thou wash my feet?" Jesus in answer said to him, "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter." That is, "this apparently degrading act has a hidden, useful meaning, at this moment beyond your comprehension, but which you will learn in due time." Peter, however, notwithstanding this plain and decided expression of Christ's wise determination to go through this painful ceremony, for the instruction of those who so unwillingly submitted to see him thus degraded,—still led on by the fiery ardor of his own headlong genius,—manfully persisted in his refusal, and expressed himself in the most positive terms possible, saying to Jesus, "Thou shalt never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "If I wash thee not, thou