Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/261

 avoiding all occasion for any collision with their prejudices. Before their arrival, he had mingled freely with the Grecian and Syrian members of the Christian community, eating with them, and conforming to their customs as far as was convenient for unrestrained social intercourse. But he now withdrew himself from their society, and kept himself much more retired than when free from critical observation. The sharp-eyed Paul, on noticing this sudden change in Peter's habits, immediately attacked him with his characteristic boldness, charging him with unworthy dissimulation, in thus accommodating his behavior to the whims of these sticklers for Judaical strictness of manners. The common supposition has been, that Peter was here wholly in the wrong, and Paul wholly in the right: a conclusion by no means justified by what is known of the facts, and of the characters of the persons concerned. Peter was a much older man than Paul, and much more disposed by his cooler blood, to prudent and careful measures. His long personal intercourse with Jesus himself, also gave him a great advantage over Paul, in judging of what would be the conduct in such a case most conformable to the spirit of his divine Master; nor was his behavior marked by anything discordant with real honesty. The precept of Christ was, "Be wise as serpents;" and a mere desire to avoid offending an over-scrupulous brother in a trifling matter, implied no more wariness than that divine maxim inculcated, and was, moreover, in the spirit of what Paul himself enjoined in very similar cases, in advising to avoid "offending a brother by eating meat which had been offered in sacrifice to idols." There is no scriptural authority to favor the opinion that Peter ever acknowledged he was wrong; for all that Paul says is—"I rebuked him,"—but he does not say what effect it had on one who was an older and wiser man than his reprover, and quite as likely to be guided by the spirit of truth. It is probable, however, that Peter had something to say for himself; since it is quite discordant with all common ideas, to suppose that a great apostle would, in the face of those who looked up to him as a source of eternal truth, act a part which implied an unjustifiable practical falsehood. After all, the difference seems to have been on a point of very trifling importance, connected merely with the ceremonials of familiar intercourse, between individuals of nations widely different in manners, habits, prejudices, and the whole tenor of their feelings, as far as country, language and education, would affect them; and a fair consideration