Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/287

 concerning his promise, but desires all to come to repentance, and will come himself at last in the achievment of our labors. Then call me."

What a life was this! Its early recorded events found him a poor fisherman, in a rude, despised province, toiling day by day in a low, laborious business,—living with hardly a hope above the beasts that perish. By the side of that lake, one morning, walked a stranger, who, with mild words but wondrous deeds, called the poor fisherman to leave all, and follow him. Won by the commanding promise of the call, he obeyed, and followed that new Master, with high hopes of earthly glory for a while, which at last were darkened and crushed in the gradual developments of a far deeper plan than his rude mind could at first have appreciated. But still he followed him, through toils and sorrows, through revelations and trials, at last to the sight of his bloody cross; and followed him, still unchanged in heart, basely and almost hopelessly wicked. The fairest trial of his virtue proved him after all, lazy, bloody-minded, but cowardly,—lying, and utterly faithless in the promise of new life from the grave. But a change came over him. He, so lately a cowardly disowner of his Master's name, now, with a courageous martyr-spirit dared the wrath of the awful magnates of his nation, in attesting his faith in Christ. Once a fierce, brawling, ear-cutting Galilean,—henceforth he lived an unresisting subject of abuse, stripes, bonds, imprisonment and threatened death. When was there ever such a triumph of grace in the heart of man? The conversion of Paul himself could not be compared with it, as a moral miracle. The apostle of Tarsus was a refined, well-educated man, brought up in the great college of the Jewish law, theology and literature, and not wholly unacquainted with the Grecian writers. The power of a high spiritual faith over such a mind, however steeled by prejudice, was not so wonderful as its renovating, refining and elevating influence on the rude fisherman of Bethsaida. Paul was a man of considerable natural genius, and he shows it on every page of his writings; but in Peter there are seen few evidences of a mind naturally exalted, and the whole tenor of his words and actions seems to imply a character of sound common sense, and great energy, but of perceptions and powers of expression, great, not so much by inborn genius, as by the impulse of a higher spirit within him, gradually bringing him to the possession of new faculties,—intellectual as well as moral.