Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/80

 *dent familiarity to which their mutual love and intimacy entitled him, in some measure, he laid his hand expostulatingly upon him, and drew him partly aside, to urge him privately to forget thoughts of despondency, so unworthy of the great enterprise of Israel's restoration, to which they had all so manfully pledged themselves as his supporters. We may presume, that he, in a tone of encouragement, endeavored to show him how impossible it would be for the dignitaries of Jerusalem to withstand the tide of popularity which had already set so strongly in favor of Jesus; that so far from looking upon himself as in danger of a death so infamous, from the Sanhedrim, he might, at the head of the hosts of his zealous Galileans, march as a conqueror to Jerusalem, and thence give laws from the throne of his father David, to all the wide territories of that far-ruling king. Such dreams of earthly glory seemed to have filled the soul of Peter at that time; and we cannot wonder, then, that every ambitious feeling within him recoiled at the gloomy announcement, that the idol of his hopes was to end his days of unrequited toil, by a death so infamous as that of the cross. "Be it far from thee, Lord," "God forbid," "Do not say so," "Do not thus damp our courage and high hopes," "This must not happen to thee."—Jesus, on hearing these words of ill-timed rebuke, which showed how miserably his chief follower had been infatuated and misled, by his foolish and carnal ambition, turned away indignantly from the low and degraded motives, by which Peter sought to bend him from his holy purposes. Not looking upon him, but upon the other disciples, who had kept their feelings of regret and disappointment to themselves, he, in the most energetic terms, expressed his abhorrence of such notions, by his language to the speaker. "Get thee behind me, Satan; thou art a scandal to me; for thou savorest not the things which be of God, but the things which be of men. In these fervent aspirations after eminence, I recognize none of the pure devotion to the good of man, which is the sure test of the love of God; but the selfish desire for transient, paltry distinction, which characterizes the vulgar ambition of common men, enduring no toil or pain, but in the hope of a more than equal earthly reward speedily accruing." After this stern reply, which must have strongly impressed them all with the nature of the mistake of which they had been guilty, he addressed them still further, in continuation of the same design, of correcting their false notion of the earthly advantages to be expected by his