Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 1.pdf/201

 art John the Baptist: some. Elias, and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets." This opinion of men, generally, was not founded in truth; as it supposed Christ to be no more than other men or other teachers, merely finite and human. The Lord then put the same question direct to the disciples, "But whom say ye that I am?" It was then that Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." It was for this acknowledgment—Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God—that Peter received a blessing: "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona! for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. xvi. 17.) When Peter said, "Thou art the Christ," he fully acknowledged Jesus to be the Messiah: if the Messiah, he was the Redeemer of Israel; and if the Redeemer, he was Jehovah manifest in the flesh, and therefore the true God and Eternal Life, in whom all Divine fulness dwells. This was an acknowledgment that in Jesus the ancient prophecy was fulfilled—"As for our Redeemer, the (Jehovah) of Hosts is his name, the  of Israel." (Isa. xlvii. 4.) Peter, as the first of the Apostles, was the representative of faith, grounded in an interior living perception of truth; and his acknowledgment the rock or firm foundation upon which Christ builds his church. The acknowledgment of the supreme divinity of the Lord