writes to the Christian converts to encourage their hope and strengthen their faith. The tone of the epistle is so exempt from controversy as to suggest its early composition before the origin of those debates, which afterwards embroiled the peace of the church,

STYLE AND CONTENTS.

From its mood of tenderness and consolation, it has been called a good epistle for old age. It has a succession of strongly marked texts, and few books are oftener quoted from for the purpose of sermons. Davidson characterizes the style as having "a limping appearance," but generally it has been called fervid like Peter's own self. Luther calls the epistle of St. Peter one of the most noble of the New Testament. The writer is termed by Keostlin an eclectic.

The epistle is composed of a great number of practical paragraphs, expressing gratitude for the benefits of Christianity, giving earnest admonitions to his readers, encouraging them to perseverance in trial and temptation, and particularizing the duties of various social and domestic classes, parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, elders and members of the churches.

Some ingenious critics have detected numerous resemblances in thought and style between this epistle and the epistles of Paul, and also between this epistle and the epistle of James, and have inferred that one must have been copied, or imitated, or borrowed from the other. But these parallelisms as also between the epistles of Peter and those of John are due to the possession of a common stock of Christian ideas and facts with which all the apostles were familiar and upon which no doubt they had conferred together, and which they would naturally express in similar and sometimes identical terms. The same fact is matter of frequent observation in poets and other writers, that when engaged upon the same subjects they naturally fall into similar trains of expression and imagery.

9

THE FIRST EPISTLE GENERAL OF

PETER.

CHAPTER I.

Gratitude for the Christian Faith and Revelation and the Duty of Living up to its Promises and Requirements.

PETER, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, 2 elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace unto you, and peace,

1. To the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, etc. The term "scattered " refers to "the dispersion" of the Jewish race through Gentile countries from whom converts had been made to Christianity. This was agreeable to the commission mutually agreed upon, Gal. ii. 9, in which the apostles Peter, James and John, were assigned to the circumcision and Paul and Barnabas to the Gentiles. But some parts of this epistle contemplate a Gentile, as well as Jewish, constituency. Chaps. i. 14, ii. 10, iii. 6, iv. 3. The districts mentioned are all contained in Asia Minor, Asia signifying a Province of Asia Minor, of which Ephesus was the capital.

2. Elect according to the foreknowledge of God. The three pre-eminent agencies of the gospel, the Father, the Son and the Spirit, who were set forth

in the baptismal formula, Matt. xxviii. 19, are here referred to, the predisposing love of God, the purifying effect of his Spirit, and the self-sacrificing obedience of his Son, as instruments of salvation. The blood of Jesus Christ. It has been said that churches are founded upon metaphors. The noxious extreme to which the figure of the "blood" of Christ has been pushed in the sacrament of the mass in the Greek and Catholic churches, and in the doctrine of the atonement in most of the Protestant churches, seems to justify the remark. For all the Scripture passages relating to the death of Christ show that it was an instrument to act upon the character and life of man, drawing and reconciling him unto God, not an instrumentality to change the law or disposition of God. The term sprinkling

be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord 3 Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and unde- 4 filed, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, 5 ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly 6 rejoice, though now for a season (if need be) ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of 7 your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise, and

refers to the ancient sacrifices, by which ceremonial purification was effected, so the blood of Jesus Christ is represented as cleansing his followers, thus acting as a moral influence upon them, not upon God. Grace unto you, etc. This was the usual Christian greeting, wishing his friends not temporal, but spiritual blessings of the highest kind.

3-5. This long sentence with so many members jointed together reminds one of the prolonged sentences of the apostle Paul. In fact it is one period or paragraph from the third to the ninth verse inclusive. By the resurrection. Here the resurrection is assigned a leading place as the instrument of the salvation of man; not the going down of Jesus to death, but his coming up from death to life. But a true criticism of the Bible should be literary, not dogmatic, i. e., should seek by the laws of language and thought to find out what the meaning of the Scripture is, not to force its sentences to uphold a creed already established, as is too much the habit with all commentators, probably the present one not excepted. To an inheritance incorruptible, etc. The epistle being largely one of consolation and encouragement, he sets before his brethren that great prize which rose and shone above all earthly failure and loss. Anticipating great changes and trials for his converts, on the

brink of important events which would change the relations of the Jews and the Christians to the Gentiles throughout the Roman world, he would arm them with a faith and hope beforehand, which would enable them to meet these changes with patience and fortitude. Prophetic as was the eye of the apostle, and assured as he was that the Christians were doomed to suffering and persecution, he would equip them with the faith and spirit of Christ and set over against all temporal disasters the grandeur of an immortal destiny. Salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Still further to encourage them he dwells on the fact that they were guarded and upheld by the ever-present power of God and that the salvation of which he spoke, was not subject to human contingency or caprice, but would be fully made known in the last consummation.

6-9. Ye are in heaviness, etc., i. e., literally "are mourning" or are made sorrowful by manifold trials. The Christians had a double trial to their faith. They became obnoxious at the same time to their Jewish brethren, whom they had deserted, and to the heathen, whose idolatry they denounced. Regarded by the Roman authorities as only a more pestilent sect of a despised race and religion, they encountered at once the legal prosecution of the state and the spasmodic fury of the populace. The

8 honour, and glory, at the appearing of Jesus Christ: whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of 9 glory receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of 10 your souls. Of which salvation the prophets have inquired

and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that I should come unto you: searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that 12 should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you, with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which

trial of your faith being much more precious than of gold, etc. The idea is that the testing of their faith was more important than the testing of perishing gold. This refining and purifying process, instead of destroying their hope, would only touch it to finer issues and give them fuller assurance, at the time of the great unfolding, of a joy unspeakable and full of glory. At the appearing of Jesus Christ, or "the manifestation or revelation of Jesus Christ," not the personal appearance of Christ, but the coming of his kingdom and the fulfilment of his predictions.__Receiving the end of your faith, etc. That this coming kingdom of Christ was not a mere temporal Messianic kingdom to the conception of the apostles as has been asserted, is evident from such passages as this, in which it is distinctly said, to center in the soul's salvation, not in any earthly conquest or temporal possession however splendid.

which was in them. As much as to say, that by virtue of their office as prophets they were identified in a certain sense with the Christ whom they predicted, and they carried in themselves the key of fulfilment and interpretation of their own announcements. Unto whom it was revealed, etc. Though they saw but in part, and knew but in part, and beheld through a glass darkly, yet they builded better than they knew, and taught wiser than they understood. The spirits of the prophets, we are told, are subject to the prophets, but in the ecstasy and enthusiasm of their great office they often transcended the limits of a literal understanding, and entered the wider domain of imagination and faith in which they saw great spiritual realities, irrespective of time or place. Not unto themselves, but unto us did they minister, or unto you. But they knew enough to know, that they held their office subordinate to no private or selfish interest, but for the great common weal and spiritual kingdom whose officers they were. That have preached the gospel unto you, i. e., literally "that have gospelled,” or evangelized you. The angels desire, etc. These are interests of such vast import that even the beings of higher worlds are curious to investigate them.