of, that might be even the heirs of their fame, (for they strove not for earthly possessions,) separated from each other by boundless tracts of sea and land, and with no such means of correspondence as the present state of society supplies; they still continue to promote a common cause to their latest breath with a zeal and energy which the most active minds have rarely displayed for terrestrial objects in the zenith of their vigour. The text upon which I discoursed to you respecting St. Paul was chosen from the last of his works, his second Epistle to Timothy. It is unnecessary to say that the same remark applies to the present text, that it is chosen from the last of the very brief writings of St. Peter: but with respect to this latter Apostle there is a much greater void than in the case of St. Paul, which can only be supplied on the principle which I have just laid down, that we may well judge what the tenor of a man's life has been by its conclusion. Fiction is usually most busy where there is the scantiest supply of authentic documents.

It appears that our Saviour no sooner

took upon him his public ministry, after his rejection of the seductions of worldly power, mysteriously presented to him by the great tempter, and after John the Baptist had been cast into prison, than he called to himself certain disciples as the companions of his future life and the witnesses of his actions; who, either moved by a divine but secret impulse, or overpowered by the sight of some miracle, obeyed the call, and implicitly followed the Saviour of mankind as their leader. Of these St. Peter was the first the various incidents of his call, and that of his brother Andrew, may be collected from the four Evangelists, each of whom supplies some circumstance peculiar to himself. From this time St. Peter is so constantly with our Saviour, that their lives may be said to have been passed together; and the Gospels written for the purpose of commemorating the history of one comprise also of necessity that of the other. It appears to have been to St. Peter that the

a St. Matt. iv. 17. St. Mark i. 14.

b St. Matt. iv. 17. St. Mark i. 14. St. Luke v. 4-11. St. John i. 40-42.

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first revelation was made of the divine character of his Master, and the object of his appearance on earth: "He saith unto them, "But whom say ye that I am? And Simon "Peter answered and said: Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And "Jesus answered and said unto him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona; for flesh and "blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but 66 my Father which is in heaven. And I say "also unto thee, that thou art Peter," (that is, a rock,)" and upon this rock I will build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not 'prevail against it." I shall merely here state the proposition, that the Church which our Saviour, being at Cæsarea Philippi in Palestine, says that he will found upon St. Peter as upon a rock, and against which the gates of hell shall not prevail, cannot, as asserted by some, be believed to mean exclusively a Church which was afterwards planted on the western side of Italy, which, rising from an obscure origin to immense temporal greatness by human means, has been guilty of the

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St. Matt xvi. 15-19.

but too human vice of inordinate power, that of endeavouring to monopolize a portion of the divine attributes. Peter also was one of those whom our Saviour took up with him into the mountain for the purpose of witnessing his transfiguration; a miracle not less stupendous than that which was employed for the conversion of St. Paul, but which was also witnessed by two other of the disciples. It is merely necessary to mention here the unbidden zeal of St. Peter in the defence of his Master when the multitude came out to take him, and his predicted weakness in the repeated denial of the same Master when arraigned and standing before his judges. It should almost appear that after the execution of our Saviour this disciple had resumed, or thought of resuming in part at least, his previous occupation in life; for at the conclusion of the Gospel according to St. John, in which is contained the fullest account of our Saviour's re-appearance upon earth, is the following relation : There were together Simon

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Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and "Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons

" of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.

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Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth and entered into a ship immediately, and that night they caught nothing." But the pathetic injunction of the Saviour three times repeated, and conjuring the disciple by the love he bare him to feed his lambs, to "feed his sheep," must have totally extinguished the design of secular employment, had any such been entertained, and reclaimed every faculty of body and mind to the work of the ministry.

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In the Acts of the Apostles we find St. Peter among those who witnessed the ascension of our Saviour into heaven. He it was who proposed the arrangement by which Matthias the Just was chosen into the place of the unhappy Judas. He made the first sermon on the descent of the Holy Ghost, evinced by the miraculous gift of tongues, the fruit of which sermon was the addition of three thousand souls to the faith

d Acts ii. 41. .