LECTURES. LECTURE I. LUKE V. 8. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. HAVING found, upon a former occasion, that the biography of one, eminent in the writings of the Old Testament, offered many valuable lessons, both to the Christian minister and the Christian hearer, it is my intention, during the present season of Lent, to bring before you some of the remarkable passages in the life of one of the great and good men under the New Testament dispensation. B The individual whose history I have selected for this purpose, is Simon Peter of whom it is not too much to assert, that, after our blessed Lord Himself, there is no one for whom a stronger prepossession is excited in our bosoms, no one with whom we more early sympathize, or, in the affecting incidents of whose eventful history, we take a more lasting interest. In the prosecution of this endeavour, I shall confine myself to some of the most striking incidents in the life of Peter, narrated in the Gospels, the length of the present season not being sufficient to admit of our embracing the whole of the instructive details of his eventful biography contained in the scriptures. May the divine grace so co-operate with the imperfect attempt, as to render it instrumental, through the power of the Holy Spirit of God, to the imparting to us some portion of that fervent love to the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, that zealous attachment to his service, that implicit obedience to his commands, which so remarkably characterized this distinguished apostle! Of the early history of Simon Peter, nothing has been handed down to us by the pen of inspiration: the earliest record which is given of him in the word of God, is contained in the first chapter of St. John's Gospel. 66 From the period when John the Baptist became acquainted with the Saviour of the world at the waters of Jordan, he preached Him as the way, the truth, and the life," to his own disciples. Among these disciples of the Baptist, was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, the first who, directed by the testimony of John, devoted himself to the service of the Messiah. No sooner had he seen and conversed with Jesus, than, as we find in the forty-first verse of the chapter to which we have alreadyalluded, Andrew, naturally anxious to dispense to those he |
