THE SERMON. 129 



Christ separated him for the office, to which he afterwards 

 gave hira a more solemn appointment and commission. 



" It can hardly be imagined but that the similarity of the 

 miracle must have painfully forced itself on the attention 

 of St. 'Peter, bringing back to the mind of the penitent 

 discij^le the happy occasion on which he had forsaken all 

 that he might follow our Lord, and perhaps suggesting 

 how deplorably he had since altered his position, through 

 overweening confidence in his own steadfastness and 

 courage. 



" But, it may be asked, what had the ' fire of coals ' to do 

 ■with the transaction ? If we consider that our Lord caused 

 a miraculous draught of fishes to remind Peter how He 

 called him originall}^, and to produce in him a sorrowing 

 remembrance of his grievous apostasy, might not the 

 ' fire of coals ' help in a measure to produce these effects ? 

 This much is certain, that the expression ' a fire of coals ' 

 occurs only in one other place in the New Testament, as 

 though this were not the ordinary sort of fire, and the 

 evangelist wished especially to mark of what it was 

 made. And it is the same evangelist, St. John, who uses 

 the word on the two occasions, — St. John, whose great 

 object in writing his Gospel appears to have been to supply 

 the omissions of the preceding historians. But what is 

 the other occasion on which St. John mentions a ' fire of 

 coals ? ' It is when he is relating what took place in the 

 palace of the High Priest, after Jesus had been apprehended 



K 



