THE SERMON. 131 



of his apostasy ? What shall people that shore with recol- 

 lections of the scene of disaster and shame? Nay, if it 

 was by ' a fire of coals ' that the recreant apostle stood 

 when he thrice denied his Lord, and if ' a fire of coals' 

 were amongst the last things to be looked for on the 

 solitary coast, it might be hard to say what could have 

 been better fitted than a ' fire of coals ' to fill Peter with 

 a remembrance of his terrible fall. Oh it must have been 

 to him as though there thronged up from the past the 

 taunting tjuestions of the servants, and his own fierce 

 execrations, and the shrill crowing of the cock, and the 

 piercing, subduing look of his Lord, when so soon as he 

 was come to land he ' saw a fire of coals there,' lighted, 

 he knew not how, but for what he could not doubt. 



" But whilst we think that such an explanation agrees 

 admirably with many of the circumstances of the case, and 

 is replete with interest and instruction, we cannot give it 

 you as in every respect satisfactory. We have still to 

 seek an explanation which shall satisfy all parts of the 

 narrative ; and this, we think, is to be found in the progress 

 of the Gospel, and the connection between the old and new 

 dispensations. 



"In one of our Lord's parables, the kingdom of heaven is 

 likened unto a net, which, being cast into the sea, 

 ' gathered of every kind ; ' so that we may be said to have 

 our Lord's own authority for considering that tlie miraculous 

 draught of fishes represented the bringing of multitudes 



K 2 



