582 APPENDIX TO PART III

less than that he had lived continually to God under the old dispensation. He means that he had lived the life of Enoch, or of Daniel. Would you not be apt to call yourselves converted already if you were living Daniel’s life, or Enoch’s, ay, even though with something of Phinehas in you, you had consented unto the death of one who you thought had blasphemed God, or, with something of Elijah in you, had said of a sect whom you supposed adverse to Him, “Let not one of them escape”?

§ 17. Take another instance-the conversion of Cornelius. You fix the time of it, I suppose, to his hearing of Peter. Yet he was a man who prayed to God, and whom God heard, long before.¹ He was, moreover, a man of perfect obedience, for he is much more ready to obey his vision of the Angel, than St. Peter to obey his of the Sheet; St. Peter’s had to be repeated Thrice, but Cornelius never paused because it was tanner’s house, though it might have seemed a strange place to which he was told to send for Salvation. He was a devout and almsgiving man, and a man of brotherly love, for he had made his soldiers devout also, and he would not hear St. Peter’s message alone, though God had not told him to send for his kinsmen. Now if we were all almsgiving people, all praying people, all obedient people, and all loving people, should we need to quarrel about the time of our conversion?

§ 18. If, however, we are able to fix the moment of conversion in this case of St. Paul and of Cornelius, is it as easy to do this in that of St. Peter himself? We know from Luke xxii. 32, that St. Peter was not converted until the close of our Lord’s ministry. We may gather therefore from his former history what it is possible for an Unconverted person to do and to be. He may have Faith-”I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not.”² “Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee.” Peter had faith enough to walk on the sea, Conviction of sin enough to make him cry out in agony under the sense of the presence of his Maker, and Love enough of God to make him leave all for Him; and if we were to reason about his conversion unassisted, when should we place it? When he was called by his brother to Christ, and received his name of Peter-having been previously baptized by John with the baptism of repentance for the Remission of Sins? That must at least have been one marked time of his life. He had left his fishing, and come far away down the Jordan to hear the great desert preacher; he had been summoned to Christ as the Messiah; had been received by Him; named by Him, yet not converted; he went back to his Fishing; he went on casting his nets for a while; but Christ came one day walking by the shore, and called him, and he forsook his nets and followed Him³-yet not converted. He followed Him but a little time, and went back to his nets: a severer lesson was needed, and given (Luke v. 1-8). This time Peter seems hard struck indeed, and we never hear of his leaving Christ any more. Yet not converted! When will you place his real conversion? When his denied Master turned and looked on him? or over the fire of coals by the old shore of Galilee, or at Pentecost?

¹ [Acts x.]

² [Luke xx. 32; Mathew xvi. 17, xiv. 29; Mark i. iv.]

³ [Mark i. 18; Luke xxii. 61.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]