Now, at this very moment a child's voice from the neighbour- ing house began repeating in a kind of chant : " Take and read, take and read." Augustin shuddered. What was this refrain ? Was it a nursery-rhyme that the little children of the countryside used to sing ? He could not recollect it ; he had never heard it before. Immediately, as upon a Divine command, he rose to his feet and ran back to the place where Alypius was sitting, for he had left St. Paul's Epistles lying there. He opened the book, and the passage on which his eyes first fell was this : " Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof." The flesh ! The sacred text aimed at him directly — at him, Augustin, still so full of lust ! This command was the answer from on high.
He put his finger between the leaves, closed the volume. His frenzy had passed away. A great peace was shed upon him — it was all over. With a calm face he told Alypius what had happened, and without lingering he went into his mother's room to tell her also. Monnica was not surprised. It was long now since she had been told, " Where I am, there shalt thou be also." But she gave way to an outburst of joy. Her mission was done. Now she might sing her canticle of thanksgiving and enter into God's peace.1
1 Louis Bertraud, Saint Augustin (trans, by V. O'Sullivan), 206,
The Keys of the Kingdom.
Literature.
Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 176.
Book (W. H.), The Columbus Tabernacle Sermons, 71.
Burrell (D. J.), The Spirit of the Age, 306.
Clow (W. M.), The Secret of the Lord, 57.
Fraser (J.), Parochial and Other Sermons, 302.
Howatt (J. R.), Jesus the Poet, 151.
Jerdan (C), Gospel Milk and Honey, 54.
Lewis (L. H.), Petros, 65.
Norton (J. W.), Golden Truths, 326.
Selby (T. G.), The Imperfect Angel, 261.
Wright (W. B.), The World to Come, 45.
Church of England Pulpit, lxii. 376 (F. R. M. Hitchcock).
Church Family Newspaper, Feb. 17, 1911 (F. S. Webster).
The Keys of the Kingdom.
I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.— Matt. xvi. 19.
When this promise was given the little Galilean company was standing on one of the lower spurs of the Lebanon, amidst the pleasant rush and music of its countless brooks, with the grey walls of the Eoman castle at Csesarea Philippi in the distance. Peter had just made his great confession, and by his swift and far-reaching intuition had established his place as foremost man of the Twelve. It was under these circumstances that this peculiar form of expression was first used by our Lord. After speaking of the supernatural knowledge that Peter had received from the Father, Christ goes on to announce the important relation of Peter, as the first possessor and witness of such knowledge, to the Church of the future. And then He advances a step, and speaks of a future gift of light and power and dominion to Peter which the Apostle should receive from His hand : " And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."
I.
The Keys.
" I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven."
Keys are the emblems of authority, and this language was addressed to Peter because of the power that was to be conferred on him. He was to arrange and toil, determine and order, in the affairs of Christ's Kingdom, not, of course, absolutely, but under Christ, for Christ is the Head. Peter's authority was to be real, but none the less derived from and dependent upon Christ's will.
304 THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM
Now, as Peter's power was not to be absolute, so it was not to be solitary. It was to be sbared by the other Apostles. That is not brought out in the text, for here Christ is dealing only with His servant who had so grandly confessed Him. But later on Christ conferred on the entire company of the disciples the same wonder- ful power and privilege as He had conferred on Peter, when He said, not to any Apostle in particular but to the entire Church, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost : Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." One outcome of the authority was that Peter, like the others, could bind and unloose, could forbid or enjoin, what should be done in the Kingdom of Christ. Through the Apostle Christ was to express His will. Through him the Master was to carry on and carry out His purposes. What Peter ordered would be what Christ desired. What Peter forbade would be the things Christ disapproved, and herein was the reality of the power, herein the vastness of the privilege, that Christ was to work in and through him, for that is loftier and grander than for any man to devise and determine unaided and unguided of the Spirit of God. And it is in virtue of this real and true guiding Spirit that we have the Epistles of Paul, and Peter, and John, and others developing the doctrine of the cross of Christ, and setting forth the source of and the power of the Christian life.