H. W. Longfellow, The Sifting of Peter,
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If The sifting of wheat is a most hard and thorough, but a most necessary, process. The wheat, as it has grown, has become associated with the protecting chaff, which it is necessary should be blown away, and with the foreign substances taken from the earth and from the air, which must be separated. Before the wheat is ready for use it must be sifted or winnowed ; no pains must be spared to make the process as thorough as possible. Only an enemy to the wheat, or a disbeliever in its true powers, would desire to spare it such an ordeal. As it falls, after such a process, solid and clean, into the receptacle which has been prepared for it, its value is greatly enhanced. There is now no doubt about its true nature and the work to which it should be put. It carries out all the points of the analogy to notice that Peter is not promised that he shall be saved from the sifting process ; no hand is put forth to hold him securely sheltered ; no cloud wraps him away from danger. Peter is too valuable to be thus treated. If he is wheat, he must be sifted.
^ When Christ at a symbolic moment was establishing His great society. He chose for its corner-stone neither the brilHant Paul nor the mystic John, but a shuffler, a snob, a coward — in a word, a man. And upon this rock He has built His Church, and the gates of Hell have not prevailed against it. All the empires and the kingdoms have failed because of this inherent and con- tinual weakness, that they were founded by strong men and upon strong men. But this one thing — the historic Christian Church — was founded upon a weak man, and for that reason it is inde- structible. For no chain is stronger than its weakest link. ^
(2) The devil will do his best to scatter the wheat, and keep the chaff. Throughout the ages the Spirit of Evil reveals a cynical distrust of goodness. Between the time of ancient Job and the self-confident Peter, the Spirit of Evil had not changed in character or method. Now he has asked to have Simon that he may sift him, sure that his character is unsound, and that all his professions are chaff. His failure with a hundred Jobs meantime has not given him any confidence in goodness. Evil never can believe in good. Still is this Satan hurrying to and fro through- out the earth, peering into every keyhole of character to find baseness there, sneaking into every corner of the soul to catch it in its depravity. Years after this sifting of Simon, in which the Spirit of Evil repeated the work upon Job, to whom he came as * G. K. Chesterton, Ueretici.
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he said, " from hurrying to and fro in the earth," the sifted Peter speaks of Satan, in his first letter (v. 8) as the " peripatetic, a wandering, roaring lion, intent on finding prey." That is the history of evil, and in nothing has it a surer manifestation than in its scepticism concerning goodness.
^ Milton, in his most masterly manner, has delineated the sneering diabolism of distrust in that " archangel ruined." Evil begins its infernal career in its utter lack of faith in goodness ; and its Satanic spirit is most manifest when virtue appears to have a blackened heart, righteousness to have been insincere, and truth to be only a concealed falsehood. Here is the very pro- fession of evil.
But of this be sure. To do aught good never will be our task, But ever to do ill our sole delight, As being the contrary to His high will Whom we resist. If then His providence Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, Our labour must be to pervert that end. And out of good still to find means of evil; Which oft times may succeed, so as perhaps Shall grieve Him.^
IT Watts painted his Miltonic Satan with the face averted from the light of the Creator with whom he talked. For title, these words were used : " And the Lord said unto Satan, whence comest thou ? Then Satan answered the Lord and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it." The Satan the painter conceived is a mighty power ruling over the evils which were unconnected with sin.^
2. The disciples had brought the peril upon themselves. They gave, as it were, an invitation to Satan to come into their company. They had evidently not paid any great regard to Christ's teach- ings concerning love and humility. The evil spirit of envy and ambition which they had harboured among themselves was the scent which attracted Satan to that particular upper room. These men, by their angry strife or calculating worldliness, lit, as it were, a beacon which brought the Spirit of Evil to the battle. If these Apostles had had more of the spirit of true prayer, if their
* Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 158.
" M. S. Watts, Georgs Frederic Watts, i. 97.
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spirits had been more humble, if their hearts had been more guile- less, and their characters attuned by discipline to the teachings of the Lord, the devil would never have been attracted to that upper room, his eye had never shone with triumph at their bickerings, nor had they stood in such danger of an awful overthrow.