(2) The Sheep. — " Feed my sheep " comes next ; feed the middle-aged, the strong, the vigorous ; they also need to be directed in their Christian course, and to be guided to some field of earnest service for Christ, therefore shepherdize them. Do not try to govern these, but feed them. They may have far more prudence, and they certainly have more experience, than you have, and therefore do not rule them, but remind them of the deep things of God, and deal out to them an abundance of consoling truth. There is that good old man, he is a father in Christ ; he knew the Lord fifty years before you were born; he has some peculiarities, and in them you must let him take his own course, but still feed him. His taste will appreciate solid meat, he knows a field of tender grass when he gets into it ; feed him, then, for his infirmities require it.
^ Not to priests only is this said, but to every one of us also, who are also entrusted with a little fiock. For do not despise it because it is a little flock. For " My Father," He saith, " hath pleasure in them." Each of us hath a sheep ; let him lead that to the proper pastures.^
^ We find the best interpretation of the three commands given by our Lord to St. Peter, by tracing their fulfilment in the
^ Memoir and Correspondent of Henry Venn, 429. 2 Dean Farrar. 3 g^^ Chrysostoro,
436 LOVE AND SERVICE
Apostle's life. In the early chapters of the Acts we find St. Peter standing forth as the spokesman and leader of the Church ; yet the doctrinal content of his sermons is extremely simple, just such as we should teach to little children : St. Peter was feeding tJie lambs. Then another Apostle comes to the front; the Church needs a more developed doctrine, for the lambs have grown into sheep and now require the " strong meat " of the Word ; St. Paul feeds the sheep, St. Peter aids the work by tending the sheep. In the First Epistle of St. Peter we find him again the leading exponent of Christian doctrine : it is now a fully developed doctrine, a great advance upon the simple teaching of his early days ; now, under the guidance of God, he is feeding the sheep.^
» H. 0. Cavalier.
The Individuality of Duty.
437
Literature.
Aitken (W. H. M. H.), The Highway of Holinm, 126.
Ballard (F.), Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 63.
Bickersteth (C), The Gospel of Incarnate Love, 106.
Burrell (D. J.), God and the People, 167.
Darlow (T. H.), Via Sacra, 125.
Dix (M.), Christ at the Door of the Heart, 158.
Gray (W. A.), The Shadow of the Hand, 133.
Harper (F.), A Broken Altar, 50.
Hopkins (E. H.), Hidden, yet Possessed, 19.
Hull (E. L.), Sermons, iii. 230.
Knight (G. H.), The Master's Questions to His Disciples, Ji(M).
Lightfoot (J. B.), Ordination Addresses, 149.
Lockyer (T. F.), Seeking a Country, 94.
Merson (D.), Words of Life, 213.
Mortimer (A. G.), Jesus and the Resurrection, 248.
Myres (W. M.), Fragments that Remain, 20, 28.
Peabody (F. G.), Mornings in the College Chapel, i. 25
Pearson (J. B.), Disciples in Doubt, 113.
Pope (W. B.), Discourses, 343.
Power (P. B.), The " I JFills" of Christ, 283.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, viii. 383.
Kendall (G. H.), Charterhouse Sermons, 149.
Stanley (A. P.), Sermons and Essays on the Apostolical Age, 234.
Stevens (W. B.), Sermons, 78.
Stone (D.), The Discipline of Faith, 167.
Taylor (W. M.), The Limitations of lAfe, 63.
Vauglian (J.), Sermons (Brighton Pulpit), vi. No. 648.
Westcott (B. F.), Social Aspects of Christianity, 197.
„ „ Peterborough Sermons, 255.
Wordsworth (C), Primary Witness to the Truth of the Gospel, 155. American Pulpit of tlie Day, 1. 448 (Tyng). CJiristian Age, xliii. 242 (Abliott). Tu)entieth Century Pastor, xxix. 132.
4Sl
The Individuality of Duty.
Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? follow thou me. — John xxi. 22.
1. This is the last recorded dialogue between Peter and Christ, and it has a special and a touching interest from the fact that it is so. How many and how varied these dialogues had been, and how rich and how vivid the instruction they contain ! They form a magazine of truth in themselves, and had we no other fragments of Christ's life handed down to us than the narrative of His dealings with Peter, we should still have a tolerably full indication both of the doctrine He intends us to believe and of the duty He commands us to practise. And now the revelation was wound up, and the interviews theipselves were to cease. Whatever further talk the Lord had with Peter, " something sealed the hps of the evangelist " ; for with these words before us his record ends.
Could there be a more fitting and consistent close to the whole? It is the same Peter who speaks, tender-hearted and impulsive as ever, with a trace of the old leaven not yet purged. It is the same Christ, too, who answers him, true to the message and unaltered in the character He had revealed from the very first. " Follow me," He said three years before by the lakeside where Peter was plying his toils, unaware of the destiny that awaited him. And now, after all that had come and gone, when faith had been strengthened by experience, and the cord of love that had first drawn the heart after Christ had become a fast firm cable, wrought through long days of fellowship and common toil, there, at the self-same spot where Christ called His disciple before, He calls him again, reminding him, as He does so, that the omega of his life is the same as its alpha, even the duty of personal discipleship, the word " Follow me."