The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-06-09
INTERNATIONAL SUNDAY SCHOOL
 LESSON
Second Quarter. Lesson XII. Na attbaxv wi 12-9Q Tppa 10 1QAl

Matthew xvi,13-2S. June 10, 1906.
 Peter's Great Confession.
 Tn His last year, Jesus turned from the multitude and concentrated His en- ergies upon His disciples. His minis try to the throng had proven a fail- ure. His pearls of word and deed had fallen before a brutish people. To per- petuate His church after His depart ure. He turns to trim and square and polish His apostles-as the foundation stones that are to bear aloft the super structure With this in view, He led them to Decapolis and Tyre and Sidon and Caesarea- -Philippi. localities where He was comparatively unknown. In such places His course of private in- struction would be least interrupted by public demands. Philips Caesarea was in what has aptly been called the Switzerland of Palestine" There was the< everstartling contrast between arctic white and tropic emer- aid. As they walked amid the oleand- CTS and beside the gushing fountain. source of the Jordan, they could lift their eyes to snow-cIad Hermon and Lebanon. It was a school-room wor- thy at once of teacher and taught. It was here that Jesus propound- ed that immeasurably important ques- tion.s"W do men say that I. Inc Son or MAn, am The question was Ouly asked that 1t might produce that dark background of an inadequate and err roneous public opinion on which the fair confession of the apostles might stand out in pristine contrast. . What a medley of opinions! Some joined guilty Antipas in the suspicion that He was the Baptist come to life again: others, that He was the fiery old reformer of Carmel; others. the n to the crypt of nature, where He had hidden the golden ark of the temple. Not a soul of the people rose to the height of recognizing Him as the Mes siah. Jesus got exactly the answer He had anticipated. He could not have been disappointed or chagrined by 1t. He did expect more of the chosen ones who had been His intimate companions for two years. In this, too. He was not disappointed. He cried, '"rhe people say this and that; but what do you say?" Then that glo- rious sanctuary of nature rang with the simplest, sublimest credo of all the ages, as the mouth of the apostles" cried, Thou are the Christ, the Son of the Living God" In that word, Pe- ter burst the shell of an hereditary and universal misconception of the nature of the Messiah. He first spread the wings of true Messianic faith. and scared above the temporal ideas of throne. army and conquest.
 At the sound of this confession, Jesus was in a transport of joy. It repaid Him for all the toll. humiliation and sacrifice of His ministry. But while Joyously setting the seal of approval on Peters creed He also avows its su- pernatural source. It came not from flesh and blood. It originated not in himself, nor in some human teacher. It was a revelation of the Father In heaven. But what is the meaning of this crucial affirmation? l do not join with those who say that Jesus addressed Peter only as the spokesman of the apostles, and that what He said to Peter applied equally to all; nor with those who say that Peters confession, not Peters self. was the rock on which Jesus built His church. These are current Protestant interpretations, but they seem to re- quire the subtlety sometimes attribu- ted to Romanism for their defense. would rather take the language just as 1t stands. and admit that Jesus built His church upon the man Peter. But he is such a man as Jesus describes "a man with revelation; a revela- ton that did not originate in himself 0f in fellow, but one that came from God; a revelation received with faith and acknowledged with joy. It Is the man as a confessor that forms the ea- sis of the church. The confession apart, be 1t never so orthodox, Is a dead thing. but the confession on the lips and in the character Is the livest thing in the world. Well says the apostle, No man can say that Jesus is the Christ except God be with him" Of course, any one could say the words by rote and parrot-like, but no one can say them as they should be said, in a manner pleasing to God, with right emotions. with faith and love and loyalty, until he has become new creature by the regenerationyf of the Holy Ghost In point of time; Peter was the first to make confession in this manner. He was laid. therefore, to use an often repeated figure of the New Testament, as the first living stone up- on the chief corner stone. So everyone who says that Jesus Is the Christ-not by revelation of flesh and blood. but of he Spirit which has made him new creature-hecomes at once living stone in that spiritual temple whose walls are salvation and whose gates Ire praise.
 The Teachers Lantern.
 The gates of hades, the tnsatianle laws. soon or late. close upon all this
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