The miracles of Jesus - Classical Christian Literature by Athleo.net

46 THE FIRST MIRACULOUS
abasement. And yet the latter is psychologically
true, and is vouched for by many similar experiences
in the lives of God's people.
The Israelites at Sinai,
amidst the signs of Jehovah's presence, implored
Moses saying, " Speak thou with us, and we will hear :
but let not God speak with us, lest we die " (Exodus
xx. 19). Job, when the true knowledge of God was
granted to him, exclaimed, " I had heard of Thee by
the hearing of the ear; but now mine eye seeth Thee,
wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and
ashes" (Job xlii. 5, 6). Isaiah, face to face with the
vision of God's holiness, was conscious at first only of
his own and his people's need as he cried, " Woe is
me ! for I am undone
;
because I am a man of unclean
lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean
lips : for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
hosts" (Isaiah vi. 5). And so now with Peter. What
other evidences of the presence and the power of
Jesus had failed to do, this miracle, perhaps from its
close connection with his own past experience as a
fisherman, succeeded in effecting. The conviction
was borne in upon him that in Jesus he had not only
a "Master" whose orders must be obeyed, but a
"Lord" of infinite purity and holiness (notice the
change in his mode of address to Jesus in verses 5 and
8). And accordingly, he who afterwards could say,
" Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come unto Thee upon
the waters " (Matthew xiv.
28), and who, when others
were doubting, held fast by the triumphant assurance,
" Lord, to whom shall we go Thou hast the words
of eternal life" (John vi. 6$), was at this moment so
overborne by the sense of his own utter unworthiness,
that the very presence of Christ seemed to carry with