not disclose to Peter all His forebodings, but
merely hints, as the disciple comes dripping out of the water, that
there are severer trials of love awaiting him than those which mere
activity and warmth of feeling can overcome, "When thou wast young,
thou girdedst thyself and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou
shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird
thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not."

To a man of Peter's impulsive and independent temperament no future
could seem less desirable than that in which he should be unable to
choose for himself and do as he pleased. Yet this was the future to
which the love he was now expressing committed him. This love, which at
present was a delightful stimulus to his activities, diffusing joy
through all his being, would gain such mastery over him that he would be
impelled by it to a course of life full of arduous undertaking and
entailing much suffering. The free, spontaneous, self-considering life
to which Peter had been accustomed; the spirit of independence and right
of choosing his own employments which had so clearly shown itself the
evening before in his words, "I go a-fishing"; the inability to own
hindrances and recognise obstacles which so distinctly betrayed itself
in his leaping into the water,--this confident freedom of action was
soon to be a thing of the past. This ardour was not useless; it was the
genuine heat which, when plunged in the chilling disappointments of
life, would make veritable steel of Peter's resolution. But such trial
of Peter's love did await it; and it awaits all love. The young may be
arrested by suffering, or they may be led away from the directions they
had chosen for themselves; but the chances of suffering increase with
years, and what is possible in youth becomes probable and almost certain
in the lapse of a lifetime. So long as our Christian life utters itself
in ways we choose for ourselves and in which much active energy can be
spent and much influence exerted, there is so much in this that is
pleasing to self that the amount of love to Christ required for such a
life may seem very small. Any little disappointment or difficulty we
meet with acts only as a tonic, like the chill of the waters of the lake
at dawn. But when the ardent spirit is bound in the fetters of a
disabled, sickly body; when a man has to lay himself quietly down and
stretch forth his hands on the cross of a complete failur