Article January 23, 1904 Issue

Self-Condemnation and Humility

ABBOT EDES SMITH.

Before the advent of Christian Science people were often taught on retiring for the night to think over all that they had done or left undone during the day and to spend much time in grieving over the day's sins of omission and of commission. It was very commonly deemed an important part of the Christian's duty to spend much of his life in mourning over his past sins and failures, and this tended to produce a kind of sad resignation which has sometimes been thought to express a high degree of piety. The story used to be told of a boy whose father drove a nail into a post whenever the boy did wrong and drew out a nail whenever the boy resisted a temptation. At first the post became well filled with nails, but gradually these were drawn out, until finally the time came to draw out the last nail. The father expected the boy to be delighted, but to his surprise the boy burst into tears and exclaimed, "The scars remain!" Each day's record in the book of life was supposed to be permanently marred by the blots of the daily misdoings, and it was forgotten that the prophet Isaiah had proclaimed, "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

When the hour of his betrayal was near at hand, Jesus took with him the three apostles whom he most trusted and asked them to watch with him in a brief hour of prayer. Three times in this hour of his agony he returned to find them asleep. Later on, when those appointed came to arrest him, Peter's first impulse was to draw his sword and fight, but later on he acted upon his second impulse, and with the other apostles he forsook the Master and fled. So when Jesus was on trial at the house of the high priest, only one of the disciples was present in the courtroom, and he not as the friend of the prisoner, but as the friend of the high priest, the chief of the judges who condemned the prisoner. Peter, too, though he loved his Master and wished to know the result of the trial, did not dare to risk his life by openly avowing his sympathy, but stood with the high priest's servants and with those who were probably part of the mob that cried, "Crucify him!" When Peter was recognized and accused of being a friend of Jesus, he positively denied the charge twice, and finally became so frightened lest he might share his Master's fate, that he cursed and swore, confident that this would prove to all that he had no part with the prisoner.

Judas' betrayal was but little worse than Peter's desertion and denial; but the essential difference is illustrated by this; that when Judas realized what an awful wrong he had done, he went and hanged himself; while Peter, though realizing his cowardly ingratitude just as fully as did Judas his ungrateful selfishness, wept bitterly, but arose and pressed bravely on, resolved to try in the future to atone for his awful crime of the past, by living, so far as he might be able, such a life as his crucified Master had lived and taught. And nobly did he succeed. At times he still stumbled, as who does not? but in spite of his faults, Peter was a manly man, honest and earnest, and it was his honest steadfastness of purpose that, whenever he fell, enabled him, instead of uselessly grieving over what could not be changed, to remember the lesson thereby learned and then, forgetting the unpleasant experience itself, to press on with renewed courage in the path of duty. Later when Peter again met the same temptation to which he had yielded before, when his choice lay between a denial of his Master and death itself, he unhesitatingly chose death and bore this last testimony to Truth, as his Master had done.

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