Article August 11, 1928 Issue

Peter, the Conqueror

JEAN M. SNYDER

To live courageously one has to understand why he can be courageous. Problems may then be faced scientifically, that is, with a spiritual understanding of God and of all things, while one looks not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen—in other words, while he denies the evidence of the senses.

"Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and unreal," Mrs. Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 505). To possess this understanding is to possess the ability to rout fears and dispose of the reality of sense-testimony, as did Peter in his prison experience. It is related in the twelfth chapter of Acts that Herod delivered Peter to "four quaternions of soldiers" and put him into prison "between two soldiers, bound with two chains; and the keepers before the door kept the prison." Here, surely, was a situation that seemed most real. But Peter could not have been accepting it. He was looking at this experience from a point of view unknown to Herod and the soldiers, for he had that of which they knew not—spiritual understanding.

Not always had he had this, simple fisherman that he was. When he was with Jesus and the other disciples, he apparently possessed but little ability to grasp the teachings about the things of Spirit. Jesus taught and retaught the unreliability of the evidence of the senses, always lifting thought from material things to things of Spirit. The impulsive, vacillating Peter could not continually hold to this.

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