Peter loved Christ truly, but miscalculated his strength. Be very careful not to adventure yourself into the midst of temptation. If God leads you thither, that is another matter. We do well to remember Ps. 1: 1-3. Let us beware of warming ourselves at the world’s fires. It was the firelight falling on his face that revealed Peter, and his brogue that betrayed him.

If, even at that hour, however, he had looked to God, a way of escape would have been found. “He delivereth and rescueth, and worketh signs and wonders in heaven and in earth,” Dan. 6: 27. But Peter sought to save him-

self from the results of his folly and sin; only to jand deeper and deeper in the morass.

What a look that must have been, v. 61! But, even now, when we sin, Christ looks at us from out of his holy heaven, with such mingled pity and love, that these constitute the worst torment. There is no need of literal fire to make hell. Disappointed love is hotter than “coals of juniper.”

Luke 22:68-71. This scene of mockery is very terrible. How difficult the twelve legions of angels must have found it to restrain themselves. See Matt. 26: 53. Here we have an exhibition of the hidden evil of the human heart, which is drawn forth in contact with infinite purity, as the stench of stagnant water is elicited by the summer sun.

Our Lord answered not a word to all the false accusations that were leveled against him. He left the false witnesses to refute each other. But as soon as his divine claims were challenged, he could not keep silence. It is very noticeable that, in this Gospel, which lays such stress on Christ’s pure humanity, Luke makes it so clear that the unwavering affirmation of his equality with God was the cause of his death, John 5:18. Is there not a sense in which the eye of faith always beholds him seated at the right hand of God’s power?