Certainly many a one would find the way to the feet of the
master, from whom the respectable church-goer, the pharisee of our
time, and the priest who stands on his profession, would draw back
with disgust. And doubtless it would be in the religious world that
a man like Jesus, who, without a professional education, a craftsman
by birth and early training, uttered scarce a phrase endorsed by
clerical use, or a word of the religious cant of the day, but taught
in simplest natural forms the eternal facts of faith and hope and
love, would meet with the chief and perhaps the only BITTER
opponents of his doctrine and life.
"But did our Lord not call the righteous? Did he not call honest men
about him--James and John and Simon--sturdy fisher-folk, who faced
the night and the storm, worked hard, fared roughly, lived honestly,
and led good cleanly lives with father and mother, or with wife and
children? I do not know that he said anything special to convince
them that they were sinners before he called them. But it is to be
remarked that one of the first effects of his company upon Simon
Peter was, that the fisherman grew ashamed of himself, and while
ashamed was yet possessed with an impulse of openness and honesty no
less than passionate.
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