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THE KING’S BUSINESS
Whether walking on the sea, or sink ing in the sea, there is something about Peter to give us a help. Now, suppose that he was utterly away from us, and we could not get any use of him when his faith rose to such—-I am almost inclined to call it such a perilous height, why not get some good of him here? You are sinking. The water is up to your lips.' Let your prayer be “ a solitary shriek”— “ The bubbling cry of some strong swim mer in his agony.” Do not perish without a cry-—“ Lord, save me!” Young man, young wom an, you are sinking, you know it ; deeper, deeper, deeper, every week you live, down into this black, seeth ing, boiling sea. Learn from Peter that all the distance between immi nent destruction and salvation is bridged over when thy soul has cried, “ Lord, save me!” Business men, you are sinking, making shipwreck of faith and o f a good conscience. Down there in city life, where the great tides meet, your ship is being battered to pieces. You are going down. Peter’s prayer is your only hope. It absolutely fits you. It is not a “won derful” prayer. I hear, men whose prayers are phrases; and I read pray ers that are far too fitly phrased, I am afraid. There is no eloquencé about this prayer. It is a cry for help, rising on the shrieks of the tempest. Therefore, is it the splendid prayer it is. There was a fine earn estness about it that redeemed it from all risk of being rude or vulgar: “ Lord, save me!” When will we learn tp pray? I do not ask that this tabernacle should resound with Peter’s cry, but I do ask that the dumb devil should be cast out of us, and that from not a few hearts here, because of the desperateness of the case, Peter’s prayer should be wrung out, “ Lord, save me! I perish!”
by human foreknowledge and fore seeing, and a good deal of it taking the shape of craft, and mechanism, and artifice. We are trying to invent some kind of cork soles, rather than to walk by faith., Peter began well. Who did hinder him? He tripped up over his own feet. For when a man begins to walk the waters he has to forget these ordinary means of loco motion. He has to forget all such considerations as those belonging to specific gravities. He needs to forget science and a great many things. Christ stood upon the sea and said, “ Come,” and faith on Peter’s part was not irrational. It was reason sublimed to its highest function. It should never be less, never! You will not get that in the philosophy books, of course. You will get that here in the Bible, and only here. No, Peter was right when he began, and these considerations only pulled him down, “ and enterprises of great pith and moment, with this regard, their cur rents turn awry, and lose the name of action.” “When he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid, and began to sink, and cried, Lord, save me.” Even when he is down, he helps us ; supposing he is rather far away from us when he is coming out of the ship. I am afraid we are very much like him now. Will we learn from him even now? Poor sinking brother, sinking sister, going down, and down, and down, merged, but not submerged, as Augustine, I think, has put it, would you be lifted up, would you be brought to peace and safety, would you be delivered from the storm that is blowing through your rigging, and would you be calm and quiet? Then here is the way to peace—“ Lord, save me.” One eager, quick, urgent cry, “ Lord, save me.” Peter at his worst is more helpful than some of us at what we seem to think is our best.
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