one another. Paul understood the claims of true Charity, for he wrote
this thirteenth of Corinthians. If he loved Peter, and if he
understood the claims of true Charity, why did he thus openly rebuke
Peter, why did he inflict upon himself the pain of doing it?
Faithfulness to Peter himself, faithfulness to the truth,
faithfulness to Jesus Christ demanded it; therefore, he sacrificed
his own personal feelings, and inflicted this pain upon himself,
rather than allow Peter to go wrong, the Romans to be misled, and the
Jews to be carried away with worldly policy. Paul set himself to
rebuke Peter in the presence of all, for truth lay, as it very often
does, with the minority; nearly all the influence was on the side of
the circumcision. _They_ were the most influential of the
brethren, and Paul set himself against all this influence in his
rebuke of Peter. Why? Because faithfulness to the truth demanded it,
and Divine Charity is FIRST PURE.

There is a greater example still in our Lord Himself, in the Master
whose whole soul was love, whose life was one sacrifice for the good
of His creatures; and yet how faithfully He reproved His own when
they erred from the truth, and how fearlessly He exposed and
denounced the shallowness and hypocrisy of those who professed to
love God, and yet contradicted this profession in their lives. How
fearlessly He reproved sin everywhere. He said to his disciples on
one occasion, "Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the
Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." As
if He had said, you ought to have learned this before now.

On another occasion, He said, "Are ye also yet without
understanding?" And again, "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou
savourest not the things that be of God;" that was Divine Charity,