recognised Him as the Messiah, they were personally attached to Him,
they were ready to accept His teaching and to obey His commandments.
That was about as far as they had gone. But they were scholars. They
had entered the school. The rest would come. It would be absurd to
expect that Christ would begin by preaching to them faith in His
divinity and atoning work. He binds them to _Himself_. That is lesson
enough for a beginner for one day.

It was the impression which Christ Himself made on Simon which
completed the work begun by his brother. What, then, was the
impression? He comes all full of wonder and awe, and he is met by a
look and a sentence. The look, which is described by an unusual word,
was a penetrating gaze which regarded Peter with fixed attention. It
must have been remarkable, to have lived in John's memory for all
these years. Evidently, as I think, a more than natural insight is
implied. So, also, the saying with which our Lord received Peter seems
to me to be meant to show more than natural knowledge: 'Thou art
Simon, the son of Jonas.' Christ may, no doubt, have learned the
Apostle's name and lineage from his brother, or in some other ordinary
way. But if you observe the similar incident which follows in the
conversation with Nicodemus, and the emphatic declaration of the next
chapter that Jesus knew both 'all men,' and 'what was in man'--both
human nature as a whole, and each individual--it is more natural to
see here superhuman knowledge.

So then, the first point in our Lord's self-revelation here is that He
shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge. One
remembers the many instances where our Lord read men's hearts, and the
prayer addressed to Him probably, by Peter, 'Thou, Lord, which knowest
the hearts of all men,' and the vision which John saw of 'eyes like a