concealed in the future, but in the change of his name, while he stood
on the very threshold of his Christian career, there was preached to
him, and there is preached to us, this great truth, that if you will
go to Jesus Christ He will make a new man of you. No man's character
is so obstinately rooted in evil but that Christ can change its set
and direction. No man's natural dispositions are so faulty and low but
that Christ can develop counterbalancing virtues, and out of the evil
and weakness make strength. He will not make a Peter into a John, or a
John into a Paul, but He will deliver Peter from the 'defects of his
qualities,' and lead them up into a higher and a nobler region. There
are no outcasts in the view of the transforming Christ. He dismisses
no people out of His hospital as incurable, because anybody,
everybody, the blackest, the most rooted in evil, those who have
longest indulged in any given form of transgression, may all come to
Him; with the certainty that if they will cleave to Him, He will read
all their character and all its weaknesses, and then with a glad smile
of welcome and assured confidence on His face, will ensure to them a
new nature and new dignities. 'Thou art Simon--thou shalt be Peter.'

The process will be long. It will be painful. There will be a great
deal pared off. The sculptor makes the marble image by chipping away
the superfluous marble. Ah! and when you have to chip away superfluous
flesh and blood it is bitter work, and the chisel is often deeply dyed
in gore, and the mallet seems to be very cruel. Simon did not know all
that had to be done to make a Peter of him. We have to thank God's
providence that we do not know all the sorrows and trials of the
process of making us what He wills us to be. But we may be sure of
this, that if only we keep near our Master, and let Him have His way
with us, and work His will upon us, and if only we will not wince from
the blows of the Great Artist's chisel, then out of the roughest block