truth expressed in this passage, which all my later writings,
without exception, have been directed to maintain and illustrate.

77. I suppose there is no event in the whole life of Christ to which,
in hours of doubt or fear, men turn with more anxious thirst to know
the close facts of it, or with more earnest and passionate dwelling
upon every syllable of its recorded narrative, than Christ's showing
Himself to His disciples at the Lake of Galilee. There is something
pre-eminently open, natural, full fronting our disbelief, in this
manifestation. The others, recorded after the resurrection, were
sudden, phantom-like, occurring to men in profound sorrow and wearied
agitation of heart; not, it might seem, safe judges of what they saw.
But the agitation was now over. They had gone back to their daily
work, thinking still their business lay net-wards, unmeshed from the
literal rope and drag. "Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a-fishing.
They say unto him, We also go with thee." True words enough, and
having far echo beyond those Galilean hills. That night they caught
nothing; but when the morning came, in the clear light of it, behold!
a figure stood on the shore. They were not thinking of anything but
their fruitless hauls. They had no guess who it was. It asked them
simply if they had caught anything. They say, No, and it tells them to
cast again. And John shades his eyes from the morning sun with his
hand to look who it is; and though the glistening of the sea, too,
dazzles him, he makes out who it is at last; and poor Simon, not to be
outrun this time, tightens his fisher's coat about him, and dashes in
over the nets. One would have liked to see him swim those hundred
yards, and stagger to his knees upon the beach.

Well, the others get to the beach, too, in time, in such slow way as
men in general do get in this world to its true shore, much impeded by
that wonderful "dragging the net with fishes"; but they get
there--seven of them in all; first the Denier, and then the slowest
believer, and then the quickest believer, and then the two
throne-seekers, and two more, we know not who.

They sit down on the shore, face to face with Him, and eat their
broiled fish as He bids. And then to Peter, all dripping still,
shivering, and amazed, staring at Christ in the sun, on the other side
of the coal-fire,--thinking a little perhaps of what happened by
another coal-fire, when it was colder, and having had no word changed