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the sacramental cup which ratifies a new fidelity.

It is so the sinner argues, his vision of what love ought to be growing
clearer by his offense against love. It is he alone, the sinner, who can
really sympathize with Christ's conception of love, for he alone feels
that this is the kind of love he needs. The elder brother does not
understand, Simon the Pharisee does not understand, because neither has
sinned in such a way as to be flung helpless at the feet of love. Peter
did not understand when he put his question to Christ. He spoke just as
the average man would speak, who has never sounded the tragic depths in
life, has never known the misery of weakness, and therefore has no fellow
feeling for the weak. Love as such men know it is less a passion than a
compact. It is a bond of mutual advantage, guarded from abuse by swift
penalty and forfeit. It is the reward of qualities, it gives no more
than it gets, it exists by an equal equipoise of service. If this
equipoise is disturbed its obligations are dissolved. It is easily
affronted, and under affront becomes resentful, bitter, even vindictive.
How oft shall I forgive my brother? Only as oft as a sense of duty shall
demand, only up to the point which is sanctioned by social custom, so
that I may save my reputation for magnanimity, always excepting certain
sins for which no pardon can be legitimately asked. But the hour was not
far off when Peter himself was to commit the very sins for which
customary love has no pardon. He was to be guilty of those offenses
which just and good men say they cannot forgive--meanness, cowardice,
perfidy, denial. That bitter hour revealed the true nature of love to
Peter. He knew that in spite of his sin against Jesus, he still loved
Him, and since love was unalterable in him, he expected an unalterable
love in Christ. It was the seventy times seven forgiveness that he
needed then; and how sweet to recollect in that hour that Jesus had
taught a love that knew no limit. "_Lovest thou Me_?" was the one word
his Master uttered when they met in the quiet morning light beside the
sea. "_Thou knowest all things, Thou knowest that I love Thee_," was the
swift reply. Storms disturb the sea but the central tides run on. Peter
found with equal astonishment and gratitude that not even perfidy was
able to separate him from the love of Christ, for that love was
unalterable as the morning star which hung above the lake, and cleansi