His great love for Christ, which makes up for all his weakness, led him one day almost to rebuke Him. Jesus had told His disciples how He must suffer and be killed. “Then Peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” No one ever pronounced such a terrible judgment on Simon, called Peter. He was called to work for the Kingdom of God, and he _thought as men do_. His mind, still occupied with the vulgar idea of the triumphant Messiah, refused to conceive of a persecuted Messiah condemned and executed. His soul had not yet kindled to the idea of divine expiation, the idea that salvation cannot be secured without an offering of suffering and blood, and that the great should sacrifice His body to the ferocity of mean men in order that the mean, after being enlightened by that life, may be saved from that death. He loved Jesus, but although his love was warm and potent, it still had something earthy in it, and he grew angry at the thought that his king should be reviled, that his God should die. And yet he was the first to recognize Jesus as the Christ; and this primacy is so great that nothing has been able to cancel it. SONS OF THUNDER The two fishermen, the brothers James and John, who had left their boat and their nets on the shore at Capernaum in order to go with Jesus, form together with Peter a sort of favorite triumvirate. They are the only ones who accompany Jesus into the house of Jairus, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, and they are the ones whom He takes with Him on the night of Gethsemane. But in spite of their long intimacy with the Master, they never acquired sufficient humility. Jesus gave them the surname of “Boanerges—Sons of Thunder,” an ironic surname, alluding perhaps to their fiery, irascible character.