_Thou art a Rock_, &c.――This is the just translation of Peter’s name, and the force of the declaration is best understood by this rendering. As it stands in the original, it is “Thou art Πετρος, (_Petros_, ‘a rock,’) and on this Πετρα (_Petra_, ‘a rock’) I will build my church,”――a play on the words so palpable, that great injustice is done to its force by a common tame, unexplained translation. The variation of the words in the Greek, from the masculine to the feminine termination, makes no difference in the expression. In the Greek Testament, the feminine πετρα (_petra_) is the only form of the word used as the common noun for “rock,” but the masculine πετρος (_petros_) is used in the most finished classic writers of the ancient Greek, of the Ionic, Doric and Attic, as Homer, Herodotus, Pindar, Xenophon, and, in the later order of writers, Diodorus Siculus. H. Stephens gives the masculine form as the primitive, but Schneider derives it from the feminine. After this distinct profession of faith in him, by his disciples, through Peter, Jesus particularly and solemnly charged them all, that they should not, then, assert their belief to others, lest they should thereby be drawn into useless and unfortunate contests about their Master, with those who entertained a very different opinion of him. For Jesus knew that his disciples, shackled and possessed as they were with their fantasies about the earthly reign of a Messiah, were not, as yet, sufficiently prepared to preach this doctrine: and wisely foresaw that the mass of the Jewish people would either put no faith at all in such an announcement, or that the ill disposed and ambitious would abuse it, to the purposes of effecting a political revolution, by raising a rebellion against the Roman rulers of Palestine, and oversetting foreign power. He had, it is true, already sent forth his twelve apostles, to preach the coming of the kingdom, (Matthew x. 7,) but that was only to the effect that the time of the Messiah’s reign was nigh,――that the lives and hearts of all must be changed,――all which the apostles might well preach, without pretending to announce who the Messiah was. HIS AMBITIOUS HOPES AND THEIR HUMILIATION.