This latter miracle is connected with our Lord’s strange faculty of seeing what was passing in men’s hearts, and of tracing what the outcome of it would be. When men felt that Christ knew their hearts, they were getting near the idea of His spiritual presence with them; so that all this leads up to the crowning point of Christ’s education, the rendering the Apostles sensitive to every breath of the Spirit, capable, amid a din of inward voices calling them diverse ways, of discerning with sure ear the tones of God. This miracle and this event contain a lesson on forgiven error, intended for all time. Here, as before observed, we have an instance of Christ’s way of ensuring that what He desired to preserve should be handed down. This event is stamped with life-like particulars which ensure its currency and its becoming familiar in the mouths of men. The words “the cock shall not crow twice” give to the incident a reality which vitalises the story and preserves it for ever. Contrast the tale such as we have it, with what it would have been if our Lord had only said, “You will deny me before I die.” As to the miracle itself a few words must be said. It brings out the identity of the idiosyncrasy of St Peter, who is given up to the impulse of the moment. The Peter who denied and then wept bitterly, is the same man, psychologically, as he who begged his Master to call him to come upon the sea, and whose faith failed. This liability to panic clung to him; years after, we find him at Antioch going along with Paul in freeing the converts from Jewish obligations; but, as soon as “certain came from James,”(329) he was alarmed at his temerity and separated himself, “fearing them that were of the circumcision.” (See also pp. 423, 424.) Neither by our Lord or any of the brethren is this failing of Peter’s ever touched upon again.