But there was far more in it. It was a rescuing look. If any friend had met Peter rushing out from the scene of his sin, he might well have been terrified for what might happen. Where was he rushing to? Was it to the precipice over which Judas plunged not many hours afterwards? Peter was not very far from that. Had it been an angry look he saw on Christ's face when their eyes met, this might have been his fate. But there was not a spark of anger in it. There was pain, no doubt, and there was immeasurable disappointment. But deeper than these--rising up from below them and submerging them--there was the Saviour's instinct, that instinct which made Him reach out His hand and grasp Peter when he was sinking in the sea. With this same instinct He grasped Him now. In that look of an instant Peter saw forgiveness and unutterable love. If he saw himself in it, he saw still more his Saviour--such a revelation of the heart of Christ as he had never yet known. He saw now what kind of Master he had denied; and it broke his heart. It is this that always breaks the heart. It is not our sin that makes us weep; it is when we see what kind of Saviour we have sinned against. He wept bitterly; not to wash out his sin, but because even already he knew it had been washed out. The former weeping is a pelting shower; this is the close, prolonged downpour, which penetrates deep and fertilises the plants of the soul at their very roots. Indeed, this was the real beginning of all the good St. Peter was to do in the world. But we will not speak of this now. Let our last thought be of Him who, in the crisis and extremity of His own suffering, when He heard His name not only denied but mingled with oaths and curses, yielded not one moment to the resentment which such an act of treachery might have occasioned, but, forgetting His own sorrows and overmastered with the instincts of the Saviour, threw into a look such a world of kindness and of love that, in an instant, it lifted the falling disciple from the gulf and set him on the rock where he ever afterwards stood, himself a rock in the constancy of his faith and the vigor of his testimony. [1] _makrothen _. [2] It is to St. Luke we owe the account here given of Peter's awakening; but he also refers to the crowing of the cock, the only cause mentioned by the other Evangelists. There is no difficulty in understanding that such a psychological crisis may have been due to two lines of suggestion. [3] Mrs. Browning's sonnets on this subject must be quoted in full: