Enthusiasm and its Dangers.
I. One reason of St. Peter's confidence was that he did not realise the situation which was awaiting him. As yet he had had no experience of any trial of the kind, and he seems not to have had that kind of imagination which can anticipate the untried with any sort of accuracy. When he said, "Though all men should be offended because of Thee, yet will I never be offended," he had not thought out in detail what was meant by the contingency which he thus describes. He had never yet seen his Master deserted by His friends and disciples, and he really treats such an occurrence in his inward heart as utterly improbable. Had St. Peter placed clearly before his mind what was meant by all men being offended at Christ, had he pictured to himself how matters would stand, when even St. James, even St. John, had forsaken the Divine Master, he would have shrunk from adding his concluding words. St. Peter's confidence, then, was first of all the confidence of inexperience, aided by lack of imagination. It is repeated again and again under our eyes, at the present day.
II. Closely allied to this general failure to realise an untried set of circumstances was St. Peter's insufficient sense, at this period of his life, of the possibly awful power of an entirely new form of temptation.
III. St. Peter's over-confidence would seem to have been due in part to his natural temperament and to his reliance on it.
IV. What, then, is the lesson which we should try to carry away from this one event in St. Peter's history. Not, assuredly, to think cheaply of moral or religious enthusiasm as such, but to measure well, if possible, our religious language, especially the language of fervour and devotion. When religious language outruns prudence or conviction, the general character is weakened.
H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxiv., p. 113.
References: Matthew 26:33. J. Vaughan, Children's Sermons,6th series, p. 30. Matthew 26:33-35. A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve,p. 393.