And still this morning of blessing was not ended. The frugal meal was past.... Turning to Peter, with pointed though most gentle allusion to the danger of self-confidence —a confidence springing from only a sense of personal affection, even though genuine— he asked: "Simon, son of Jona"— as it were with fullest reference to what he was naturally— "lovest thou me more than these?" Peter understood it all. No longer with confidence in self, avoiding the former reference to the others, and even with marked choice of a different word to express his affection from that which the Saviour had used, he replied, appealing rather to his Lord's, than to his own consciousness: "Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee."... Yes, and Peter did love the Lord Jesus. He had loved him when he said it, only too confident in the strength of his feelings, that he would follow the Master even unto death. And Jesus saw it all— yea, and how this love of the ardent temperament which had once made him rove at wild liberty, would give place to patient work of love, and be crowned with that martyrdom which, when the beloved disciple wrote, was already matter of the past.
—From The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah,
