PETER HEADSTRONG’S HOUSE—A STUDY OF ST. PETER’S LIFE

[The reference to Peter may be omitted, at the close, and this may be made a general talk on the necessity of a solid foundation for one’s life.]

Peter Headstrong was a very rich man who had a beautiful palace to build. His architect drew all the plans and selected the location for the palace. It was a spot where the soil was not very deep, but underneath it was a solid rock that reached down to the centre of the earth.

As soon as the architect was out of the way, Peter Headstrong decided that there was a place he liked better. It was a place where the soil was deep, and where the grass was green, and where there were many trees, and so he had workmen build the palace in this place. But, as it happened, there was no rock there, and the soil was sandy and treacherous.

Peter Headstrong hurried on the workmen, and it was not many months before the roof was finished, the work done, and everything about the house in beautiful order. But alas! when the architect came to look at the completed house, he saw that the walls were cracking, the doors were twisted, the foundations crumbling, and he told Peter Headstrong that he must at once move everything of value out of the house, for it would soon tumble down.

Peter Headstrong refused to believe him, but the architect was a true prophet, and, just when he said it would, the palace fell to pieces. And so Peter Headstrong was compelled to move all the material, and set it up again on the rocky ground which the architect had first selected. And here the beautiful palace was finally built, so strongly that he lived in it all his life.

This story, boys and girls, will show you the kind of life that was lived by Peter, about whom we study today,—that headstrong disciple of our Lord. He made all his mistakes because he was trying to build his house on sandy, unstable ground. Christ told him that the house would fall down, and you know how sadly it did fall just at the time Christ said it would, when Peter three times denied his Savior. But afterward Peter took his ruined life, and set it up again as Christ bade him, on the solid Rock. Let this lesson, children, teach every one of you to build your lives on the Foundation that Peter at last found.