Though this bird is too well known to need any account being given of him, yet being rendered so memorable in Scripture, from the circumstance of the apostle Peter's denial of Christ, I cannot pass it by without remarking, in allusion to that striking event, how slender the means which the Lord is pleased sometimes to make use of, to answer the most important purposes! The crowing of a cock is enough, in the Lord's hand, to accomplish the Lord's design. No one but Peter understood what the crowing of this cock meant; but to him it became more powerful than the sound of thunder. Such are the slenderest events in common life, when the Lord commissions them to be his messengers! Some of the Fathers have drawn a resemblance between the crowing of the cock, and the ministry of God's word. For as Peter heard the first crowing of the cock without the least emotion, so do men hear the word of God, when unaccompanied with grace, untouched and unconcerned. But when that word of God is sent home to the heart, by the powerful conviction of the Spirit of God, like the eye of Jesus which looked upon Peter, as the cock crew the second time, then the word is rendered effectual, and, like Peter, the sinner is led forth to weep bitterly. (Luke 22:61)