in reading the second Gospel we are in reality holding communication with an eye-witness of the deeds and an ear-witness of the words of Jesus Christ our Lord.

II.-The internal peculiarities of S. Mark's Gospel.

By far the most interesting and valuable characteristic of S. Mark's Gospel is its clear, minute, and graphic style of narrative. In this respect his Gospel stands in contrast with that of S. Matthew, of which it has sometimes been most unjustly regarded as a mere abridgment. That S. Mark was in any sense an abbreviator of S. Matthew is a notion, which (as it appears to me) can be held only by those who have taken no trouble whatever to compare the works of the two evangelists. That the greater portion of the history found in S. Mark may also be found in S. Matthew, that in the latter portion of the two Gospels the coincidence is often very close, and that S. Matthew's Gospel is much longer than that of S. Mark, all this is undoubtedly true; but if a story be taken which has been recorded by the two Evangelists, and if the two records be placed side by side and compared, it will be found in general that S. Mark, so far from being an abbreviator of S. Matthew, is much more minute and full. My own opinion, after having had the subject under consideration for some years, is, that neither did S. Matthew ever see S. Mark's Gospel in its present condition, nor S. Mark see S. Matthew's; the coincidences between the two are rather to be accounted for upon the supposition that S. Matthew had access to some of those materials, which were also and independently used in the composition of the Gospel of S. Mark.

The attention of the reader will be frequently called, in the course of the following Commentary, to points illustrating the characteristics of S. Mark's style which have been above alluded to. His attention will also be called, perhaps so frequently as to appear to him sometimes tiresome, to the relation in which

passages of this Gospel stand to parallel passages of S. Matthew. I take this opportunity of apologising to the reader if he should be offended with this feature of the Commentary, and of begging him to believe that he will find much useful employment in following out the hints which are given, and that the result of his study will be in all probability the persuasion that S. Mark's Gospel has little justice done to it by the popular estimate which has been formed of it. In the minds of many readers of the New Testament it is still, if I mistake not, a mere abbreviation of S. Matthew; an examination of the parallels between the two Evangelists will infallibly explode this notion, and consequently raise the general appreciation of the value of S. Mark's Gospel, regarded as a portion of that volume, which the Holy Spirit has indited for the benefit of the Church, and which God's providence has preserved as her chief treasure.

One distinction between the first two Gospels is to be found in the difference of the qualities of the readers, for whom they were respectively, in the first instance, chiefly designed. S. Matthew's Gospel is manifestly directed especially to Jewish readers; S. Mark's, although coming as we have seen primarily and principally from the Apostle of the circumcision, is not in any way adapted to the peculiar wants and feelings of Jews, but rather to the common wants and feelings of mankind. The openings of the two Gospels sufficiently point out the difference between them in this respect: S. Matthew's Gospel bears in its first verse the significant phrase, The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham; S. Mark no less significantly commences his Gospel with the broader description of the character of our Lord contained in the words, The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Yet if any one should that the second Gospel was written from a decidedly and exclusively Gentile point of view, he would find his supposition contradicted by the facts of the case; for

suppose

example, S. Mark quotes ancient prophecy as having been fulfilled in Christ, though not nearly so copiously as does S. Matthew; and he does not omit the story of the Syrophenician woman, containing though it does the strong language of our Lord concerning the taking away of the bread of Israelitish children and casting it to Gentile dogs. It would in fact, I think, be more correct to say, that S. Mark's Gospel was not written especially for Jews, than that it was written especially for Gentiles in the trifling circumstance of the explanation of Hebrew terms being given, it may be asserted that there is evidence of adaptation to Gentile wants, but taken on a broader and deeper view of its character and purposes it may be rather said to regard the Lord Jesus Christ and His life upon earth from that point, which does not belong exclusively either to Jew or Gentile, but is the common property of both. And thus S. Mark's Gospel appears to symbolise the real relation in which S. Peter stands to the Gentile world; S. Peter was emphatically the Apostle of the circumcision, and yet it was he who was chosen by God to be the first preacher to the Gentile world in the person of Cornelius the Centurion; and the Church of Rome, the great light of early Gentile Christianity, claims S. Peter as its principal founder. In fact, Jew and Gentile were in Christ made one, the middle wall of partition was broken down, and so an Apostle of the circumcision could not be an Apostle of the circumcision exclusively; even as the Lord, who declared Himself sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, did nevertheless gather together other sheep not of that fold. S. Mark's Gospel then is a Gentile Gospel, but it is all the more truly so because

1 Nine instances of reference to prophecy are noted in the margin of the Commentary; but it should be observed that of these, six occur in reported discourses of our Lord, and of the remaining three, viz. Chap. i. 2, 3, and Chap. xv. 28, the last is not very well supported by manuscript authority. Thus the Evangelist's own reference to the Old Testament scriptures is very sparing indeed.

it springs from the very heart of Judaism; even as Christ was lifted up from the earth to gather all men unto Him, and yet bore on His head the superscription, The King of the Jews.

One peculiarity of S. Mark's Gospel, as compared with S. Matthew's, is obvious to the most cursory reader, namely, the omission of the longer discourses and of many of the parables of the Lord. Only four parables are recorded; and the sermon on the Mount and the great woe-discourse, which in S. Matthew's Gospel open and terminate respectively the public ministry of the Lord, are by S. Mark alike omitted. In this striking fact alone we have, as I think, abundant disproof of the notion that S. Mark was an abbreviator of S. Matthew: it is easy to say that we do not know the principle upon which he abridged, and therefore cannot say positively what he would omit and what retain; but I confess myself unable to conceive of any principle of abridgment, which could lead a writer, who, with S. Matthew's Gospel before him, was preparing a new Gospel for the Gentile world, to omit deliberately from his pages so many of the solemn utterances of his Master. That S. Mark's Gospel is such as it is convinces me that the author never had S. Matthew's Gospel in his hands; and this becomes the more evident when it is observed, that S. Mark is as much fuller in the delineation of action as he is more brief in the record of words.

It is noticed in the proper place in the following Commentary that the last eleven verses of the concluding chapter are in all probability not by the hand of S. Mark himself. Assuming this to be the case we perceive that the Gospel according to S. Mark, properly so called, is a fragmentary history; and that, not only as failing to record everything which Jesus did and taught, in which sense every written history could not fail to be fragmentary, but also as closing abruptly after the record of the Resurrection, and omitting altogether the great event of the Ascension of the Lord into heaven. It may seem strange that such an omis

sion should have been made; but it is a significant fact that the omission is common to the other two Gospels which claim immediate Apostolic authority, and that only in the Gospel according to S. Luke is the Ascension made a part of the regular consecutive narrative. Possibly in the case of S. Mark we may say that the author of the Gospel confined himself strictly to those portions of the Lord's life, for which he had the written testimony of S. Peter, or which he had received orally from that Apostle; nor can we be surprised to find Apostolic teaching culminating in the Resurrection; this was the point of the message of the Apostles to the world, as we see from the book of their Acts and from their Epistles; if this were admitted, the Ascension would (so to speak) follow as a necessary consequence, for a resurrection, which again terminated in death and corruption, would have been no real triumph over the grave, and useless as a ground for the faith of mankind. And therefore, although according to the rules of art S. Luke's history must be accounted the most complete, terminating as it does with the session of the Lord Jesus after His troubles and weariness on earth in the bliss of Heaven at the right hand of the Father, still there is a beauty of their own belonging to the three other Gospels; S. Matthew, S. Peter, and S. John follow their Master until He is given back to them from the grave, and then they leave Him; and they seem to imply that He is still with the Church, as indeed He is. S. Luke says, He was parted from them; but the Apostles themselves rather conceal the parting, and dwell upon that other equally true view of the case, which is expressed in the Lord's own words as recorded by S. Matthew, Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.

For the further development of the general view which I have here endeavoured to give, I must refer to the Commentary; and I now pass on to notice those portions of Gospel history, for which we are indebted to S. Mark.