Mark 8

Mk. 1 THEN came together unto him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came 2 from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, 3 that is to say, with unwashen hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. 4 And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, and of brazen vessels, and tables. 5 Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why walk not thy disciples according to, but transgress, the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they M. 3 eat bread. But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the command- Mk. 8 ment of God by your tradition? For, laying aside the commandments of God, ye hold the tradition of men, as the washing of pots and cups: and many other such like things 9 ye do. And he said unto them, Full well ye reject the commandment of God, that ye M. 4 may keep your own tradition. For God commanded by Moses, saying, Honour thy father 5 and thy mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or mother, It is Corban, that is to say, a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; and honour not his father or his Mk.12 mother, he shall be free. And ye suffer him no more to do aught for his father or his 13 mother; making the word of God of none effect by your tradition, which ye have de- M. 7 livered: and many such like things do ye. Ye hypocrites, well hath Esaias prophesied 8 of you, saying, as it is written, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, 9 and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit, in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Mk.14 And when he had called all the people, he said unto them, Hearken unto me every 15 one of you, and understand: There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him. Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but the things which come out of him: that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a 16 man. If any man have ears to hear, let him hear. 17 And when he was entered into the house from the people, then came his disciples, M. 12 and said unto him, Knowest thou that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard 13 this saying? But he answered and said, Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath 14 not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. 15 And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Then his disciples asked him concerning the parable; and Peter said unto him, Declare unto us this parable. 16 And Jesus said unto them, Are ye also yet without understanding? Do ye not per- Mk.18 ceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth at the mouth into the man, it can- 19 not defile him; because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and is cast out 20 into the draught, purging all meats? And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man: for those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth 21 from the heart; and they defile the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, 22 proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, covetousness, wicked- ness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, false witness, blasphemies, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and these are the things which defile a man but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

OUTWARD obedience is invaluable, when it is the fruit of a holy heart; but all the teaching of our Lord shows that the work must begin within. Obedience is the child of Love. Prophecy, alms, and martyrdom are nothing without this inward principle. No perfection of exterior service can make up for a want of the life of God in the soul. The reformation of things outward, and the performance of good acts, unless from a principle of regard to God, are only like hanging fruits on the branches of a sapless tree, dead to the very root. So Christ taught. So the gospel everywhere affirms. J. W. A.

Mk. 3. Except they wash their hands, eat not. The Jews attached more importance to the traditional exposition than to the Scripture text itself. The duty of washing before meat is not inculcated in the law, but only in the tradition of the scribes. So rigidly did the Jews observe it, that Rabbi Akiba, being imprisoned, and having water scarcely sufficient to sustain life given him, preferred dying of thirst to eating without washing his hands. A.

5. The tradition of the elders.** The Jews distinguished between the written law and the traditional law, or “law upon the lip;” and the latter was asserted, by its more extravagant votaries, to have been orally delivered by God to Moses, and orally transmitted by him through a succession of elders. On it is founded the Talmud (or “doctrine”), which consists of the Mishna (or “repetition”) of the law, and the Gemara, or “supplement” to it; and so extravagant did the reverence for the Talmud become, that it was said to be, in relation to the law, as wine to water; to read the Scriptures was a matter of indifference, but to read the Mishna was meritorious, and to read the Gemara would be to receive the richest recompense. And it was this system of revered commentary and pious custom which Jesus now completely discountenanced. F.

M. 5. As they had specified an instance in which the traditions of the elders had been violated by his disciples, he in turn specifies an instance in which they, by their traditions, had nullified a commandment of God. No human duty was of clearer obligation than that by which a child was bound to honor and help his father and mother. The command enforcing the duty stood among the precepts of the Decalogue. But the elders had found out a way of reading it by which the selfishness or ill-will of a child might find room for exercise, under a religious garb. All that one, who desired to evade the obligation of assisting his parents, had to do, was to say “Corban” over that property on which his parents might be supposed to have a claim—to declare it to be consecrated, bound over to the Lord—and he was free. H.—It was then not lawful for him to succor his parent. And, what was most strange, he was not held to be bound by his words to devote his estate to sacred uses; but, not to relieve the parent, he was inviolably bound. J. L.—So it was that these traditionalists among the Jews quenched the instincts of nature, gave place to evil passions, and broke one of the first and plainest of the divine commands, all under a pretence of piety. H.

8. Their heart is far from me.** Even in the light of the Old Testament it was known that piety of heart was indispensable to a true fulfilment of the law. Christ himself appealed to a passage in the Old Testament (Hos. 6 : 6) in proof of this; and even the well-disposed scribe admitted it. N.—Often in the prophetic word its threats and promises are for all times of the Church: the particular event then foretold being but one fulfilment of those deeper and more general declarations of God, which shall be ever having their successive illustrations in his dealings with men. A.

Mk. 14. No further answer will our Lord give to the Pharisees than this severe retort. But first to the multitude, and afterward to his disciples, he will say a word or two of that wherein all real defilement consists—not in the outward, but in the inward. H.—The foregoing dialogue, though in the people’s hearing, was between Jesus and the Pharisaic cavillers, whose object was to disparage him with the people. But Jesus, having put them down, turns to the multitude who, at this time, were prepared to drink in everything he said, and with admirable plainness, pithiness, and brevity, lays down the great principle of real pollution, by which a world of bondage and uneasiness of conscience would be dissipated in a moment, and the sense of sin be reserved for deviations from the holy and eternal law of God. B.—Here Christ displays the same conscious, lofty superiority so often manifested in his disputes with the Pharisees; instead of softening down the offensive doctrine, he presents it more and more forcibly in proportion as they take offence. N.

15. Nothing from without a man can defile.** Nothing that is and remains external to man, and enters only into his body, not into his heart to become part of his character, can defile. The Pharisees feared defilement from their food; of this defilement our Lord speaks. L. A.—Words clear enough to us, but grand beyond thought when uttered, for they were the knell of caste, of national divisions and hatreds, and of the religious worth of external observances as such; and the inauguration of a universal religion of spirit and truth! Nothing external, they proclaimed, made clean or unclean, holy or unholy. Purity and impurity were words applicable only to the soul and its utterances and acts. The charter of spiritual religion: the abrogation of the supremacy of forms and formula forever, was at last proclaimed; the leaven of religious freedom cast into the life of humanity, in the end to leaven it throughout! G.

M. 13. The reply of Jesus was an expression of calm indifference to earthly judgment, a reference of all worth to the sole judgment of God as shown in the slow ripening of events. F.—All merely human growths—everything not planted by God—must fall; the whole Pharisaic system shall come to the ground. Let not their talk trouble you; blind are they, and those that follow them; both leaders and led are going on to destruction. N.

—14. Let them alone. This seems at first a singular counsel respecting the teachers of error. It is, however, different from, Let the error alone, or, Let the pupils of error alone. Christ very rarely entered into direct controversy with false teachers. In no single instance did he invite to or provoke a controversy with them. He devoted himself to the affirmative work of preaching the truth, and, for the most part, let the preachers of error alone. And God has rooted up their plants. Christ is, in this respect, an example to the modern Christian teacher in dealing with modern antagonisms to Christianity.

Fall into the ditch. Christ’s disciples had been assailed for eating with unwashed hands, because this was in the eyes of the Pharisees an uncleanness. Christ’s response to his disciples embodies the idea that the guidance of the Pharisees will lead directly to the foulest uncleanness. L. A.

15. The disciples were still too much ruled by Jewish views to apprehend correctly the full force of Christ’s figurative language. The form of expression was simple enough in itself; it was the strange thought which made it difficult. It was only at a later period that even Peter could learn, and that, too, by the illumination of the Holy Ghost, that everything is pure, for men, which comes pure from the Creator’s hand. “Do ye not yet understand,” said he, “that what enters a man’s mouth from without cannot defile the interior life? It is the product of the heart, it is that which comes from within, that makes a man unclean.” N.—

21. Evil thoughts—like one tiny rill of evil, and then the burst of all that black overwhelming torrent! F.

THE Pharisees had refined the law into a microscopic casuistry which prescribed for every isolated act, but Jesus brought it into the compass of a living principle in the soul. A lifetime was hardly enough to learn the rabbinical precepts respecting offerings, but Jesus virtually abrogated them all by the short utterance that “mercy was better than sacrifice.” The schools had added to the simple distinctions of the law between clean and unclean beasts, endless distinctions respecting different parts of each, and the necessary rites; the simple rule of Jesus was—It is not what enters the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes from the heart. The rabbis contended after what uses vessels should be purified in running, after what in drawn water, and how wooden and metal dishes were to be minutely discriminated. Jesus waived aside this trifling and deadly pedantry, and told his hearers to take care to have what was within clean, and then the outside would be clean also. Even the Sabbath laws, with their countless enactments, were as briefly condensed. “It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath-day.” “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.” Such teaching was unheard of in Israel. It was revolutionary in the grandest sense. G.

Section 71.—The Syrophenician Mother’s Faith. Heals One Deaf and Dumb.

Borders of Phenicia. Decapolis.

Mk. 24 AND from thence Jesus arose and departed into the borders or coasts of Tyre and Sidon; and entered into an house, and would have no man know it; but he could not be hid. For behold, a woman of Canaan, out of the same coasts, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came, and fell at his feet: and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed 26 with a devil. (The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation,) and she besought M. 23 him that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth 24 after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house 25, 26 of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But Jesus answered and said unto her, Let the children first be filled; for it is not meet to take 27 the children’s bread, and to cast it unto the dogs. And she answered and said unto him, Truth, Lord, yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs, which fall from 28 their master’s table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: for this saying, be it unto thee even as thou wilt. Go thy way: the devil is gone Mk.30 out of thy daughter. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour. And when she was come to her house, she found the devil gone out, and her daughter laid upon the bed. 31 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Gali- 32 lee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand 33 upon him. And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, 34 and he spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith 35 unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and 36 the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. And he charged them that they should tell no man: but the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal 37 they published it; and were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.

WHY was it that in this woman’s case, to use the words of an old divine, Christ “stayed long, wrest- ling with her faith, and shaking and trying whether it were fast-rooted” or no? Doubtless because he knew that it would stand the proof, and that she would come out victorious from this sore trial; and not only so, but with a stronger, higher, purer faith than if she had borne away her blessing at once. Now she has learned that men ought always to pray and not to faint; that, with God, to delay a boon is not therefore to deny it. She won the strength which Jacob had won before, from his night-long struggle with the angel. Here is the same persevering struggle on the one side, and the same persevering refusal on the other; the stronger is at last overcome by the weaker. God himself yields to the might of faith and prayer; for a later prophet, interpreting that mysterious struggle, tells us the weapons which the patriarch wielded: “He wept and made supplication unto him,” connecting with this the fact that “he had power over the angel and prevailed.” The two histories, indeed, only stand out in their full resem- blance when we keep in mind that the angel there, the angel of the covenant, was no other than that Word who, now incarnate, “blest” this woman at last, as he had blest Jacob at Peniel—in each case re- warding a faith which had said, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” Yet, when we thus speak of man overcoming God, we must never for an instant lose sight of this, that the power whereby he over- comes the resistance of God, is itself a power supplied by God. T.

This Syrophenician woman is still, after the lapse of eighteen hundred years, the model supplicant. Her very coming to Jesus was an act of heroic faith; for she came not only without invitation or promise, but in the face of fearful discouragements. Somehow she believed beforehand in his love to her, a poor Gentile mother; and this was great faith indeed. And her faith grew stronger, and shone more brightly through the progress of a trial which would have utterly extinguished that of any ordinary believer. It is faith alone which brings us into that living sympathy with God in which lies the possibility and prevailing power of prayer. Z. E.

JESUS retires from Galilee, first to the region of Tyre and Sidon; then he returns to the Decapolis; and goes afterward to the district of Cesarea Philippi, now Banias. All these were districts not un- der the jurisdiction of Herod, whose domain in- cluded only Galilee and Perea. R.

Mk. 24. The borders of Tyre and Sidon. (See map, p. 270.) It is not probable that our blessed Lord actually overpassed the limits of the Jewish land; and the true meaning is, that he came into the confines of that heathen land. T.—He had proclaimed the supreme truth that God was the great Father of all mankind, and that the human race round the world were brethren in his great household. But pity for his own nation—the Israel of the old covenant—forbade his going forth, for the time, to all races. It would at once have sealed the fate of his people, for what was offered to the heathen would have been instantly rejected by the fanatical Jew. G.

26. This woman was by birth a Canaanite, and a Syrophenician; by position a Roman subject; by culture and language a Greek; and her appeal for mercy to the Messiah of the chosen people might well look like the first-fruits of that harvest in which the good seed should spring up hereafter in Tyre and Sidon, Carthage, Greece, and Rome. F.—Phenician was the general name given to a race whose colonies were widely spread in very ancient times. One division of this race occupied the country from which they were driven out by the Israelites; and as that country bordered upon Syria, they were called Syrophenicians by the Greeks and Romans. It was to this tribe that the woman belonged. It is a pure and simple case of one belonging to the great world of heathendom coming to Jesus. H.

M. 23. Answered her not a word. He knows with whom he has to do, and he has different ways for souls differently disposed. To the feeble he makes advances, and accommodates himself to their infirmities; the strong, it pleases him to make to wait, to provoke to holy combat, in order to exercise their courage, and, at the same time, to display before the eyes of men and angels the beautiful spectacle of their victory. Thus he strengthened the faith of the woman of Canaan, while he instructed his disciples so much the more. “What coldness in his language!” you say. Yes, but what love in his heart! A. M.—Send her away. The twelve learned, at last, that even heathen “dogs” were not to be sent away unheard. G.

25. Lord, help me!** Sent to me, or not, here thou art, oh! Saviour of the unfortunate! Called, or not, here am I, a wretched mother! Thou must hear me, thou must cure my daughter, thou must drive away this demon; I will not let thee go, until thou hast delivered me! A. M.—Her words are few, but quantity is compensated by intensity of feeling and truth of conviction. Tears and cries, not words and periods, for him who hears not with human ears; who regards not the tongue, but listens to the beating of the heart. W. A. B.

26. Dogs.** She knew that, in comparing the Jews to the children of God’s family, and the heathen to the dogs without, he simply used the comparison and statement common among his people, as expressing the relation between them, without meaning to give personal offence. K.—To the Jew, and, in general, to all the nations of the East, the dog was an unclean animal, the type of profane and persecuting impiety, as the swine, with which he was associated, was the type of an inordinate and sensual impiety. A. M.

27. Such an answer might well have struck a chill into her soul; and had he not foreseen that hers was the rare trust which can see mercy and acceptance even in apparent rejection, he would not so have answered her. But not all the snows of her native Lebanon could quench the fire of love which was burning on the altar of her heart, and prompt as an echo came forth the glorious and immortal answer: Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs. F.—She, like the centurion, and under still more unfavorable circumstances, was mighty in faith; and, from the very word which seemed to make most against her, she drew an argument in her own favor. She entangled the Lord, himself most willing thus to be so entangled, in his own speech. Upon these words Luther, who has dwelt on all the circumstances of this little history with a peculiar love, and seems never weary of extolling the mighty faith of this woman, exclaims: “Like her, thou must give God right in all he says against thee, and yet must not stand off from praying, till thou overcomest as she overcame, till thou hast turned the very charges made against thee into arguments and proofs of thy need—till thou too hast taken Christ in his own words.” She consents to Christ’s declaration, not immediately to make exception against the conclusion which she draws from it, but to show how in that very declaration is involved the granting of her petition. T.—With a presence of mind that we should admire, if our attention was not absorbed by a spectacle far more beautiful, that of her faith, she arms herself against the Lord with the very weapon with which he had just pierced her: “A single crumb of that bread with which thou satisfieest the desires of thy chosen people, a single word, a single look, and my daughter shall be healed!” A. M.—To us it requires some reflection to see the exquisite fitness of this rejoinder, and to understand the strength of the faith that could stand up under such reiterated discouragement. But Jesus felt it all in one moment; and he was all the while, not merely hearing her words, but looking upon her heart. His voice altered, his countenance relaxed, and she beheld the King in all the beauty of his benignity and tenderness. K.

28. For this saying.** The words of the woman of Canaan open the heavens, triumph over the Lord, drive away the devil, and accomplish whatever she wishes. It was because these were the words of faith. Faith gives us some mysterious share in the omnipotence of God himself. If it is written: “With God, all things are possible,” it is also written: “All things are possible to him that believeth.” Fear not that pride may be engendered by this glorious power; it is exercised only in humility; it escapes when the heart is inflated; the woman of Canaan is all-powerful at the moment when she abases herself most profoundly. A. M.—The time is not passed when he comes down to wrestle with men, to be a seeming opponent to them in the great conflicts of the soul, and not surrender his blessing until it has sometimes been wrung from him by agonies of importunity; but all the while he wrestles on their side, and draws out their strength that it may lay hold of his, and so prevail. Ker.—It is voluntarily, and without prejudice to his sovereign power, that the Lord is overcome, or rather that he suffers himself to be overcome, in the contest into which he enters with us. It is he himself who has established this double rule, that unbelief should receive nothing, and that faith shall obtain all things. A. M.

O woman, great is thy faith! Many things besides had there been to commend in her—her strong maternal love, her earnestness, her perseverance, her deep humility. Over all these the Saviour passes, or rather he traces them all up to their common root—her faith in him, her trust in front of all difficulties, in opposition even to his own words and acts; her trust in his good-will to her, in his disposition to pity and help. Two instances only are recorded in which Jesus passed such an approving judgment; and it is remarkable that they are those of two Gentiles—the Roman centurion and the Syrophenician woman. H.—It is precisely this sense of unworthiness and unconditional submission to God, when revealed in his omnipotence and mercy; it is precisely faith, in this peculiarly Christian sense, which is made, throughout the New Testament, the condition of all manifestations of the grace of God. . . . The transaction affords another lesson. The Christian may comfort himself under the hardest trials and severest struggles—nay, even when his most ardent prayers appear to be unheard and unanswered—with the consoling belief that behind the veil of harshness the Father’s love conceals itself. N.

Mk. 31. Decapolis. The name given to a large and undefined region which lay around ten cities, to which peculiar privileges were granted by the Romans after their conquest of Syria. All of these, with a single exception, lay to the east and southeast of the Sea of Galilee. H.—It was a confederacy of ten free cities, in a district which, on their return from exile, the Jews had never been able to recover, and which was therefore mainly occupied by Gentiles, who formed a separate section of the Roman province. F.

33. Put his fingers. Afflicted as this man was, all other avenues of communication, save by sight and feeling, were of necessity precluded. Christ by these signs would awaken his faith, and stir up in him the expectation of a blessing. Took him aside. His purpose in this was, that apart from the tumult and interruptions of the crowd, in solitude and silence, the man might be more recipient of deep and lasting impressions; even as the same Lord does now oftentimes lead a soul apart when he would speak with it, or heal it; sets it in the solitude of a sick chamber, or in loneliness of spirit, or takes away from it earthly companions and friends. He takes it aside, as this deaf and dumb out of the multitude, that in the hush of the world’s din it may listen to him; as on a great scale he took his elect people aside into the wilderness, when he would first open their spiritual ear, and speak unto them his law. T.

34. He sighed. Why did he sigh? In a few moments, this imprisoned mind will be rejoicing in the full restoration and liberty of its action. And certainly there was no occasion for sadness in the faith of the friends who brought the man to the Healer’s feet. For nothing in all the offices of friendship is more precious to him than its intercessions. Why, then, should he sigh? There can be but one answer. In all common sights Christ saw more than our common eyes can see. To him everything, whether in nature or in man, was set into divine connections and bore some spiritual meaning. His thought passes from the one case of wretchedness before him to the vast accumulations of physical sickness and anguish, which sometimes make the earth itself look like a hospital. He sees that, back in its deep root and secret origin, not only death but disease comes by sin; that as sure as there is agony, God’s good law must somewhere have been broken. In the groan of every ailing body the Saviour heard an echo of the retributive lamentation of the whole groaning and travailing creation in its pain, crying out for his cross, and waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God. What wonder if he sighed with it? All this suffering, these stripes, he must take up, in the wonderful capacity and fulness of his reconciling work, into his loving and glorious person. More than once, these premonitions of the Garden and Calvary fell upon him; as he came to the burial-place at Bethany, as he was on the eve of working those very miracles where his perfect mastery over every kind of evil seemed to be proved, he was sad at heart, he sighed, and he wept. And this expression of his sadness shows how perfectly Christ was man. Beholding only the displays of his miracle-working omnipotence, seeing the winds and the sea, the sick and the dead, obey him, vigorous life flushing again through the paleness and stiffness of death just as light and motion did through the universe on the morning of the first creation, we might fix our attention only on his supernatural majesty, and so lose the tender sense of his human oneness with ourselves. But the sound of this sigh—such as only a human breast could heave—the sight of tears such as only a nature fashioned in all points like our own could shed—this brings him to our side. We look into those moistened eyes, and believe him. We lean on that sighing breast, and are at peace with him. Jesus sighs, and thereby the sighing soul of man is invigorated. F. D. H.

After the sigh came the utterance Ephphatha, a word belonging to that dialect of the old Hebrew language called the Aramaic, or Syro-Chaldaic, which was then current in Judea. It has recently been established by a great variety of proof, that in the days of our Saviour the Jews knew and spoke two languages; all the grown-up educated population using the Greek as well as the Aramaic tongue. Assuming that Greek was the language ordinarily employed by our Saviour, it would very naturally occur that occasionally he reverted to the old dialect, and that when he did so the words that he used should have been preserved and interpreted. H.

Be opened. It is because he proceeds instantly from sighing for the sick man to acting for him, that we know sympathy is not meant to waste itself in mere feeling, but to stimulate our active energies for useful service. All sorrow, all faith, all work are reconciled in him. For he sighs, he looks up to heaven, and then he opens the ears of the deaf, and loosens their tongues, for his praise. Give no place to that irreligious sorrow which does not look up to heaven, but only sighs on earth. Grief has two comforters, two angels that sit in the empty tomb: the prayer of faith, and work, for suffering men. F. D. H.

36. Charged them that they should tell no man. The probable reasons for these injunctions of secrecy were, his wish to avoid as much as possible the opposition of the Pharisees, which might have caused attempts upon his life before the purposes for which he came into the world were accomplished; and also to prevent any sedition or tumult among the people, arising from their mistaken notions of the Messiah as a temporal king and deliverer; by which means his enemies would have obtained the advantage they desired. Stanhope.

37. He hath done all things well. Everywhere, under all circumstances, he is animated by the same spirit, he sheds the same light, he proclaims the same law. He fulfils every duty to God, to man, and to himself, with perfect ease and freedom, and exhibits an entire conformity to the law, in the spirit as well as the letter. His life is one unbroken service of God in active and passive obedience to his holy will; one grand act of absolute love to God and love to man; of personal self-consecration to the glory of his heavenly Father, and the salvation of a fallen race. In the language of the people who were “beyond measure astonished at his works” we must say, the more we study his life: “He did all things well.” F. G.

We are daily passing through changes of our earthly history, some of bitterness, some of sweetness; some expected, some unexpected. We feel at times a difficulty in judging of these, for many of them seem so much against us; but knowing that here we see in part and know in part, remembering the love and the wisdom under whose direction all these things are happening, we put away the suggestions of unbelief, and let Faith speak out in her firmest, gladdest tone, “He hath done all things well;” and, “What we know not now, we shall know hereafter.” But when wandering by the banks of the river of the water of life, or along the jewelled walls of the New Jerusalem, we recall our past life, and, with far fresher memory than now, pass from scene to scene, remembering time’s prosperities or its adversities, its joys and sorrows; our calms and our storms, our weariness and our rest; hope blighted, hope fulfilled, disappointment, bereavement, perplexity—all the windings of our earthly route; and finding in what glory they have landed us; how blessedly they have, each of them, great and small, wrought out our holiness, our progress, and our endless recompense—then shall we know that “He hath done all things well.” An.

Section 72.—Multitudes healed. Four Thousand fed.

East Side of the Lake.

M. 29 And he went up into a mountain, and sat down there. And great multitudes came 30 unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many oth- 31 ers, and cast them down at Jesus’ feet; and he healed them; insomuch that the multi- tude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel.

Mk. 1 In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat, Jesus called 2 his disciples unto him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, 3 because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and I will not send them away fasting to their own houses, lest they faint in the way: for divers 4 of them came from far. And his disciples answered, and say unto him, From whence should we have so much bread here in the wilderness, as to satisfy so great a multitude? 5 And Jesus asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven, and a few 6 little fishes. And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake them, and gave to his disciples to set 7 before them; and they did set them before the people. And they had a few small 8 fishes: and he blessed, and commanded to set them also before them: so they did all eat, and were filled; and they took up of the broken meat that was left, seven baskets

M. 38 full. And they that did eat were four thousand men, beside women and children.

39. And he sent away the multitude; and straightway he entered into a ship with his disciples, and came into the coasts of Magdala, into the parts of Dalmanutha.

In the profound yet unconscious wisdom, in the serene purity, in the tenderness, the forbearance, the persevering love, the combined magnanimity and lowliness of that faultless life of Jesus, we “behold, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord.” As we follow in his mission of unwearied beneficence, that gentle compassionate being in whom sorrow ever found its best consoler, and penitence its pure yet pitying friend; as we note how, wherever he came, the cry of the wretched awaited him—wherever he went, the blessings of them that were ready to perish followed his steps; how the hungry blessed him for food, the homeless for shelter, the heavy-laden for rest; how, one touch from his hand and the frozen blood of the leper flowed with the warm pulse of health—one word from his lips, and the eyes of the blind gleamed back their gratitude upon him; how, too, far deeper ills than these—the pangs of conscious guilt, the woes of the troubled conscience, the incurable wound of remorse, the inner maladies that oftenest baffle mortal skill, found ever in him their most tender yet most potent healer; and finally, as we observe in the agent of all this wondrous working a simplicity, a self-forgetfulness, a certain calm unobtrusiveness, that in his mightiest acts bespeaks no effort and courts no observation or applause; as we witness all this prodigality of goodness and majestic ease of power, does not the mind involuntarily ascend to that Being whose name is Almighty Love—does not the exclamation rise spontaneously to the lip, “Surely God is here?” C.

It is implied that those with whom our Lord associated on these shores were accustomed to out- door life. They meet on the mountain to hear him preach; they follow him into a desert place to be fed; they spend whole days there without any ap- parent provision for either shelter, sleep, or food; they are found in the open courts of houses or on the shore of the lake at all times. Now all the specifications are here, just as they should be—the mountain, the desert place, the shore, the open court, the climate so warm as to lead the people into the open air, the present habits of the people— everything in exact accord with the gospel narra- tives. The inhabitants not only go forth into the country as represented in the New Testament, but they remain there, and sleep in the open air, if occasion require, without the slightest inconvenience. Instructions addressed to such a people, assembled in the open country or on the seaside, would naturally, almost necessarily, abound in illustrations drawn from country life and from surrounding objects. No others would so seize upon their attention, be so readily comprehended, or so tenaciously remembered. Accordingly, we hear the divine Teacher exclaim at Shechem, “Lift up your eyes to the fields, already white to the harvest. Pray ye the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into the fields.” Thus, too, he speaks of the vineyards; of the good branches purged; of the dry ones gathered for the fire; of the penny-a-day laborers standing in the market waiting to be hired, and of their receiving their wages at the close of each day. Such things as these we now see constantly, daily, and to the minutest shade of verbal accuracy. All these allusions are perfectly natural and appropriate to the country, the people, the Teacher, the age, and every other circumstance mentioned or implied in the evangelical narratives. We have the originals still before us. The teachings and illustrations of our Lord would have been out of place in any other country except this. They could not have been uttered anywhere else. W. M. T.

The events which follow describe a period of apparent retirement, spent partly in Galilee, partly north of Galilee in the districts about Cesarea Philippi. This period, up to his departure from Galilee to fulfil the ministry more fully described by John, is devoted chiefly to instructing his disciples respecting the kingdom of God. L. A.

2. Three days they had now been with him, and, as many of them came from a distance, their food was exhausted. Jesus pitied them, and seeing their faith, and unwilling that they should faint by the way, once more spread for his people a table in the wilderness. F.

4. Their question here hardly indicates a doubt; it is elicited by Christ’s previous question, and is such as they might readily have proposed, if they wished merely to leave all to Christ without suggesting, as they never did throughout all his ministry, the performance of a miracle. L. A.

6. His miracles in bread and in wine were far less grand and less beautiful than the works of the Father they represented, in making the corn to grow in the valleys, and the grapes to drink the sunlight on the hill-sides of the world, with all their infintudes of tender gradation and delicate mystery of birth. But the Son of the Father be praised, who, as it were, condensed these mysteries before us, and let us see the precious gifts coming at once from gracious hands—hands that love could kiss and nails could wound. McD.—It is as instructive as it is remarkable, that on only two occasions did our Lord create food; and miraculously provide money on only one—leaving the law of God not only to its righteous but beneficent course, “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” Guthrie. (Compare Section 66, Feeding of 5,000.)

M. 39. Dalmanutha. Just before reaching Mejdel (Magdala) we crossed a little open valley, with a few corn-fields and gardens straggling among the ruins of a village, and some large and more ancient foundations by several copious fountains, probably identified with Dalmanutha. H. B. T. (See illustration and map, Section 26.)

Section 73.—Accuses Pharisees, and cautions Disciples.

Magdala. Plain of Butaiha.