Mark 9

M. 1 THE Pharisees also with the Sadducees came forth, and began to question with him; 2 and, tempting him, desired that he would shew them a sign from heaven. He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather, for 3 the sky is red; and in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day, for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not Mk.12 discern the signs of the times? And he sighed deeply in his spirit, and saith, Why doth this wicked and adulterous generation seek after a sign? Verily, I say unto you, 13 there shall no sign be given to this generation, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and entering into the ship again, departed to the other side. 14 And when his disciples were come to the other side, they had forgotten to take

15 bread; neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf. Then Jesus charged them, saying, Take heed, and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees, and of the leaven of Herod. And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is 16 because we have taken no bread. Which when Jesus perceived, he said unto them, O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? 17 Perceive ye not yet, neither understand? Have ye your heart yet hardened? Having 18 eyes, see ye not? And having ears, hear ye not? And do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments 19 took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve. And when the seven loaves among the four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? And they said, Seven. 20 M. 11 And he said unto them, How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees? Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.

He sighed deeply in his spirit. Everywhere as he looked he saw that soul that had sprung a pure, holy, happy thing from his hands, now filled with selfishness and pride, and envy and impurity, and all ungodliness—that soul that had been destined for the companionship of God and angels, now ripening for the blackness of darkness forever! And can we doubt that his was an anguish at the sight into which no finite mind can enter? He could feel for external sufferings. He looked up to heaven and sighed for the deaf. He wept, and groaned in spirit for the dead. But what were external suffering and death to this? To him the world was strewn with a more awful than material desolation—with the wreck of spiritual grandeur, the memorials of lost and ruined souls. C.

1. The multitude having been fed [on the eastern shore] and sent away, Jesus had sailed across the lake, landing on its western shore [at Magdala] between Tiberias and Capernaum. He had scarcely reappeared in the neighborhood in which most of his wonderful works had been wrought, when, once again, in their old spirit of contemptuous challenge, the Pharisees demand that he would show them a sign from heaven. Now, however, for the first time, the Sadducees appear by their side, leaguing themselves with the Pharisees in a joint rejection of Christ—in slighting all that he had already said and done—in counting it insufficient to substantiate any claim on his part to be their Messiah, and in demanding the exhibition of some great wonder in the heavens. H.— The Pharisees were accompanied with their rivals and enemies the Sadducees, that skeptical sect, half-religious, half-political, to which at this time belonged the two high-oriests, as well as the members of the reigning family. Every section of the ruling classes—the Pharisees, formidable from their religious weight among the people; the Sadducees, few in number but powerful from wealth and position; the Herodians, representing the influence of the Romans, and of their nominees the tetrarchs; the scribes and lawyers, bringing to bear the authority of their orthodoxy and their learning—were all united against him in one firm phalanx of conspiracy and opposition, and were determined above all things to hinder his preaching, and to alienate from him, as far as was practicable, the affections of the people among whom most of his mighty works were done. F.

3. Discern the times. The Jews had been, and were, most blind to the signs of the times, at all the great crises of their history; and particularly to the times in which they were then living. The sceptre had departed from Judah, the law-giver no longer came forth from between his feet: yet they discerned none of these things. A.— Christ’s question is, Cannot ye discern the signs or tokens of the time appointed, by symbol and prophet in the O. T., for the coming of the Messiah?—in the overthrow of the throne of Herod and the subjection of Israel to Rome, in the degradation, political and moral, of the realm, in the coming of John the Baptist in the spirit of Elijah, and in the miracles wrought for the blessing of the people in fulfilment of such prophecies as that of Isaiah 61: 1-3. L. A.

Mk. 12. Why seek a sign? No “sign” could avail where there was no sympathy. The truth he came to proclaim appealed to the heart, and must be its own evidence, winning its way by its own divine beauty into humble and ready breasts. External proofs could only establish external facts.

G.—A third time Jesus repels them with an allusion to the great “sign” of his resurrection. H. M.

13. He left them.** He did not press his mercies on those who rejected them. As in afterdays his nation were suffered to prefer their robber and murderer to the Lord of life, so now the Galileans were suffered to keep their Pharisees and lose their Christ. He left them as he had left the Gadarenes—rejected, not suffered to rest even in his home; with heavy heart, solemnly and sadly he left them—left them then and there—left them, to revisit, indeed, once more their neighborhood, but never again to return publicly—never again to work miracles, to teach or preach. F.

15. The Pharisees were the formalists of the first century, the Sadducees the rationalists, the Herodians the unprincipled and worldly politicians. The leaven against which Christ warns his disciples is that of formalism and pretence, of sneering unbelief, and of the craft and cunning of worldliness. L. A.—Leaven. It is from the penetrating and diffusive power of leaven that the comparison, for good or bad, is derived. The Herodians were more a political than a religious sect, the dependents and supporters of the dynasty of Herod. These, though directly opposed to the Pharisees, were yet united with them in their persecution of our Lord. And their leaven was the same—hypocrisy. A.

19,20. Baskets . . . twelve . . . seven.** Profuse as were our Lord’s miracles, we see from this that they were not wrought at random, but that he carefully noted their minutest details, and desired that this should be done by those who witnessed, as doubtless by all who read the record of them. Even the different kinds of baskets used at the two miraculous feedings—so carefully noted in the two narratives—are here also referred to; the one smaller, of which there were twelve, the other much larger, of which there were seven. B.

M. 12. The doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Religious error commonly wears the semblance of truth; often begins in the distortion or perversion of some particular truth to the neglect of other truths in their systematic and harmonious relations to the body of doctrine. Error in religious faith or practice is likened to leaven, because, being within the system, its tendency is to spread, to infect whatever it touches, and to cause fermentation. The Church of Christ has need to be on the lookout for signs of the two kinds of leaven indicated by our Lord—the Pharisaic leaven of formalism, the Sadducean leaven of rationalism. J. P. T.

Section 74.—Heals a Blind Man. Peter’s Great Confession and Christ’s Reply.

Bethsaida Julias. Cesarea Philippi.

Mk. 22 And he cometh to Bethsaida; and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town; and when he had spit on his eyes, and put his hands upon him, he asked him if he saw aught. And he looked up, and said, I see men as trees walking. After that he put his hands again upon his eyes, and made him look up: and he was restored, and saw every man clearly. And he sent him away to his house, saying, Neither go into the town, nor tell it to any in the town. 27 And Jesus went out, and his disciples, into the coasts and towns of Cesarea Philippi. And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him. And by the way he asked them, saying, Whom do men say, that I, the Son of man, am? And they answered, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or that one of the old prophets is risen again. And he saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said unto him, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth, shall be loosed in 20 heaven. Then he straitly charged and commanded his disciples, that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

WE, in this distant age, acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, our Redeemer and Lord. With the thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands who in the ages past have loved him, and now praise him in heaven, with all the living of every kindred and people and tongue who now trust and serve him, we bow before him, and join the great confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Him we behold a sorrowful man in the dimness of a far-off age and land, burdened and smitten by the power of sin, suffering for us, the just for the unjust, to bring us to God. Him we behold above the convulsions of the ages, the halo about his majestic head shining as the sun down all the tract of time, his voice speaking promise and peace amid the confusion of human affairs. Him we behold seated on the right hand of majesty on high, all power given unto him in heaven and on earth, and on his head are many crowns. Him we joyfully confess “King of kings and Lord of lords;” we offer the prayer which he has taught us: “Thy kingdom come;” we accept the command and the promise which he has given us: “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you;” and, in the expectation that his kingdom shall fill the earth, we consecrate our lives to his service. And, entering into the joy of all the redeemed, with all who have tasted and sſen that the Lord is gracious, we offer him our homage: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing; for thou hast redeemed us to God out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, unto him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.” S. Harris.

ABOVE Perea the tetrarchy of Philip reached to the slopes of Hermon on the north, and away to the desert on the east. It included the provinces of Gaulonitis, Iturea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Batanea. Gaulonitis—still known as Golan—reached from Cesarea Philippi, or Panias, on the slopes of Mount Hermon, to the south of the Sea of Galilee, stretching back twenty to thirty miles, in barren uplands of volcanic origin, to the green pastures of Batanea or Bashan; with the district of Iturea on its north, the lava plateau of Trachonitis on its east, and the equally waste tract of Auranitis, or the Hauran, on the south. Gaulonitis looked over toward Galilee from a range of hills running parallel with the Jordan, north and south. Besides Cesarea Philippi, at its extreme north, the province boasted the town of Bethsaida, rebuilt by Philip, and called after the daughter of Augustus. It lay in a green opening at the upper end of the Lake of Galilee.

In the lifetime of Christ, a large Jewish population lived in all these districts, in the midst of much larger numbers of Syrians, Arabs, Greeks, and Phoenicians, under the rule of Philip, the son of Herod and of Cleopatra of Jerusalem. The best of Herod’s sons, he retained not only the good-will of his family, but was held in high esteem by the Romans, and the Jews especially honored him as sprung from a daughter of Zion. During a reign of thirty-seven years, he was no less gentle to his subjects than peaceful toward his neighbors. His reign continued through the whole life of our Lord; but he is not mentioned in the gospels, though it is a noble tribute to him that Jesus once and again took refuge in his territories. G.

From the eastern side of the Lake of Tiberias, Jesus went with his disciples up the course of the Jordan, staying at Bethsaida, where he healed a blind man, to Cesarea Philippi, near the sources of the river. This city, at the very extremity of the Holy Land, marking the northmost limit of our Saviour’s travels, was the scene of some most memorable events; events designed to prepare the disciples for the consummation now rapidly approaching. Now the time was come for a full and intelligent profession of their faith. Mk. 22. Bethsaida. There were two places of this name: 1. The native place of Andrew, Peter, and Philip was on the west side of the lake. Dr. Robinson places it at ‘Ain et-Tabigah, a short distance north of Khan Minyeh, which he identifies with Capernaum. 2. The town here mentioned was northeast of the lake. It was formerly a village, but rebuilt and adorned by Philip the tetrarch, and raised to the dignity of a town under the name of Julias, after the daughter of the emperor. S.—About two miles up from the entrance of the Jordan into the lake is the ford and the mound or “tell” of Bethsaida Julias. It is necessary to notice the distinctness of the two Beth-

saidas. Here, on the east side, our Lord fed the five thousand, and then sent the people away to the other side, toward the other Bethsaida. H. B. T. (See map, page 247.)

23. The Lord links on his power, as was frequent with him, to forms in use among men; working through these forms something higher than they could have produced. Thus he bade his disciples anoint the sick with oil—one of the most esteemed helps for healing in the East. Not the oil, but his

Word was to heal, yet without the oil the disciples might have found it too hard to believe in the power which they were exerting—those who through their faith were to be healed, in the power which should heal them.

25. Not all at once are the old errors and confusions put to flight; not all at once do they see clearly: for a while there remains much of their old blindness; they see men but as trees walking. Yet in good time Christ finishes the work which he has begun; he lays his hands on them anew, and they see every man clearly. T.

27. Cesarea Philippi. A town, Baal-Gad—named from the Canaanite god of fortune—had occupied the site from immemorial antiquity, but Philip had rebuilt it splendidly, three years before Christ’s birth, and, in accordance with the prevailing flattery of the emperor, had called it Cesarea in honor of Augustus. The worship of the shepherd god Pan, to whom a cave out of which burst the waters of the Jordan was sacred, had given its second name, Panias—now, Banias—to the place. It was one of the loveliest spots in the Holy Land, built on a terfilled with the ruins of a temple. From the cave, from the ruins, from every chink and cranny in the soil and rocks around, waters gush forth, which soon collect into a torrent, dash in sheets of foam down a rocky bed, and at length plunge over a precipice into a deep, dark ravine. This is one of the great fountains of the Jordan. . . . But a deeper and holier interest is attached to the spot. Beneath the shadow of that battlemented height, and along the banks of that stream, our Lord and his disciples wandered; and on one of those peaks above, Peter, James, and John obtained a glimpse of heaven’s glory in the Transfiguration. J. L. P.

One Source of the Jordan.

race of rock, part of the range of Hermon. From the hill on which the town stood—one of the lower spurs of Hermon—the view ranged over all northern Palestine, from the plains of Phenicia to the hills of Samaria. In the northwest rose the dark gigantic mountain-forms of Lebanon; to the south stretched out the rich table-land of the Hauran. From Hermon, not from Zion or the Mount of Olives, one beholds “the good land, the land of brooks, of waters, of fountains, of depths that spring out of the valleys and hills.” G.

We wandered for hours among the ruins of Cesarea Philippi, where hewn stones, massive foundations, and fragments of granite columns testify alike to former strength and grandeur. The site, unlike most others in Palestine, is not less remarkable for natural beauty than for classic and sacred associations. Here are rugged mountain and wooded vale, battlemented height and gushing stream, crumbling ruin and wide-spreading plain, all combined in one glorious picture. Behind the ruins rises a cliff of ruddy limestone. At its base is a dark cave, now nearly

29. Whom say ye that I am? He had never openly spoken of his Messiahship. John indeed had borne witness to him, and to those who could receive it he had indirectly intimated that he was the Son of God. But it was his will that the revelation should dawn gradually on the minds of his children; that it should spring more from the truths he spake, and the life he lived, than from the wonders which he wrought. It was in the Son of man that they were to recognize the Son of God. F.

M. 16. Thou art the Christ of God. It was, indeed, an amazing utterance. The twelve had been the daily witnesses of the human simplicity and poverty of his life, his homelessness, his weary wanderings afoot, and all the circumstances of his constant humiliation, which might have counterbalanced the great memories which their privileged intimacy had afforded, and obscured their spiritual significance. Yet they had broken through the hereditary national prejudice of their race; they had disregarded the judgment of their spiritual rulers and leaders; risen above the utmost ideas of those around; and had seen in their lowly rejected Master the true Lord of the new kingdom of God. Nor is the fact less wonderful that the life and words of Jesus, seen thus closely, should have created such a lofty and holy conception of his spiritual greatness, amid all the counteractions of outward fact and daily familiarity. In spite of all, he was the Malka Meschicha—the King-Messiah—to those who had known him best. G.—This acknowledgment itself might have been made by Peter at an earlier period; but the way in which he made it at that critical moment, and the feeling which inspired it, showed that he had obtained a new intuition of Christ as the Son of God. It was for this that Christ called him “blessed,” because the drawing of the Father had led him to the Son, and the Father had revealed himself to him in the Son. N.

17. Never did even the lips of Jesus utter more memorable words. It was his own testimony of himself. It was the promise that they who can acknowledge it are blessed. It was the revealed fact that they only can acknowledge it who are led thereto by the Spirit of God. It told mankind forever that only by heavenly grace can the full knowledge of that truth be obtained. It was the laying of the corner-stone of the Church of Christ, and the earliest occasion on which was uttered that memorable word, thereafter to be so intimately blended with the history of the world. F.—In the faith which thus expressed itself, Jesus saw the germ of all that living faith by which true believers of every age were to be animated—that faith which was to form the very life and strength of the community, the Church, which he was to gather out from among the nations—the fruit of God’s own work within human souls. H.

18. This rock. Banias, the site of Cesarea Philippi, is one of the most grand and picturesque places in all Palestine. Immediately behind, Hermon, the highest peak of Anti-Libanus, rises to a height of ten thousand feet, densely wooded on its side, and its summit diademed with eternal snow, pure as the azure sky above it. A little way to the left of the village, there stands the majestic ruin of the castle of Banias, built on the rocky crest of a projecting spur of Hermon, which rises a thousand feet above the village, and it is itself several hundred feet higher. Is it possible to doubt that the eye of the great Master and his disciples was turned, while he spoke, to that castle upon its rocky base, filling up the whole view eastward, and that he doubled the impression of his sayings, as he so often did, by surrounding them with the framework and casting on them the coloring of a natural picture? A. Thomson.

Thou art Peter, etc. The word petra, here translated rock, has the generic sense, a mass of rock, and is never used in the signification of petros (Peter), a single stone. It is employed here, not only to distinguish the word from petros, the proper name in thou art Peter, but as more consentaneous with the idea of foundation, which, in the case of edifices designed to be durable, was composed, if possible, of the living rock. J. J. O.—The end and aim of his question is not Peter but Christ. Here is the clew to the interpretation of our Lord’s words to Peter, “On this Petra I will build my Church.” And hence we are led to believe that the Rock is CHRIST. Again, in the O. T., as far as the word Rock is used figuratively as a foundation to build upon (as it is used here), it is used of God and of him alone. The language of the N. T. is similar. He who builds on Christ’s words, builds on a rock (M. 7 : 24, 25). And Paul says (1 Cor. 3 : 11), “Other foundation can no man lay than that which lieth"—not, is laid, as the apostles are laid on the foundation, but which lieth by its own spontaneous act, as the foundation—JESUS CHRIST, i. e., he who is JESUS as man, and CHRIST as the Son of the living God; which is Peter’s confession here. What He says is this: “I myself, now confessed by thee to be both God and man, am the Rock of the Church. This is the foundation on which it is built.” And because Peter had confessed him as such, he says to Peter, “Thou hast confessed me, and I will now confess thee. Thou art a genuine Petros of me, the divine Petra. And whosoever would be a living stone, a Peter, must imitate thee in this thy true confession of me the living Rock; for upon this Rock, that is, on myself, believed and confessed to be both God and man, I will build my Church.” W.

The word petros, in its highest figurative sense of “a stone,” when applied to Peter, can represent only one true believer, or faithful member of Christ’s Church, that is, one out of the great multitude of true believers in Christ, who, as figurative stones, form altogether the glorious spiritual building of Christ’s Church, and not the foundation on which that Church is built; because that figurative character cannot, consistently with truth, be applied to any other person than to God, or to Christ alone. A due consideration also of the second noun, petra, “a rock,” will demonstrate that the supreme title of the rock, which, in other texts of Holy Scripture, is applied to Jehovah, or God, alone, most certainly was not intended by our Lord to be understood as applicable to his disciple Peter; but only to that true testimony which Peter had just before declared concerning the divine dignity of the Messiah—“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” G. T.

The true interpretation is to be found in the Hebrew custom of giving significant names, not solely, or even chiefly, to describe qualities in the persons who bore them, but to commemorate truths in which they were concerned. It is simply absurd to insist on finding in the words, “Thou art Peter,” the necessary antecedent to “on this rock will I build my Church.” The true connection is this: “Thou art rightly called Peter,” for thou hast uttered a confession which embodies the foundation of Christian truth, the divine nature and the true Messiahship of Jesus Christ; and upon this rock will I build my Church. The concurrent testimony, both of prophecy and of the New Testament, points to Christ himself as the Rock, and the only foundation of his Church; and surely it must be his strength, and not Peter’s, which forms a basis too steadfast for the powers of destruction (“the gates of Hades”) to prevail against! But still, in a secondary sense, the apostles are spoken of, together with the prophets, as the foundation on which the Church is built, but in subordination to “Jesus Christ, the chief cornerstone;” and in this sense Peter himself was one of the first stones of the edifice, of which he himself calls all believers “living stones.” His position in the Church is then illustrated by another figure (verse 19), which has been equally perverted; as if the servant who has charge of the keys of a house were almost on a level with the master himself. The event furnished the simple and natural interpretation, when, on the day of Pentecost, Peter was the first to admit a multitude of the believing Jews, and afterward, in the house of Cornelius, a number of Gentile proselytes, into the Christian Church. He did both as the organ of the other apostles, who shared his action in the first case, and confirmed it in the second; for to them Christ afterward gave the same privilege that he now gave to Peter. The only distinction between him and the other apostles is a priority in time, corresponding to the priority of his confession of Christ. S.

We find Simon Peter, not only in the lists of the apostles, but also in their history, prominent on various occasions before the rest. Sometimes he speaks in their name; sometimes answers when all are addressed; sometimes our Lord addresses him as principal even among the three favored ones; sometimes he is addressed by others as representing the whole. He appears as the organ of the apostles after our Lord’s ascension; the first speech, and apparently that which decided the council, is spoken by him. All this accords well with the bold and energetic character of Peter, and originated in the unerring discernment and appointment of our Lord himself, who saw in him a person adapted to take precedence of the rest in the founding of his Church. That, however, no such idea was current among the apostles as that he was destined to be the primate of the future Church is as clear as the facts above mentioned. For (1) no trace of such a preëminence is found in all the epistles of the other apostles; but when he is mentioned it is either, as in 1 Cor. 9: 5, as one of the apostles, one example among many, but in no wise the chief; or, as in Gal. 2: 7, 8, with a distinct account of a peculiar province of duty and preaching being allotted to him, viz., the apostleship of the circumcision, as distinguished from Paul, to whom was given the apostleship of the uncircumcision; or, as in Gal. 2: 9, as one of the principal pillars, together with James and John; or, as in Gal. 2: 11, as subject to rebuke from Paul as from an equal. And (2) wherever by our Lord himself the future constitution of his Church is alluded to, or by the apostles its actual constitution, no hint of any such primacy is given, but the apostles are spoken of as absolutely equal (Matt. 19: 27, 28; 20: 26, 28; Eph. 2: 20). Again (3), in the two epistles which we have from his own hand, there is nothing for, but everything against, such a supposition. He exhorts the presbyters as being their co-presbyter; describes himself as a partaker of the glory that shall be revealed; addresses his second epistle to them that have obtained the like precious faith with ourselves, and makes not the slightest allusion to any preëminence over the other apostles. A.

Three times after this the dispute arises among them which should be the greatest—a dispute which never could have arisen had Jesus already openly and distinctly assigned the primacy to Peter—and a dispute, we may add, which never would have been settled as Jesus in each case settled it, had any such primacy been ever intended to be conveyed by him. H.—Were it not a matter of history, it would have been deemed incredible that on so baseless a foundation should have been rested the fantastic claim that abnormal power should be conceded to the bishops of a Church which almost certainly Peter did not found, and in a city in which there is no indisputable proof that he ever set his foot. The immense arrogancies of sacerdotalism; the disgraceful abuses of the confessional; the imaginary power of absolving from oaths; the ambitious assumption of a right to crush and control the civil power; the extravagant usurpation of infallibility in wielding the dangerous weapons of anathema and excommunication; the colossal tyrannies of the Popedom, and the detestable cruelties of the Inquisition—all these abominations are, we may hope, henceforth and forever, things of the past. But the Church of Christ remains, of which Peter was a living stone. The powers of hell have not prevailed against it. F.

This is the first occasion on which Jesus used that word—the church; and he named it in his own lifetime but once again. He did everything to lay the true and only foundation of that Church; but he did almost nothing with his own hand to erect or organize it. H.—The word church occurs but once besides in the gospels, and there in the same sense as here, viz., the congregation of the faithful; only there (M. 18: 17) it is one portion of that congregation, and here the whole. A.

19. All that was said here to Peter was said twice afterward by Christ to all the twelve and to all the Church. You have but to read M. 18: 18, 19, and J. 20: 19–23, to be fully satisfied that, put what interpretation you may upon the words spoken at Cesarea Philippi to Peter, they conveyed to him no power or privilege beyond that which Jesus conferred upon the entire college of the apostles, and in its collective capacity upon the Church. H.—In his Hebrew and Talmudical Exerciations, Lightfoot shows that the words “to loose and to bind” were first used in doctrine and in judgments concerning things allowed or not allowed in the law. Secondly, that to bind is the same with to forbid, or to declare forbidden. To think that Christ (he continues), when he used the common phrase, was not understood by his hearers, in the common and vulgar sense, shall I call it a matter of laughter, or of madness? To this, therefore, do these words amount: When the time was come wherein the Mosaic law, as to some part of it, was to be continued and to last forever, he granted Peter here, and to the rest of the apostles (chap. 18: 18), a power to abolish or confirm what they thought good; being taught this, and led by the Holy Spirit, as if he should say, “Whatsoever ye shall bind in the law of Moses, that is, forbid, it shall be forbidden, the divine authority confirming it; and whatsoever ye shall loose, that is, permit, or shall teach that it is permitted and lawful, shall be lawful and permitted.” Hence they bound, that is, forbade, circumcision to the believers; eating of things offered to idols, of things strangled, and of blood for a time, to the Gentiles; and that which they bound on earth was confirmed in heaven. They loosed, that is, allowed, purification to Paul, and to four other brethren, for the shunning of scandal (Acts 21: 24): and, in a word, by these words of Christ it was committed to them, the Holy Spirit directing, that they should make decrees concerning religion, as to the use and rejection of Mosaic rites and judgments, and that either for a time, or forever. G. T.

20. Tell no man.** Because the apostles were not as yet fully schooled in the doctrine of the true nature of Christ’s kingdom and office, and would not be so till the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon them; also because Christ desired not to exasperate his enemies, but allow them longer time to consider the evidence of his works. W.—The prohibition was doubtless given with a view to prevent them from diffusing the expectations of Messiah which they then entertained, and thus leading the people to political undertakings in opposition to the objects of Christ. N.

16–19. The declaration of Peter being suppressed, the Church and Christianity became only vain words, the ministry only a usurpation, the sacraments a sacrilegious sport. The meaning, the truth of all these things is only in these words of Peter, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Thou art the Christ, the anointed of the Lord, possessed of that threefold unction, which, under the ancient law, was shared between kings, priests, and prophets. Thou art the King of mankind; thou art the sovereign Prophet to whom the Spirit was given without measure; thou art the eternal Priest, offering to God in thy life and in thy death the reparation of which sacrifice is only the emblem. Thou art the Son of the living God, of that God who has manifested himself within the circle of time, has mingled his history with our history, and become a personal God, a true God. Thou art the Mediator, uniting in thyself all the fulness of divinity, and all the fulness of humanity, the living tie between God and man; in whom are reconciled the eternal Creator, and the creature formed in his image. Yes, thou art less than nothing for conscience and salvation, or thou art indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God. Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God, or there is no Church—no hope, no future, no heaven, no God; and a little dust moistened with a few tears expresses the whole destiny of poor human nature. A. V.

Section 75.—Peter rebuked, and Disciples urged to Self-denial.

Cesarea Philippi.

M. 21 And from that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, and to teach them, how that he, the Son of man, must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. And he spake that saying openly. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee. Mk.33 But when he had turned about, and looked on his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying,

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but the things that be of men.

34. And when he had called the people unto him, with his disciples also, he said unto them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross 35 daily, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will 36 lose his life for my sake and the gospel’s, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul, or be cast away? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be 38 ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his M. 27 Father’s, and of the holy angels. For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. 28 And he said unto them, Verily, I say unto you, That there be some of them that stand here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God come with power, the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

PETER, elated with his own spiritual insight and the blessing pronounced upon himself and his confession, with the impetuosity of his nature attempted to take his Lord to account for apparently contradicting that confession by announcing his sufferings and death. But Jesus thus linked his humanity to his divinity, his work of redemption upon earth to his glory as the Son of God. The kingdom of heaven would be opened through his sacrifice upon the cross, and ever after through the preaching of Christ crucified. The confession of Christ, the Son of God, must be coupled with the confession of Jesus, the suffering Redeemer. Hence his disciples must follow him in the spirit of self-renunciation—each for himself taking up his cross. The true life consists in spiritual union with Christ, in the culture of the soul in holiness, and in the realization of fellowship with God. This is the only blessedness. He who seeks his happiness in this world and its belongings will miss the inner life of the spirit, which is the life eternal. And when he quits the world, and the world itself passes away, all that he had gained of earth will avail nothing for the peace and salvation of his soul. The crucified Son of man shall one day manifest himself as the Son of God in the glory of his Father. They who would then be owned as in his kingdom must here confess and serve, with humility and sacrifice, their crucified Lord. J. P. T.

M. 21. First, he simply proclaims, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand;” then he explains the principles and laws of that kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount; then in the parables by the sea, he sets forth in figures the nature of its progress and the obstacles it will encounter; but not until, by no direct word of his, but by gradual acquaintance with him, the disciples have come to the full faith that he is the Messiah, the Son of God, does he begin to foretell to them his cross. L. A.—Christ confirmed his apostles in their confession of his Messianic dignity. But he knew that their minds were still tinctured with the ordinary ideas and expectations of a visible kingdom to be founded by Messiah; and he, therefore, gradually taught them that it was by his own sufferings that the kingdom of God was to be established. N.—When their own faith was confirmed beyond all wavering by the mighty fact of his resurrection, when their hearts had been filled with the new Shechinah of God’s Holy Spirit, then, but not till then, would the hour have come for them to go forth and teach all nations that Jesus was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God. But although they now knew him, they knew nothing as yet of the way in which it was his will to carry out his divine purposes. F.

One coming unto his own, and by his own received not; walking in lowliness all his days; a man of many deeply-hidden griefs, misunderstood by the mass of the people, despised and rejected by their rulers, judged and condemned as a deceiver of the people, a vilifier of Moses, a blasphemer against God; crucified at last as a malefactor—it had never entered into their thoughts that such a one could be their Messiah. He might suffer somewhat, perhaps, at the hands of his own and Israel’s enemies; possibly he might have to submit to death, the common lot of all men; but that he should suffer at the hands of the very people over whom he came to reign, and that by their hands he should be put to death—no throne erected, and no kingdom won—this was utterly contradictory to their conceptions and their belief. Yet all this was true; and from their earlier and false ideas the disciples had to be weaned. During all his previous converse with them he had carefully abstained from saying anything about his approaching sufferings and death. He had allowed them to take the natural impression which his teaching and miracle-working, and the whole tenor of his life and conversation, were fitted to make upon honest, devout-minded men. Their knowledge of him, their faith in him, he had left to grow, till now, as represented in the confession of Peter, it seemed strong enough to bear some pressure. They might now be told what it had been out of time to tell them earlier. H.—Therefore he began, calmly and deliberately, to reveal to them his intended journey to Jerusalem, his rejection by the leaders of his nation, the anguish and insult that awaited him, his violent death, his resurrection on the third day. F.

Elders, chief priests, and scribes. The elders were leaders in the Jewish nation. Their office dates from the patriarchal era. Their age gave them their authority as counsellors and leaders; hence their name. These elders exercised certain not very well-defined political functions; were organized by Moses into a body; but existed as a recognized class of men before his time. From them were selected certain representatives of the lay element in the Sanhedrim, the supreme court of the Jewish nation in the time of Christ. The chief priests were the heads of the priestly courses; the scribes were the Jewish rabbis, the writers and teachers of the law. Christ’s language here represents the Sanhedrim, which was composed of these three classes, laymen, priests, and teachers, and constituted the tribunal before which he was tried, and by which he was condemned to death. L. A.

Mk. 33. As the Saviour had just before exalted Peter so highly, when he testified to that which had not been revealed to him by flesh and blood, but by the Father in heaven, so now he reproved him as severely for an utterance inspired by a love too much debased by flesh and blood. N.—Christ saw with the lightning glance of his spirit in the words of Peter a suggestion not so much of his as of Satan’s; as he had in the wilderness suggested more directly, that there was a shorter way to the kingdom of his glory than by the cross of his shame; and to him the words are properly and primarily addressed; although in reaching him enough glances off from them to constitute a most real rebuke for Peter. T.—In calling Peter an offence, Jesus compared him to a stone in the path over which the wayfarer stumbles. The comparison must have sunk deeply into the apostle’s mind, for he too in his epistle warns his readers against some to whom, because they believe not, the headstone of the corcorner became “a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence.” F.

34. He would seize the opportunity to proclaim once more that not in his own case alone, but in the case of all his true followers, self-denial, self-sacrifice, must be undergone. A number of the people, who had assembled at the sight of Jesus and his apostles passing by, he called to him, as if wishing to intimate that what he had now to say was meant for all—was to be taken up, repeated, and spread abroad, as addressed to the wide world of mankind. H.

Will come. As soon as you begin to turn your feet in coming, you will feel the cross, but as soon as you feel the cross you will feel that it is eased for you. Pain will not vanish, but become a privilege. Self-denial will not be annihilated, but will be welcome. A new power will come. F. D. H.

Deny himself. The essence of that repenting enjoined by the gospel is the change of mind to which reflection and compunction lead—a change of the whole mind in desire, feeling, thought, purpose, action, a change in the whole spirit and intent of life as toward God and his truth, and all that affects character; and inasmuch as the heart has yielded to carnal, selfish, worldly desires and aims, it must renounce this way of life as the first step toward the kingdom of God. Hence Christ insisted so much that if any man would become his disciple, he must begin by denying himself—must put self down in order to set up Christ as his king. J. P. T.

Take up his cross daily. The thing imparted in this daily cross is self-denial, and with self-denial more or less of pain; of pain that has many alleviations, but that in few cases can ever be expected wholly to cease, and that no earnest pilgrim of Zion should ever wish to wholly cease. Think of all the fettered but impatient vices, the tolerated imperfections, the residues of old follies, the rash impulses of even the better nature, the self-deceits, the masked and plausible weaknesses, the self-excusings, the concealed reluctances, that beset even the holiest among us, and we will incline to the conviction, that where life is but too short for discipline we ought not to covet too much repose before the grave. Circumstantially the cross may vary, but its purpose is the same in all; and that purpose our Lord has here, with great precision, assigned. W. A. B.

The point of duty for us, as for the Master, is not to seek the cross, but by the cross to seek the glory of the resurrection, which is found in no other path. The cross, for the cross, never; but the cross for the Lord, always; for no man can accept the crucified one without the cross, except he take the shadow for the substance. Christianity without the cross is Christianity without Christ. A. M.—Every one is to take up his cross: not the trouble of another man, but that which is sent for his own trial, and adapted to his own case. Many complain that they could have borne anything else but that present evil under which they are suffering! God knew that, and therefore sent it, to teach them patience, and to make them fly to him for help and support under the pressing sense of their own weakness. W. J.—After all, the self-made trial is a poor disciplinarian weapon. There is a subtle, masterly irritant and provoking point in the genuine natural trial, and in the natural crossness of events, which the artificial cannot manage; we can no more make our trials than we can make our feelings. In this way moderate deprivations are in some cases more difficult to bear than extreme ones. And so it is often the case that what we must do as simply right, is just the hardest thing to do. J. B. M.

“It is difficult,” said an old thinker in the things of faith, “and yet not difficult, to be a Christian; only be in earnest, and take not up the gospel as a trivial thing, but upon both thy shoulders. Make not light of thy load for Christ, and Christ will make it light for thee.” Our faith is for the life that now is, or else it is no faith to fit us for the life to come; and it works out its hallowed alleviations for all the disquietude of these laboring and heavy-laden hearts, not by transforming the conditions of their lot, but, while leaving these just as they are, by bringing the inner man into such one-ness of life with the Master, that he, the great burden-bearer of all our humanity, shall be their perpetual passover and their peace. F. D. H.

36. What is a man profited? A question which comes the most home to every man’s concern, of any that can possibly enter into his thoughts. It implies that the salvation of a man’s soul is so infinitely more important to him, so beyond and above anything he can get or anything he can lose, anything he can enjoy or suffer on this side the grave, that nothing which the world offers can make up for the loss of it, or be a compensation when that is at stake. Paley.—There was one living who, scarcely in a figure, might be said to have the whole world. The Roman Emperor Tiberius was at that moment the most powerful of living men, the absolute, undisputed, deified ruler of all that was fairest and richest in the kingdoms of the earth. There was no control to his power, no limit to his wealth, no restraint upon his pleasures. What came of it all? He was, as Pliny calls him, confessedly “the most gloomy of mankind.” And from the home of his hidden infamies, from the island where on a scale so splendid he had tried the experiment of what happiness can be achieved by pressing the world’s most absolute authority, and the world’s guiltiest indulgences, into the service of an exclusively selfish life, he wrote to his servile and corrupted senate, “What to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel that they are daily destroying me, if I know.” F.

37. Exchange for his soul. For if a man once lose his soul, where shall he find an equivalent in value for it; that by which it can be redeemed or bought again? H.—It is of all things most certain that a soul living consciously in sin is living without God, and to be without God is to be without hope. This, too, is certain, that the longer a man thus lives the more does absence from God deepen the sense of dislike, and the more difficult and improbable will be his return. The thought of this may not trouble some very much at present, because they feel as if they can live without God in a very pleasurable way, and they do not see why they should ever have a greater necessity for him. They can put friendships and occupations in his room, and contrive to forget him. But when these pass, as pass they must, and perish like flowers on the edge of a gulf, the awful depth of the chasm will be seen. When fold after fold which now closes the eye of the soul is torn off, and it is compelled to look on eternal realities, how will it stand the gaze? This loss of God must then be felt to be that loss of the soul of which the Saviour speaks, when he asks, What shall a man give in exchange for it? And when he who made the soul, and loved it so much, puts the issue before us so solemnly, should it not bring us seriously to question ourselves, and to resolve to give place to nothing that will cloud our clear view of God, and never to betray Christ and the homage we owe him for the whole world? Ker.

38. What hinders many from a full embrace of Christ and all the blessings of his salvation, is a desire to go with the multitude; a shrinking, through shame, from anything that would separate them from the world. Upon the ears of such the solemn words of our Lord fall with power: “Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his glory.” H.—Come in his glory. He clearly points out that the glory which they had expected to attend the present coming of the Messiah was reserved for a future time. K.—And as clearly indicates that their cross-bearing and self-denial was, like his own, but for a time, and to eventuate in “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” J. G. B.—The evident tendency of these words was to prepare the minds of his disciples for the treatment which both he and they were to undergo, and at the same time to raise their drooping spirits by setting before their eyes his own exaltation, and their glorious rewards in another life. P.

M. 28. I find no satisfactory explanation of this prediction except in that mightiest judgment act of the Son of man, which the world has yet seen, the destruction of Jerusalem. This event, when the Lord spake, was some forty years distant, or more. To men of full age it was not then a mere nugatory prediction, that they should live to see this event, at once so terrible and so magnificent; as these words of Christ compel us to believe that, if only for one apostle, yet for more than one of the disciples then standing there, it was fulfilled. T.—This declaration refers, certainly not to the Transfiguration which follows (for the expression “some of them,” etc., indicates a distant event), but to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the full manifestation of the kingdom of Christ by the annihilation of the Jewish polity: which event, in this aspect as well as in all its attendant details, was a type and earnest of the final coming of Christ. This dreadful destruction was indeed judgment beginning at the house of God. A.—If, as all Scripture shows, “the kingdom of the Son of man” be understood in a sense primarily spiritual, then there can be no difficulty in understanding this prophecy in the sense that, ere all of them passed away, the foundations of that kingdom should have been established forever in the abolition of the old and the establishment of the new dispensation. Three of them were immediately to see him transfigured; all but one were to be witnesses of his resurrection; one at least—the beloved disciple—was to survive that capture of Jerusalem and destruction of the temple which were to render impossible any literal fulfilment of the Mosaic law. F.

The World and the Soul.—The seat of life is the soul. There is the centre of all movement, the spring of power, the point of intense concern. All greatness proceeds thence. All well-directed anxieties converge thither. Blind as we become to the magnificent fact, whatever interests agitate markets and families and states—whatever influences play through street, shop, congress, the academy and college, no less than the church—terminate at last in the soul. For that, in the original design, however we as individuals pervert or come short of it, the farmer’s tillage rears and reaps the summer’s grain on all the quiet meadows and slopes; for that the arms of labor swing in ten thousand workshops; for that the printing-press is worked and types are cast; for that, at last, if the Sermon on the Mount is true, the lily blossoms and the sparrow flies. Institutions are founded, whether their founders remember it or not, statute-books are written, cities are built, new countries are colonized, factories occupy the streams, exploring expeditions animate the commercial map of the world, for the soul. It is not, after all, for the fortunes that are made, the fabrics woven, the speed attained, the money multiplied, the world’s fairs exhibited. These are only means to an end; and that end is man’s spiritual education. By far the deepest question you can ask respecting any of these mighty agencies is, What kind of souls is it helping to rear? what sort of characters is it fashioning? Is it leaving men with a larger or leaner humanity, with a purer or weaker piety? And the most momentous question any individual can put to himself, respecting all these forms of outward activity and acquisition, is this old evangelical and personal one: “What shall it profit a man, though he gain the whole world and lose his soul?” F. D. II.

Oh! the untold world of agony contained in that expression—“a lost soul!” agony exactly in proportion to the nobleness of original powers. For it is a strange and mournful truth, that the qualities which calculate to shine are exactly those which minister to the worst ruin. God’s highest gifts—talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power—they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. It is the awful warning, and not the excuse of evil, that the light which leads astray is light from heaven. F. W. R.

Section 76.—The Transfiguration.

Spur of Mount Hermon.