PREFATORY NOTE. THE following Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Mark, though latently complementive of the author's Commentary on the Gospel according to St. Matthew, is yet entirely self contained.' There are, indeed, occasional references to some fuller discussions or expositions in the Commentary on St. Matthew; but the thread of continuous exposition in St. Mark is never suspended or broken off. The author conceives that he was not entitled to postulate the reader's possession of the earlier volume; and he imagines that it would have been a blunder in the structure of his present work, had it imposed, even on those readers who possess the companion volume, the irksome task of turning to it, and turning it up, ere they could ascertain his opinion on any particular passage in St. Mark. In thus endeavouring to avoid a 'rock' on which many had struck, the author was not unmindful that there was a little mälstrom-like 'Charybdis' on the other side of 'Scylla,' no less dangerous to navigators. Hence he has been on his guard not to allow any of the materials which have done duty in the Commentary on St. Matthew to float silently away into the whirlpool of circulatory repetition, in order to do double service in expounding the coincident representations in St. Mark. He hopes that whatever else his readers may miss in the present volume, they will find b throughout fresh veins of representation and illustration, the result of fresh labour and research. In St. Mark's Gospel, moreover, there is a pervading peculiarity of phraseology, (inartificial indeed, yet idiosyncratic,) which to the lover of delicate tints and flickers of presentation affords a continual incentive to fresh investigation. Hence, in truth, much of the charm, as also much of the difficulty, in expounding St. Mark. The charm is intensified if the conviction can be substantiated, (as it undoubtedly can, provided the sum of the existing evidence be impartially weighed,) that St. Peter's teaching within the circle of the early catechumens was the chief fountainhead from which St. Mark drew the substance and even the minutiae of his Gospel. The flicker of St. Peter's subjective conceptions is thus passing before us as we read. It is a fact fitted to stimulate. We feel as if we should not like to let slip any of that subtle essence, or quintessence, of mind which made the primary observations of the chief of the Lord's personal attendants distinctive as well as distinct, and his subsequent reminiscences and representations invariably vivid and frequently picturesque. Whether attributable to St. Peter's tenacity of memory, or to that unique element in his dialect which made his manner of speech, like that of every other original mind, peculiarly his own, or whether merely attributable to the reproductive idiosyncrasy of the writer, 'vexed expressions' abound in St. Mark, and give ample scope for patient, yet exciting, research. There are vexed' questions in addition, belonging to the department of Introduction, as distinguished from Exposition. In particular, there is the question of the genetic inter-relationship of the three Synoptic Gospels, a subject around which a peculiarly thorny and 'vexatious' thicket, or rather forest, of literature has, during the past eighty or ninety years, been growing up. Into this forest the expositor is invited to enter, the moment he passes from one to another of the synoptic narratives. In this new edition of his Commentary the author has, with as much care as was possible to him, revised the whole contents; and he hopes that it may prove a help to students, preachers, Sunday school teachers, and other lovers of Bible exegesis. He may add that he has taken counsel throughout of the English Revised version; but he has been gratified to observe that a very large proportiou of the Revisionists' emendations had been anticipated in the author's previous editions. FLORENTINE BANK HOUSE, INTRODUCTION TO THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. § 1. GOSPEL AND GOSPELS. It is a matter of interest and significance that, in the biblical records, we have not only gospel but Gospels. We have gospel, running like a golden thread through the whole Bible, connecting history, precept, proverb, prophecy, and binding the entire constituents of the volume of the Book' into unity. We should certainly have had no Bible at all, had there been no gospel. But in particular portions of the progressive revelation the golden gospel line becomes doubled as it were, or trebled, or multiplied in some still higher ratio. The whole texture of certain paragraphs or larger sections gleams and glows with gospel. Such are the Messianic Psalms. Such is the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. And such, of course, are the four Gospels of the New Testament. The gospel is so efflorescent in these Gospels that the lovers of the Bible have, from a very early period of the Christian era, agreed to call them, par excellence,' the Gospels. § 2. TITLE OF ST. MARK'S GOSPEL. The Gospel ascribed to St. Mark was neither by himself, nor by the subsequent compilers of the New Testament canon, designated the Gospel of Mark. The word gospel was not specifically em |