PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. Mark
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 200,681 words · 280 reading sections
The Pattern Of Service
Let me remind you, too, that still more dangerous than the pity which is not based upon, and corrected by, the look to heaven, is the pity which does not issue in strenuous work. It is easy to excite people's emotions; but it is perilous for both the operator and the subject, unless they be excited through the understa…
702 wordsSECTION 122The Pattern Of Service
But however that may be, the sluggishness of our imaginations, the very familiarity with the awful facts, our own feeble hold on Christ, our absorption in personal interests, the incompleteness and desultoriness of our communion with our Lord, do all concur with our natural selfishness to make a sadly large proportion …
1,055 wordsSECTION 123The Pattern Of Service
But the same law has its special application in regard to the enterprise of Christian missions. It defines the spirit in which Christian men should proclaim the Gospel. The effect of much well-meant Christian effort is simply to irritate. People are very quick to catch delicate intonations which reveal a secret sense,…
733 wordsSECTION 124The Pattern Of Service
Let me not be misunderstood when I speak of adapting our presentation of the Gospel to the wants of those to whom we carry it. That general statement may express the plainest dictate of Christian prudence or the most dangerous practical error. The one great truth of the Gospel wants no adaptation, by our handling, to a…
724 wordsSECTION 125The Pattern Of Service
What unlimited consciousness of sovereign dominion sounds in that imperative from His autocratic lips! It is spoken in deaf ears, but He knows that it will be heard. He speaks as the fontal source, not as the recipient channel, of healing. He anticipates no delay, no resistance. There is neither effort nor uncertainty …
853 wordsSECTION 126The Pattern Of Service
Then, however languor and despondency may sometimes tempt us, thinking of slow advancement and of dying men who fade from the place of the living before the gradual light has reached their eyes, our duty is plain--to be sure that the word we carry cannot fail. You remember the old story how, when Jerusalem was in her h…
712 wordsSECTION 127The Patient Teacher, And The Slow Scholars
The pattern for our work, dear brethren, is before us in the Lord's look, His sigh, His touch, His word. If we take Him for the example, and Him for the motive, Him for the strength, Him for the theme, Him for the reward, of our service, we may venture to look to Him as the prophecy of our success, and to be sure that …
794 wordsSECTION 128The Patient Teacher, And The Slow Scholars
And what do the questions suggest? Not only emotion very unusual in Him, yet truly human, and showing Him to be our Brother; but they suggest three distinct types of emotion, all of them dashed with pain. 'Why reason ye? Having eyes, see ye not? Do ye not remember?' That speaks of His astonishment. Do not start at the…
703 wordsSECTION 129The Patient Teacher, And The Slow Scholars
So here we have a self-revelation, as by one glimpse into a great chamber, of the deep heart of Christ, the great Teacher, moved to astonishment, grief, and indignation. II. Now let me say a word about the slow scholars. I have spoken of these questions as being rapid and repeated, and as a rain of what we may almost…
746 wordsSECTION 130The Patient Teacher, And The Slow Scholars
The last suggestion from these questions is that the cure for all that stolid insensibility, and its resulting misuse of capacity, and the absorption in daily visible things, is remembrance of His and our past--'Do ye not remember?' It was only that same morning, or the day before at the furthest, that one of the mirac…
303 wordsSECTION 131The Religious Uses Of Memory
'Do ye not remember!'--Mark viii. 18. The disciples had misunderstood our Lord's warning 'against the leaven of the Pharisees,' which they supposed to have been occasioned by their neglect to bring with them bread. Their blunder was like many others which they committed, but it seems to have singularly moved our Lord,…
700 wordsSECTION 132The Religious Uses Of Memory
Only, brethren, if we are wisely to exercise remembrance, and to discover God in the lives which, whilst they are passing, had little perception of Him, we must take into account what the meaning of all life is--that is, to make men of us after the pattern of His will. 'Not enjoyment, and not sorrow, Is our destined …
701 wordsSECTION 133The Religious Uses Of Memory
It is when you see your life in retrospect that you understand the significance of the single deeds in it. We are so apt to isolate our actions that we are startled--and it is a wholesome shock--when we see how, without knowing it, we have dropped into a habit. When each temptation comes, as the moments are passing, we…
698 wordsSECTION 134The Gradual Healing Of The Blind Man
Further, the memory of defeat may be the parent of the hope of victory. The stone Ebenezer, 'Hitherto hath the Lord helped us,' was set up to commemorate a victory that had been won on the very site where Israel, fighting the same foes, had once been beaten. There is no remembrance of failure so mistaken as that which …
653 wordsSECTION 135The Gradual Healing Of The Blind Man
Now, there may have been something about our Lord's circumstances and purposes at the time of this miracle which accounted for the great urgency with which at this period He impressed secrecy upon all around Him. What that was it is not necessary for us to inquire here, but this is worth noticing, that in obedience to …
834 wordsSECTION 136The Gradual Healing Of The Blind Man
Is there not in it, too, a lesson for all you good-hearted Christian men and women, in all your work? If you want to do anything for your afflicted brethren, there is only one way to do it-to come down to their level and get hold of their hands, and then there is some chance of doing them good. We must be content to ta…
717 wordsSECTION 137The Gradual Healing Of The Blind Man
II. We have Christ stooping to a sense-bound nature by the use of material helps. No doubt there was something in the man, as I have said, which made it advisable that these methods should be adopted. If he were the sort of person that I have described, slow of faith, not much caring about the possibility of cure, and…
689 wordsSECTION 138The Gradual Healing Of The Blind Man
III. Lastly, we have Christ accommodating the pace of His power to the slowness of the man's faith. The whole story, as I have said, is unique, and especially this part of it--'He put His hands upon him, and asked him if he saw aught.' One might have expected an answer with a little more gratitude in it, with a little…
805 wordsSECTION 139Christ'S Cross, And Ours
Ah! dear friends, 'Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in yourselves.' Desire Him to help and bless you, and He will do it. Expect Him to do it, and He will do it. Go to Him like the other blind man and say to Him--'Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me, that I may receive my sight,' and He will lay His…
746 wordsSECTION 140Christ'S Cross, And Ours
I. Note the preparation for the announcement of the Cross (verses 27-30). Why did Christ begin by asking about the popular judgment of His personality? Apparently in order to bring clearly home to the disciples that, as far as the masses were concerned, His work and theirs had failed, and had, for net result, total mis…
679 wordsSECTION 141Christ'S Cross, And Ours
The charge of silence contrasts singularly with the former employment of the Apostles as heralds of Jesus. The silence was partly punitive and partly prudential. It was punitive, inasmuch as the people had already had abundantly the proclamation of His gospel, and had cast it away. It was in accordance with the solemn …
882 wordsSECTION 142Christ'S Cross, And Ours
III. We have here the announcement of the Cross as the law for the disciples too (verses 34-38). Christ's followers must follow, but men can choose whether they will be His followers or not. So the 'must' is changed into 'let him,' and the 'if any man will' is put in the forefront. The conditions are fixed, but the cho…
733 wordsSECTION 143Christ'S Cross, And Ours
To that future our Lord passes, as His last reason for the command and motive for obeying it, in verse 38. One great hindrance to out-and-out discipleship is fear of what the world will say. Hence come compromises and weak compliance on the part of disciples too timid to stand alone, or too sensitive to face a sarcasm …
352 wordsSECTION 144The Transfiguration
'And after six days Jesus taketh with Him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and He was transfigured before them. 3. And His raimemt became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. 4. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses:…
678 wordsSECTION 145The Transfiguration
Did Jesus will His transfiguration, or did it come about without His volition, or perhaps even without His consciousness? Did it continue during all the time on the mountain, or did it pass when the second stage of the incident began? We cannot tell. Matthew and Mark both say that Jesus was transfigured 'before' the th…
813 wordsSECTION 146The Transfiguration
The voice repeated the attestation of Jesus as the 'beloved Son' of the Father, which had been given at the baptism, but with the addition, 'Hear Him,' which shows that it was now meant for the disciples, not, as at the baptism, for Jesus Himself. While the command to listen to His voice as to the voice from the cloud …
329 wordsSECTION 147'This Is My Beloved Son: Hear Him'
'And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is My beloved Son: hear Him.'--Mark ix. 7. With regard to the first part of these words spoken at the Transfiguration, they open far too large and wonderful a subject for me to do more than just touch with the tip of my fing…
764 wordsSECTION 148'This Is My Beloved Son: Hear Him'
Dear friends there is no rest anywhere else; there is no peace, no pleasure, no satisfaction--except close at His side. 'Speak Lord! for Thy servant heareth.' 'To whom shall we go but unto Thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life.' Look how these disciples, grovelling there on their faces, were raised by the gentle ha…
437 wordsSECTION 149Jesus Only!
'They saw no man any more, save Jesus only with themselves.'--Mark ix. 8. The Transfiguration was the solemn inauguration of Jesus for His sufferings and death. Moses, the founder, and Elijah, the restorer, of the Jewish polity, the great Lawgiver and the great Prophet, were present. The former had died and been myst…
412 wordsSECTION 150Christ'S Lament Over Our Faithlessness
'He answereth him and saith, O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you?'--Mark ix. 19. There is a very evident, and, I think, intentional contrast between the two scenes, of the Transfiguration, and of this healing of the maniac boy. And in nothing is the contrast more marked th…
675 wordsSECTION 151Christ'S Lament Over Our Faithlessness
Dear friends, here is 'a little window through which we may see a great matter' if we will only think of how all that solitude, and all that sorrow of uncomprehended aims, was borne lovingly and patiently, right away on to the very end, for every one of us. I know that there are many of the aspects of Christ's life in …
773 wordsSECTION 152Christ'S Lament Over Our Faithlessness
May we venture to say, as we have already hinted, that all this pain is in some mysterious way still inflicted on His loving heart? Can it be that every time we are guilty of unbelieving, unsympathetic rejection of His love, we send a pang of real pain and sorrow into the heart of Christ? It is a strange, solemn though…
736 wordsSECTION 153Christ'S Lament Over Our Faithlessness
In this connection, too, is it not striking to notice how long His short life and ministry appeared to our Lord Himself? There is to me something very pathetic in that question He addressed to one of His Apostles near the end of His pilgrimage: 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known Me?' It was…
579 wordsSECTION 154The Omnipotence Of Faith
Jesus said unto him, If them canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth.'--Mark ix. 23. The necessity and power of faith is the prominent lesson of this narrative of the healing of a demoniac boy, especially as it is told by the Evangelist Mark, The lesson is enforced by the actions of all the person…
693 wordsSECTION 155The Omnipotence Of Faith
That wide statement is meant, I suppose, for the disciples as well as for the father. 'All things are possible' both in reference to benefits to be received, and in reference to power to be exercised. 'If thou canst believe, poor suppliant father, thou shalt have thy desire. If thou canst believe, poor devil-ridden son…
686 wordsSECTION 156The Omnipotence Of Faith
In all trust in God there are two elements: a sense of need and of evil and weakness, and a confidence more or less unshaken and strong in Him, His love and power and all-sufficiency; and unless both of these two be in the heart, it is, in the nature of things, impossible, and will be impossible to all eternity, that p…
683 wordsSECTION 157The Omnipotence Of Faith
May I make a very simple, close personal application of this thought? We have as much religious life as we desire; that is, we have as much as our faith can take. There is the reason why such hosts of so-called Christians have such poor, feeble Christianity. _We_ dare not say of any, 'They have a name to live, and are …
650 wordsSECTION 158The Omnipotence Of Faith
The same thing is true of each one of us. Audacity and presumption are humility and moderation, if only we feel that 'our sufficiency is of God.' 'I can do all things' is the language of simple soberness, if we go on to say 'through Christ which strengthened me.' There is one more point, drawn from these words, viz., …
700 wordsSECTION 159Unbelieving Belief
'And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.'--Mark ix. 24. We owe to Mark's Gospel the fullest account of the pathetic incident of the healing of the demoniac boy. He alone gives us this part of the conversation between our Lord and the afflicted c…
734 wordsSECTION 160Unbelieving Belief
What we Christian teachers have to fight against is that we are charged to offer to men a blessing that they do not want, and have to create a demand before there can be any acceptance of the supply. 'Give us the leeks and garlics of Egypt,' said the Hebrews in the wilderness; 'our soul loatheth this light bread.' So i…
877 wordsSECTION 161Unbelieving Belief
II. Then, secondly, we have here the infancy of faith. As soon as the consciousness of belief dawned upon the father, and the effort to exercise it was put forth, there sprang up the consciousness of its imperfection. He would never have known that he did not believe unless he had tried to believe. So it is in regard …
724 wordsSECTION 162Unbelieving Belief
III. Notice the cry of infant faith. 'Help Thou mine unbelief' may have either of two meanings. The man's desire was either that his faith should be increased and his unbelief 'helped' by being removed by Christ's operation upon his spirit, or that Christ would 'help' him and his boy by healing the child, though the f…
725 wordsSECTION 163Unbelieving Belief
The disappointments, the weaknesses, the shameful defeats which come when our confidence fails, are another page of His lesson-book. The same Apostle of whom I have been speaking got that lesson when, standing on the billows, and, instead of looking at Christ, looking at their wrath and foam, his heart failed him, and …
308 wordsSECTION 164Receiving And Forbidding
'And He came to Capernaum: and being in the house He asked them, What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way? 34. But they held their peace: for by the way they had disputed among themselves, who should be the greatest. 35. And He sat down, and called the Twelve, and saith unto them, If any man desire to b…
1,026 wordsSECTION 165Receiving And Forbidding
II. Note the exhibition of the law in a life. Children are quick at finding out who loves them, and there would always be some hovering near for a smile from Christ. With what eyes of innocent wonder the child would look up at Him, as He gently set him there, in the open space in front of Himself! Mark does not record …
729 wordsSECTION 166Receiving And Forbidding
III. The Apostles' conscience-stricken confession of their breach of the law (verses 38-40). Peter is not spokesman this time, but John, whose conscience was more quickly pricked. At first sight, the connection of his interruption with the theme of the discourse seems to be merely the recurrence of the phrase, 'in Thy …
797 wordsSECTION 167Receiving And Forbidding
IV. We have the reward of receiving Christ's little ones set over against the retribution that seizes those who cause them to stumble (verses 41, 42). These verses seem to resume the broken thread of verse 37, whilst they also link on to the great principle laid down in verse 40. He that is 'not against' is 'for,' even…
496 wordsSECTION 168Salted With Fire
'What was it that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?'--Mark ix. 33. Was it not a strange time to squabble when they had just been told of His death? Note-- I. The variations of feeling common to the disciples and to us all: one moment 'exceeding sorrowful,' the next fighting for precedence. II. Christ's divine…
660 wordsSECTION 169Salted With Fire
The salting fire, then, which cleanses and preserves, and to which every Christian soul must submit itself, to be purged thereby, is, as I take it, primarily and fundamentally the fire of that Divine Spirit which Christ Himself told us that He had come to cast upon the earth, and yearned, in a passion of desire, to see…
740 wordsSECTION 170Salted With Fire
Nor must we forget that there is still another possible application of the words. For whilst, on the one hand, the Divine Spirit's method of delivering us is very largely that of imparting to us the warmth of ardent, devout emotion; on the other hand, a part of this method is the passing of us through the fiery trials …
792 wordsSECTION 171Salted With Fire
And so I bring you Christ's message: He will have no man to enlist in His army under false pretences. He will not deceive any of us by telling us that it is all easy work and plain sailing. Salting by fire can never be other than to the worse self an agony, just because it is to the better self a rapture. And so let us…
696 wordsSECTION 172'Salt In Yourselves'
'Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.'--Mark ix. 50. In the context 'salt' is employed to express the preserving, purifying, divine energy which is otherwise spoken of as 'fire.' The two emblems produce the same result. They both salt--that is, they cleanse and keep. And if in the one we recognise…
712 wordsSECTION 173'Salt In Yourselves'
We are sanctified in proportion as we are coming under the influence of Christian truth, which, believed by our understandings and our hearts, supplies motives to our wills which lead us to holiness by copying the example of Christ. Hence the main principle is that the cleansing energy operates on us in proportion as …
674 wordsSECTION 174Children And Childlike Men
The same principle intensified gives us a picture of heaven and of hell. In the one are the 'solemn troops and sweet societies'; in the other, no peace, no confidence, no bonds, only isolation, because sin which is selfishness lies at the foundation of the awful condition. Friends, without that salt our souls are dead…
650 wordsSECTION 175Children And Childlike Men
II. The child's nearness to Christ. 'Of such is the kingdom.' 'Except ye be converted and become like little children,' etc. Now this does not refer to innocence; for, as a matter of fact, children are not innocent, as all schoolmasters and nurses know, whatever sentimental poets may say. Innocence is not a qualificat…
598 wordsSECTION 176Almost A Disciple
'And when He was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to Him, and asked Him. Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life! 18. And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou Me good! there is none good but one, that is, God. 19. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, D…
741 wordsSECTION 177Almost A Disciple
But while His reply bears directly on the errors in the question, it has a wider significance. Either Jesus is here repudiating the notion of His own sinlessness, and acknowledging, in contradiction to every other disclosure of His self-consciousness, that He too was not through and through good, or else He is claiming…
691 wordsSECTION 178Almost A Disciple
'His countenance fell,' or, according to Mark's picturesque word, 'became lowering,' like a summer sky when thunder-clouds gather. The hope went out of his heart, and the light faded from his eager face. The prick of the sharp spear had burst the bubble of his superficial earnestness. He had probably never had anything…
706 wordsSECTION 179Christ On The Road To The Cross
'And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem; and Jesus went before them: and they were amazed; and as they followed they were afraid.' --Mark x. 32. We learn from John's Gospel that the resurrection of Lazarus precipitated the determination of the Jewish authorities to put Christ to death; and that immediately the…
757 wordsSECTION 180Christ On The Road To The Cross
But, further, Christ's character teaches us what is the highest form of such strength and tenacity, viz., gentleness. There is no need to be brusque, obstinate, angular, self-absorbed, harsh, because we are fixed and determined in our course. These things are the caricatures and the diminutions, not the true forms nor …
758 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.