^ Bishop Westcott has said, " Faith is a principle of power." Yes, and Christ is the great Power which, as a magnet, draws all faith to Himself. It is to be in touch with Christ that gives faith power.
Can peach renew lost bloom,
Or violet lost perfume;
Or sullied snow turn white as overnight?
Man cannot compass it, yet never fear:
* 0. 0. Albertson.
ST. MARK 225
The leper Naaman
Shows what God will and can ;
God who worked there is working here;
Wherefore let shame, not gloom, betinge thy brow,
God who worked then is working now.
2. Christ is our great argument. He is both the glory and the defence of Christianity, The case of John Stuart Mill may be taken as a typical one. That this calm, guarded, sceptical thinker should close a life of research by acknowledging the validity of the argument from design, extolling Christianity, attributing its main power to the doctrine of an incarnate God, admitting that Christ is really historical, praising and vindicating His character, and in so many words recommending Him to the worship of men, is certainly something to make the most in- veterate unbeliever think and think again. And any man who is conversant with the chief writers of the time will perceive that John Stuart Mill is not solitary, but that, in spite of a materialistic drift, there is an under-current of the earnest, intensely ethical, philanthropic, and spiritual which is turning hearts more and more to Christ. The character of Christ was never so much or so widely appreciated as at the present day, nor has the difficulty of accounting for Him on purely natural principles ever pressed so heavily. In the history of Christ, the materialist is confronted with this question: Was this noble, self-denying, compassionate Holy One, who bore mankind on His heart, who on the Cross prayed for His murderers and resigned His spirit into the hands of His heavenly Father — was He only a fleeting combination of atoms, and was all this sublime self- devotion a delusion ? Is this life and death of Jesus a creation of human thought ? Is that great picture of God manifest in the flesh, a God so loving that He comes into human nature to suffer and die and thus win men back to Himself, simply the projection of the human heart, an ideal which it forms for itself ? Then what depths there must be in the heart that creates such an ideal and worships it ! Is this the ideal that man forms ? and is he himself only perishable matter ?
^ The history of Jesus is wholly unparalleled. It is so splendid, so wrapt in deepest mystery, so clear, so simple, and so deep, with roots through all the past, and throwing such light
ST. MARK — 15
226 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
over God and man. Is that history a human creation ? This is the difficulty that unbelief has to meet. Objections raised against particular parts of the Bible and difficulties about inspiration do not affect this. Treat the Bible as you like, you can never throw the Divine out of it. You can never obliterate the marks of a great Divine purpose in it or remove the glory of its great miracle and proof — Jesus Christ. " Lord, to whom shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal life." ^
^ J. Leckifl.
The Little Children.
Literature.
Abbey (C. J.), The Divine Love, 322.
Brown (C. J.), The Word of Life, 50.
Burrell (D. J.), The Church in the Fort, 297.
Cox (S.), The Bird's Nest, 83.
Doney (C. G.), The Throne Boom of the Soul, 183.
Gibbon (J. M.), The Children's Year, 43, 51.
Gordon (S. D.), Quiet Talks on Home Ideals, 176.
Gray (W. H.), The Children's Friend, 1.
Kuegele (F.), Country Sermons, i. 212.
Macleod (A.), Talking to the Children, 237.
Matbeson (G.), Messages of Hope, 181.
Milligan (G.), in Great Teods of the New Testament, 243.
Newbolt (W. C. E.), Counsels of Faith and Practice, 104.
Norton (J. N.), Milk and Honey, 189.
Pentecost (G. F.), Bible Studies, 85.
Shedd (W. G. T.), Sermons to the Natural Man, 379.
Smith (J.), Short Studies, 74.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, x. 413 ; xzxii. 565.
Temple (F.), Rugby Sermons, ii. 259.
Vaugban (D. J.), Questions of the Day, 55.
Vaughan (J.), Serrnons (Brighton Pulpit), v. No. 557>
Watson (A.), Christ's Authority, 296.
Christian World Pulpit, xxii. 246 (Wagstaff) ; xxiv. 280 (Aldis) ;
xxxvii. 86 (Jones). Church Pulpit Year Book, ii. 229 ; vi. 205. Contemporary Pulpit, 2nd Ser., ii. 200 (Ainger). Preacher's Magazine [1892], 437 (Campbell) ; [1897], 436 (Pearse).
sal
The Little Children.
Suffer tlie little children to come unto me ; forbid them not : for of such is the kingdom of God. — x. 14.
1. In this chapter our Lord touches, and by touching hallows, almost all the stages of human life. First, He defines and fences and dignifies matrimony. Then He passes naturally to the fruit of matrimony — little children — and lays His hands upon them. Next, He receives and guides and loves a young man who had great possessions. And the chapter closes with the highest duty and privilege of manhood, — a self-denying, consecrated life for God, leading on to the same life to be re- newed beyond the grave and for ever. "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive an hundredfold, and shall inherit everlasting life."