discourses of our Lord, Mark pictures his deeds. Hence, while Matthew gives us fifteen of his parables, Mark reproduces only four, and that in a condensed form. ‘ Mark does not wear the flowing robes of Matthew. His dress is ‘for speed suc- cinct.’ Swift-paced, incisive, his narrative proceeds straight to the goal, like a Roman soldier on his march to battle.” His Gospel is the Gospel of the present, not of the past. His refer- ences to the Old Testament, with the exception of i. 2, 3, are quotations occurring in the discourses of Christ, or cited by others. They belong, as Canon Farrar observes, “to the nar- rative, not to the recorder ” (xv. 28 is an interpolation). The word vopos, law, never occurs in Mark nor in Peter.
Mark’s is, therefore, pre-eminently the pictorial Gospel: the Gospel of detail. “There is,” says Canon Westcott, “ perhaps not one narrative which he gives in common with Matthew and Luke, to which he does not contribute some special feature.” Thus he adds to John the Baptist’s picture of loosing the shoe- latchet another touch, in the words to stoop down (i. 7). He uses a more graphic term to describe the opening of the heavens at Christ’s baptism. According to Matthew and Luke the heavens were opened (avedyInoav) ; Mark depicts them as rent asunder (ayifouévous; i. 10). Matthew and Luke repre- sent Jesus as led (dvjy9n) into the wilderness to be tempted ; Mark as driven (éeBdadrev); adding, He was with the wild beasts ; to which some detect a reference in Peter’s comparison of the devil to a roaring lion (1 Pet. v. 8). He gives a realistic touch to the story of James and John forsaking their employ- ment at the call of Jesus, by adding that they left their father with the hired servants (i. 20). After the discourse from the boat to the multitude upon the shore, Mark alone tells us that the disciples sent away the multitude, and throws in the little details, they took him as he was ; and there were with them other little ships (iv. 86). His account of the storm which fol- lowed is more vivid than Matthew’s or Luke’s. He pictures the waves beating into the boat, and the boat beginning ¢o fill ; notes the steersman’s cushion at the stern on which the sleep- ing Lord’s head reposed (iv. 87, 38); and throws the awaking by the disciples and the stilling of the tempest into a dramatic