The Pulpit Commentary — Mark — Volume 1 — Section 144

II. THE WORST DEGREE OF SIN. Sin has its scalo, its climax. There are sine of instinct and of passion and of ignorance. When there is little light to be guided by there is little light to sin against. The next step in sin is where there is deliberation before the wrong is done. Last and worst is where not only the deliberat.e jud"ment is gone against, but the attempt is made to deny the principle of judgment in the soul itself. 'l'he hands of the watch move backwards; the lamp flags with the very abundance of oil; the man's soul dies. Over against the words "Repent I be forgiven I" stand these "Irreclaimable I unforgivable I "-J. ' Vers. 31-35.-Kinship to J~us. I. FIRST THAT WHICH IS NATURAL, AFTERWARDS THAT wmcu rs SPIRITUAL. This is One order. Our spiritual being is built up on a natural basis. Slowly the bud of the higher being unfo!ds from the plant of ea.rt-hly root. Through the home to the Church; by the love of mother end brother and sister, to the love of God and of all IT. FIRST THE SPIRITUAL, AFTERWARDS THE NATURAL. This is the order in anothe? way. The end of our being is in the spiritual; this is its ilignity, its reflection of the Divine. It claims the first thought, other things being equal. When friends stand h: the way of duty, between us and the light of truth, we must be true to the higher self. It may seem a stem rule, until we find that every low affection we renounced for the higher is given back to us bathed in a new glory.-J. Vers. 1-6. Pa.rallel pa.ssa.ges: Matt. xii. 9-14; Luke vi. a....:..11.-The man with the withered hand. L THE NATURE OF TRE DISEASE. It was a case of severe paralysis of the hand-the right hand, as St. Luke, with a physician's accuracy, informs us. The sinews were shrunken, and the hand shrivelled and dried up. And yet we owe to St. Mark's great particularity in narration and minuteness of detail a piece of information that one might rather have expected from the professional skill of" the beloved physician," Luke. St. Luke, as well as St. Matthew, uses an adjective (hpc\, equivalent to dry) to describe, in a general way, the state of the iliseased member; but St. Mark employs the participle of the perfect passive (l~71paµ.µ071v, equivalent to having been dried up), which furnishes a hint as to the origin of the ailment. While from the expression of the former two evangelists we might conclude that the ailment was congenital-that the man was born with it; we are enabled, by the term made use of in the Gospel before us, to correct that conclusion, and to trace this defect of the hand as the result ot disease or of accident. . IL V.A.BJETY OF IHSEASEB. The multitude of "ills that flesh is heir, to " is truly wonderful; the variety of iliseases that afflict poor frail humanity i1! astonishing. Whatever be the place of our abode, or wherever we travel, we find our fellow-creatures subject to weakness, pains, physical defects, wasting disease, pining sickness, and bodily ailments, too ma.ny and too various to enumerate. No continent, no island, no zone of earth, is exempt. The greatest salubrity of climate, though it may somewhat diminish the number, does not do away with cases of the kind. Though our lot be cast amid the mildness of Southern climes, or under the clear bright sky of Eastern lands; though our dwelling-place be- " Far from the winters of the West, By every breeze and season bleat:" still we find ourselves within the reach of those infirmities that seem the common lot of man. We cannot read far in the Gospels, or trace the ministry of our Lord to much length, until we fiud him surrounded by and ministering to whole troops of invalids and impotent folk.. IIL SoUBCE OF ALL DIBEABEB. If there were no sin there would be no sorrow, and if there were no sin there would be no sickness. The effects of sin extend to both body and soul. Sin has brought disease ae well as death into the world, as we read, "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death bath passed upon all men for that all have sinned." As death has thus passed upon all men, so disease, ~ore or less aggravated, at one time or other, has b?Come the lot of all; for what are pain and disease and sickness but forerunners, remote it may be, of death, and for- feitures of sin? The original punitive sentence was not Moth tumath, "Thon Hhalt be ou. m. 1-35.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 139