The Pulpit Commentary — Mark — Volume 1 — Section 311

and the sealed ear opened to his voice and the stammering tongue proolaimed hie praise See Keble's lines- • " As thou hast touched our ears, and taught Our tongues to epeo.k thy praises plain, Quell thou each thankless, godless thought That would make fBSt our bonds again," do. C.0NOLUSION. Henceforth this man would be a living witness to Christ's power; Though it was expressly forbidden to blaze abroad his cure, all who saw him at home or at work would say, "That is the man whom Jesus healed." So let us go forth to live for Jesus, resolving that our words shall utter his praise and that our lives shall witness to his holiness, till at last another "Ephphatha I" shall be heard and we pass through the golden gates, into the land where no ears are deaf and n~ tongues are mut.e..-A. R. Vere. 1-23.-Tlle ritual and tl.e reality of purification. I. THE MOST NATURAL ACT IIAY BE PERVERTED INTO A RITUAL BIN. The disciples were seen eating with unholy hands, that is, unwashed! How this came about we are not told; probably it was a, case of necessity : there was no water to be had. Probably it was a choice between. going without food and being ritually correct, or being ritually incorrect and supplying the wants of nature. II. THE MEANING AND USE OF RITUAL IS CONSTANTLY LOST BIGHT OF BY SHALL MINDS. " The Pharisees and all the J udieans, unless for a pygmy's length they wash the hands and arms, do not eat." The Talmud (Lightfoot) directs that the hands be washed to the elbow-a rule like that here hinted at ; " pygmy " denoting the arm and hand. The custom went beyond what the original ritual required. And so the associations of the market-place were thought peculiarly profane. They carried the rule out in application to cups, jugs, copper vessels, and couches; things which cannot feel, which are not spiritual, and which therefore are no subjects of "baptism." The root of the error was : 1. Blind respect for custom. Custom commands our respect; but a blind respect defeats its end and meaning. 2. The reversal of the spiritual order. That order is : first the spiritual, then the material ; the body for the soul. The Pharisaic order was : first the material, and the spiritual through the material. 3. The post- ponement of the present to the past. What tradition of the fathers can make it a duty to neglect the welfare of the sons? The rules of the past conserved the privileges of the present; if they block the way and tend to hurt human life, they must give way. We must study the perspective of duties if we do not desire to become narrow in intelligence, and defeat the spirit of law. III. ATTACHMENT TO RITUAL :HAY ACTUALLY OBSCURE THE VIEW OF RELIGIOUS DUTY. Religion begins in the heart. Unless we love our God and our fellow-man, we shall miserably blunder in our construction of duties. Great teachers have always. placed us at this moral centre; face to face with God, in immediate relation to his universal imperative. 1. Isaiah (xxiL 13). He taught that the lips might readily be made to do duty for the heart; and that invented obediences might distract from the genuine, natural obedience of the right and loving heart. 2. Moses. To go back further in the stream of sacred tradition: no name more honoured than that of the great lawgiver of the desert. He distinctly enunciated the duty of filial reverence, founded on the instincts of the heart. How were the Pharisees carrying this out?' The way in which Christ refers to this is keenly ironical. 3. Christ himself. The Pharisees can and do actually evade the great command of filial piety under the show of obedience to the ceremonial Law. "By a general consecration to the temple of whatever might be useful to parents, it was made sacrilege to give anything to them,, because whatever was given to them was included in the vow." A miserable trickery, cheating God of his due while seeming to obey him I Tradition may be so followed as. to subvert its very essence; for there is no tradition respectable which does not enshrin& Divine command!!. IV. THE TRUE VIEW OF PUBITY RESTORED. 1. Impurity i, not from without but from within. The external defilement may be cleansed away. It is not part of the: ,nan. The moral im"Durity i,. It is only what the imagination conceives and the will <IH. VII. 1-37.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. 309