cepts given for a particular purpoRe and obligations for a limited time, and those laws that were unvarying in their nature and perpetual in their obligation. The principle in question our Lord propounds in the form of an antithetic paradox. The first part of it seemed to collide with the distinction between meats clean and unclean, which God himself had appointed and minutely specified ; and, if taken in a ceremonial sense, so it did; but understood morally, as our Lord had intended, it pointed not obscurely to the purpose for which such distinctions had been instituted. That purpose was temporary in its duration, and for the segregation of the chosen people from the mass of mankind, as well as for the symbolic intimation of the difference that should exist between the holiness to which the people of God were called, and the heathenism that prevailed around. Oar Lord meant to correct an injurious error under which the people of the Jews in general then laboured. He had rebuked their superstitious punctiliousness about certain ceremonial washings, and their sinful regardlessness of moral obligations. This naturally leads him to expose the grave mistake they made when they foolishly supposed that meats of themselves exercised any moral efficacy or possessed any moral potency. That they defiled ceremonially, and exposed to disabilities of a ceremonial kind and entailing purification, was not doubted ; but that they had any power of themselves either to cleanse or purify is here most positively denied. The cause of defilement was man's fallen nature; the source of it was within ; the seat of it was the heart ; the stagnant pool from which such polluted waters issued was deep down in the very depths of his being. Thence proceeded defilement~ of speech through the mouth, defilements of work in the conduct, defilements of thoughts in the character and con- versation. The disciples had shared the errors and prejudices of their race to a very large extent, and not understanding the strange paradoxical statement, sought an explanation in private. After a gentle reprimand for their dulness of apprehension, they were favoured by their Master with a full explanation. 3. Moral impurity. 'l'he belly is the stomach and viscera, or organs of digestion generally; the heart is used for both the intellect and affections-the whole soul. These are totally distinct ; what enters the former does not and cannot reach the latter. There is no connection between these parts of man's nature, and no compatibility between the objects that affect them. Meats only enter the stomach and intestines, and minister to man's life and strength ; even the exclusion of their refuse tends to purification rather than defilement. But the things that do defile proceed out of the heart; and they are sins against God's Law, or dispositi<ms that incline to those sins, and incentives that prompt to them. Those sins are against the commandments in the 110-called second table of the Law. According to a rough classification that has been made, some are sins against the sixth commandment, as murders, wickedness, and an evil eye; some against the seventh, as fornication, adultery, and lasciviousness; some against the eighth, as theft and deceit; some against the ninth, as blasphemies, or evil-speaking, and false witness (in St. Matthew's enumeration); and some against the tenth, as covetousness, or, literally, "reachings after more." But of the evil dispositions that lead to overt acts of sins, the chief place is occupied by evil thoughts, whether the reference is to evil thoughts in general, or to such vicious reasonings (5uw,.,,,a-µol) as those in which the Pharisees were accustomed to indulge. While such inward thoughts or reasonings are the seminal principles from which sinful actions proceed- the bitter roots from which they shoot up and grow-a leading motive to sin is specified: it is pride ({11r,p71cpa.11la, a desire to appear above others), the wish for conspicuous elevation. In pride itself the predominant element is selfishness-that selfishness that prompts men to seek the pre-eminence in all things, and to prefer self to all other persons or interests, in contrariety to the scriptural precept which directs us" in honour to prefer one another." Pride implies that overbearing demeanour and haughtiness of carriage that make men look down on others, supposing themselves so much superior. Pride centres all in self, disregarding others' interests whenever they seem to stand in the way ; at the same time proud persons, male or female, "sacrifice to their own net, and burn incense to th~ir own drag." Pride is thus a most powerful motive to sin, to selfish inrlulgence, to self-aggrandizement, to supercilious speech in regard to others, and to self-intereRt, wh.atever form if. may assume, and however much detriment may be done to the rights of others. F 1rther, one characteristic of all sin, and a name frequently used in Scripture as synonymous with "sin," is "folly" (ii4>poa-uVJ1). Thia 320 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK. [oH. vn. 1-37
l!elll!elessness denies God the glory that pertains to him, for "the fool hll8 ea.Id in hie heart., There is no God." While it thus robs God, it refuses to man his due. In the end it ruins the individual himself. "This their way is their folly." Oh, the folly of sin I The enumeration of the things which defile a man, a11 given here by St. Mark is fuller than that given by St. Matthew. The latter mentions only seven• whil; St. Mark specifies thirteen. The cause of this additional number by the latter ::Uay be found in the vices that commonly prevailed among the Romans, for whom in the first instance St. Mark wrote, as compared with those to which the Jews, whom St. Matthew more especially kept in view in his Gospel, were addicted. A comparison also of the catalogue of crimes, which St. Paul, in writing to the Romans, gives at the close of hi& first chapter, will probably confirm the same conclusion, that the cause of the difference in the enumeration is connect.ed with the different classes of sins to which persons belonging to these different nationalities were respectively addicted. Judaism at it1 worst, if this theory be correct, had greatly the advantage of pa.,oanism; so the lowest tfl'8 of Christianity is superior to heathenism.--J. J. G.