"should all fulness dwell;" that" all power in heaven and on earth" was entrusted to his bands. He was indicating, moreover, the unity of purpose and of plan that subsisted between the Father and the Son; that he was doing the will of the Father, and accom- plishing the work with which he had been commissioned. "The Father," he said, •• worketh hitherto, and I work;" "It is my meat and my drink to do the will of him that sent me." He sought thereby the Father's glory, as he himself said, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him;" and again he says, " I have glorified thee on earth: I have finished the work that thou gavest me to do." Thus here and now, as always, he sets forth his mediatorial dependence on the Father, and the eye he had to his praise: "My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me;" " He that speaketh of himself seeketh bis own glory; but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him." 3. Duty of imitatir,g the Master. As it was with the Master, so in measure is it with the disciple still. Ever and anon we must turn our eyes to bea,en. While our hands are duly employed in the daily occupations of our calling upon earth, our hearts must mount upward on the wings of faith, in praise for mercies received and in prayer for the ble55ing to be bestowed:" I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth." Otherwise our most strenuous efforts will be frustrated, our most fondly cheri,hed hopes blasted, and our highest aspirations doomed to disappointment; for "except the Lord build the house, they labour in vai11 that build it: except the Lord keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain." While we thus lean on an Almighty arm, and depend for everything on God, we must have a single eye to his praise, e,er keeping his glory as our chief end in view, and ever seeking from himself grace and strength and steady purpose to do his will "To do thy will I take delight, 0 thou my God that art ; Yea, that most holy Lu.w ot thine 1 have within my heart." 4. The sigr,ificanre of the Saviour's sigh. "He sighed ; " and no wonder, when he thought of the ruin that sin had wrought, and of the wreck which man had in consequence become. The Saviour sighed when be looked abroad on suffering humanity, when he reflected on the miseries of a. fallen race, and when especially he contemplated the living example of that misery that then stood before him. He sighed in sympathy with our sufferin!;s, "for we have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." me~sed be God for such" a merciful and faithful High Priest in thing!l pertaining to God." He sighed in sorrow for our sins. In them he saw the cause of all; in them he saw the bad and bitter fountain-head; in them he saw the fruitful source of so much woe; in them he saw that ft,arful thing that darkened heaven above us, opened hell beneath us, and cursed the earth on which we tread; in them he saw that fell infection that has disordered, in a certain sense and to a certain extent, all the members of the body and all the faculties of the soul, so that" the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint; " in them he saw the prolific germ of all those "iUs that flesh is heir to," anii of all those pangs that make the heart of humanity ache: for "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," and not only death, but with it all our woe; in them he saw, too, the grievo::is load he was himself one day to bear, whl'n he" bare our sins in his own body on ~he tree," ~o that it has been truly as te~sely 18.id- "With pitying eyes, the P1ince of pea,iP, DehclJ. our be) pleas grief; lie eu.r., and oh I amazing love I He came to our relief." .tle sighed when he thought of the works of the a~vil and his malice against man, and how human weakness had given him power to deform the body by disease, and defaco the image of the Creator in the soul of his creature. Perhaps, too, he sighed when, as has been shrewdly suggested by an <,Id divine, he saw the new temptation to sin thai the man's renewed powers would exr.ose him to-the evil things the ear would hear, the idle t1in~s the tongue would speak, the wicked things in which both organs might b& on. vn. 1-37.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARK . 329
.1111.de instrumenta.1. "Therefore," said the psa.lmist, "I will take heed to my ways, that I sin not with my tongue : I will keep my mouth with a bridle, while the wicked are before me." The explanation of the Saviour's sigh, by e. German writE:; on the miracles, though ingenious, is not sufficiently co1nprehens1ve, when be traces its cause to" the closed ear of the world" of which the dmf man was the symbol, " which does not perceive his Word, e.nd therefore ~ocs not receive it;~ and thi!l~s his v~ew commended if not confirmed, by St. Marks numerous exhortat10ns to epmtual hea.nng by me.xim, parable, and symbol. The maxim is, "If any ma~ have ~rs to h~ar, le1 him hea.r ·" and connected with it is the parable of the earth s producmg fruit afte1 the reception of the seed, or salvation attained by right hearing of the word, wbile the l)resent symbol corroborates the same truth.
"The deaf me.y hear the Saviour's voice, The fettered tongue its chain may break; But the deaf heart, the dumb by choice, '.rhe laggard soul, that will not wake, The guilt that scorns to be forgiven- These baffle e'en the spells of Heaven: In thought of these, his brows benign Not e'en in healing cloudless shine.