IL AS A MEANS OF AVENGING THE TRUTH UPON ITS ADVERSARIES. How quick they were to seize upon it and turn it to the best advantage! For a little while they had it all their own way. So infatuated were they, that they put the seeming contradiction in the strongest possible form; the antithesis is all but perfect. Not quite so, how- ever. They had to confess that he had “saved others.” The monuments of his work remained, and facts are hard to discredit. There was something in the very sound > which would recall histories of gracious sympathy and help; miracles of saving power. It was precisely this element of stubborn matter of fact which could not be accounted for on the theory of mere pretension, and which in turn vitiated their argument. A thousand presumptions will not disprove, but must yield to, a single fact. Now, the fact of Christ’s miraculous works is certified to us by those who sought to discredit and disprove them. Out of their own mouths are they condemned. They are self-sentenced to a vicious mill-round of mere logic, The natural man cannot understand the heavenly mystery.
ox. xv. 1—47.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MARR. 821
TI]. As A MEANS OF DISCIPLINING AND REWARDING FAITH. 1. That the disciples themselves did not comprehend it at first is evident from the Gospel narrative. It must have been hard for them to see what appeared the falsification of their hopes ; harder still to be taunted by those who had so cruelly slain their Master. What part may it not have had in the “cup” the Saviour himself had to drink? 2. But by this very discipline it prepared them for the inner and spiritual “ discerning of the Lord’s body.” Their spiritual susceptibilities were awakened, and they began to realize the meaning of the mystery. Gradually they were to emerge from the bewilderment and perplexity. Peter and the rest of the disciples travelled far ere they reached Pentecost, but each step in the journey of their faith was a revelation of the secret of Jesus. It was not to - human force he had submitted, but to his Father’s will. The necessity that bound Lim to the cross was a spiritual one. It was because he wished to save others abso- lutely that he would and could not save himself.—M.
Vers. 40, 41.— Women watching the cross. The prominence of women in the Gospel narrative suggests the fact that Christianity has done more to awaken the spiritual nature of women, and to furnish them with a sphere for the exercise of their special gifts and graces, than any other religion. For the first time the gospel gave to woman dignity and recognized position in spiritual things. In the gospel, the feminine as well as the masculine aspects and phases of morality are represented. Why were they at the cross ?
I, A PROOF OF THEIR ATTACHMENT TO Curist. 1. They had already shown thts, They were, some of them, of good social standing, and had command of considerable means. This advantage they had employed in the interests of Christ and his work— “they ministered unto him ” when he was in Galilee. And the service they rendered involved a certain inconvenience and trouble, for they had to follow him almost as much as his apostles. 2. Now they gave even more signal evidence. Modestly retiring to the outskirts of the rabble, they persistently watched him. They might have been excused by ordinary scruples from witnessing the horrible scene, but they could not allow themselves to go away. He still represented their highest spiritual interest, and they were willing to brave anything for his sake.
II. A TRIAL OF THEIR LOVE. It rose into heroic resolution and sacrifice. 1. How typical their experience was of that which their sisters have had to go through tn all ages! ‘They stood by helpless, upable to render any further service, It was not for them to attempt a rescue when brave men had forsaken him and fled. But they could show the virtue of passive endurance. They could prove to the Sufferer that their love was unabated, their faith forlorn, but not dead. So many a noble wife, sister, ot mother has had to stand by when loved ones have been done to death, or ruined by great concerns in which they might not interfere. They have been able only to trust and wait and pray, to comfort when they could not deliver. One consolation remained to them—they had done what they could. 2. To so try it was the grandest recognition of tts genuineness. They were accounted worthy to suffer with Christ. Their affec- tion was to pass through the fires seven times refined. Peter might be faithless, and the rest of the disciples sadly fail, but they could watch with the Saviour as his spirit sank beneath its accumulated woe.—M.
Vers. 42—47.— The burial of the Crucified. I. ProvipeD ror By Gop. There are several striking proofs of providential arrangement in the burying of the Saviour. He never stipulated as to where or how he should be buried ; his mind was too much occupied as to how he should die. Yet were great things to turn upon the manner, the time, and the place of his burial. He whose angels hid the grave of Moses, was equally careful to make known the place where his Son lay. The sepulchre was new, and in the midst of a garden, therefore isolated from other graves. The identity of the risen One is thus secured against all possibility of mistake. In inspiring the agents through whom the burial was effected, God fulfilled his own eternal appointment. The death, hastened by the unusual delicacy of the Sufferer, and the intervention of the sabbath, secured on the one hand that “not a bone should be broken,” and, on the other, that he should be buried on the day before the sabbath, his rest in the grave coinciding with the sabbatic rest of the Creator, fulfilling the week, so to speak, of the old economy,
MABK—IL 4
322 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST, MARK. {[cu. xv. 1—47.
and ending with the beginning of the first day of the next week, thus ushering in a new economy, a new creation. The garden-tumb of Joseph a fit resting-place for him who was to be the Firstfruits of the resurrection. If the cross was shameful, the tomb was honourable. “They had appointed him a grave with the despised ; and among the honoured (did he obtain it) in his death ” (Isa. lili, 9, Lange’s translation).