Excerpt from The Gospel According to Mark

Hence, in tracing the Gospel history, Mark seems to have viewed his subject mainly in the light of that prophecy of the patriarch Jacob: Judah is a young lion (gen. Xlix. 9) - a pre diction taken up once more by Hosea (xi. 10) and by Amos (i. And swelling into a note of triumph in the last pages of Scripture (rev. V. Accordingly, although the great adversary of that Lion, even Satan himself, goeth about like a roaring lion (1 Pet. V. He is not a lion in the genuine and spiritual sense. The simile applies only allegorically, in reference to his bold appearance in the open persecution of believers; in its higher symbolical meaning, that title belongs to the Lord Himself. In this respect, Peter has well described the agency of Christ (acts x. 38) as healing all that were oppressed of the devil. Mark delineates Christ as, from first to last, pro-eminently the victorious Conqueror of all Satanic powers. He has left us a record of the manifestation of Christ's power, when that great Lion seized upon the ancient world, and of His brief but decisive victory, after which only the ruins of the ancient world are left, which in turn furnish the materials for the new one.

This Gospel of the intrinsic power and life of Christ, in its original freshness, as it is reflected in the kindred soul of the Evangelist, possesses a great variety of distinguishing characteristics, both of a negative and positive kind. It is on the ground that it Springs out into record from his own peculiar individual life, that we account for the conciseness of this the briefest of the Gospels, and not primarily on that of the historical occasion for its composition (mark, one of Peter's Evangelists, relating the events of evangelical history by way of explaining his preach ing). We can understand thus, why there is apparent in it no deliberate leisurely contem plation of things and events; why meditation gives place to rapid and picturesque description; why he omits the longer discourses of J csus, and, when he does record any of His discourses, selects those burning words of controversy, denunciation, judgment, or triumph; why, occasion ally, there is an indulgence in hasty, dashing expression (such as not to put on two coats, ch. Vi. And towards the close he even breaks off abruptly and begins again (ch. Xvi. And why the arrangement of his material, though distinct, is so often obscured by the rapid suc cession of the great events described, that Papias suggested that Mark had not written in the order of succession, such as be conceived it to have been (of) raga, Euseb. Iii.

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