CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 10:46-52. See R.V. for several graphic touches obscured by A.V.
Mark 10:51. Rabboni.—The highest title he could give, the gradations being Rab, Rabbi, Rabban, Rabboni. See John 20:16.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 10:46-52
(PARALLELS: Matthew 20:29-34; Luke 18:35-43; Luke 19:1-28.)
Bartimeus.—There are three powers which, interacting upon one another, work out the drama of life. There is the power within us, the power of self. There is the power without us, the power of the world. In proportion as we can make the power within operative on the power without we are successful. But above these two powers there is a third—the power of God over all. If the power of self, working in conjunction with the power of the world, brings about success or failure, the realisation of the power of God is the way to that best success—the success over ourselves and the world, the victory of character. The story of Bartimeus shews us a man in difficulties, and exhibits his conduct when face to face with these three powers of life.
I. The world is the first power we shall think of in this case.—
1. The world has its power. There is something which the world can do, and that something is what the world on the whole very readily does. Bartimeus found that this was the case. The world gave pity, also practical evidence of its pity. The world gave its alms.
2. But the world has its limitations. The one thing which the man most needed was the one thing which the world could not give. The world could not supply his real need, for his real need was sight. The world seldom can reach the real needs of men. She can bestow honour, she can alleviate suffering, but she cannot heal or satisfy the soul. The gifts which the world gave to Bartimeus, kind and well intentioned as they were, were just those gifts which reminded him most keenly of his misfortune. In receiving the alms of men he felt his dependence. Men in all ages have found out the world and its limitations. Like Severus, who had reached the supreme height of power, they have tried everything and found that everything was naught. Like Augustine, they have found that the heart which is made for greater things cannot rest in the lesser. Like Lacordaire, they have exclaimed with indignation and loathing, “I cannot leave my heart in this heap of mud.” The world, great, kindly, and generous as it is, cannot satisfy the desire of the soul.
3. The world, too, has its moods. The society in which we live is kindly and well disposed. It is not hard-hearted, but it likes to help in its own way, and it is relentless in its opposition to those who strike out their own line. Society has its moods as well as its limitations. The story of Bartimeus illustrates this, for it not only shews us what the world could do and what it could not do, but it also shews us what it did do. The action of the world in this respect may be described in one word—hindrance. It hindered the man in his attempt to realise his most cherished dreams. He desired to be no longer a profitless and dependent creature, but to be restored to the possession of sight, and with it to that capacity for self-direction which is requisite for true life. The moment came when it was within his grasp. The Healer, the Prophet of Nazareth, endowed with the powers of restoration, was near. Bartimeus lifted up his voice in earnest appeal. Society chided Bartimeus for his cry. “They rebuked him that he should hold his peace.” The picture is true to life. The world is intolerant of the best aspirations of men; it resents the attitude of those who take a line of their own. The world has a way of stifling the utterance of the great and unexpected voices which are lifted up in earnest desire or noble appeal. Genius has found it so. The world has hindered, frowned upon, and too often clamoured down the man whose intellectual range was beyond the grasp of average dulness. Philanthropy has found the same. Even a Howard and a Wilberforce cannot escape detraction; and society has shouted against those who have cried aloud in the cause of humanity, and has bidden them to hold their peace. The reformer has fared no better. There are always Eliabs to be found who chide the aspirations of young faith. And even apostles proclaiming a nobler life and spiritual emancipation to society will be clamoured against as those “who turn the world upside-down.”
II. What the man Bartimeus did for himself.—There are two principles which are essential to independent success. One is the principle of self-dependence, the other is that of single-mindedness. Bartimeus illustrates both these principles in his action.
1. He was self-reliant. He took his own course. He did not abandon his purpose because of the clamour of the crowd. This is a lesson which life soon teaches us. Men begin life by hoping much from their patrons. They know men who have influence; they look forward to an easy grasp upon the object of their desires. But they soon unlearn this delusion. Like Dr. Johnson, they discover that too often the office of patron is to leave the struggling man unassisted, and to encumber him with help when he no longer stands in need of it. Men soon discover that their own best patron is their self-reliance. It is this quality which Bartimeus displays. He is heedless of the crowd; but it is not the heedlessness of a coarse and indifferent nature. It is the heedlessness of a man who knows what he wants, and who has the courage to dare all to secure it. It is the quality of soul which Wellington displayed when he planted himself on the heights of Torres Vedras, and held to his choice in spite of the clamour, abuse, and accusations of home ignorance. He knew what he was doing, and he was in earnest. He was not to be turned aside from his purpose because of the empty chatter of impatient and inexperienced criticism.
2. The companion virtue of self-reliance ought to be single-mindedness. Single-mindedness seeks, by concentration of all the attention and all the powers upon one thing, to secure the end in view. It is the spirit which will not be turned aside or seduced. It knows that some sacrifice is needed, and it is ready to pay the price. It compels the attention of the whole mind to the thing in hand. It will cast overboard the most precious freightage in order to reach its harbour successfully. This spirit also Bartimeus displays. It is necessary for him to reach Christ. He must run no risk of failure. The long robe about him was useful enough as he sat by the gate of the city the whole day through. But it might prove a hindrance to his advancing footsteps. There is no hesitation in his action. If there is any chance of its being in his way, it must be sacrificed. He flings aside his robe, and so, unimpeded, advances towards the Lord. Greatness possesses the courage which can sacrifice what may be useful, when it may also prove a temptation or an encumbrance to its advancing march. Cæsar knows when to burn his boats. Industry knows that many a social pleasure and many an hour of relaxation must ruthlessly be sacrificed if ultimate victory is to be achieved. Like Lord Eldon, it knows that the way to success is to live like a hermit and work like a horse! The message of successful lives is the lesson of a single-minded devotion to the object in view. That which is the counsel of successful lives is the command of religion. For the sake of the higher life the encumbrances of the lower must be laid aside. The garments of the old life must be left behind. When the soul is filled with one strong passion, such single-mindedness becomes easy. To Bartimeus it was as nothing to cast aside his robe. He thirsted for sight. What was raiment compared with such a dowry? To those who thirst for the vision of God no sacrifice seems too great. Indeed, it is only those who are possessed of a spirit ready to sacrifice all who can behold that light.
III. What Christ did for him.—When we have spoken of self-reliance and single-mindedness, we have not said the last word about success. As far as temporal life is a conflict with the world these two are indispensable factors of success. But there are ranges of life which lie outside the compelling forces of energy and self-denial. Life is not merely energy, industry, achievement. There is place for repose and worship as well as for zealous activity. Man is not merely a busy, achieving sort of creature; he is a receptive being also. Self-assertion works well against the world; but in the presence of Him who is greater than the world, the spirit of self-assertion drops away. As Bartimeus stands before Christ his whole demeanour is changed. He is no longer the strong and stout pleader of his own cause and his own need. Jesus commanded him to be brought; and when he stands before Christ he is silent till Christ speaks. He stands as one who waits. It is right that it should be so. There are gifts which come only to waiting souls. There are utterances which are open to all the world, which only they hear who wait to hear—
“Celestial harmonies then only heard
When the heart listens.”
This calm and trustful attitude of mind has a kind of natural devoutness in it. It recognises a source of inspiration greater than itself. Great men of different faiths and different ages have realised this. Avicenna found his subtlest syllogisms given him after meditation and worship. Haydn prayed before he composed. Many a man of genius can truly say of some of his best works, “They were given to me.” Inspirations are for men who can and will wait upon God. In the Albert Memorial Chapel at Windsor one of the most suggestive pictures on the walls exhibits this aspect of the soul waiting for God’s gift. David and the harpists of Israel are represented with their instruments in their hands. Their fingers hang listless upon the strings. Their heads are bowed. All the appliances of their art are in their grasp, but the Divine gift is not yet. They are waiting for the inspiration from on high. So Bartimeus, the man of energy and self-assertion, waits before Christ for the gift which his force and his determination cannot seize, which must be given as love’s free gift. He waits till Christ asks, “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” To say that our Lord shewed love to the blind man is to say what is true enough and obvious enough; but it does not help us to the full appreciation of Christ’s personal dealing with Bartimeus. His action shewed much more than a vague and limp benevolence. His love was ever exerted with an everlasting moral influence upon those whom He helped.
1. There was sensibility. Here, amid the clamour of the crowd, He detects the voice of want, just as at another time He knew at once when the weary and suffering woman laid a trembling finger on His robe. His love was of that delicate and responsive order which makes kindness twice welcome in being so obviously the outcome of a sympathetic and ready heart.
2. There was decision. No clamour or noise of discountenancing crowds could stay the march of His love. Jesus, in the midst of the outcry against Bartimeus, stood and commanded him to be brought. In one moment the clamouring crowd changes its demeanour. “Be of good cheer. Rise: He calleth thee.” Nothing succeeds like success. A little firmness, and the strong man brings the whole multitude over to his side. The man who knows what he means, and has the requisite firmness to pursue it regardless of noise, is like a solid mass floating on the surface of the water which draws the purposeless jetsam to its side.
3. There was judgment. He does not heal the blind man all at once. There is a pause; there is a question. “What wilt thou that I should do unto thee?” The need was obvious, but it was well the man should express it. The interchange of speech created a feeling of confidence; the bond between him and Christ became one through which moral sympathy might flow. It was no cold exercise of power; it was no heartless magic which restored the sight. It was power exercised by wise and loving sympathy. Here we touch a principle which may shed light upon the mystery of prayer. Why go through the form of asking God to help us, when God, if He be all-knowing, knows all about our needs? If all-powerful, He can help us. If all-good, He will. What need is there, then, of prayer? But is prayer only so to be measured? Is the establishment of sympathetic confidence between the soul of man and the love of God to count as nothing?
4. There was capability. With Christ, love and power were one. “Receive thy sight.” The words are spoken, and Bartimeus looks up. The restoration of sight is restoration to his true and complete manhood. He can see things as they are. It is this which Christ can bestow on all. It is the power to see in their true relationship the great forces of life—the world, self, God—the force without us, the force within us, and the power above us. It is the power to see God as He is—in His purity and lovingness as well as in His might. It is the power to see ourselves as we are in our weakness and dependence, in our sinfulness and foolishness. It is the power to see the world and life as they are, and therefore to see life not as the opportunity of accumulating the things which perish, but as the opportunity of being what we ought to be, and of doing what we ought to do.—Bishop Boyd Carpenter.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 10:46. The uncomfortable situation of the blind.—In what uncomfortable circumstances are some of the children of men placed! One is deprived of his eyes, another of his ears, a third of his legs, and a fourth of his judgment. Of all these there are none more pitiable and helpless than the blind.
I. The uncomfortable situation of the blind.—
1. They are deprived of the benefit of light, which is so cheerful and animating.
2. They are deprived of the advantages of reading, either for instruction or entertainment.
3. They are incapable of following the common occupations of life, by which to earn their bread.
4. They are in a great measure dependent upon others.
II. Some means by which to alleviate the miseries of the blind.—
1. To furnish them with some employment, which may prevent them from being a burden to the public.
2. That the occupation be of such a nature as gently to engage the mind without fatiguing it, and by diverting their attention to make them less a burden to themselves.
3. That they be taught the principles of the religion of Jesus, which are so nobly suited to afford consolation under the hardest lot, and to render them contented and happy.—D. Johnston, D.D.
Mark 10:47. In the Nazarene Bartimeus saw the Messiah. Why did he so? Why more than the rest of the crowd that followed? Can we doubt the reason? Can we be in a difficulty about it? He was blind now. But there had been a time, perhaps, when he was able to see. If so, he had used his eyesight for a heavenly purpose. He had read and marked and inwardly digested the truth as it is in Jesus. Happy Bartimeus! He can see clearer than the most keen-eyed. The penetration of philosophy is nothing to his; he understands all mysteries; he pierces the thick palpable darkness; he sees through the veil of the outward sense the glory and the majesty of Him who is the Light of the world. What an example for us to follow! We may not be dark-visioned, like Bartimeus, but we shall have our hours of the heart’s darkness, or of moral twilight. How shall we prepare for them? Most surely in the way that he prepared—by reading God’s Holy Word, by diving into its hidden depths, by praying for enlightenment, by committing to our memories, and by treasuring up in them the holy texts of promise or of prophecy which lie like jewels within that great sea of wonder.
Mark 10:48. Want and faith not to be silenced.—Could their hands stop the mouth of him who spoke and felt as Bartimeus did? Nay; for he had a double tongue. His faith and his misery alike were speaking. You may stifle almost anything else; but there is a life and an energy in want and in faith which nothing can overpower. Did the winds and the waves ever prevent the seaman that has been washed overboard from crying for the cable to be thrown him? Is not his cry the mightier for their tempestuous riot? It is the cry of nature, the cry of that voice which God has implanted in all. But the cry of the new nature is in this case added to that of the old; it is the cry of grace and of nature too. It is nature that feels the want; it is grace that believes the remedy.
Mark 10:49. “Commanded him to be called.”—By this circumstance Christ administered reproof and instruction: reproof, by ordering those to help the poor man who had endeavoured to check him; instruction, by teaching us that, though He does not stand in need of our help, He will not dispense with our services, that we are to aid each other, that though we cannot recover our fellow-creatures we may frequently bring them to the place and means of cure.—W. Jay.
Mark 10:50. Renunciation.—The action of the blind man in casting aside his garment in order to come to Jesus means to us much more than a mere revelation of personal character—a disclosure of the faith and zeal of the blind beggar. It may be taken as a type of the removal of the hindrances of whatever kind that prevent a soul from coming to Jesus as its Saviour.
1. The necessity of casting away our garment of self-righteousness in order to come to Jesus. Every man thinks that he has whereof to boast—his acts of worship or kindness, his upright character and goodness of heart. We are slow to believe that God does not ask some valuable consideration at our hands, and that if we would seek His blessing it is not necessary for us to be furnished with some price or equivalent to give. We have our formularies, our ordinances, our offerings, which we think will open our way; and we exact from ourselves certain spiritual qualifications as a preparation. But if we are to be cured of our blindness and poverty, we must fling this garment aside. If we would get near enough to Jesus to get personal benefit from Him, we must have the conviction inwrought in us of our utter destitution of true religion. We must be brought to believe that we do not believe. We must hide our poverty no longer from ourselves. We must honestly and humbly take the beggar’s place and raise the beggar’s cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”
2. The necessity of casting away the garment of effete forms and methods in order to grow in knowledge and grace. Religion itself is often made a hindrance in the way of coming nearer to Christ. What would happen if, when the warm, quickening sun of spring is calling every living thing to new growth and development, the buds of the trees persisted in retaining the scales in which they were wrapped up, merely because they had been indispensable in preserving the vitality of their buds during the winter’s frosts and storms? There would be no foliage, no blossom or fruit, no formation of new wood for man’s use, no shade for the earth and its creatures. The whole economy of nature would suffer grievous loss and be deranged. Nay, more, the arrested buds themselves would either die into hard knotty excrescences, or would be transformed into formidable thorns. And so, if we persist in retaining the old effete wrappings of religion merely because they were formerly, at an earlier stage of growth, indispensable, when the summer sun of a higher faith is quickening us and calling us to a fuller Christian life, we shall become mere dry sticks in the vineyard of the Lord, providing no shade or fruit or beauty for ourselves or others; we shall derange the whole economy of the Church by our deadness and conservation, and our arrested growth will be transformed into a wounding thorn.
3. The necessity of casting away in the end the garment of the body by death in order to be present with the Lord, and to be effectually cured of all our poverty and blindness. All nature is deciduous. The bud casts off its scales in order to produce its foliage; the flower casts off its petals in order to produce the fruit; the fruit decays in order to liberate the seed; the seed dies in order that the germ may grow. The worm leaves behind its silken tomb in order to emerge a butterfly. And at every stage of advancing life some old garment that suited an old purpose is cast away. So we cast away our body every seventh year in order to grow and mature our physical nature. And in the end we must cast away our body itself in order to finish our development and emerge into ampler life. As the growth of the young foliage of spring from the cast-off husks of autumn is a process of life and not of death, so in the expansion of the soul through the casting off of the body death loses all the elements which make it death. It is a process of life and development—in the harmony, and not out of the harmony, of the Divine order. A higher miracle than that wrought upon Bartimeus will be performed upon us; and what this world under the bright sunshine was to him when his eyes were couched of their films, and he saw the glory of nature for the first time, this in a far grander form will be the heavenly world that shall burst upon our purified vision, and we shall see the glorious form of Jesus in the light in which He dwells. We shall see Him as He is, and we shall be changed into the same image. Surely it is worth casting away the garment of the body; surely what things are gain to us in this world we may well count loss, to have such a revelation and experience as that!—H. Macmillan, D. D.
Mark 10:52. “Thy faith hath made thee whole.”—Ask for this faith, if you have it not. Exercise it if you have it. It is the appropriator of every blessing; it is the hand which lays hold of every blessing, yea, which puts on Christ Himself. Grace stands, so to speak, above us, holding out the mantle of blessedness; faith raises its hand, takes the mantle, and puts it on. Poor, blind, naked, ignorant, wretched, as we may be, yet come we in faith, come we in tears, in penitence, in deep contrition, and yet in faith to the Friend of penitents; and there is not a stain we lament which shall not be wiped out, nor a heart-wound which shall not be healed.
Following Jesus.—So with us, when our eyes are opened we follow Jesus in the way. Before that we walk in our own way, in the way of the world; we follow the multitude to do evil, we follow our own sinful lusts and passions; we choose our own way instead of God’s way; we prefer the path which is most pleasant, most easy, most profitable; but when our eyes are opened all is changed, we learn to say, “I loved to choose and see my path; but now—lead Thou me on.” Thus we come to follow Jesus in the way; and that way is the way of holiness, the narrow way which leads to life. It is not always a smooth way; it climbs up the Hill Difficulty, and anon winds down into the Valley of Humiliation; it passes through a garden of Gethsemane, a place of agonised prayer; it leads to a cross, a lifelong cross sometimes; it carries us to a grave, but, thank God, a grave from which the stone is rolled away, and which is bright with the light of a glorious resurrection. And withal it is a way of pleasantness, and a path of peace, of peace such as the world cannot give, and it ends in heaven.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 10
Mark 10:46. The blind beggar and the multititude.—Origen gives a very pretty allegorical turn to this narrative. He makes the blind man, who calls on Jesus, an Ebionite; and the multitudes around, who commanded him to hold his peace, believers from among the heathen converts, who generally held the more exalted views in regard to the Passion of the Messiah; and then he continues thus: But although the multitudes commanded him to be silent, yet he said the more because he believed in Jesus, although his faith was of a human kind; and he cried out aloud, and said to Him, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” How different would many things have been if men, in this spirit of love and freedom, had always allowed the grace of the Redeemer to fall on all who call upon Him! if they had always taken into account the various stages in the Christian progress up to the ripeness of manhood in the faith, and had not wished to force different spirits all at once into the same measure and degrees!
Treatment of the poor.—The Jews had a law that there should be no beggar in Israel. England has statutes also to correct impudent poor and to provide for impotent poor; but, as it is observed, our laws have a better prologue than epilogue; they be well penned, but ill kept; and so this good order is neglected among us, as it was about Jericho, to the great scandal of Christian religion and dishonour of our English nation. It is written of the Athenians that they punished idle persons as heinous offenders. And the Egyptians had a law that every man should bring his name to the chief ruler of the province and show what trade he followed. The Romans enacted severe statutes against such as negligently left their ground untilled. Among the Chinese every man is set about somewhat, according to his strength and years; one labours with his hand, another with his foot, etc.; and (which is most admirable) they keep in Canton four thousand blind men, unfit for other service, to grind corn and rice for the people. If either the law were believed as gospel, or the gospel kept as law, such as would not labour should not eat. Loiterers and sturdy rogues should be sent to prison, or some place where they might work well; and as for such as cannot labour, it is fit, we that are strong, should help to bear the burdens of the weak, being eyes to the blind and feet to the lame.—Dean Boys.
Mark 10:47. Soul sight.—One day a cry went down the street, every one fled, as a runaway horse came tearing along the road. A little blind girl, left all alone, stood in the road, not knowing which way to turn to escape from death. She could not see, and no human hand was there to guide. She did not try to run, but sinking down on her knees just where she was, with upturned face to the heaven the bodily eye could not see, she commended herself to the Father of all. The horse dashed on—it was upon her! It swerved and thundered past, leaving the lonely kneeling child unhurt. That little one’s bodily eye could not see, but the soul eye, looking out beyond all, saw the Maker and Creator of all. So sometimes blind folk see more than those who think they see.
Mark 10:50. “And he, casting away his garment, rose, and came to Jesus.”—I remember once reading these words on a memorial tablet in a country church. Inscriptions on tombstones are often unsatisfactory, and Scriptural quotations upon them most inappropriate; but this one was as suitable as it was singular. The squire of the village had late in life come under the influence of Christian friends, who brought him to a knowledge of the gospel; and to him the words of the Evangelist were applied. They were very suggestive. They told of pride, and worldly pursuits, and self-righteousness, of all to which the man had clung for a lifetime, cast away that he might come to the Saviour. For a sinner saved in life’s last hours a better epitaph could hardly have been chosen. I admired the piety that compared the rich man lying there to the poor blind beggar of the gospel story, the once highly esteemed garment of personal righteousness to the beggar’s worthless robe, and that expressed the one hope and refuge of the soul in Christ by the words “he came to Jesus.” It reminded me of the lines on William Carey’s tomb:
“A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Thy kind arms I fall;
Be Thou my strength and righteousness,
My Jesus, and my all.”
What is your mant?—We complain of wandering thoughts; we kneel at our devotions, and our thoughts go fluttering away from us like the sparrows that flit and twitter in the trees. The remedy for this is to have a want. Let us pause at the threshold of prayer as Jeanie Deans did at the door of the audience-room, laying her hand upon her heart. Let us, if we would present a petition at the throne of heavenly grace, feel the parchment to make sure it is there.