Mark 14:12-31 - Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Mark 14:12. The first day, etc.—14th Nisan—Thursday in Holy Week. The previous day had been spent in seclusion at Bethany, which “was reckoned as regards religious purposes part of Jerusalem by the Rabbis, and the lamb might be eaten there, though it must be killed at the Temple” (Lightfoot, Hor. Heb.).

Mark 14:13. Two of His disciples.—Peter and John (Luke 22:8). A man bearing, etc.—It being essential to Christ’s plan that He should not be arrested before His celebration of the Passover, He did not divulge to His apostles until the last moment the place where it was to be held. Probably He had made some private arrangement with a trusty disciple living in Jerusalem to send a man-servant (instead of a woman, as was usual) for water at a particular time of day. Possibly the man-servant was also a disciple and in the secret.

Mark 14:14. The guest-chamber.—My lodging-place: κατάλυμα, rendered “inn” in Luke 2:7.

Mark 14:15. Furnished.—The couches for reclining on set in order and spread with carpets. Prepared.—Ready for the due celebration of the Passover, so far as the room was concerned—every particle of leaven having been cleared out. There make ready.—By procuring the lamb, the unleavened cakes, the cups of wine and water, the bitter herbs, and the sauce. Some of these would perhaps be provided by the master of the house, but there is great uncertainty as to what exactly took place.

Mark 14:16. The Passover.—An account of the ritual may conveniently be inserted here.

(1) Two or three flat cakes of unleavened bread, and four cups of red wine mixed with water, were placed before the master of the house, or the most eminent person present, who was called the Celebrant or President.
(2) All present having reclined, he took one of the cups, known as the “Cup of Consecration,” gave thanks, tasted the cup, and passed it round.
(3) Water was brought in, and the President washed his hands ceremonially.
(4) There were placed on the table the bitter herbs (lettuce, endive, beet, succory, horehound), the sauce called “Charoseth” (made of dates, raisins, figs, vinegar, etc., pounded and mixed together), and the Passover lamb.
(5) After again thanking God for the fruits of the earth, the President took a portion of the bitter herbs “the size of an olive,” dipped it in the Charoseth and ate it, and his example was followed by the rest.

(6) The second cup of wine was filled, after which began the “Haggadah” or “Shewing forth” (1 Corinthians 11:26). A child or proselyte inquired, “What mean ye by this service?” (Exodus 12:26), and the President answered according to a prescribed formula. The first part of the “Hallel” (Psalms 113, 114) was then sung, and the second cup solemnly drunk.

(7) The President again washed his hands (the rest doing so also), and taking two of the unleavened cakes, broke them, gave thanks, and distributed to the company. Each, on receiving his portion, wrapped bitter herbs round it, dipped it in the “Charoseth,” and ate it.
(8) The flesh of the lamb was then eaten.
(9) After thanksgiving, the third cup (“Cup of Blessing”) was handed round.
(10) Thanks were given for the food received and for redemption from Egypt, the fourth cup (“Cup of Joy”) was drunk, the second part of the “Hallel” (Psalms 115-118) was sung, and the company dispersed.

Mark 14:17. In the evening.—After sunset on Thursday—the beginning of 15th Nisan—the proper paschal night.

Mark 14:18. Sat.—Reclined on the divans. The original standing posture (Exodus 12:11) had long been abandoned. Render last part of verse: One out of you (among you, but not of you) will deliver Me—he that is eating with Me.

Mark 14:21. The order of the words in the last clause, and the intrinsic meaning of καλόν, incline one to render thus: An excellent thing were it for Him (the Son of Man) if there had not been born that man (the man who, while an apostle, becomes a traitor); and the meaning may perhaps be, that the burden pressing on Christ’s soul would have been infinitely easier to bear had His apprehension not come about by the agency of His own familiar friend. Earlier in the verse He exclaims, Alas for that man! thinking, apparently, of the self-reproach that would overwhelm Judas, almost the moment the deed was done.

Mark 14:22. Took bread.—One of the unleavened cakes lying on the table. Blessed.—Spoke the word for good; the word (λόγος), for good (εὐ). so in the Latin, benedicimus = we utter the word bene, i.e. bene fiat. “Cum Deus bene dicit, tum bene est: cum homo, tum ut bene fiat.” See the profound note by Prof. T. S. Evans on 1 Corinthians 10:16 in the Speaker’s Commentary. Eat.—Imported from Matthew 26:26, where genuine. A very natural addition, as of course it is implied. This is My body.—The copula means neither “represents” nor “symbolises,” but simply is. The Lord is pleased to establish the most intimate relation possible between the consecrated elements and His sacred humanity. The faithful communicant, when he receives the Eucharistic bread and wine, eats the flesh and drinks the blood of the Son of Man (John 6:53-56). It ought not to be necessary to add that “this is a great mystery,” and that the eating and drinking are purely spiritual acts—and, because spiritual, therefore most real and true.

Mark 14:23. Given thanks.—I.e. for εὐ or God’s good gifts of bread and wine: the idea of thanks is exhausted in the χάρις. So Prof. Evans on 1 Corinthians 11:24.

Mark 14:24. Of the new testament.—Omit “new,” and render: of the covenant—i.e. of the arrangement (διαθήκη) which God has graciously made for restoring to man his lost inheritance. From first to last God has entertained but one grand scheme of mercy to our fallen race; but this scheme, when our Lord spoke, had been manifested in its initial stage only (see Exodus 24:4-8), which was a shadow cast before of the great reality to be revealed in due time. Since, however, the Jews had mistaken the shadow for the reality, and were for the most part content to offer and rest in material sacrifices which could never take away sins, it became necessary to differentiate the true plan of salvation through the blood of Christ from the preparatory sacrificial system of Israel which merely typified it. This was done by terming the one the “old covenant,” and the other the “new.” See Jeremiah 31:31-34; Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 11:25; Hebrews 9:15; Hebrews 9:18-22; Hebrews 12:24. But both here and in Matthew 26:28 the word “new” is not found. Shed.—Being shed: Christ was there and then offering His precious blood for the sins of the whole world. For many.—In behalf of many: ὑπέρ = super, over, the essential idea being that of a person bending over another—in New Testament never in a physical, always in a moral sense. The Redeemer bent His mind over many—even the whole race of men—when He laid down His life to effect their salvation (1 John 2:2).

Mark 14:25. See Revelation 19:9. Kingdom of God.—With the announcement of the kingdom’s immanence Christ’s ministry began (Mark 1:15); with the prophecy of that kingdom’s perfect consummation and bliss it fitly ends.

Mark 14:27. An hymn.—Second part of Hallel (Psalms 115-118.); for no doubt the first part (113, 114) had been sung in its usual place earlier in the evening.

Mark 14:27-31. See R.V. for reading and rendering.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 14:12-31

(PARALLELS: Matthew 26:17-35; Luke 22:7-38; John 13-17)

The Christian Passover.—It is a noteworthy fact that of the sacred times and seasons of the old economy we have nothing left but the Feast of the Passover. The perpetuation of that feast was provided for and announced in its original institution (Exodus 12:14). On the night when Jesus was betrayed He ate the Passover with His disciples, and at the same time established the Holy Communion as its successor. He thus rescued the Passover feast from among the vanishing shadows of the ceremonial economy, and gave it in a simpler form but with unbroken continuity a perpetual place among the ordinances of the new dispensation.

I. The original Passover feast was observed at night.—It was the night of the 14th Nisan. King and people were asleep, unmindful of approaching danger. But the Hebrews were awake; lights glimmered in their homes. They had been forewarned that in their behalf the Lord was about to make bare His arm. The years of their oppression were at an end. Staff in hand they crossed the threshold, passed along the streets and out through the gates into the wilderness, then on through toil and danger and weariness to the land of which the Lord had said, “Behold, I will give it you.” It was a darker night than that when our Lord hung dying on His Cross. At high noon the shadows closed around Him. Earth never saw so deep a darkness, nor was night ever pierced with a cry so dismal, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” His cry of abandonment was the signal of our deliverance. When His anguish had reached its utmost, we, healed by His stripes, passed forth into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

II. The Passover feast was kept within-doors.—This was true of no other of the great festivals. On other days the ties of kinship might be ignored, but on that day blood was always thicker than water. It was a time for praising the Lord because He hath set the solitary in families. The father presided; the children hearkened to his counsels and joined him in gratitude for the blessings of the roof-tree. The Holy Communion is our family feast. Here the Elder Brother takes our hands and places them in the strong grasp of the Infinite One, bidding us say after Him, “Abba, Father.” We here commune with one another in the household of faith and with Him who is the God and Father of us all.

III. The lamb was at the centre of the paschal feast.—It must be a lamb of the first year and without blemish. The four days previous to the Passover were set apart for careful inspection. The lamb was placed in the hands of judicious persons, who were instructed to see that there should be no spot nor blemish in it. By a providential coincidence the four days previous to our Lord’s crucifixion were days of peculiar trial. The eyes of many were upon Him to discover any possible spot or blemish. And when the preparation was over He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.

IV. The blood of the paschal sacrifice was sprinkled on the door-posts and the lintel.—It was not enough that the lamb should have been slain. The head of the household must arrange for the sprinkling of the blood where the destroying angel might see it. For so it had been promised, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” The Rabbis tell, in one of their sacred books, of a sick girl who on that memorable night was troubled with apprehension lest due precautions had not been taken. She called her father to her couch, saying, “Father, I greatly fear lest the blood hath not been sprinkled on the lintels of the door. I pray thee, see to it.” He laughed at her fears, but at her persistent entreaty he went and looked, and lo, his servant had neglected his task. The basin and the branch of hyssop were speedily brought, the blood was sprinkled, and the household saved. In like manner the merits of the Saviour’s blood are effective only for such as appropriate it. Faith is the condition of life. Faith is the hyssop branch that sprinkles the lintels of the door. The night is dark, the black-winged angel is above us; but we are quite secure if we have entrusted our welfare to the only begotten Son of God.

V. The lamb was eaten with bitter herbs and unleavened bread.—The bitter herbs were a reminder of the toil and weariness of Egypt. The unleavened bread was a symbol of the sinless life. The two together set forth the nature and necessity of repentance. For repentance is on the one side sorrow for sin, and on the other an abandonment of it. At the Holy Communion we remember with sorrow our Lord’s passion for us and with joy His breaking of our bonds. In memory of His sacrifice we renew in this sacramentum our vows of devotion and signify our abhorrence of and departure from sin. Wherefore Paul enjoins upon us to purge out the old leaven (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

VI. The children of Israel ate their Passover with sandals on and staff in hand.—They were ready for the signal of departure. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.”—D. J. Burrell, D.D.

The Holy Eucharist.—It is part of the manifold wisdom of God that His gifts, in nature and in grace, minister to distinct and, as it often seems, unconnected ends, manifesting thereby the more His own unity as the secret cause and power of all things, putting itself forward in varied forms and divers manners, yet itself the one cause of all that is. The element which is the image of our baptism cleanses alike and refreshes, gives health and nourishment and growth. And if in nature, much more in the gifts of grace. For therein God, not by will or by power only, but by Himself and the effluence of His Spirit, is the life of all which lives through Him. It is, then, according to the analogy of His other gifts that His two great sacraments have in themselves manifold gifts. Baptism containeth not only remission of sin, actual or original, but maketh members of Christ, children of God, heirs of heaven, hath the seal and earnest of the Spirit, the germ of spiritual life; the Holy Eucharist imparteth not life only, spiritual strength, and oneness with Christ, and His indwelling, and participation of Him, but, in its degree, remission of sins also. As the manna is said to have “contented every man’s delight and agreed to every taste,” so He, the Heavenly Manna, becometh to every man what he needeth, and what he can receive; to the penitent perhaps chiefly remission of sins and continued life, to those who have “loved Him and kept His word” His own transporting, irradiating presence, full of His own grace and life and love; yet to each full contentment, because to each His own overflowing, undeserved goodness.

I. The penitent’s joy, then, in the Holy Eucharist is not the less deep because the pardon of sins is not, as in baptism, its direct provision.—The chief object of the Holy Eucharist, as conveyed by type or prophecy, by the very elements chosen, or by the words of our Lord, is the support and enlargement of life, and that in Him. In type the tree of life was within the paradise of God, given as a nourishment of immortality, withheld from Adam when he sinned: the bread and wine wherewith Melchizedek met Abraham were to refresh the father of the faithful, the weary warrior of God: the paschal lamb was a commemorative sacrifice; the saving blood had been shed; it was to be eaten with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and with bitter herbs, the type of mortification, and by those only who were undefiled. The manna was given to them after they had passed the Red Sea, the image of cleansing baptism, and, as He Himself interprets it, represented Him as coming down from heaven to give life unto the world, the food of angels and the holy hosts of heaven; the shewbread was eaten only by those hallowed to the priesthood (as the whole Christian people has in this sense been made kings and priests), and, when once given to David and those that were with him, still on the ground that the “vessels of the young men were holy” (1 Samuel 21:5). In verbal prophecy it is foretold under the images of the very elements, and so of strengthening and overflowing joy. See Proverbs 9:5; Psalms 22:26; Psalms 23:5; Psalms 4:7; Psalms 104:15; Isaiah 55:1; Song of Solomon 5:1. In all these varied symbols—strength, renewed life, growth, refreshment, gladness, likeness to the angels, immortality—are the gifts set forth; they are gifts as to the redeemed of the Lord placed anew in the paradise of His Church, admitted to His sanctuary, joying in His presence, growing before Him, filled with the river of His joy, feasting with Him, yea Himself feasting in them, as in them He hungereth. Hitherto there is no allusion to sin; it is what the Church should be, walking in the brightness of His light, and itself reflecting that brightness. And when our Lord most largely and directly is setting forth the fruits of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, He speaks throughout of one gift—life; freedom from death, life through Him, through His indwelling, and therefore resurrection from the dead and life eternal. See John 6:50-51; John 6:53-54; John 6:56-58. No one can observe how this whole discourse circleth round this gift of life, and how our Lord, with unwearied patience, bringeth this one truth before us in so many different forms, without feeling that He means to inculcate, that life in Him is His chief gift in His Sacrament, and to make a reverent longing for it an incentive to our faith. Yet although life in Him is the substance of His whole teaching, the teaching itself is manifold. Our Lord inculcates not one truth only in varied forms, but in its different bearings. He answers not the strivings of the Jews, “How can this man give us His flesh to eat?” Such an “How can these things be?” He never answereth; and we, if we are wise, shall never ask how they can be elements of this world and yet His very body and blood. But how they give life to us He does answer; and amid this apparent uniformity of His teaching each separate sentence gives us a portion of that answer. And the teaching of the whole, as far as such as we may grasp it, is this: That He is the living bread because He came down from heaven, and as being one God with the Father hath life in Himself, even as the Father hath life in Himself; the life then which He is He imparted to that flesh which He took into Himself, yea, which He took so wholly that Holy Scripture says He became it, “the Word became flesh,” and since it is thus a part of Himself, “Whoso eateth My flesh, and drinketh My blood” (He Himself says the amazing words), “eateth Me,” and so receiveth into Himself, in an ineffable manner, his Lord Himself, “dwelleth” (our Lord says) “in Me, and I in Him,” and having Christ within him, not only shall he have, but he “hath” already “eternal life,” because he hath Him who is “the only true God and eternal life”; and so Christ “will raise him up at the last day,” because he hath His life in him. Receiving Him into this very body, they who are His receive life, which shall pass over to our very decaying flesh; they have within them Him who is life and immortality and incorruption, to cast out or absorb into itself our natural mortality and death and corruption, and “shall live for ever,” because made one with Him who alone “liveth for evermore.” But where, one may feel, is there here any place for the sinner? Here all breathes of holy life, life in God, the life of God imparted to man, the indwelling of the All-holy and Incarnate Word, the presence of God in the soul and body, incorruption and eternal life, through His holy presence and union with Him who, being God, is life. Yet although most which is spoken belongs to Christians, as belonging already to the household of saints and the family of heaven and the communion of angels and unity with God, still, here as elsewhere in the New Testament, there is a subordinate and subdued notion of sin; and what wraps the saint already in the third heaven may yet uphold us sinners, that the pit shut not her mouth upon us. The same reality of the Divine gift makes it angels, food to the saint, the ransom to the sinner. And both because it is the body and blood of Christ. To him its special joy is that it is his Redeemer’s very broken body, it is His blood, which was shed for the remission of his sins. In the words of the ancient Church, he “drinks his ransom,” he eateth that, “the very body and blood of the Lord, the only sacrifice for sin,” God “poureth out” for him yet “the most precious blood of His Only-Begotten”; they “are fed from the Cross of the Lord, because they eat His body and blood”; and as of the Jews of old, even those who had been the betrayers and murderers of their Lord, it was said, “The blood, which in their frenzy they shed, believing they drank,” so of the true penitent it may be said, whatever may have been his sins, so he could repent, awful as it is to say, the blood he indeed despised, and profaned, and trampled underfoot, may he, when himself humbled in the dust, drink, and therein drink his salvation.

II. In each place in Holy Scripture where the doctrine of the Eucharist is taught, there is at least some indication of the remission of sins.—Our Lord, while chiefly speaking of Himself, as the bread of life, the true meat, the true drink, His indwelling, resurrection from the dead, and life everlasting, still says also, “The bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” As amid the apparent identity of this teaching each separate oracle enounces some fresh portion of the whole truth, so also does this; that His flesh and blood in the Sacrament shall give life, not only because they are the flesh and blood of the Incarnate Word, who is life, but also because they are the very flesh and blood which were given and shed for the life of the world, and are given to those for whom they had been given. This is said yet more distinctly in the awful words whereby He consecrated for ever elements of this world to be His body and blood. “This is My body, which is given for you”; “This is My body, which is broken for you”; “This is My blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins”; “This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you.” He saith not, “which shall be given,” “shall be broken,” “shall be shed,” but “is being given,” “being broken,” “being shed” (διδόμενον, κλώμενον, ἐκχυνόμενον), and this in remarkable contrast with His own words, when speaking of that same gift, as yet future, “The bread which I will give is My flesh, which I will give [ὃν ἐγὼ δώσω] for the life of the world.” And of one of the words used St. Chrysostom remarks how it could not be said of the Cross, but is true of the Holy Eucharist. “For ‘a bone of Him,’ it saith, ‘shall not be broken.’ But that which He suffered not on the Cross, this He suffers in the oblation for thy sake, and submits to be broken that He may fill all men.” Hereby He seems as well to teach us that the great act of His passion then began; then, as a Priest, did He through the Eternal Spirit offer Himself without spot to God; then did He “consecrate” Himself, before He was by wicked hands crucified and slain; and all which followed, until He commended His Blessed Spirit to the hands of His Heavenly Father, was one protracted, willing suffering. Then did He begin His lonely journey, where there was none to help or uphold, but He “travelled in the greatness of His strength”; then did He begin to “tread the winepress alone,” and to “stain all His raiment”; then to “wash the garments” of His humanity “with” the “wine” of His blood; and therefore does the blood bedew us too; it cleanses us, because it is the blood shed for the remission of our sins. There is, accordingly, an entire agreement in the Eucharistic liturgies of the universal Church, in prayer, in benediction, in declaration, confessing that in the Holy Eucharist there is forgiveness of sins also. Those of St James and St. Mark so paraphrase the words of consecration as to develop the sense that they relate not only to the past act of His precious bloodshedding on the Cross, but to the communication of that blood to us now. “This is My body, which for you is broken and given for the remission of sins.” “This is My blood of the New Testament, which for you and for many is poured out and given for the remission of sins.” Again, the liturgies join together, manifoldly, remission of sins and life eternal, as the two great fruits of this Sacrament. Thus in the prayer for the descent of the Holy Ghost on the sacred elements, “that they may be to all who partake of them to the remission of sins, and to life eternal”; or in intercession, “that we may become meet to be partakers of Thy holy mysteries to the remission of sins and life eternal”; or in the words of communicating, “I give thee the precious and holy and undefiled body of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and life eternal.”

III. Since, then, this Divine Sacrament has, as its immediate and proper end, union with Him who hath taken our manhood into God, and the infusion into us of His Spirit and life and immortality, making us one with His glorified humanity, as He is one in the Godhead with the Father, and, besides this, it is ulteriorly the cleansing of our sins, the refining our corruptions, the repairing of our decays, what must be the loss of the Church of the latter days, in which Communions are so infrequent! How can we wonder that love should have waxed cold, corruptions so abound, grievous falls have been among our youth almost the rule, to stand upright the exception, heathen strictness reproach Christian laxity, the Divine life become so rare, all higher instances of it so few and faint, when “the stay and the staff,” the strength of that life is willingly forfeited! How should there be the fulness of the Divine life, amid all but a month-long fast from our “daily bread”! It implies a life so different from this our commonplace ordinary tenor, a life so above this world as knit with Him who hath overcome the world, so angelic as living on Him who is angels’ food; an union with God so close, that we cannot mostly, I suppose, imagine to ourselves how we could daily thus be in heaven, and in our daily business here below—how sanctify our daily duties, thoughts, refreshment, so that they should be tinged with the hues reflected by our daily heaven, not that heavenly gift be dimmed with our earthliness—how our souls should through the day shine with the glory of that ineffable Presence to which we had approached, not we approach to it with earth-dimmed souls. It must ever be so; we cannot know the gift of God if we forfeit it; we must cease mostly even to long for what we forego. We lose the very sense to understand it.

IV. But, however we may see that our present decay and negligence should not continue, restoration must not be rashly compassed.—Sound restoration must be the gift of God, to be sought of Him in humiliation, in prayer, in mutual forbearance and charity, with increased strictness of life and more diligent use of what we have. He who alone can make more frequent Communion a blessing, and who gave such strength to that one heavenly meal, whereby through forty days and forty nights of pilgrimage He carried Elijah to His presence at the Mount of God, can, if we be faithful and keep His gift which we receive, give such abundant strength to our rarer Communions, that they shall carry us through our forty years of trial unto His own Holy Hill, and the vision of Himself in bliss. Let us each suspect ourselves, not others; the backward their own backwardness, the forward their own eagerness; each habitually interpret well the other’s actions and motives; so, while we each think all good of the other, may we all together, strengthened by the same bread, washed by the same blood, be led, in the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace and holiness of life, to that ineffable feast, where not, as now, in mysteries, but, face to face, we shall ever see God, and be ever filled with His goodness and His love.—E. B. Pusey, D.D.

The feelings suited to our last Sacrament,—The last words of a man of God, at the close of a religious solemnity, are regarded with peculiar attention. The parting warnings, counsels, and encouragements of such a man have counteracted the influence of temptations to folly, kept the mind steadfast in seasons of difficulty, excited to the most arduous duties, and reconciled the heart to the most painful separations. Our text presents to us the last words of the Lord Jesus at the observance of the Holy Communion—words rich in admonition and in comfort—words which have melted many a heart in pious affection, and inspired many a fearful soul with the most blessed hopes.

I. Consider these words as an intimation of our Lord’s speedy departure, and of the termination of all the present intercourse of His disciples with Him.—

1. Our Blessed Saviour made frequent references to His death during the course of His life. To reconcile His disciples to an event so necessary, He expatiates on its blessed results, and generally connects with it consequences of the most happy description both to Himself and to them.
2. The intercourse of our Lord with His disciples had been of the most affectionate kind. But that intercourse was now to close; from the circle of love and peace in which He now sat He was about to be removed into the assembly of the wicked, and to suffer all the ignominy and pain which their unrestrained malice could inflict.
3. Mark with what mild resignation our Lord contemplates this event. What was dear to Him in life He willingly sacrificed; what was painful in death He cheerfully bore.
4. Our Lord’s language intimates the necessity of His dying to His mediatorial glory and to the future happiness of His people.
5. Our Lord, in contemplating this as His last participation of the Holy Sacrament with them, may be viewed as anticipating the close of all that worship which was suited to His state of humiliation and suffering.

II. Consider the intimation our Lord gives of a reunion.—There are two considerations which stamp a peculiar beauty on this assurance. The termination of His intercourse with them was to be closed in a manner no way creditable to their attachment or their courage. His generous heart could forgive their weakness and cowardice, and friends and foes were the objects of a charity which was stronger than death. I may add that this promise of reunion, following so immediately the notice of His separation, shews, in a most affecting manner, how unwilling He is that His people should mourn in hopeless grief, and how ready He is to solace and to encourage. It has been much disputed to what place or scene our Lord refers as that of reunion with His disciples. Some have supposed that it refers to His renewed intercourse with them after His resurrection; and in this view it intimated to them that the death of their Master, to which they looked forward with so much terror, would only be a temporary subjection to the last enemy, and that He would rise in heart unchanged, with the same delight in their society and the same solicitude for their welfare as ever. But as it appears to me that our Lord meant to suggest the fullest consolation, it seems better not to limit the passage to an intercourse with them on earth, which was to lie in a few meetings during the space of forty days, but to consider it as pointing to the communion of the world of glory.

1. Considering it as referring to the heavenly state, this promise suggests that the reunion of the disciples with their Lord is certain. Men have often spoken of meeting their friends in heaven when parting with them in death; but they speak of a place whose gates they have no power to open, whose bliss they have no power to allot. It is in many cases the language of ignorance and presumption, which reason will not sanction, which conscience condemns; but the Speaker in the text is the way, the truth, and the life. Every heart is in His hands, every lot is in His sentence, every region is in His power, and all futurity is in His eye.
2. It intimates that this reunion should be in the most glorious place, even in the kingdom of His Father. It will take place in a scene where naught can occur either to embitter or to terminate it. In that kingdom the highest honours were destined for Himself; but to them, poor and despised as they now were, He would grant to share in His dignity, and to rejoice in His joy. His love deemed no abasement too low for Himself, and no exaltation too high for them.
3. It suggests that, when thus reunited, their intercourse should be most intimate and affectionate. In His intercourse with them here Judas mingled, though he had probably gone out before the institution of the Holy Communion; but in heaven there should not be one whose heart was not sincere in friendship, nor one whose presence should in the least check the freest disclosure of the Redeemer’s feelings. Here too the idea of the termination of this intercourse afflicted the disciples; but in heaven they should reign in life, never see their Saviour’s countenance less complacent, nor behold the last enemy but in his final destruction.
4. It intimates that in this reunion they should enjoy together the purest and most blissful delights.
(1) They shall enjoy these delights with the Saviour. His presence shall heighten the beauty of paradise, and render more delicious all that proceeds from its living fountains. In all the tokens of their Father’s complacency Ho shall share, and in all their attainments in excellence He shall be the pattern.
(2) The enjoyments of the heavenly state shall be the same in kind with those of the sanctuary on earth, however they may differ in degree. They are excited by the same objects and directed by the same spirit.
(3) These enjoyments in heaven shall, like the Holy Communion on earth, bear a direct reference to the Cross. Every feeling of rapture will attest its efficacy, every song of the redeemed celebrate its glory.
(4) Their reunion with one another is intimated in this assurance.

III. Consider these words as a memento intended for every observance of the Holy Communion.—At one Sacrament or another these words will be addressed to every pious communicant, and sooner probably to the most vigorous and. healthy than he is aware; for “we are strangers before God, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding.” It would be proper that all of us should consider our situation in this light; for none can promise himself another solemnity of this nature, and none will improve this ordinance properly who does not observe it as his last Sacrament.

1. It should be received with resignation.
(1) It is made by Him who hath the power of life and death, and whose will it is both impious and vain to resist.
(2) The kindness of the manner in which He intimates this is another reason for resignation. It is with the voice of invitation and persuasion that He addresses you, rather than with that of authority.
(3) You cannot, in this scene, mark the resignation of your Lord to His Father’s will, nor hear Him saying, “The cup which My Father giveth Me, shall I not drink it?” and be disposed to rebel against the determination of His providence.
2. It should be received with gratitude. It shews His goodness to you that He apprises you of this event, that you may use all the appointed means of preparation for it. He wishes to save you from the anxiety and horror of those who shall be awakened from the sleep of security by the notice of His approach. 3. It should be received with love. Here we see Christ submitting to death to redeem us from destruction, laying open to us the kindness of His heart, revealing the everlasting felicity for which He hath destined us, and solacing Himself in the prospect of being happy with us for ever. That heart must be lost to all proper feeling which is not kindled into affection by this statement of the Saviour. It ought to be heard with increasing affection to our Christian brethren. Aged persons have been sometimes charged with implacability of temper, with brooding over the injuries of former times, and instilling their prejudices and animosities into their descendants; but let your conduct shew that you have fully imbibed the forgiving spirit of the Cross, and that every malignant feeling is extinguished within you.
4. It should be received with a determination to shew increasing diligence in preparing for our departure. Nobler objects solicit your affections; let them now engage your whole heart.
5. It should be received with hope of the felicity here promised. This is the promise of Him who is the faithful witness, and, while such love breathes in it, you cannot question His intention to fulfil it.—H. Belfrage, D.D.

Mark 14:26. The Hallel, and Jesus singing.—The best scholarship warrants us to assume that as Psalms 113-118 formed the Hallel or hallelujah songs of praise associated with the Passover, so the closing hymn sung by Jesus and His disciples was Psalms 118, as being that which rounded off the partaking of the fourth festal cup (“the cup of salvation”).

I. Psalms 118 opens with a burst of hallelujahs over the mercy of God.—The sum of these hallelujahs is, “O praise God for His mercies of old and now.” It is easy to understand how at that moment thoughts of the mercy of God would gird the Redeemer as with new strength to go forward to His appointed work. That work was to lay open the channel along which the mercy of God should flow “in righteousness” toward our fallen race. So that we cannot help feeling that it was Divinely ordered that this jubilant refrain should come in as part of the Lord’s last singing on earth. You remember how similarly this was the keynote of the dedication of the first Temple: “He is good; His mercy endureth for ever.” And so throughout. The great heart of the world—as of a sick, weary giant—ached for the ultimate manifestation of this mercy; and it could not but bring to the Lord a strange and awful joy that now at long, long last the manifestation was about to be made. I covet for myself and you all deeper insight into the wonder and grace, benediction and righteousness, of God’s ever-enduring and unchanging mercy in Christ Jesus. Grasping it, how may we dare to go to the guiltiest, even vilest, and whisper, “God loves you.” Behold the proof in the Cross, in the Crucified!

II. The suitableness to the Lord’s circumstances and to the continuous dangers of His Church (Mark 14:5-13).—It was the hour and power of darkness. Personally the shadow of Gethsemane was already blackening over His path. There lay before Him the betrayal—the arrest—the forsaking—the denial—the arraigning—the judgment—the suborned witnesses—the insults—the mockery—the loathsome spitting—the blows—the scourging—the condemnation—and, beyond, the spectre and spectacle of the ghastly cross. Is it not, then, affecting and yet again sustaining to find here written beforehand, in this last psalm of the Hallel, great words of strength and cheer (Mark 14:5-6): “Out of my distress”—plumbless, measureless distress—“I called upon the Lord: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place. The Lord is on my side; I will not fear what man can do unto me.” We can again conceive the Lord flinging Himself on the vast breadth of these exultant words. Amid all dangers and tribulation the Church, like her Divine Head, may well find in this portion of the final Hallel psalm inexhaustible consolation. Martin Luther in the throes of the Reformation and of his own peril, and when even Catherine de Bora seemed to counsel retreat and compliance, turned to this psalm and “waxed valiant” as he sang (Mark 14:17), “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.” Let us not fear. The waves of the tempest-trampled sea may toss to and fro and make a mighty noise, but the blue heavens beyond the clouds are calm. God lives. God reigns. The once pale hand grasps the sceptre of the universe, and sways ebb and flow of event and circumstance to His “everlasting purpose.”

III. The joy set before the Redeemer and before us through Him (Mark 14:14-21).—Joy is the sublimation of sorrow. Sorrow opens the door for joy to come in. Sorrow and joy are strangely akin, or, as we say in Scotland and old English, “sib.” Sorrow turns into joy—not merely is followed by joy, but turns into it. So was it with the disciples. “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy”—the very event that seemed so black and calamitous becoming the centre and source of everlasting light. Some of you, doubtless, have seen Dore’s great picture of “Pilate’s Wife’s Dream.” Those of you who have seen it will remember that whilst the horrid cross in the foreground looms up large and hideous, yet away in the radiant distance that same cross is shewn transformed and glorified, and glorifying all that it shines upon. So if sorrow is deep, I think it leads to and issues in something deeper still, and that is joy. Hence in the Epistle to the Hebrews, by one of those deep glances into the heart of the mystery of things that make this letter so great, we have all this summed up (Mark 12:2). Be it yours and mine, like our Lord, to rest on this Hallel psalm and see all around us demonstration, that the Lord’s mighty prayer was no idle breath like “idle tears”: “These things I spake in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves” (John 17:13).

IV. The great Messianic symbol (Mark 14:22-23).—As we turn and return on the favourite texts of Jesus, it moves and melts us to discover how they nearly all revolve around His redemptive work. The present is no exception. For we all carry in our heart of hearts the “exceeding great and precious promises” and teaching that set forth the Lord Christ as a “stone.” Even the glazing eye of dying Jacob beheld it (Genesis 49:24). And so Isaiah sang (Isaiah 28:16). It is therefore just what might have been expected, that earlier the Lord turned to those very words now before us, and uttered from them some of His most barbed and searching words to rejecting Israel. And as we to-day think of the supernatural structure—part on earth and part in heaven—that along the nineteen centuries has been raised on this one Stone, do we not thrill to the song of Christ’s last singing, and exclaim, “This is from the Lord: it is marvellous in our eyes.”

V. Finally, in Mark 14:25-29, we have thanksgiving. I can but accentuate Mark 14:27: “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar.” Once more to the vision of faith this sacrifice has been set forth—once more it has been our privilege by the memorial symbols appointed to remember the Lord’s death “until He come.” And so as thus again we behold “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,” thanksgiving may fitly close our service as thanksgiving closed His, as perchance falteringly He sang for the last time the Hallel of His own sacrificial death: “He filleth our mouths with songs.” In our outlook I see no call for despondency, I discern no omens of failure—I catch a light of glory on the mountain-tops that is descending to the plains, and is making the Cross still more refulgent, and rallying more and more myriads of tired feet and wearier hearts to the great broken heart. Yea, I see our blood-ransomed world girdled by mightier rings than Saturn’s, swung back into its primal orbit of unsullied light; and by-and-by we shall hear reverberating from sea to sea and from shore to shore (Revelation 11:15).—A. B. Grosart, D.D.

Mark 14:27-31. Man’s need of Divine support.—We are taught by our holy religion that man’s ability to perform the appointed duties of his Christian calling is derived from the co-operation and assistance of the Holy Spirit, which must be sought by humble and fervent prayer. Some, however, have entertained doubts on the subject, in consequence of their inability to discriminate between the natural movements of their minds and the influences of Divine agency, forgetting that we are required not to give account of the nature or extent of the assistance vouchsafed from above, but only to receive it thankfully and to use it diligently. Others have questioned the existence of such spiritual aid, because not conscious of their own need of it. To them this discourse is addressed.

I. The circumstances connected with the fall of St. Peter.—

1. If ever an unassisted mortal might have been expected to stand by his own strength, it was Peter—the Rock-man. The instructions he had received, the miracles he had witnessed, the variety of motives with which his intercourse with Christ must have supplied him, might have been considered almost as an equivalent for inspiration. Yet he fell. Betrayed by ignorance of his own heart and presumptuous confidence in his own resolution, he caused himself to be recorded for an everlasting memorial of human weakness and frailty.

2. The Master, as the time of His betrayal approached, with a view doubtless of consoling His disciples under their coming disgrace, gave them a previous intimation of it in the kindest and most soothing terms (Mark 14:27-28). The effect of this announcement upon the others is not recorded. Perhaps conscious of their own weakness, they remained silent; or perhaps, while inwardly trusting that they would be found ready for any emergency, they did not presume to express that confidence. Peter alone ventured to proclaim his imaginary fortitude (Mark 14:29). Christ thereupon revealed a lower depth even than desertion to which Peter would descend (Mark 14:30). Such seeming distrust of the sincerity of his attachment drew from the warm-hearted disciple a vehement protest (Mark 14:31). But in the hour of trial, how did he behave? Whence that equivocating answer, conveying falsehood under its most subtle guise (Mark 14:68)? Whence that second denial (Mark 14:70)? Whence that cursing and swearing with which the third accusation induced him to accompany the repetition of his assertion (Mark 14:71)? Alas! human nature must bear the shame of these reiterated falsehoods and blasphemies. Though selected for the apostleship, Peter yet remained dependent only on mortal resources, and in the hour of trial they proved utterly inadequate.

II. The admonition to be derived from St. Peter’s sad fall.—

1. Is there to be found a man who, in face of such an example, dares to refuse the proffered aid of the Holy Spirit, and to encounter life’s conflict in his own unaided strength? Let him attend to an exposition of the delusion under which he labours.

(1) Such a man may have persuaded himself that his reliance on his own strength is not the effect of presumption, but only of a fervent wish and sincere resolution to tread the path of holiness. But such we know was equally the disposition of Peter’s mind. On his first introduction to our notice we are even struck with his exceeding humility and self-abasement (Luke 5:8); and the same meek and modest distrust of himself is again evinced only a few hours before his fall (John 8:6-9).

(2) The self-confident man may imagine that there was a perverseness in the character of Peter from which he is himself free. But the Gospel history lends no countenance to such a theory. On more than one occasion the extreme openness and warmth of his disposition led Peter to so unreserved a discovery of the opinions and prejudices of his heart as exposed him to sharp reproof (Matthew 16:23; John 18:11). Yet we find that he was ever submissive to the correction and ever obedient to the direction of his Master.

(3) A man may flatter himself that he possesses a firmness, an energy, and a zeal which were wanting in Peter. But what reason has he for thinking so? He surely must have had no inconsiderable degree of firmness who merited and received from Christ the name “Cephas”; and he certainly could not be accused of want of energy and zeal who, when his Lord was arrested, instantly drew sword in His defence, and wielded it so effectually as to incur the displeasure of Him for whom he fought!
2. How, then, came Peter’s resolution to miscarry in the scene of his Master’s dire extremity? The reason seems to be this: he had grounded the execution of that resolution upon a sudden feeling of immoderate self-confidence,—nothing doubting but his will was in his own power, whether God’s grace assisted him or not; fully satisfied that what he had courage to resolve so honestly he had likewise ability to perform. He had not sufficiently considered that He who forewarned him of the failure of his resolution was the Searcher of hearts, and needed not that any should testify of man, for He knew what was in man—and what was not. Had he only reflected on the Master’s own declaration, “Without Me ye can do nothing,” the empty boast would have died away upon his lips, and given place to a humble petition for Divine assistance.

III. The need of prayer to ensure preservation from a like fall.—In contemplating the failure of a man who seems to have possessed all the elements of moral strength, and all the qualities requisite for a life of consistent integrity and undeviating holiness, are we not irresistibly led to the conclusion that our natural powers are insufficient for the work which we have to do, and that consequently an appeal must be made to heaven for grace to help in time of need? If we reach this conclusion by a comparison of ourselves with St. Peter in those faculties which we may be supposed to possess in common with him, must not the conviction of our insufficiency be increased tenfold, when we reflect that he must have had many opportunities and incentives to perseverance which we naturally cannot have? Yet he fell! His familiar association with Christ—hearing His words, witnessing His actions, and consequently receiving continual accessions of information and continual confirmations of his faith—must necessarily have enlarged his understanding and strengthened his judgment. Yet he fell! Who, then, at the distance at which we are placed by nature from intercourse with Christ, can possibly hope to stand alone? Who that sees an apostle vanquished will dare to go forth to the battle of life unaided by that Divine Spirit “without whom nothing is strong, nothing is holy”?

Mark 14:29-31. How best to promote the accomplishment of our good resolutions.—Perhaps it is not taking for granted too much to suppose that few Christians have come to a due conviction of their own sinful weakness and infirmity of purpose without having themselves so fallen under some trying occasion or temptation as afterwards to bewail from the heart their own irresolution, and, like Peter, to go out and weep bitterly. For however strong the mind, however sound the faith, and however fixed and confirmed by habit the religious principles, there are occasions when the Christian’s armour seems to stand him in little stead. He appears taken by surprise,—either his situation is new to him, or the allurement unusually great, or the opportunity too auspicious, or the alternative attended by great dangers, or the advantage of compliance sure and important, or the favourable concurrence of circumstances not likely to occur again. One or other or even all of these considerations perhaps prompts him to decide quickly; and, alas! to determine wrongly. He falls, therefore, because he never contemplated such a trial of his strength; or having contemplated it, thought himself quite safe. But how, it may be asked, is such success to our best purposes and resolves to be secured, that we may be, as much as possible, prepared for every temptation—that we may, as far as human infirmity will permit, prevent “sin from getting dominion over us”—that we may be able to withstand in the evil day, and, having done all, “to stand”?

I. To give stability to our good resolutions we must be convinced of our own weakness as well as wickedness.—No man can be ignorant of his besetting sin—his peculiar bias towards some one vice, temper, or failing; and whatever it may be, to that he should principally direct his attention in forming his resolves. For without having made this part of his moral nature his especial study, without understanding clearly what little reliance he can place upon himself, in the case of allurement and temptation addressed to this his prevailing sin, his most deliberate purpose will avail him nothing. He will seek occasions and places and persons from which he never yet escaped without guilt, and thus perhaps continue to impute to circumstances the fault which belongs only to his own heart.

II. We must have minutely considered our former lapses and relapses before we presume to make a resolve.—The causes of our fall should be accurately ascertained, and the leading incitement to each relapse be singled out and set up as a kind of beacon to warn us effectually where our danger lies. The repeated practice of sin has made this admonition by no means difficult for the sinner to obey. For he has only to select any one transgression, and he will for the most part trace in it the usual course of his progress in the commission of sin. Above all, he will perceive that with each relapse his resolves have become less efficacious, the path to his favourite vice has become smoother, his compunctions less bitter, his heart more hardened.

III. The sense of your weakness and of your frequent relapses should induce such a distrust of your own strength as to deter you from exposing yourselves to trials which may be avoided.—It is easy to attribute to yourselves powers of resistance or forbearance and self-denial which are far beyond your present attainments in Christian discipline. Your resolves should therefore be made in all humility. Nothing too high and hard for your present strength should be attempted. We are all to expect trials; but it is a criminal degree of rashness to go out needlessly to meet them, and much more so when a little reflexion might teach us that we have not arms sufficiently strong for the encounter.

IV. There must be after every lapse an act of sincere and sorrowful repentance before we presume to make a fresh resolve.—Where there have been shame and confusion, and remorse and fear, there may be some promise of our “taking heed to our ways,” of our hating sin, of our “recovering ourselves out of the snare of the devil.” But when the sinner, in order to pacify at the moment the fearful misgivings that ever attend guilt, satisfies himself with the bare resolution to offend no more, what grounds can he have for accepting so insignificant a pledge of his own actual improvement?

V. Even after repentance we must not consider our resolves as any warrant of our safety without two other safeguards.—

1. The first of these is vigilance. Our minds must be thoroughly imbued with that important truth that ours is a life of warfare—that we are, as it were, in an enemy’s country. Our own corruption within and constant temptations without should keep us ever in the state of sentinels. For the greatest security for the sinner, after all, is to avoid every occasion of sin—to be beforehand in shunning the dangerous opportunity, the depraved associate, the convenient hour, the favourable situation.
2. The other principal safeguard to our resolves is prayer. We have only to be earnest and sincere in our applications to the throne of grace for spiritual aid, through the intercession of that Redeemer who is “able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God through Him,” and we shall not fail to receive the blessing that we ask.

VI. Among the religious offices which come in aid of the means above recommended, none is more efficacious than the “spiritual food and sustenance” properly received in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.—On no occasion does the heart of man come into closer intercourse with his God and Saviour; on no occasion does he draw more freely from the fountain of Divine grace. For he not only receives remission of his sins, and peace and comfort past all understanding, but he is endued with new vigour for his conflict with the world, the flesh, and the devil; and all his holy purposes and resolutions receive the sanction and support of his approving Maker. Thus renewed in the inner man, he cometh forth from that holy ordinance as “a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course.”—A. B. Evans, D.D.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Mark 14:12-16. Christ’s preparation for the Passover.—Not even Peter and John are to know beforehand the man’s name and address, lest, if Judas should suspect them of knowing, he should worm, or try to worm, the secret out of them. Perhaps he did suspect—perhaps he did try to get at their secret; but even Peter could not tell him what he did not know. In His love and pity, His love for them, His pity for Judas—to save them from a mistake they would have found it hard to forgive, and to hold him back from a sin which man has not forgiven yet, though we have no right to assume that Christ has not forgiven it long ago—He rendered it impossible for them to betray Him to Judas, and for Judas to betray Him to the priests. The incident, thus viewed, has many lessons for us.

1. Even when He seems most unlike Himself our Lord is most truly Himself, and is leading us where we would be, though by ways we know not, and which do not seem likely to lead us there.
2. His prescience extends to the minutest details as well as to the main lines and critical occasions of life: nothing which really concerns us is overlooked or forgotten by Him; no, not even the pitcher, or the cup of cold water we need to slake our thirst, or are carrying to a neighbour who needs it even more than we do.
3. If we love Him, and are bent on serving Him, He will save us from those innocent, because unconscious and unintentional, transgressions of His goodwill for us which must inevitably inflict their natural punishment upon us, however guiltless we may be—just as He saved Peter and John from innocently betraying a secret to Judas of which he would have made an evil use.
4. Even when we are traitors to Him in our hearts, when we are meditating some sin which will cast us from His grace, He will do all He can, short of forcing our will, to save us from our sin; He will place hindrances and impediments in our way as He did in the way of Iscariot, and will not abandon us to our evil hearts, until, against all the remonstrances and warnings of His love, we overleap all hindrances and plunge into what we know to be a path of death.—S. Cox, D.D.

Mark 14:14. Preparation for Christ as our guest.—At all seasons of the year, and on festivals and ordinary days alike, the question, which is at once a warning and an invitation, is addressed to each one of us, “Where is My guest-chamber?” And we, far more than the owner of that honoured house in Jerusalem, have had opportunities of knowing all that that question means. It is no guest-chamber built with hands that He needs, but the temple built without hands, which temple we are. If that hospitable disciple would do so much for His entertainment during a few hours, surely we may do as much when we aim at having Him for our guest for ever—throughout life and in eternity.

1. It must be an upper room, in the highest part of our being, the best that we have to offer to any one. It must be in our heart of hearts, where we can love Him, not in word and tongue, but in deed and truth, with all our soul and all our strength. There are those who think that they have done much if they have given Him a welcome in some transitory emotion of religious excitement. But these heated feelings are not the upper room, which is ever calm and quiet; they are more akin to the common hall, where noise and excitement are frequent.

2. It must be a furnished room and ready: furnished with those things which He loves, and which will enable Him to rest and abide—prayers and hymns, thanksgivings and intercessions, holy thoughts, kind words, and good deeds. “Alms all around and hymns within”—that is the atmosphere in which Christ can abide; and the heart that is furnished with these can offer Him a home in which He may bestow His goods. For Christ is no man’s debtor. If He comes as a guest He comes open-handed, and bestows blessings without measure or stint.

3. And therefore we must prepare a large room. As we are niggardly in what we offer to Him, so also we are half hearted and little-minded in what we ask from Him. We do not desire His graces enough, and we do not desire enough of them. We must open our hearts freely to receive the good measure, pressed down and shaken together, which He yearns to bestow. It is His own command, His own promise, which says, “Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.”—A. Plummer, D.D.

Mark 14:17-19. A traitor among the twelve.—

1. In the holiest society on earth the unholy may have a place.
2. The highest goodness may fail to win to the obedience of faith.
3. There may be moral wrong without present consciousness.
4. The knowledge and appointment of God do not hinder the freedom and responsibility of man.—J. H. Godwin.

The traitor.—

1. At first it seems strange to find a traitor amongst the select disciples of Christ. Yet there is nothing in this selection of a bad man to be an agent in carrying on a good design which is not in harmony with the general scheme of the Divine government. It is a condition of the visible Church that “the evil should be ever mingled with the good,” and that sometimes the evil should have authority and pre-eminence over the good. Thus the small circle of Christ’s select disciples presented a sort of epitome of the world into which they were to be sent and the Church over which they were to preside.

2. The next thing which challenges observation here is the unfruitfulness of this unhappy man under the extraordinary religious advantages which he enjoyed. We plainly see, in this instance, that mere means of grace, unaccompanied by an actual operation of Divine power upon the heart, are nothing. Even the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ, then for the first and last time administered by Christ Himself, and of which Judas was permitted to partake, as the type of all who should thereafter profane those holy mysteries, had no effect upon him, except to make him worse than before (John 8:27).

3. The commonness of the sinful lust by which Judas was enticed. What is there singular in a man’s rejoicing because his wealth is great, or desiring that it may be still greater? This is, in fact, the ruling passion of mankind. The desire of acquiring is one of the most powerful springs of human conduct. Rightly directed and strictly regulated, it is not only innocent, but laudable. Unregulated and misdirected, see what it leads to!—F. Field, LL.D.

Mark 14:18. A question of propriety as to quality and time of news.—Christ then breaks news at table that operates distressfully. He knew it would. That was a violation of hygienic law. At such times, to secure the best results, cheerfulness should reign. He who made the Sabbath for man would surely not thoughtlessly or wantonly establish a precedent the observance of which would be against man. It cannot be. The gospel tends to gladness. Its trend makes for the good of man as man, body and soul, in all the phases of his being. But there is a disturbing element in him. The otherwise beautiful equipoise, adjustment, and beneficent operation of the laws of human life have been rudely shattered by sin. Anarchical times demand different treatment from the “piping times of peace.” Just when and where the province of one law should be invaded in deference to another and higher were questions which the Saviour, we may be sure, in His own case settled righteously. That He had good reason therefore we may rest assured. But what that was we may not be so sure. Possibly the “needs be” was this: His hour was at hand. The goal was being reached without the unnecessary introduction of the miraculous either in forcing or retarding. God does not work by miracles when ordinary means will suffice. Were Christ to utter these words sooner, Judas might, humanly speaking, have perfected arrangements and precipitated matters. Jesus would then have been betrayed before “His time,” unless a miracle of prevention were wrought. Had He spoken them later, Judas might not have the requisite time to compass his plans and be on the ground at the right moment for “his hour,” unless a miracle of hastening were wrought. And then, again, these words may have been uttered at that moment to secure the absence of this disturbing element from the feast of love that was to follow.—Wm. M. Campbell.

Mark 14:19. The moving of conscience.—This question indicates a deep stirring of conscience, quickened by God. It is a question of which every human soul at some time or other is more or less cognisant, whatever may be the answer given to it. It is a question which is vital to any adequate conception either of the sinfulness of sin, or of the standard of personal duty, or of the ideal walk of the regenerate spirit with God.

I. Consider it in some of the various motives and intentions with which a human soul may conceivably put the question to God.

1. Clearly it may be put (God protect us from it!) in a spirit of insolent hardness. Thus Judas put it. A man to whom sin is not sinful, to whom self-gratification is the law of his being, who neither fears God nor regards man, may say, “Lord, is it I?” But he will not care for an answer, nor wait to hear it given.
2. It may be put also in a spirit of shallow and ignorant levity. We little know what possibilities of good and also of evil are hidden in our wonderful and complex nature—to what heights of goodness we may rise, into what abysses of infamy we may fall.
3. It is also the question of a holy self-distrust. There are so many pitfalls at our feet, such woful surprises, such mortifying recollections of hopes disappointed, opportunities neglected, duties omitted, blessings lost, that “Lord, is it I?” is often the aching, frightened question of a bewildered though honest spirit, fearful of losing itself in the mazes and obscurities of its unknown tendencies, and quite distinct from the morbid self-questionings of spiritual egotism.

II. There are circumstances which from time to time suggest if they do not compel it; and so sinuous and intricate are the windings of the human heart, so apt are even true natures to be deceived by refined sophistries, or encouraged to mistake transient emotion for the continuous action of dominant principles, that it is almost necessary for us, if we would adequately know ourselves, and habitually rule ourselves, to be forced to find ourselves out as we stand in the light of God.

1. The sight of a brother’s sin may be wholesome though humbling in making us recognise that only by the grace of God we are what we are. Had we been tempted as he was tempted, might not we have fallen perhaps lower? Or we may ourselves have been exposed to the fiery trial of temptation and been saved, yet so as “by fire.” We never knew till now how strong was the strength of God, how weak the weakness of man.
2. There are also occasions in life which, like mountain-peaks rising out of a level plain to break its monotony and form its landmarks, bring us face to face with hidden corners in our personal life, and make us feel with a thrill of gladness the good hand of our God upon us. Sometimes it is a special mercy, which makes us wonder how God can be so good to us.—Bishop Thorold.

“Is it I?”—It was a good sign that the first thought of each of them was about the possibility of his own sin. When a man foresees a great temptation that is coming, it is always better that, instead of turning to his neighbours and saying, as he searches their faces, “I wonder who will do this wicked thing?” he should turn to himself and say, “Is it possible that I am the man who will do it?” When the wind is rising, it is good for each ship at sea to look to its own ropes and sails, and not stand gazing to see how ready the other ships are to meet it. We all feel that we would rather hear a man asking about himself anxiously than to see him so sure of himself that the question never occurred to him. We should be surer of his standing firm if we saw that he knew he was in danger of a fall.

I. There are times in the lives of all of us, I think, when that comes to us which came here to Christ’s disciples.—Beneath us, as beneath them, the worst possibilities of our nature sometimes reveal themselves. Such times are not our worst times certainly. Often they are times which, by their very sense of danger, are the safest and strongest of our lives. But they are often moments that dismay us. They come in upon our self-complacency and shock it with their ominous presence.

1. One of them is the time when we see deep and flagrant sin in some other man. When some great crime is done, when through the community there runs the story of some frightful cruelty or dreadful fraud, I think that almost all of us are conscious of a strange mixture of two emotions, one of horror and the other of a terrible familiarity. The act is repugnant to all our conscientiousness; but the powers that did the act, and the motives that persuaded the doing of it, are powers which we possess and motives which we have felt. When you read the story of yesterday’s defaulter fleeing to-day, an exile and an outcast, or sitting gloomily behind his prison bars, it is not with an angel’s innocent wonder what a sin like this can mean; it is with the understanding of a man who has felt the same temptation to which this poor wretch has yielded, that you deplore his fate. With simple wonder an angel might walk through our State prison-halls; but a man must walk there full of humbleness and charity; for as the best man that ever lived finds something of common humanity in us which makes his goodness seem not impossible to us, so the worst of men stirs by the sight of his human sin some sense of what human power of sinfulness we too possess.
2. Another of the occasions which let us see our own possibility of sin, which open to us a glimpse of how wicked we might be, is when we do some small sin and recognise the deep power of sinfulness by which we do it. A pure, honest boy cheats with his first little timid fraud, and on the other side, the bad side of him, the door flies open, and he sees the possibility that he too should be the swindler whose enormous frauds make the whole city tremble. The slightest crumbling of the earth under your feet makes you aware of the precipice. The least impurity makes you ready to cry out, as some image of hideous lust rises before you, “Oh, is it I? Can I come to that?”
3. And yet another occasion when we become aware of our own bad possibility is the expression of any suspicion about us by another person. I think that for you or me to find our names linked to-morrow in this community with some great crime of which we knew that we were totally innocent must stir the mystery of our inner life, and make us see what capacity of sin is lying there. I think our disavowal of the sin that we were charged with would be not boisterously angry, but quiet and solemn and humble, with a sense of danger and a gratitude for preservation. I think that ought to be the influence. And even the boisterousness with which some men deny a charge against their characters is still a sign in a worse way of how their conscience has been touched. Would you want the clerk in your store to be charged with dishonesty, and not go back to his work, when the charge had been disproved, with a deepened perception of temptation and a quickened watchfulness and care?
4. By a strange but very natural process the same result often comes from just the opposite cause. Not merely when men suspect us and charge us with wrong-doing, but when men praise us and say that we are good, this same recognition of how bad we have the power to be often arises. A man comes up to our life, and, looking round upon the crowd of our fellowmen, he says, “See, I will strike the life of this brother of ours, and you shall hear how true it rings.” He does strike it, and it does seem to them to ring true, and they shout their applause; but we whose life is struck feel running all through us at the stroke the sense of hollowness.
5. Is it not also true that every temptation which comes to us, however bravely and successfully it may be resisted, opens to us the sight of some of our human capacity of sin? The man who dares to laugh at a temptation which he has felt and resisted is not yet wholly safe out of its power.

II. What is this but saying that in every serious moment of life the possibility of sin stands up before us?—None but the man who has no serious moments, none but he who makes all life a play, escapes the sight. To every other man—nay, may we not say to every man, since no man is literally always a trifler?—to every man at some time the clouds roll back, the spell is broken, and he sees what a power of being wicked as of being good belongs to him just as man.

1. Is it good for him to see this? Will it help him or harm him? That will depend upon the way it works in him. It may become in him either paralysis or inspiration. One man sees his danger, and stands powerless. Another man sees his danger, and every faculty is strung to its intensest strength. If the feet are set more resolutely toward goodness, and the hands lay hold more firmly upon help, it is good for us to know how wicked we may be, how great our danger is.
2. What is it that makes that difference? How is the consciousness of our danger prevented from becoming a depressing emotion and turned into an inspiring motive? It must be by opening the life upon the other side. It must be by realising the possibilities of our human life for good as well as for evil, by seeing and never forgetting how good we have a chance to be, as well as how bad we may become. This is the power of hope; and hope is the true master of fear. A merchant hopes to be rich, and the fear of being poor, instead of being a vexing anxiety, becomes the humble servant of his expectation, and helps him on toward wealth. The fear of death is terrible to a sick man until the hope of life and strength and activity opens before him; and then in his convalescence the fear of death has ceased to depress him as a feeling, and only remains with him as a motive to caution and watchfulness. Thus fear is always good when it has hope to rule it.
3. Now if you saw a young man overwhelmed with the sight on which our eyes have been fixed to-day; if you saw him so full of the consciousness of the power of sin in his life, the possibility of the badness that he might do and be, that he was wretched and paralysed,—what would you do for him? Would you try to make him forget what he had seen? Would you try to shut out the mystery of his life from him, and make him live again the life of narrow satisfaction in the present which he lived before he looked down into the deep gulf? You could not do it. But if you could, would it be well? Surely not. What you need to do for him is to make him lift up his eyes and see the heights above him. You want to make him like the climber on a ladder, who looks up and not down, who climbs not to escape the gulf below him, but to reach the top above him, and who feels the gulf below him only as a power that makes the hold of foot and hand on every round of the ladder which they strike more firm. Now it is the glory of the Christian gospel that in the treatment of man’s spiritual nature it preserves this true relation between hope and fear perfectly.
4. I suggested just now the analogy between our physical and moral consciousness, between our consciousness of the power to be sick and the consciousness of the power to sin. It is an analogy which illustrates what I have just been saying. There is a nervousness about health which is all morbid. It is full of imaginations. There are people who can never hear a disease described without thinking that they have it. They never hear a sick man talk without feeling all his symptoms repeated in themselves. You think of such a person and realise his wretchedness. Then you look away from him to a perfectly healthy man who seldom thinks about being sick at all. But yet he is something different from what he would be if there were no power of sickness in him. Unconscious for the most part, but now and then coming forth into consciousness, there is always present with him a sense of his humanity, with all the liabilities which that involves. He does not do what a man would do who had literally a frame of iron. And that is just the condition of the man with the healthy soul. He does not nervously believe, when he hears of any flagrant crime, that he is just upon the brink of that crime himself. He lives in doing righteousness, but all the time he keeps the consciousness that sin, even out to its worst possibilities, sin even to the cruelty of Cain, the lust of David, the treachery of Judas, is open to him.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.

Mark 14:21. A wail in the woe.—There is a wail in the word for “woe,” a tone of lament, if also a tone of reprobation. Indeed, we shall get nearer the meaning of the whole verse if we think of it as an elegy, rather than as a formal sentence on the traitor. Jesus could not lose even “the son of loss” without sorrow. That any man should be base enough to betray “the best Man that e’er wore flesh about Him” might well make even an angel weep. There must have been something good in Judas, or he would not have been “called to be an apostle”; but there must also have been something horribly mean in a man who, while affecting great love for the poor, could habitually steal from the purse which commonly held so little, but always a little for the destitute and helpless. And how could He who loved all men but mourn over one in whom much that was good and of fair promise had been blighted by a sordid selfishness and covetousness, one who had given place to the devil, and to the meanest of all devils, the most sordid of the spirits that fell? “Good for that man,” etc., was a proverbial expression of blended pity and blame, and must not be taken too literally, since nothing could be good or bad for an unborn man. It means simply that not to have been at all would have been better than to have become such a man as Iscariot was. And there are many of whom this might be said. Judas is not the only man who has been unfaithful to his ideal, nor the only man who has played the hypocrite and proved a traitor to Christ from selfishness and greed.—S. Cox, D.D.

The grace of God received in vain.—Judas was treated even as the rest of the apostles up to the moment of his defection. That he was meanwhile so ill disciplined in heart as to be robbing the common purse of his little fraternity almost certainly denotes that he had received this favour before he had become “like a little child”—that he was an exception, in short, to the general rule of the Messiah’s ministry while on earth, and of the Comforter’s dispensation ever since. It was an exception which, considered in all its bearings, was sure to be always remembered and recorded, and might therefore have been made and exhibited in a strong light for the purpose of shewing that the rule from which it was a departure was really no limitation to the free mercy of God in Christ. In the same manner as Adam’s fall proved that the whole human race were incapable of standing without Divine assistance added to their natural powers, even so Judas’ case was perhaps designed to shew that if in the recovery of fallen man the grace of God were more lavishly dispensed, if His Son while on earth or His Spirit now required of us no preparatory frame of heart and mind, we should not be the better for the removal of the apparent restriction in the offer of mercy. To man in that unprepared state of heart the grace of God would be the pearl thrown to swine.—S. Hinds.

Warning from the fall of Judas.—The Lord, when He pleases, can employ bad men in His service, and bestow splendid abilities and extraordinary spiritual gifts upon them, which He perhaps denies to His dutiful and beloved children. If it be asked why He does this, and why He permits hypocrites, covetous and deceitful workers, to appear among men as angels of light, it may be answered that He has a right to do what He will with His own, that He giveth no account of His matters, and that from what He has revealed of His character we ought to believe, whether we can always see it or not, that He is righteous in all His ways, holy in all His works, and wise in all His proceedings. But since the fact is so, that Satan can transform himself into an angel of light, and his ministers appear as ministers of righteousness, that Balaam can prophesy, Judas work miracles, and wicked men preach and pray with great eloquence, we ought to be aware of it, lest we be dazzled or misled, and therefore excited to covet splendid gifts instead of those graces of the Spirit which essentially accompany salvation, and mark us out as real members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.—W. Richardson.

Mark 14:22-24. The Holy Communion.—When the earnest Christian kneels at the altar to take the Holy Communion, he performs a sixfold Acts 1. It is an act of obedience. Not a suggestion merely, not a time-honoured custom only, but a command, explicit, emphatic.

2. It is an act of remembrance. Not that Christ needed a memorial, but that we needed a memory.
3. It is an act of thanksgiving—a eucharist. This is worthy. Nations honour themselves in honouring their heroes. Thus Garibaldi is honoured in Italy, Luther in Germany, Napoleon in France. Thus Italy, and France, and Germany, and all Christian people honour the world’s Hero, the world’s Saviour, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in this eucharistic feast.
4. It is an act of fellowship—a communion. We join with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven and of earth to magnify the glorious name of God.
5. It is an act of testimony. Every celebration of this Sacrament is one new link in the continuous chain of testimony that comes down through the ages from the upper chamber of Jerusalem. Every hand that takes this bread and cup joins hands with the unbroken chain of priestly hands that reach back to the pierced hands of Jesus.
6. It is an act of expectancy. We shew forth the Lord’s death till He come. We look back, and we look forward “till He come.” It is going up to the altar on the mountain-top and looking to the eastern sky to see if there be any sign of the coming dawn.—R. S. Barrett.

The Holy Communion the most solemn Christian service.—

1. If any one were to ask what is the most sacred, solemn, and consoling part of our religious service, that where God has gathered together most abundantly the greatest of His truths and the richest of His graces, where it is that in our life on earth we are brought nearest to heaven, and are most lifted up in heart and spirit, calmly and awfully to feel the presence of the God whom we serve, no well-instructed Christian would doubt how to answer. He would say at once, “In the Holy Communion.”
2. What is it that makes it so different from all other acts of prayer and praise? What gives it its matchless solemnity, its matchless savour of heaven, its deep comfort?
(1) It is the communication to us of the death and passion of Christ, and in it we are carried back for the time to that One Sacrifice, in which our own pardon was involved, and from which flowed God’s mercy to the world.
(2) It is the link and bond, while Christians are living in the flesh, between earth and heaven, the meeting-place between the redeemed and their Redeemer, out of sight, but not far off, the communion in which we are again and again joined to the risen and glorified Lord, who is the heavenly strength and life by which our spirits live.
(3) Here we have communion also with the whole Church of Christ. Here we who are so separated are one. Here we who most deeply sympathise with one another, and we who never could be brought on earth to understand each other, are practically joined in one; for both break the bread and pour the wine, and receive it as the token that the Lord had died for them, that the Lord hath pardoned us, that the Lord is nigh.—Dean Church.

The presence of Christ in the Eucharist.—

1. I say and confess with the Evangelists and with St. Paul that the bread on the which thanks are given is the body of Christ in the remembrance of Him and His death, to be set forth perpetually of the faithful until His coming.
2. I say and confess the bread which we break to be the communion and partaking of Christ’s body with the ancient and the faithful Fathers.
3. I say and believe that there is not only a signification of Christ’s body set forth by the Sacrament, but also that therewith is given to the godly and faithful the grace of Christ’s body—that is, the food of life and immortality; and this I hold with Cyprian.
4. I say also, with St. Augustine, that we eat life and we drink life; with Emissene, that we feel the Lord to be present in grace; with Athanasius, that we receive celestial food which cometh from above; the property of natural communion, with Hilary; the nature of flesh and benediction which giveth life, in bread and wine, with Cyril; and, with the same Cyril, the virtue of the very flesh of Christ, life and grace of His body, the property of the Only-Begotten, that is to say life, as He Himself in plain words expoundeth it.
5. I confess also, with Basil, that we receive the mystical advent and coming of Christ, grace, and the virtue of His very nature; the Sacrament of His very flesh, with Ambrose; the body by grace, with Epiphanius; spiritual flesh, but not that which was crucified, with Jerome; grace flowing into a sacrifice, and the grace of the Spirit, with Chrysostom; grace and invisible verity, grace and society of the members of Christ’s body, with Augustine.
6. Finally, with Bertram, I confess that Christ’s body is in the Sacrament in this respect—namely, as he writeth, because there is in it the Spirit of Christ, that is, the power of the Word of God, which not only feedeth the soul, but also cleanseth it. Out of these I suppose it may clearly appear unto all men how far we are from that opinion whereof some go about falsely to slander us to the world, saying we teach that the godly and faithful should receive nothing else at the Lord’s table but a figure of the body of Christ.—Bishop Ridley.

Christ’s presence in the Eucharist to unworthy receivers.—May we say, then, that Christ is really present in the Sacrament as well to the unworthy as to the faithful receivers? Yes, this we must grant, yet must we add withal that He is really present with them in a quite contrary manner; really present He is, because virtually present to both—because the operation or efficacy of His body and blood is not metaphorical but real in both. Thus the bodily sun, though locally distant for its substance, is really present by its heat and light as well to sore eyes as to clear sights, but really present to both by a contrary real operation; and by the like contrary operation it is really present to clay and to wax, it really hardeneth the one and really softeneth the other. So doth Christ’s body and blood, by its invisible but real influence, mollify the hearts of such as come to the Sacrament with due preparation, but harden such as unworthily receive the consecrated elements. If he that will hear the Word must take heed how he hears, much more must he which means to receive the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood be careful how he receives.—T. Jackson.

The mystery of the Eucharist.—The words, “Take, and eat: it is My body. Take, and drink: it is the cup of My blood,” understood in their true meaning, literally and without metaphor, are to human reason a mystery unheard of and impenetrable. The bread that Jesus offers to His apostles is no longer merely bread, but His body which is about to be sacrificed; the cup which He gives them to drink is no longer merely wine, but His own blood which is about to be shed. The apostles understood it so. They did not ask, “How can this be done?” In the simplicity and fulness of their faith, knowing that the power of the Master was boundless, and that the truth was in Him, they believed on His words, and partook of His body and His blood under the forms of bread and wine. What Jesus had said a year before to the people of Galilee at Capernaum (John 6:35, etc.), He realised on this day a few hours before His death. He taught them that He was the “Bread of Life,” that in eating of Him they should live; that if they ate not the flesh of the Son of Man and drank not His blood, they should not have life; that His flesh was the true meat, and His blood the true drink; that he who ate of His flesh and drank of His blood should dwell in Him. The people, shocked and scandalised, had turned away, asking ironically how He would give any man His flesh to eat. “How” was now explained.—Father Didon.

The significance of the Eucharist.—This scene contains the whole religion of Jesus. In this single moment of His life He realises it at one stroke in its perfection. He appears at once as Priest and Victim, as creating the eternal priesthood and the eternal sacrifice. He reveals without metaphor or parable the reason of His death. John had rightly called Him “the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.” How are men to profit by the personal atonement which the Son of God comes to accomplish? They must be incorporated in the Victim who delivers Himself up and dies for their sakes. And Jesus requires not only that there should be a spiritual union with His spirit and His person—His design is a grander one. His aim is a spiritual and material union together; His design is that man, being both spirit and matter, body and soul, should be united in spirit and reality to His whole being—to the Son of God and the Son of Man—to His Divinity and His humanity, to His soul and His body. His design is that he should believe on His Word, and become through faith one and the same spirit with Him—that he should eat of His body and drink of His blood, and be incorporated in the flesh of the Son of Man.—Ibid.

The Eucharist an extension of the Incarnation.—Gregory Nazianzen defines the Eucharist, “a communion of the incarnation of God.” For in that He affirms the bread to be His body, and the wine to be His blood; by receiving this body and blood of Christ, and so changing it into the substance of our body and blood by way of nourishment, the body of Christ becomes our body and His blood is made our blood, and we become in a mystical manner flesh of His flesh and bone of His bone. And as in His conception of the Holy Virgin He took upon Him the nature of man that He might save man, so in His Holy Sacrament He takes upon Him the nature of every man in singular that He might save every man who becomes one with Him in the Divine Sacrament of His body and blood. His real incarnation was only in one, but His mystical incarnation in many; and hence comes this Sacrament to be an instrument whereby Christ is conveyed unto us, His benefits applied, and so our faith confirmed.—J. Mede.

The Eucharist is on the one side the perfection of the sustenance of life in personal communion, on the other a use of the products of the earth as instruments of communion, implying the necessity of taking the whole nature into communion if it is to be real, the symbols of creation and of the Lord’s body in one. The life of the disciples with Christ was exchanged for a life in Christ: they abode as branches in the Vine of which His Father is the Husbandman. The bread took for them the place of the body through which they had first learnt to converse with a living Lord. The wine took for them the place of the blood in which His life had dwelt. In that feast of blessing and thanksgiving, that joyful participation of accepted sacrifice, no life was found too earthly to be offered on the altar of the Cross, or to become a means of human fellowship and Divine communion.—Prof. F. J. A. Hort.

Communion.—

1. Communion is permanent, yet needs times of revival.
2. All Christian life is sacramental. Not alone in our highest act of communion are we partaking of heavenly powers through earthly signs and vehicles.
3. This neglected faith may be revived through increased sympathy with the earth derived from fuller knowledge, through the fearless love of all things.—Ibid.

Mark 14:22. Analogies between Christ’s body and bread.—

1. As bread is the strength and state of our natural life, so Christ is for our spiritual, being all in all.
2. As bread is loathed of the full stomach, but most acceptable to the hungry soul, so Christ is most welcome to such as “hunger and thirst after righteousness.”
3. As bread is usual and daily, so Christ should be to the Christian, feeding on that bread which came down from heaven, the soul’s ordinary refection.
4. As bread is made one loaf of many grains, so we that are many are one bread and one body, because we are all partakers of one bread.
5. As corn is cut down with the scythe, threshed in the barn with many stripes, torn in the mill with much violence, then bolted and sifted, last of all baked with extreme heat in the oven, and all this that it may be fit meat for our body, so Christ in His ripe age was cut down by cruel death, His body was whipped, His flesh rent asunder, His soul was as it were melted in the fiery furnace of God’s anger; and all this that He might become food for our soul, that we might eat of this bread and drink of this cup.—Dean Boys.

Mark 14:23-24. The blood of Jesus Christ becomes, through His goodness, milk for His children, a band of union to His members, the seal of His covenant, and the ransom of His slaves; and, on the contrary, through the wickedness of the imitators of Judas, it becomes to them a mortal poison, a sword of separation, the seal of their reprobation, and the cause of an eternal captivity.—P. Quesnel.

Mark 14:25. The new Passover.—Jesus never partook afterwards of the Passover—never, that we know of, celebrated the Eucharist with His disciples. It is said, indeed, that after His resurrection “He was known of them in breaking of bread”; but this can hardly be so applied. Rather say that the Holy Spirit of Christ is in His Church, which is His new body, even as His fleshy frame was when this declaration was made. When, therefore, after the descent of the Holy Ghost—when, at this day, a Christian congregation partakes of the new Passover, Christ is in the midst of them, they are His body and members in particular. He is then as truly present, and as truly a partaker in the ceremony of “drinking the fruit of the vine,” as when His Divine nature was united only with the Man Christ Jesus. In this sense He fulfilled His declaration to the apostles, and in this sense continues, in every age of the Church, to drink the fruit of the vine in His own kingdom, the kingdom of God on earth. He said that He would drink it new, because it was thenceforth to assume a new character and efficacy. He came not to destroy, but to fulfil, God’s former appointments—to make all things new.—S. Hinds.

Communion in heaven.—Let us take care to raise our hearts from the sacramental communion here on earth to the eternal communion in heaven, to be celebrated there not under veils or sensible symbols, but openly and without veils. The sight of truth, unveiled and perfectly disclosed to our eyes, is a torrent of delight and joy, which as it were inebriates the soul, makes it forget all the afflictions and miseries of the earth, and transports it out of itself, in order to its living only in the truth, upon the truth, and for the truth.—P. Quesnel.

Mark 14:26. Jesus singing.—That song is like an aureola encircling that little company in the gathering gloom. There is no concord between light and darkness, no real affinity between woe and song. One is from above, the other from beneath. One is a daughter of the skies, the other a child of perdition. Musical harmonies are not heard in the outer darkness, breaking sweetly on the ear amid the awful discords of despair. But heaven is a land of song. Joyous strains are heard constantly echoing in sweetest refrain over the “bright plains” of paradise.

1. Christ singing! And at such a time! The hour and power of darkness approaching. The agony of Gethsemane and the darkness of the Cross near. He knows it all, yet calmly sings. What a vision is here of holy confidence and anticipated triumph! Apparently Christ on the eve of defeat; the powers of darkness on that of victory. But He sings. Glad omen for the cause of redemption. Such singing does not indicate a discouraged leader or a defeated cause.
2. The disciples sang. This would have a tendency to neutralise the effect of the “exceeding sorrow” that oppressed them. It would prevent a panic until the “hour” had come.
3. In time of danger and in the face of the coming storm, how much depends, under God, on the leader! Napoleon in the hearts of his soldiers fights and wins an Austerlitz or a Jena. The spirit of Wellington pervades Waterloo and saves Europe. Jesus can sing on the eve of the Waterloo of the world’s redemption. Such a leader, such a spirit, such a song, animates His people to meet foes, “fight the good fight of faith,” and conquer. Blessed paradox! The darkest hours may still be bright with the light of the heavenly sun. The Eternal Father and Friend is “at the helm.”—Wm. M. Campbell.

The spirit in which to meet the trials of life.—Praise is an exercise in the spirit of which we should meet the trials of life. I use the term “spirit” as distinguished from the outward act, from the mere utterance of words or melody of sounds, and to guard against the idea that apart from those feelings of which it ought to be the expression and accompaniment any form of worship is entitled to the commendation given in Scripture to the exercise of praising God. The exercise is founded on a knowledge and belief of the Divine perfections; it is not so much a mechanical as a spiritual act—it is not the exercise of musical taste, but of devotional feeling—it is the admiring contemplation of the Divine perfections, expressed in the appropriate forms of inspired devotion. Be it yours to rise from the contemplation of second causes to the contemplation of the First Cause, in adoring admiration of Him who appoints and arranges all according to His unerring will. Be it yours to remember that the hand which removed the gourd you delighted in likewise bestowed it,—that the worm which withers has been sent by Him, not in wrath, but in love; not to leave your heads defenceless against the scorching sun or the pelting storm, but to lead you to abide in a safer and sweeter peace under the shadow of the Almighty. Trials thus met would be deprived of their sting. And did either your own interests or those of Christianity require that sufferings as great as those which martyrs have endured should be appointed you, encountering them in the same spirit, you would come out of them with the same triumph.—R. Brodie.

Mark 14:27. Christ the Shepherd—

1. As descending from ancient patriarchs who were shepherds. They were types of Him.

2. He knows His sheep, and marks them for His own (John 10:3; John 10:14). God sets His seal on them (2 Timothy 2:19).

3. He feeds their souls and bodies in green pastures (Psalms 23), and drives them to the sweet streams and waters of comfort by the paths of grace and righteousness.

4. He defends them from the wolf and enemies; they being timorous, simple, weak, shiftless creatures, unable to fly, resist, or save themselves.
5. He nourishes the young and tender lambs.
6. He seeks them when they go astray, and rejoices to find them.
7. He brings them to the fold.
(1) The fold of grace.
(2) The fold of glory.—T. Taylor, D.D.

Christ smitten, an example to us.—

1. He suffered for no necessity or desert, but by voluntary humility, whereas we deserve fiery trials.
2. He suffered not for His own cause, but ours; and shall not we for His?
3. He despised the shame; and why should not we?
4. The end of His Cross was the exaltation at God’s right hand; and we expect the same.—Ibid.

The sheep scattered.—Why were the disciples thus scattered?

1. Their own weakness and carnal fear made them fly to save themselves. They had not counted the cost of their profession. Nor had they yet received the Holy Spirit, which afterwards kept them strong and steadfast.
2. God in His wisdom would have Christ deserted, because He was to be known to tread “the winepress of God’s wrath alone.”
3. Thus it behoved the Scripture to be fulfilled, in regard of Christ Himself, who, voluntarily undertaking the grievous burden of our sin, must be forsaken by all for the time.
4. To teach us that all our safety depends on our relation to the Chief Shepherd. Without Christ we lie dispersed, ungathered, and forlorn.—Ibid.

Mark 14:28. The promised meeting in Galilee.—Why in Galilee?

1. That our Lord and His disciples may more surely enjoy one another without fear of the Jews, and that He may instruct them in the things concerning the kingdom of heaven.
2. Because Christ had more disciples and favourites in Galilee to whom He would familiarly offer Himself and manifest His resurrection than in Judea.
3. His disciples belonged to Galilee, and He would bring them to the place where He found them.
4. They must follow their calling till Christ came, and for the time before they can get into Galilee He will be there before them, waiting for them.—Ibid.

Christ going before.—It is a very great consolation to the diseased and infirm members to be assured that their Head will not abandon them when they fall, but that He will even go before them. If Jesus did not vouchsafe to come to meet us in the power of His new-raised life—that is, by powerful graces—how should we be able ever to rise and go to Him?—P. Quesnel.

Christ the Leader.—He is always going before His followers as an Infallible Teacher, as a Faithful Friend, and as a Mighty Leader; He went before Joseph to Egypt; He went before Moses to the land of Midian, and through the wilderness to the Promised Land; He went before Daniel to the lions’ den; He went before the three brave-hearted Babylonian nonconformists to the fiery furnace; He went before Paul to Rome and John to Patmos. And He will faithfully go before us in our paths of duty, in all our trials and temptations, and in sickness and death we shall find Him going before us.

Mark 14:29. The rashness of the heart.—When we love, we think ourselves capable of anything. Suffering or death seems nothing to us. Of all kinds of rashness, the most incurable and the most unreflecting, and at the same time the most excusable, because it is the most sincere, is not the rashness of the mind or the will, but the rashness of the heart.—Father Didon.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 14

Mark 14:18-19. Betraying Christ.—Upon the mouldering walls of the refectory at Santa Maria delle Grazie, in Milan, are the faded outlines of the most famous fresco in the world. It is the Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci. The artist has taken the moment when the Master has said to His disciples that one of them would betray Him, and the disciples have started up and fallen into excited groups, and they are depicted in every variety of surprise and consternation, sorrow and self-searching. Is the artist right in so representing it? There was only one traitor amongst them, surely! Judas knew he meant to betray the Master; but the others were loyal men—nothing farther from their thoughts than handing over the beloved Lord to His persecutors and judges. I think, if you will reflect, you will see that the artist is right, for this reason—these men realised the possibilities which lay in their nature. They did not mean to betray, and yet they might be on the moment of betrayal. And all of us have understood how a sudden question applied to us, a sudden charge made against us, however unjustly, or a charge made against another justly, will sometimes reveal ourselves, as it were, and shew what we little suspected, that we were capable of enormities which, in our better moments, we condemned, and that we were even at that moment standing upon the very brink of a precipice, which is revealed to us by a lightning-flash. The artist, then, was probably right in shewing all the disciples equally anxious, though only one was conscious of treachery.

“Is it I?”—A preacher in a certain village church once gave an easy lesson in Christian ethics from the letters of the alphabet. It was to this effect: “You say, A lies, B steals, C swears, D drinks, F brags, G goes into a passion, H gets into debt. The letter I is the only one of which you have nothing to say.”

Mark 14:22-25. The Holy Communion.—All our churches contain the apparatus for a certain sacred ceremony. And this is no novel introduction; for when we examine the most ancient sanctuaries, or excavate the ruins of the oldest structures, we find this arrangement existing—nay, even when we descend into the catacombs of Rome, where, underground, the infant Church of Jesus worshipped in the days of persecution, we find due provision made for celebrating the Holy Communion. Up then almost to the very era of the Saviour’s mission do we trace this ancient institution, and every time we behold the Lord’s table standing in its appointed place we see an evidence of the truth of Christianity; for there is no way of accounting for its existence, or for the appearance of a new rite amongst the religions ceremonies of mankind, at a particular period, except by assenting to the truth of the gospel narrative that, on a certain eventful night, Jesus of Nazareth established the Blessed Sacrament of His Body and Blood, and commanded it to be observed for an everlasting memorial.—Dr. Hardman.

Spiritual nourishment.—When General Grant took the Federal army at Chattanooga, it was feeble and dispirited because it was almost destitute. The food of the army was hauled with difficulty over mountain roads and the supply was totally insufficient. His first movement, on assuming command—and it was that which eventually led to victory—was to repair the railroads and open up communication, so that the army soon had everything it needed. There is a like necessity in the spiritual life of Christ’s army. We are worth very little in the service of Christ except as we are spiritually nourished. The soul is easily starved by lack of appropriate food. And our spiritual nourishment must come from Christ.

Sacramental grace.—Were a king to offer grants of land to any who would serve in a war for the defence of the country, it would be a foolish question, “Can we not obtain a grant without serving in the war?” The king might give a grant to some who served him in a, different way, but in ordinary cases he would not. God may save a man without the sacraments; but those who reject the sacraments are, to say the least, in great peril. There was a labouring man some time since in one of our northern towns who, owing to some mistake, had been misinformed as to the hour of service. He came when the celebration of the Holy Communion was just over, and when they came out of church they found him waiting sadly outside. The clergyman explained how the mistake had arisen, and expressed his sorrow for it. “Never mind, master,” said the man; but the poor fellow could not help adding, “only I did so build upon it.” He knew his own weakness, and his need of Divine grace and supernatural assistance; and so he was coming, not as if there was any virtue in the bare act of coming, not as if the Sacrament itself could save him, but because he had grasped the great truth that it is through the Sacrament that God imparts grace and strength and life to us His children, unworthy as we are of the least of His benefits.

The Eucharist a feast of consecration.—Here we renounce the idols of the world and put on more and more devotion to our God. Not long ago a foreign potentate was received with much pomp and circumstance by the Lord Mayor of London. He came along the Strand with courtiers and attendants to Temple Bar, at the borders of the old city, where the Lord Mayor met him and delivered to him the keys of London, so signifying that he was welcome not merely to the freedom of the city, but also to the custody of it. As we at this sacramental gateway of promise pass out into the larger and better life, let us turn over the keys to our Prince. Come in, Thou Blessed One I Come in and possess Thine own.

The Eucharist prized.—In times of persecution men would risk their lives to get their Communions. A hundred years ago, during the French Revolution, when religion was abolished by the French Parliament, when Sunday was done away with, the clergy were hunted into the thickets like beasts of prey, and none might conduct or attend a service on pain of death, did people go without this means of grace? No I From time to time a messenger hurried with a mysterious watchword from house to house. “The black swamp,” he would mutter, and pass on without greeting or farewell. But the persons addressed understood him. Shortly after midnight, men and women, dressed in dark clothes, would meet silently by the black swamp below the village, and there, by the light of a carefully guarded lantern, one of the homeless priests would give the Body and Blood of the Lord to the faithful of the neighbourhood. They all knew that at any moment, before the alarm could be given, the soldiers might be upon them, and a volley of grape-shot might stretch them bleeding and dying on the ground. What matter? Man might kill their body, but Jesus had said that He would raise them up at the last day.

Benefit of the Sacrament.—A poor woman was once asked by a neighbour what good she got by receiving the Blessed Sacrament. “Can you understand it?” asked her neighbour. “No,” said the woman, “I cannot understand it, I cannot explain it; but this I know, that I go to the altar empty and I come down full.”

The Holy Grail.—Such was the name given long ago to the actual cup out of which our Saviour dispensed the first Lord’s Supper. This cup, it was believed, had been taken up to heaven, but was revealed miraculously to every one whose heart was pure. And it was thought that the sight of this cup imparted pardon and peace to all who were favoured with a vision of it. This was the tradition believed by our forefathers, and there is a beautiful truth in it which all who consider may understand. For beneath the outward symbols of the Holy Eucharist there is a Divine reality which is seen only by those whose hearts have been purified. Everybody sees the bread and wine, but few see the Divine Flesh and Blood behind them that purchased salvation for us on the bitter cross. Long ago people used to set out on painful pilgrimages in the hope of seeing the Holy Grail. They prayed, they fasted, they wrought good works, they longed for a sight of the wonderful vessel that would give them blessing and joy. But these painful pilgrimages were needless. The Holy Grail was nearer than they thought. For the wonderful vision is to be seen at every Communion, and all we need to see it is a pure heart.

Mark 14:24. Bloodshedding as an expression of love.—A certain Asiatic queen, departing this life, left behind her three accomplished sons, all arrived to years of maturity. The young princes were at strife as to who should pay the highest respect to their royal mother’s memory. To give scope for their generous contentions they agreed to meet at the place of interment, and there present the most honourable gift they knew how to devise or were able to procure. The eldest came, and exhibited a sumptuous monument, consisting of the richest materials, and ornamented with the most exquisite workmanship. The second ransacked all the beauties of the blooming creation, and offered a garland of such admirable colours and delightful odours as had never been seen before. The youngest appeared without any pompous preparations, having only a crystal basin in one hand and a silver bodkin in the other. As soon as he approached he threw open his breast, pierced a vein which lay opposite to his heart, received the blood in the transparent vase, and, with an air of affectionate reverence, placed it on the tomb. The spectators, struck with the sight, gave a shout of general applause, and immediately gave preference to this oblation. If it was reckoned such a singular expression of love to expend a few of those precious drops for the honour of a parent, oh, how matchless, how ineffable, was the love of Jesus in pouring out all His vital blood for the salvation of His enemies!

Mark 14:26. Affliction, producing song.—In his Hunting for the Nightingale in England, John Burroughs tells of listening one black night to the song of the sedge-warbler in the hedge. It was a singular medley of notes, hurried chirps, trills, calls, warbles. When it stopped singing, a stone flung into the bush set it going again, its song now being so persistently animated as to fill the gloom and darkness with joy. Samuel Rutherford’s most gladsome letters are those from his prison. The saints have sung their sweetest when the thorn has pierced their heart.

The power of a hymn.—A little boy came to one of our city missionaries, and holding out a dirty and well-worn bit of printed paper, said, “Please, sir, father sent me to get a clean paper like this.” Taking it from his hand, the missionary unfolded it, and found it was a paper containing the beautiful hymn beginning, “Just as I am.” The missionary looked down with interest into the face earnestly upturned to him, and asked the little boy where he got it, and why he wanted a clean one. “We found it, sir,” said he, “in sister’s pocket after she died; she used to sing it all the time when she was sick, and loved it so much that father wanted to get a clean one to put in a frame to hang it up. Won’t you give us a clean one, sir?”

Mark 14:29-31. Mistaken self-complacency.—It was well said once by a remarkable man, and the words are worth remembering, “Bear in mind that you are just then beginning to go wrong when you are a little pleased with yourself because you are going right.” Let us watch against this as a snare of Satan, and endeavour ever to maintain the apostolic attitude: “In lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than himself.” And let me caution you not to make the mistake of supposing that this self-complacency can be effectually guarded against by a mere use of the recognised theological expressions duly ascribing all the merit and all the praise to God. These are too often merely the garments of Spiritual pride, and by no means must they be mistaken for true humility.

Presumption.—Henry Winstanley, who built the first Eddystone Lighthouse in 1696, had such confidence in the structure that he expressed a wish that he might be in the lighthouse during the fiercest possible hurricane. In November 1703 he had his wish gratified; and the morning after the tempest not a vestige of the lighthouse remained.

Danger of presumption.—A scientific gentleman, deputed by the Government, was, not many years ago, examining the scene of a fatal explosion. He was accompanied by the underviewer of the colliery, and as they were inspecting the edges of a goaf (a region of foul air), it was observed that the “Davy “lamps which they carried were afire. “I suppose,” said the inspector, “that there is a good deal of fire-damp hereabouts.” “Thousands and thousands of cubic feet all through the goaf,” coolly replied his companion. “Why,” exclaimed the official, “do you mean to say that there is nothing but that shred of wire-gauze between us and eternity?” “Nothing at all,” replied the underviewer, very composedly. “There’s nothing here where we stand but that gauze wire to keep the whole mine from being blown into the air.” The precipitate retreat of the Government official was instantaneous. And thus it should be with the sinner; his retreat from the ways of sin—those “goafs” of poisonous air—should be instantaneous. Sir Humphry Davy’s lamp was never designed as a substitute for caution if accidentally or unknowingly carried into foul air, whereas many do so knowingly and habitually.