CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Mark 9:35. If any man desire.—If any one wishes, as chap. Mark 8:34.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 9:33-41
(PARALLELS: Matthew 18:1-5; Luke 9:46-50.)
Receiving and forbidding.—Surely the disciples might have found something better to talk about on the road from Cæsarea, where they had heard from Jesus of His sufferings, than this miserable wrangle about rank! Probably they understood little of His meaning, but hazily thought that the crisis was at hand when He should establish the kingdom; and so their ambition, rather than their affection, was stirred. Perhaps, too, the dignity bestowed on Peter after his confession, and the favour shewn to the three witnesses of the Transfiguration, may have created jealousy. Matthew makes the quarrel to have been about future precedence; Mark, about present. The one was striven for with a view to the other.
I. Note the law of service as the true greatness (Mark 9:33-35).—“When He was in the house, He asked them.” The tongues that had been so loud on the road were dumb in the house—silenced by conscience. His servants still do and say many things on the road which they would not do if they saw Him close beside them, and sometimes fancy that these escape Him. But when they are “in the house” with Him, they will find that He knew all that was going on; and when He asks the account of it, they too will be speechless. “If any man would be first,” he is to be the least and servant, and thereby he will reach his aim. Of course that involves the conception of the nature of true greatness as service, but still the distinction is to be kept in view. Farther, “last of all” is not the same as “servant of all.” The one expresses humility; the other, ministry. There are two paradoxes here. The lowest is the highest—the servant is the chief; and they may be turned round with equal truth—the highest is the lowest, and the chief is the servant. The former tells us how things really are, and what they look like, when seen from the centre by His eye. The latter prescribes the duties and responsibilities of high position. In fact and truth, to sink is the way to rise, and to serve is the way to rule—only the rise and the rule are of another sort than content worldly ambition, and the Christian must rectify his notions of what loftiness and greatness are. On the other hand, distinguishing gifts of mind, heart, leisure, position, possessions, or anything else, are given us for others, and bind us to serve. Both things follow from the nature of Christ’s kingdom, which is a kingdom of love; for in love the vulgar distinctions of higher and lower are abolished, and service is delight.
II. Note the exhibition of the law in a life.—Children are quick at finding out who loves them, and there would always be some hovering near for a smile from Christ. With what eyes of innocent wonder the child would look up at Him, as He gently set him there, in the open space in front of Himself! Mark does not record any accompanying words, and none were needed. The unconsciousness of rank, the spontaneous acceptance of inferiority, the absence of claims to consideration and respect, which naturally belong to childhood, as it ought to be, and give it winningness and grace, are the marks of a true disciple, and are the more winning in such because they are not of nature, but regained by self-abnegation. What the child is, we have to become. This child was the example of one half of the law, being “least of all,” and perfectly contented to be so; but the other half was not shewn in him, for his little hands could do but small service. Was there, then, no example in this scene of that other requirement? Surely there was; for the child was not left standing, shy in the middle, but, before embarrassment became weeping, was caught up in Christ’s arms and folded to His heart. He had been taken as the instance of humility, and he then became the subject of tender ministry. Christ and he divided the illustration of the whole law between them, and the very inmost nature of true service was shewn in our Lord’s loving clasp and soothing pressure to His heart. Christ goes on to speak of the child not as the example of service, but of being served. The deep words carry us into blessed mysteries which recompense the lowly servants and lift them high in the kingdom. “One of such little children” means those who are thus lowly, unambitious, and unexacting. “In My name” defines the motive as not being simple humanity or benevolence, but the distinct recognition of Christ’s command and loving obedience to His revealed character. Unselfish deeds in His name open the heart for more of Christ and God, and bring on the doer the blessing of fuller insight, closer communion, more complete assimilation to his Lord. Therefore such service is the road to the true superiority in His kingdom, which depends altogether on the measure of His own nature which has flowed into our emptiness.
III. The apostles’ conscience-stricken confession of their breach of the law (Mark 9:38-40).—Peter is not spokesman this time, but John, whose conscience was more quickly pricked. He begins to think that perhaps the man whom they had silenced was “one such little child,” and had deserved more sympathetic treatment. Pity that so many listen to the law, and do not, like John, feel it prick them! Christ forbids such “forbidding.” They are only to forbid those who do speak evil of Christ; to all others, even if they have not reached the full perception of truth, they are to extend patient forbearance and guidance. “The mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped”; but the mouth that begins to stammer His name is to be taught and cherished.
IV. We have the reward of receiving Christ’s little ones set over against the retribution that seizes those who cause them to stumble (Mark 9:41-42).—These verses seem to resume the broken thread of Mark 9:37, whilst they also link on to the great principle laid down in Mark 9:40. He that is not against is for, even if he only gives a cup of water because they are Christ’s. That shews that there is some regard for Jesus in him. It is a germ which may grow. Such a one shall certainly have his reward. That does not mean that he will receive it in a future life, but that here his deed shall bring after it blessed consequences to himself. Of these none can be more blessed than the growing regard for the Name, which already is in some degree precious to him. The faintest perception of Christ’s beauty, honestly lived out, will be increased. Note, too, the person spoken of belongs to the same class as the silenced exorcist, thus reading the disciples a farther lesson. Jesus will look with love on the acts which even a John wished to forbid. Note, also, that the disciples here are the recipients of the kindness. They are no longer being taught to receive the little ones, but are taught that they themselves belong to that class, and need kindly succour from these outsiders, whom they had proudly thought to silence.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Mark 9:33-34. Ambition a universal fault.—How subtile is the poison of ambition! how difficult for a man to preserve himself from it! Few people are heartily willing to be below others; they find as much difficulty almost to bear an equality; and much the greatest number think of nothing but gaining a superiority. Who would imagine that ambition could take hold of persons who had forsaken all, and that the apostolical college should not be exempt from it? In short, everybody is subject to it, and nobody is willing to own it.—P. Quesnel.
Our Lord’s question brings His hearers back to their higher selves, and they can again see that to be permitted to work at all in bringing God’s kingdom to pass is a great blessing, in comparison with which all petty distinctions between this kind of work and that disappear out of view. We see in this instance how the mere question operates. Could any rebuke have met the purpose better? Do we not find that an accusation commonly provokes a defence, and that the temper which is bent on finding excuse is not that which leads a man to amend? Our Lord causes men’s hearts to condemn them; and when so condemned they turn in their trouble to Him, and find that He is “greater than their hearts and will forgive them”: whereupon a great light comes into their minds. This is what happened here.—H. Latham.
Mark 9:35. Service the road to preferment and rule.—To lord it over men is not the way to win the first place in their hearts. The men whom we all know, admire, praise, whom we cheerfully acknowledge as our superiors, are those who live for others rather than for themselves. Men will resist mere power, but they bow to love.—S. Cox, D.D.
True greatness consists in renouncing greatness itself. A man becomes a slave to it when once he desires it; he is above it whenever he despises it. The primacy or first place in humility is the only one to which we are permitted to aspire. To dispute with secular persons, which should be the greatest, is a thing very opposite to an ecclesiastical spirit. The only thing of which a minister of Christ ought to be ambitious is to be the last of all. Humility must not be an idle virtue, but a virtue useful to our neighbour. It places its chief joy not only in being below all, but even in serving all. For true charity is humble, and true humility is charitable.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 9:36. Look at the children.—Look at the children set by God in our midst. Christ’s parable to His disciples can never grow stale, for always there are fresh young children in our midst to repeat it. They are there, and when we are sick with self-reflexion and self-preoccupation turn and look at the children. How simply they take their days! how gaily they face them! how fresh and natural the development of their life! how untrammelled by questionings about whether they are properly appreciated or no! They go, in tears perhaps as well as laughter, but always in all circumstances trusting to be just what they are, trusting to their own native reality, to the natural self as it acts in its spontaneous freedom. Love is trust—trust in God, the trust of a child that he was made to be what he is. We take our being on trust. No growth in self-direction diminishes in the least degree the absolute necessity of continuing to act in the child’s trust. God’s creative impulse abides from hour to hour within us, feeding, moulding, upholding, making us what we are; and the child in us alone enables us to respond to His impulse, to live in His breath, to move in His will. Oh, what sweet and tender peace would spring up within our secret souls if deep within, below, and beyond all the self-questionings we could just quietly lie back in God like a child in the arms of Jesus! There is a great picture by Watts, charged with his mystic passion, in which an old man, worn and feeble, lies back in his chair, dying, and round him, dropped from his nerveless hands, lie all the gifts of his culture, the tools and signs of all that has been his in philosophy, in science and art. Wearily he fades away, amid the wreck of his highest human experiences; and then up above a great angel, benignant and strong, bears off his soul, new-born through death in the shape of a baby child, soft, white, and warm. A child-soul—that is what a man should have within him at the last, still living within him to surrender at death to his God. It is as a little child that he shall enter that new kingdom of love, as a little child that he should be taken up into the arms of Jesus and set there in the midst.—Canon Scott-Holland.
Childhood our model.—Was it the boy Ignatius or the little son of Peter? We know not. It was childhood, and not the particular child, which Jesus commended as the model of the Christian life In the condensed report of the talk of Jesus at this time, Matthew tells us about “turning” from the natural or selfish mind to that of the child’s, or about being “converted.” Luke emphasises the fact that Jesus read the hearts of His disciples and spoke directly to these. Mark selects the blessedness of lowly service as the theme most urged upon His followers by Him who emptied Himself of His glory. In all three the main purpose of Jesus was to shew that the Christian life is but a glorified childhood.
Mark 9:37. The Church the guardian of the children.—The care taken of these little ones may be regarded as among the tests of the sound state of any branch of the Church to which they have been so lovingly commended by her Lord; they, in outward shew, poor, helpless, weak, ignorant, having everything to learn—to the eye of faith, cleansed in their Redeemer’s blood, waited upon and guarded by the highest angels, clad in the white robes of their baptismal purity, rich in invisible treasures, insensible to our poor outward world, and wrapped in a world unseen, and set forth as our example that we should become such as they. Of a truth, whether we contemplate them in their purity, or our Saviour’s “woe on such as cause them to offend,” one would alike shrink from the duty of forming what is of so great price and yet so frail, but that a duty is laid upon us, yea, “woe is on us, if we do it not”; and it is not we alone who do it, but He who saith, “Whoso receiveth one such little child in My name receiveth Me”; He whose face their angels in heaven do always behold.—E. B. Pusey, D.D.
“Such children.”—The term includes all who are in any way like such children: as, for instance, all who are helpless, as children are; all who are simple-minded, or even weak in mind; or, particularly, all who are young in the faith, who, like children, require the “milk” of the Word, and not its “strong meat.”—M. F. Sadler.
“In My name.”—That is, for My sake; not only because they are baptised or belong to Christian parents, though these are good reasons indeed, but because they partake of the nature which Christ took upon Him, because they belong to the race which Christ redeemed—because like Him they are poor, and have no settled homes, or because He may be honoured in their after-life. Such children are received in Christ’s name not only in orphanages or in Sunday-schools, but by many of the Christ-loving poor who have children of their own, and yet take into their homes some poor waif or stray, and cherish it as their own flesh and blood for no reward except the Lord’s approval.—Ibid.
“Receiveth Me,”—The grace of this promise seems almost incredible. What an honour would any Christian have esteemed it if he had been permitted to receive Christ under his roof for a single hour, and yet that receiving might have been external and transitory; but the Lord here undoubtedly promises that to receive a little one in His name is to receive Him effectually.—Ibid.
Mark 9:38-40. Christian usefulness.—
1. The great principle of Christian usefulness. He whose first concern it is to be faithful to Christ, as the Almighty Saviour of the human race and the Lord of the dead and of the living, will be equally faithful and pure in his conduct to the world around him: earnest in selecting the means and opportunities of usefulness; active and conscientious in applying them; firm in his purpose, in opposition both to foreseen and to unexpected difficulties, where he sees the good which may be done.
2. The obstructions to conscientious usefulness which in every age of the world arise from false conceptions or from a deliberate perversion of the genuine spirit of the gospel.
3. The indulgence which is due from sincere believers to the pure intentions of useful and upright men. Though the means employed should not embrace every instrument of usefulness which our peculiar views or habits might suggest to ourselves, when the general effect is visible and the means selected are in themselves beyond all exception, we are bound to regard the labours of the men who are employed together in conducting them as genuine service to our Blessed Master, and to respect them as fellow-workers together with Him.—H. M. Wellwood.
Mark 9:38. Indiscreet zeal.—The most holy persons have sometimes occasion to secure themselves from secret emulations. We very easily mingle our own interests with those of God; and our vanity uses the glory of His name only as a veil. A preacher sometimes imagines that his only desire is that men should follow Christ and adhere to His Word; and it is himself whom he desires they should follow, and to whom he is very glad to find them adhere. John has fewer imitators of that perfect freedom from self-interest which he had after the descent of the Holy Ghost, than he has of this defect in his state of imperfection. A man willingly approves the good which is done by others, when he loves good for its own sake and God for His.—P. Quesnel.
The confidence between Master and disciple evidenced by this free avowal is to be marked: if the disciples had been set right whenever they were wrong, or had frequently met with reproach, such confidence might not have grown up. It was much helped on by their being sure that their Master would understand them: what often keeps young people from opening their hearts to their elders is that they are afraid of not being understood. But though our Lord is very gentle in His treatment of the particular case, yet He speaks strongly of the distemper of which a symptom had appeared—of the evil humour which vents itself in rebuffs.—H. Latham.
Mark 9:39. The Church’s duty as to irregular preachers.—There are great numbers of persons amongst us who are preaching Christ after their fashion who have had not only no commission from the Church, but no training even in the Scriptures from any professedly religious body whatsoever. Are we of the Church to forbid them, i.e. to denounce them as necessarily schismatic and anti-Christian? I think that this place, together with such words as those in Philippians 1:18, settles the matter that we are not. But then we are bound to do that which will entail upon ourselves far more trouble and odium. We are bound to witness to such preachers and their followers that Christ desires the absolute Unity of His Church, and exhibited His desire by very earnestly praying for it (John 17:20-21); so that if they preach such things as conversion and present acceptance of Christ without regard to the truth that there is not only “one Spirit” but “one Body,” they may destroy with one hand what they think they build up with the other. We are bound also to tell them that in all probability they hold an imperfect, indeed a very mutilated Christianity; for all such persons are, by the necessity of their position as external to the Catholic Church, unable to comprehend the truths which relate to the Mystical Body, and in consequence they ignore the leading truths of the apostolic writings (Romans 6, Romans 12:1-4; 1 Corinthians 6:18-20; 1 Corinthians 10:16-18; 1 Corinthians 12:12-30; Ephesians 1:22-23; Ephesians 3:6; Ephesians 4:4-6); they in consequence disparage altogether the grace of Sacraments, have most imperfect views of the holiness of the Christian’s body, and of set purpose absolve their followers from all need of preparation for the judgment of Christ. The loss of these truths we should bring before them very prayerfully and very humbly, knowing that the Church herself has in time past through her ministers imperfectly taught them; but still we should set them before them very decidedly, for they are not our truths, but the Lord’s, and in so doing we shall not be without success.—M. F. Sadler.
“Forbid him not.”—We can conceive what such an utterance as this of Jesus was to the disciples as they listened to Him. Was it a disappointment that came to them? I think not. I think they were too great and noble men for that. I can almost see the face of John glowing with satisfaction and delight, and a certain release and freedom coming to his soul. I can almost hear him say: “Then I need not have rebuked that man. Then my Master will let me rejoice in every work that is being done in His name, no matter how imperfectly and irregularly it may be done.” Oh, let that release come to your souls out of the words of Jesus! Do not think yourselves ever bound to be narrow and exclusive in jealousy for your Lord. Believe He wants you to go through the world as He went through the world, seeking out what men are doing of good and rejoicing in that good.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
Christ suffers many things in His Church which are done without His mission; but He makes them contribute to the establishment of His kingdom. Whatever reason we may have to fear that some persons will not persevere in goodness, we must notwithstanding suffer them to continue their endeavours, when they appear to be anyways useful. God Himself authorises such persons, since it is He who performs the good in them. It is to make the world promote and carry on God’s work, for a man to engage worldly people to do good, or to favour the Church. And this is sometimes even a beginning of their salvation.—P. Quesnel.
Mark 9:40. On Christ’s side.—Not in the truth we believe, although it is good to believe all truth, lies the real sanction and warrant of our belonging to our Master, Christ. It is not in the regularity of our association with the Church, although it is good to be associated with that Church which He founded, and which has come down through the ages from Him. Ultimately there is only this test. We are on His side if we are not against Him. If our work in the world is helping men to be wicked instead of good, then, whatever may be our saying or our creed or our part in the assemblies of the Church, we are none of Jesus Christ’s.—Bishop Phillips Brooks.
Mark 9:41. Sympathy with Christ’s ministers.—
I. The need of sympathy with ministers of the gospel is implied.—
1. Destitution may arise from thoroughness of devotion to their work. Care for the spiritual may trespass upon the temporal. History of Jesus; Paul.
2. Destitution may arise from the opposition of the world to their work. Spoiling of goods.
3. Destitution may arise from Divine providence, in order to test their sincerity in the work.
II. The nature of sympathy with ministers of the gospel is described.—
2. It may be small in quantity.
2. It may be exhibited by any one.
3. It must be from regard to Christ.
III. The reward of sympathy with gospel ministers is pledged.—
1. It will be substantial acknowledgment.
2. It will be personally enjoyed.
3. It is Divinely assured.—B. D. Johns.
“Ye belong to Christ.—
1. Proprietorship. We are all Christ’s—
(1) By creation.
(2) By redemption.
(3) By baptism.
2. Privilege.
(1) Special care.
(2) Identity of interests.
(3) High dignity.
3. Responsibility.
(1) To live for Christ.
(2) To live like Christ.
(3) To confess Christ.—R. Roberts.
The reward for Christian service.—The action is worthy and rewardable, and shall therefore obtain reward. Not that there is anything in it that should or could be erected on a high pedestal of merit. But, being right and good, God will smile on it.—J. Morison, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 9
Mark 9:35. Humility.—St. Augustine being asked, “What is the first thing in religion?” replied, “Humility.” “And what is the second?” “Humility.” “And what the third?” “Humility.” Benjamin Franklin, when young, received this advice, when, on going out of a house by a shorter way, he hit his head against a beam: “You are young, and have the world before you; stoop as you go through it, and you will miss many hard thumps.”
Mark 9:36. Our blessed religion looks upon children as immortal creatures, full of beauty. It is by no means a matter of course that children are respected. Look at the social contempt in which Mahometan children are held. Look at the random influence of the infidel’s child. The atheist may indeed treat his child after the Christian custom of the land he lives in; but at the bottom of his creed the child is a mere perishing brute. Listen to the shrill shriek that comes from the fiery altar of Moloch, and the splash on the banks of the Ganges. Look at China’s infanticide, and the blood on the Juggernaut’s wheel. Then look at Christendom’s child enthroned—enthroned in the church, in the home, in the school, in Christian art, and in the Christmas festival.
Mark 9:37. Christ in His little ones.—The legend of St. Christopher is told in various ways, but one version is that, being a humble ferryman on the banks of a turbulent river, he heard one dark and stormy night a child’s voice outside his hut, asking to be carried across the river. Simply doing his duty, he took the wailing little one in his arms and breasted the swollen torrent; but before he had gone far his burden was surrounded with a halo of light, and he found that it was no ordinary child but the Christ-child, and that in performing his humble duty he had the unspeakable honour of carrying the Lord of Glory, and on this account his name was changed to Christopher, “the Christ-bearer.” This is no mere legend. It embodies an experience possible to every Christian. Whoever lovingly and patiently cares for one of Christ’s little ones will find his burden growing blessedly light, and he will realise the joy not only of rescuing the perishing, but of bearing the Christ perpetually in his heart.
Reverence to childhood.—John Locke drank into the spirit of our Lord’s teaching when he wrote this maxim: “Maxima debetur pueris reverentia” (“The greatest reverence is owed to children”). At Eisenach a famous master, John Trebonius, was rector of the convent of the Barefooted Carmelites; and when he taught his classes of boys there, he always did so with his head uncovered, to honour, as he said, the consuls, chancellors, doctors, and masters who would one day proceed from his school. There was reverence to youth! And not in vain was it shewn, for among his scholars was that highly honoured servant of God Martin Luther, who was greater than all the consuls, chancellors, and doctors of his time. When Edward Irving was at the height of his power as an orator in London, some ladies, who had established an infant school in the district of Billingsgate, and were unsuccessful in persuading the people to send their children to it, applied to him to help them. He immediately consented, and went with them through the district. In the first house he allowed the ladies to explain their errand, and they did it very offensively to the poor, so full of condescension and patronage was their manner. In the second house Irving took the place of spokesman upon himself. When the door was opened, he spoke in the kindest tone to the woman who opened it, and asked permission to go in. He then explained the intentions of the ladies, asked how many children she had, and whether she would send them. A ready consent was the result; and the mother’s heart was completely won when the visitor took one of her little ones on his knee, and blessed her. The ladies who were engaged in this work were horrified. “Why, Mr. Irving,” exclaimed one of the ladies, when they got to the street, “you spoke to that woman as if she were doing you a favour, and not you conferring one on her! How could you speak so? and how could you take up that child on your knee?” “The woman,” he replied, “does not as yet know the advantages which her children will derive from your school; by-and-by she will know them, and own her obligations to you; and in so speaking and in blessing her child I do but follow the example of our Lord, who blessed the little ones, the lambs of His flock.” Edward Irving’s conception of a child is given in these words: “a glorious bud of being.” He had a high appreciation of a child. He saw grand possibilities hidden away in its undeveloped capacities. He saw the promise of a new world in its being devoted to God, and blessed by Christ. But we must not forget this: Irving, like Trebonius, was a seer. And might not all be seers if they would only do as he did, accept Christ’s estimate of children?
Begin with the children.—Dr. Duff, the missionary to India, began his work there on a principle altogether new in missionary enterprise. He began with the children. With the eye and heart of a philosopher, as he was—a Christian philosopher—he saw that, if he could gain the children, the coming generations would be gained. In the words of Sir Charles Trevelyan: “Up to that time preaching had been considered the orthodox regular mode of missionary action; but Dr. Duff held that the receptive, plastic minds of children might be moulded from the first according to the Christian system, to the exclusion of all heathen teaching, and that the best preaching to the rising generation, which soon becomes the entire people, is the ‘line upon line, precept upon precept’ of the schoolroom.” This action of Dr. Duffs recalls the action of the Spartans, who, when Antipater demanded fifty children as hostages, offered “him in their stead a hundred men of distinction. One would have thought this by far the noblest offer, but there was a far-seeing wisdom in it. In the children there was hope of retrieving their loss, and wiping out their dishonour. Their fathers had lost the day, the children might regain it. In them Sparta would flourish anew.
Mark 9:40. Friends mistaken for enemies.—A sailor once told me that the most terrible engagement he had ever been in was one between the ship to which he belonged and another English vessel, when, on meeting in the night, they mistook each other for enemies. Several persons were wounded, and both vessels were much damaged by the firing. When the day broke, great and painful was the surprise to find the English flag hoisted from both ships. They saluted each other, and wept bitterly together over their mistake. Christians, sometimes, commit the same error. One denomination mistakes another for an enemy; it is night, and they do not recognise one another. What will be their surprise when they see each other in heaven’s light! How will they salute each other when better known and understood!—W. Williams.
Mark 9:41. Common life sublime.—In the universe filled with Christ, the falling sparrow is to the thoughtful Christian as impressive as the stars fighting in their courses. Grandly does that profound Christian thinker and poet, Sidney Lanier, in his development of the English novel, show how Christ has made even common life sublime. Maggie Tulliver, amid the details of humble routine, now wins our sympathies as much as does Œdipus. We have learned the gospel of details. What need have we of all the complex machinery of Greek tragedy when we know that God sees, knows, pities, and Christ has blessed even the cup of cold water? Like the Divine flood in Ezekiel’s vision of the ankle-deep rill swelling into the lordly river, so this beatitude of refreshment to the needy has made increase of the cup to a flood that has quenched the thirst of millions through eighteen centuries. The well and the fountain built in Christ’s name, the medicine to assuage fever, the kindly ministrations of the nurse and the hospital, the reforms of the Christian ages, are but the magnified results of the truth taught by our Lord and made vital in the lives of His people.
Cup of cold water.—When Sir Philip Sidney, after being wounded at the battle of Zutphen, was retiring to the camp, he was almost overcome by the oppressive heat. Calling for a drink of water, a soldier with great difficulty procured him one. Just as he was raising it to his lips, a wounded soldier was borne by, who turned his eyes wistfully towards the cooling draught. Instantly passing the bottle down to him he said, “Thy necessity is greater than mine.”