Mark 1:21-34

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

Mark 1:21. Capernaum was at that time a flourishing commercial town on north-western shore of lake. A customs station, with military quarters. Its synagogue was the gift of a centurion (Luke 7:5). Here Jesus healed Simon’s wife’s mother, the centurion’s servant, and a paralytic; called Levi from the toll-house; and discoursed on humility, and on the bread of life.

Mark 1:22. Not as the scribes.—They could only insist on the observance of petty rules invented by men like themselves; whereas He dived deep down to eternal principles, which bore the manifest impress of the Divine approval. Moreover, His teaching—unlike theirs—was exemplified to the letter in His pure and holy life.

Mark 1:23. With an unclean spirit.—In, i.e. in the power of—subject to—influenced or possessed by. The demon had apparently obtained complete ascendency over the wretched man, whose whole mind was now given up to uncleanness. But, as to this, see note by Dr. Maitland on pp. 32, 33.

Mark 1:24. Let us alone.—This exclamation was probably imported here from Luke 4:34, where it signifies the demon’s resentment at Christ’s interference. What have we to do with Thee?—What common ground is there between us? Truly, none whatever. They were far as the poles asunder—the “unclean spirit,” and the “Holy One of God.”

Mark 1:25. Jesus rebuked.—The Saviour endorses the demon’s admission of the infinite distance which separated them morally the one from the other, and refuses to accept at his mouth even so much as an acknowledgment of His own Divine claims. Throughout His ministry Christ never for a moment countenances anything that might be construed into a truce with Satan or his emissaries—anything that could give colour to the sneer of the Pharisees that by the prince of demons He cast out demons.

Mark 1:27. What thing is this?—What is this? New teaching with authority! He commandeth even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him!

Mark 1:30. Lay sick of a fever.—Was prostrated with a burning fever. Intermittent fever and dysentery, the latter often fatal, are common Arabian diseases.

Mark 1:32. At even.—When the disappearance of the natural sun announced the close of the Sabbath, the Sun of Righteousness arose with healing in His wings.

Mark 1:33. All the city was gathered.—What a picture would linger in Peter’s memory of this unwonted assemblage in front of his own house!

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Mark 1:21

(PARALLELS: Luke 4:31; Matthew 8:14.)

A Sabbath in Capernaum.—I. Two places compete for the honour or shame of being the site of Capernaum—Tell Hum at the northern extremity, and Khan Minyeh at the north-western corner.

1. At the former there have been found the remains of a synagogue built of white marble, the style of which belongs to the Herodian period; and the following circumstance respecting it may be worthy of consideration. It appears to have been usual to carve over the doorway of these buildings an emblem, which, in every case known save one, was “the seven-branched candlestick,” signifying that they were set apart chiefly for illumination or instruction. The one exception is at Tell Hum, where the carving represents “the pot of manna” surrounded by a vine and cluster of grapes. Now it was in the synagogue at Capernaum that Christ delivered His discourse about the “manna” and the “living bread which came down from heaven”; and it has been conjectured, with some show of reason, that He who so frequently based His teaching on some object in sight at the time, may have brought the conversation round to this point on purpose, because the unusual emblem formed so happy an illustration of His subject. See John 6:24.

2. Dr. Otts, a recent American traveller, writes as follows, in support of the claim of Khan Minyeh:—Without entering into the controversy, or presuming to dogmatise, we settle down on Khan Minyeh as the site of “His own city,” in which was the Jesus-house, contemptuously called, in His day, by the unbelieving Jews, “the house of the heretic,” and ever since known as such in tradition. In this city Jesus had a house. It is spoken of in the Gospels as “the house,” and was doubtless known by His friends and foes as “the Jesus-house.” It may have been a hired house, like that in which Paul lived and preached at Rome, engaged and maintained by His friends and followers as the place where He met with His disciples, and received all who sought the benedictions of His holy ministry. It seems that when He first went to Capernaum to make His home there, He lodged with Peter while this house was being procured and prepared for His use; and while staying in Peter’s house, He healed his wife’s mother of a fever, etc.

II. The synagogue was a term applied both to the congregation of Jews in a provincial town, and to the place where it assembled—on the Sabbath for worship, and during the week for instruction, discussion, and administration of justice. The origin of this institution is lost in obscurity. As far back as the time of Samuel there were meetings of bands of prophets for praise and prophesyings (1 Samuel 10:5; 1 Samuel 19:20), which pious Israelites would doubtless attend. In the days of the kings people resorted to the prophet of the time for instruction at certain seasons (2 Kings 4:23). The only Old Testament mention of religious meeting-places other than places of sacrifice—if, indeed, the reference be not to religious feasts rather than religious houses—is in a Psalm (Psalms 74:8) of Maccabean date. Jewish tradition ascribes the establishment of synagogues to Ezra and Nehemiah. After the return from captivity they assumed a prominent place in the Jewish ecclesiastical system. The order of service was far less conventional than that of the Temple, distinguished strangers being frequently invited to read and expound (Acts 13:15). Thus the synagogue was a notable exception to the rigid formality which was sapping the life out of Judaism, and formed a rallying-point for the propagation of the Christian faith. Christ made constant use of the synagogue both for private devotion and for teaching purposes (Luke 4:16).

III. The teaching of Christ in the synagogue at Capernaum struck His auditors with amazement, as it had done before at Nazareth (Luke 4:14). It is not unlikely that He repeated now the substance of what He said then: declaring that His mission was to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord—the jubilee, in which God offers forgiveness of sins and deliverance to sinners; and that this blessing was for all, of whatever nation, who would turn from their sins and trust in God. To all this He may have added some of those imperishable sentences which were afterwards gathered up in the grand charter of the heavenly common wealth which we call the Sermon on the Mount. Such teaching as this—at once so simple, so gracious, so comprehensive, so Divine—could not fail to create a sensation in the hearts of people accustomed only to the pedantries and quibbles of the scribes, who only darkened counsel by words without knowledge. How had the commandment of God been emptied of all meaning by their puerile hair-splittings on every conceivable subject that bordered on religion without touching its inner essence! how had they bewildered the minds of the simple by their endless arguments and speculations and refinements, and by their wearisome appeals to this authority as against that! With Jesus it is altogether different. He moves on a plane as far above theirs as the heaven is higher than the earth. When He speaks, it is to utter truths that find their unmistakable echo in every human soul; when He teaches, it is to quote the opinion of no earthly authority, but to lay down the eternal law of right and wrong as Himself the Word of God. And what He preaches to others, He practises Himself; while He points, He also leads. Not so the scribes: they said “Go,” but went not themselves.

IV. A striking result of Christ’s preaching manifests itself immediately. The hush of awe which testified to the strong impression made by Christ’s discourse in the synagogue, is abruptly disturbed by shrieks of rage and fear proceeding from one of the auditors who is manifestly under the dominion of the powers of evil. Here we are brought face to face with the profound and solemn problem of demoniacal possession. The phenomenon cannot be explained away by saying that our Lord merely accommodated His language to the mistaken ideas of the time, for we find that He deliberately made it part of His disciples commission to “cast out demons” (Matthew 10:8), and afterwards gave thanks to the Father for their success in this part of their work (Luke 10:17), while on another occasion He reproved them for having failed to expel an evil spirit (Matthew 17:21). We must, then, decline to identify these demons with mere physical and mental diseases—a theory which in any case would be insufficient to account for the double personality so manifest in nearly every instance on record, and conspicuously in the text, where at one moment the man, at another the demon, gains the ascendency. In one of his better moments the poor wretch made his way to the synagogue, the very last place that the demon would willingly have permitted him to enter; but when there the demon, goaded to fury by the presence of Christ, asserts his supremacy over his victim, even while he fears that it will be to his own undoing. “Involuntarily, in his confessed inability of disguise or resistance, he owns defeat, even before the contest. ‘What have we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth? Thou art come to destroy us! I know Thee who Thou art, the Holy One of God.’ And yet there seems already an emergence of the consciousness of the demonised, at least in so far that there is no longer confusion between him and his tormentor, and the latter speaks in his own name. One stronger than the demon had affected the higher part in the demonised. It was the Holy One of God, in whose presence the powers of moral destruction cannot be silent, but must speak, and own their subjection and doom. The Christ needs not to contend; that He is the Christ is itself victory. But this was not all. He had come not only to destroy the works of the devil. His Incarnation meant this—and more: to set the prisoners free. By a word of command He gagged the confessions of the demon, unwillingly made, and even so with hostile intent. It was not by such voices that He would have His Messiahship ever proclaimed. Such testimony was wholly unfitting and incongruous; it would have been a strange discord on the witness of the Baptist and the Voice which had proclaimed Him from heaven. The same power which gagged the confession also bade the demon relinquish his prey. One wild paroxysm—and the sufferer was for ever free.” See Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, book iii., chap. xiv., for a thoroughly reverent and learned discussion of this difficult subject.

V. The house of Simon and Andrew is the next scene of our Lord’s ceaseless activity. On this memorable Sabbath a sudden attack of violent burning fever, such as is still common in that neighbourhood, had prostrated Simon’s mother-in-law. That St. Peter was a married man, who continued to live with his wife after his call to the apostolic office, has been made the occasion of many a bitter gibe at the Roman See. But surely with great want of fairness, for the celibacy of the clergy is nothing more than a matter of discipline, one of those minor points which any branch of the Church has a right to exact from its ministers if there be reason to think God’s work may thus be done more effectively. It is evident from 1 Corinthians 7. that St. Paul was strongly in favour of celibacy, whenever and wherever possible, in the then condition of society; and the Roman See has simply applied to a particular class the general principle approved of by the apostle. In thus doing the Roman See may be acting wisely or unwisely—that is a question which must be decided entirely on its own merits; but the fact that St. Peter happened to be a married man has nothing whatever to do with it. St. Peter’s wife is said to have been named Perpetua or Concordia, to have been a faithful convert, to have accompanied Peter in his apostolical journeys, and to have died a martyr for the faith of Christ during the persecution of Nero, her husband supporting her in the last struggle, and comforting her with the words, “O my wife, remember thy Lord who died for thee, that thou mightest gratefully shed thy blood for Him” Now to return to Peter’s wife’s mother. Our Lord, as soon as He is told of her illness, restores her by a touch. “He held the woman’s hand to give life,” says Petrus Chrysologus, “because Adam from a woman’s hand had received death. He held her hand in order that what the hand of the presumer had lost, the hand of the Author might restore. He held her hand, that the hand might receive pardon which had plucked the sentence of death.” And the cure is perfect. The woman who an instant before lay in a consuming fever rises as if from refreshing and invigorating sleep, and at once goes about her usual household duties, making the best possible use of her recovered health by ministering to the wants of Him who gave it.

VI. The day’s work is not yet over; for the news of the Divine Benefactor’s marvellous power has rapidly spread throughout the town, and there is a universal desire to profit by His presence among them. True, the Blessed Physician has a short respite, since it is the Sabbath, on which day journeys must not be taken and burdens must not be carried. But no sooner does the sinking sun proclaim the close of the Sabbath, than Christ’s privacy is invaded by a surging mass of anxious people who have brought their sick and demonised friends to seek His aid, and of course their number is soon swelled by crowds of onlookers full of curiosity to witness the unwonted spectacle. “And all the city,” says St. Mark, “was gathered together at the door”: can we doubt that in this exclamation we have the very words of St. Peter, the master of the house, who at the time must have been puzzled to think what was best to do or how the multitude was to be got rid of? But it matters not to the Saviour—so utterly regardless of His own comfort and ease is He—how many there may be; for every emergency He is equally ready, to every cry for succour He makes the same response. “He cast out the spirits,” St. Matthew tells us, “with His word, and healed all that were sick; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, Himself took our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses.” What encouragement is here for all: for those “who are any ways afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate,” to bring to Jesus all their woes; and for those who have friends or neighbours ignorant or heedless of the Saviour, to proclaim to them the blessed tidings of His pity and His love! But, alas! how little do we realise that Jesus can cure, and wishes to cure, every infirmity of our fallen nature—from the great fever of our sin-sick souls, down to the hasty tempers and uncharitable thoughts which mar the characters of so many professing Christians, and yet cause them so little concern!

Mark 1:23. The plea of evil, and its rejection.—

I. The plea of evil (Mark 1:24).—

1. It is the plea of personal evil. The carnal mind asserts its right to be, and insolently rages when confronted with the claims of truth and love and righteousness—rages most of all when confronted with the beauty of Jesus Christ.
2. It is the plea of public evil. The moment reformers attempt to deal with any social wrong, any pernicious institution, custom, trade, or law, they are attacked after this fashion.
(1) Idolatry;
(2) Slavery;
(3) Intemperance;
(4) Impurity.
3. And when evil dare not claim absolute immunity, it pleads for toleration and delay. “What have we,” etc. The last thing to be expected from evil is that it will tamely abdicate. Let us be sure that it never quits its hold until after struggles which shake to their foundations personal, social, and national life.

II. Some characteristics of this plea.—

1. It is specious. The demon has closely identified himself with the human, and it is cleverly represented that the devil is the man’s friend, Christ his enemy, and whatsoever is done against the demon is done against the man. So blinded are the minds of them that believe not, that they regard an attack on the devil’s kingdom as an invasion of their own rights, a confiscation of their own riches. Wickedness is never friendly to anything that concerns the rights, safety, or enrichment of humanity, and when the devil becomes an advocate it is the wolf pleading for the lamb.
2. It is impudent.
(1) This world is not the devil’s world, but God’s. The desert must apologise for itself, not the garden of spices; the black weed, not the lily or the rose; the cesspool, not the crystal river or the sea of glass.
(2) In the development of this world the devil plays no essential part. Evil has no rights.

3. It is cruel (Mark 1:26). Can we let evil alone in ourselves—that which dims our eye, enervates our resolution, sears our conscience, destroys our affections, shatters our wing, blasts our hope? Can we for any consideration whatever let sin alone in our children? Sensitive as we are to their welfare, we cannot leave them a prey to the dark passions which destroy body and soul in hell. Can we let the heathen nations alone? Idolatry, infanticide, sutteeism, hook-swinging, slavery, cannibalism, are sufficiently terrible customs to let alone, and yet they are but a few red bubbles on a vast sea of sorrow whose depths God alone can sound. Are we to let alone the evils which afflict our own community? Intemperance, lust, war, tyranny, and other vices are filling our land with woes too deep for tears.

III. Christ’s rejection of this plea.—

1. “Hold thy peace” (Mark 1:25). Here is the voice of contempt. Christ speaks to principalities and powers as to a dog. Where a spark of reality, sincerity, promise, existed, Christ was infinitely patient and sympathetic; but there was no place for argument here, because in pure wickedness there is no truth, no reason, no hope.

2. “Come out of him.” Here is the voice of authority.

Lessons.—

1. Evil is to be cast out of humanity. The whisper of Christ prevails against all the wrath and rage and roar of hell.
2. Evil is to be wholly cast out. Nothing is rational in dealing with evil but the severity that breaks it off suddenly, that condemns it utterly, that pursues it to the death.
3. Evil is cast out in Christ.—W. L. Watkinson.

OUTLINES AND COMMENTS ON THE VERSES

Mark 1:21. An authoritative Teacher and His audience.—I. An authoritative Teacher.—

1. Dignified in manner.
2. Original in matter.
3. Convincing in argument.
4. Consistent in practice.

II. An astonished audience.—They might well be astonished at—

1. The range of His intellectual gifts.
2. The wealth and force of His illustrations.
3. His acquaintance with the human heart and conscience.
4. His deep knowledge of the Divine law.

Christ stood distinguished in these points among others from all the Rabbis who had been, or then were, in Israel.

1. The relation between His person and His word. The Teacher made the truth He taught. His teaching was His articulate person, His person His incorporated teaching.
2. The consciousness He had of Himself and His truth; its authority and creative energy. He was, at the first as at the last, at the last as at the first, certain of the reality of His words and claims, of their endurance and triumph.
3. His knowledge of His truth and mission was throughout perfect and self-consistent. His progress was not a series of tentative efforts, of mended mistakes, but an orderly movement to a consciously conceived end.

Mark 1:22. Christ’s independence of thought.—It was as if an English judge, instead of implicitly following precedents in all his decisions, were to discard any reference to even the most weighty, and speak, it might be, in direct opposition to them. No judicial luminary dares or dreams of such a thing, his greatest audacity leading him no further than to venture on some timid advance in a new deduction from earlier “Cases.”—C. Geikie, D.D.

The failure of the scribes as teachers.—The scribes failed, first, in the matter; they delivered not the doctrine of God: secondly, in the manner; they taught coldly and without zeal: thirdly, in the end; they taught in pride and ambition, seeking their own and not God’s glory.—E. Leigh.

Teaching enforced by personal religious character.—While the scribes leaned upon the authority of others, and quoted chapter and verse for all they taught, Jesus spoke straight out from Himself the truth that was embodied in His own life, leaving it to find an echo in the hearts of the truth-loving and God-revering. His teaching impressed itself upon the populace, mainly because it was backed up by a personal religious character; the teaching of the scribes failed mainly because it lacked this—because they did not in their own lives act out what they taught. The one thing essential above all else is to be ourselves living the truth that we desire others to embrace. It has been reserved for Christianity to present to the world an ideal character, which, through all the changes of eighteen centuries, has filled the hearts of men with an impassioned love; has shewn itself capable of acting on all ages, nations, temperaments, and conditions; has not only been the highest pattern of virtue, but the highest incentive to its practice; and has exercised so deep an influence that it may truly be said that the simple record of three short years of active life has done more to regenerate mankind than all the disquisitions of philosophers, and all the exhortations of moralists.—W. E. H. Lecky.

Teaching with authority.—

1. Men will teach well only as they teach under Christ.
2. Authority is impossible apart from association with the Master.
3. Authority of tone must come from intensity of conviction.
4. Hearers know the voice of authority.
5. The Christian teacher is to show his supremacy over all other teachers.—J. Parker, D.D.

Mark 1:23. Unclean spirits.—I do not see anything in the history of those spirits, or of the persons possessed by them, which should lead to the use of the epithet “unclean” in any such sense as we should think of assigning to the word. If we could imagine the evil spirits or demons thus represented as wandering on earth to be the impure spirits who left their own habitations, we might perhaps suppose that they were characterised and described, not by the acts of their vagrant humiliation, but by the sin that had led to it. This, however, does not seem to be consistent with the idea of their custody; and I am more inclined to believe that the uncleanness, or impurity, relates to their mixed nature; not purely human, or angelic.—S. R. Maitland, D. D.

“In an unclean spirit.”—There is dreadful meaning in the preposition here used—“a man in an unclean spirit,” as if his human self was immersed in that filthy flood. The words embody three thoughts: the fierce hatred which disowns all connexion with Jesus; the wild terror which asks or affirms Christ’s destructive might over all foul spirits; and the recognition of Christ’s holiness, which lashes unholiness into a paroxysm of mingled despair and hate.—A. Maclaren, D. D.

Demoniac possession is not an organic or bodily disorder, a kind of hallucination or mental alienation, or one of the nervous affections, as rationalist critics have pretended in defiance of the Scripture; it is a particular condition of the mind, a psychological disorder. The presence of a demon in certain men neither absorbs nor yet destroys their personality. The individuality is indestructible and inviolable. God Himself, who could destroy everything, as He has created everything, destroys nothing and does not allow destruction. The most violent Satanic action only affects the organic and lower faculties, the imagination and the senses of the unfortunate victims; their freewill may be enchained for a moment, but only when voluntarily surrendered. The man possessed of a demon is under the dominion of a spirit which tyrannises over him, suspends or fetters his liberty, deprives him of the normal control of his body and limbs, speaks by his mouth and deranges his feelings. The abnormal state of his faculties is not due to an unhealthy condition of the brain or to organic disturbances; it is born of the violent and disturbing action of a superior will; it is a result and not a cause. Hence the healing of one possessed is beyond the power of medicine; it can only be effected by the moral influence of one spirit on another. It is true that actual illness, as a rule, accompanied demoniac possession. Certain senses were often paralysed; the man possessed of a demon could not see, could not speak; he was subject to convulsions or epileptic fits; but we have no authority to confound these maladies with the possession itself. All that we can say, after the closest examination of the texts, is that the mischief introduced into the organic life of the victim may have been originated by the violent action of the spirit which tormented him: so intimate is the connexion between mind and body, that organic disturbances lead to mental troubles, just as mental troubles engender organic disorders.—Father Didon.

Mark 1:24. The spiritually disturbed consciousness a figure of the curse of sin—

1. In its destruction and contradictions.
2. In its restraint.
3. In its despair.
4. But also in its dim feeling of its misery and of the coming of its Saviour.—J. P. Lange, D.D.

The characteristics of the wicked.—

1. Knowledge without love.
2. Hatred to Christ, and withal flattering acknowledgment.
3. Pride even to madness, and yet impotent fear and flight.—Ibid.

The antithesis of heaven and hell.—

1. Peace of soul, and passion (the devil assaults first).
2. Collectedness, and distraction.
3. The spirit of mercy, and the spirit of torment
4. Dignity, and degradation.
5. Victory, and prostration.—Ibid.

The name “Jesus of Nazareth” given to Christ—

1. By early disciples (John 1:45).

2. By the demons.

3. By the multitude (Mark 10:47).

4. By the soldiers (John 18:5; John 18:7).

5. By the high-priest’s servant (Mark 14:67).

6. By Pilate (John 19:19).

7. By the angel at the sepulchre (Mark 16:6).

8. By the two disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:19).

9. By Peter (Acts 2:22; Acts 3:6; Acts 4:10; Acts 10:38).

10. By Christ Himself after the Ascension (Acts 22:8).

Mark 1:25 The unclean spirit silenced.—

1. An evidence of Christ’s Divine commission.
2. A proof of Christ’s goodwill to men.
3. A declaration of the great object of Christ’s incarnation—to destroy the works of the devil.
4. An indication of Christ’s determination to refuse all quarter to the minions of hell. One cannot believe that His rejection of their testimony was prudential only, whatever possibility there may have been of that charge of complicity which was afterwards formulated. The thought of allowing Himself to be indebted to them for help of any kind would be most abhorrent to Him. And must He not still regard as contamination every truce with evil of whatever kind—every gain accruing to His cause by fraud, injustice, or suppression of the truth?

Mark 1:27. Cured by a word.—What caused such astonishment was not so much the fact itself, as the way in which it was performed. Such cures, it seems, were not unknown to the Jews, but they were due to the virtue of the prayers, sacred formulæ, incantations, and invocations of their exorcists, and, probably, more often to the accommodation of the spirits themselves. Jesus did not appeal to any extraneous force, He only had to speak one word; He commanded, and the unclean spirit passed out subdued, ejected by a superior will.—Father Didon.

Mark 1:30. Christ wrought miracle to relieve Himself from the common burdens of humanity.—These indeed pressed the heavier upon Him because He uplifted their weight from other men; and it is in his narrative of this very day’s events that St. Matthew applies this principle to His mastery over disease (Mark 8:17). All the more, He relieved with especial promptness the distresses of those who were near to Him—of His hosts when their wine failed, of His followers threatened by hunger, of His disciples alone upon the waters, of those whom He loved in Bethany. Thus He was, in temporal as in spiritual trouble, the Saviour of all men, yet especially of them who believe. And therefore He is prompt to respond to this appeal for one whom He must have known, and whom His disciples evidently loved—an appeal at once so fervent and so delicate, so free from dictation, that it was equally well characterised as “beseeching Him” and as “telling Him of her.”—Dean Chadwick.

Personal compassion.—The same character is to be recognised in the spiritual work of Jesus, even to this day. It is still a personal compassion which cools the worse and deadlier fevers of the soul; still when invoked He bends over us, and our healing is due to no mechanical grace, but to His own direct act of love; and still it is ours, when healed, to minister to Him and to His people.—Ibid.

Contact with the individual.—

1. The individual case as well as the case of the multitude should be regarded as worthy of attention.

2. Bodily diseases as well as spiritual ailments are within the sphere of our solicitude; we are to be philanthropic as well as spiritually-minded.
3. We are to put ourselves in personal contact with those who suffer.—J. Parker, D.D.

Mark 1:34. Christ’s miracles of healing may be regarded—

1. As proofs of His Divine mission, Messiahship, and Godhead.
(1) They were such as no man could have wrought without direct aid from heaven.

(2) They were such as the prophets had predicted would be wrought by the Messiah (Isaiah 53:4; Isaiah 35:5, etc.).

(3) They were wrought with an air of authority such as no mere man would dare arrogate to himself.
2. As a means of overcoming prejudice, and so securing a favourable reception for His message. His attention to their bodily interests, and His success in dealing with physical maladies, induced men to believe in His solicitude for the welfare of the soul, and to have confidence in the spiritual treatment He prescribed.
3. As an encouragement to believing prayer. Christ is as really in our midst to-day, as He was that Sabbath in Capernaum; and He is every whit as ready to sympathise and as able to succour. But He cannot work for us and with us and in us, unless we trust Him implicitly and without reservation of any kind. “Lord, increase our faith!”
4. As examples for our imitation. The whole apparatus now at work for the relief of suffering and for the care of sufferers—hospitals and infirmaries, asylums and homes—is the direct fruit of Christianity. Does it not become us, according to our ability and opportunity, to give such institutions our cordial support? Innumerable cases of suffering and disease come constantly before us. While we carry the sufferers in the arms of faith and prayer to God, let us do what we can to alleviate their pains by self-denying effort, and so prove that our prayers are the outpouring of tender, sympathising hearts.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1

Mark 1:23. An unclean spirit the essence of pollution.—It is not every unclean thing that offends the sight, while the slightest stain upon some things will excite in us deep dislike; the feeling depends entirely upon the nature of the thing, and the purpose to which it is applied. We pass by an unclean stone unnoticed.… But rising a step higher in the scale of creation, to an unclean plant, we become conscious of a slight emotion of dislike, because we see that which might have pleased the eye and have beautified a spot in creation disfigured and useless. An unclean animal creates our dislike still more, for instead of proving useful in any way it is merely a moving pollution. But an unclean human being excites our loathing more than all; it presents our nature in a light so disgusting that it lessens our pity for him if he be miserable, and excites in us ideas of disease, contamination, and pain. But an unclean spirit—it is loathsome above all things. It is the soul and essence of pollution; it is the spectacle which excites the deep dislike of God Himself.—F. F. Trench.

Mark 1:25. Restored harmony.—The legend runs that there once stood in an old baronial castle a musical instrument upon which nobody could play. It was complicated in its mechanism, and during years of misuse the dust had gathered and clogged it, while dampness and variations of temperature had robbed the strings of their tone. Various experts had tried to repair it, but without success, and when the hand of a player swept over the chords it woke only harsh discords and unlovely sounds. But there came one day to the castle a man of another sort. He was the maker of the instrument, and saw what was amiss, and what was needed for its repair, and with loving care and skill he freed the wires from dust, and adjusted those which were awry, and brought the jangling strings into tune, and then the hall rang with bursts of exquisite music. So with these souls of ours, so disordered by sin, that everything is confusion and at cross-purposes: it is not until their Divine Maker comes and attempts the task of repair and readjustment that they can be set right and be made capable of the harmonies for which they were originally constructed.

Mark 1:27. God is against disease.—Remember that the men who said this did not look then, as we look now, on Jesus as Son of God. What they saw was a son of man with power over the subtlest form of disease; and from that day man began to realise that God had “given this power unto men,” and that the disease that walketh in darkness or destroyeth at noonday should by man be met and conquered. Nor was this all the glad tidings of the new gospel of the Great Physician. Men saw Him who claimed to be one with the Father, going about doing good, and healing all manner of diseases among the people. Then, thought they, God is against disease; it is a Godlike thing to destroy it. And when the Christian world awoke to a further consciousness of the cause—viz. that these bodies of ours are made in God’s fair image, and built to be the temples of the Holy Ghost, are not our own, but are bought with a price, and belong unto the God who hath redeemed us—then the Christian world arose in enthusiasm, and determined to seek and save not only the dying souls, but the dying bodies of men also. Hospitals for victory over death arose, where before had only been public buildings to victory in battle over fellow-men.—H. D. Rawnsley.

Mark 1:32. Christ’s care for humanity.—If we may reverently compare this scene with its modern analogies, it bears less a resemblance to anything that occurs in the life of a clergyman than to the occupation of a physician to a hospital on the day of his seeing his out-patients. There is, indeed, all the difference in the world between the best professional advice, and the summary cure such as was our Lord’s. But we are, for the moment, looking at the outward aspects of the scene; and it shows very vividly how largely Christ’s attention was directed to the well-being of the bodily frame of man. Now it would be a great mistake to suppose that this feature of our Saviour’s ministry was accidental or inevitable. Nothing in His work was accidental: all was deliberate, all had an object. We may infer with reverence and with certainty that His first object was to shew Himself as the Deliverer and Restorer of human nature as a whole: not of the reason and conscience merely without the imagination and the affections—not of the spiritual side of men’s nature, without the bodily; and, therefore, He was not merely Teacher, but also Physician; and therefore and thus He has shed upon the medical profession to the end of time a radiance and a consecration which are ultimately due to the conditions of that redemptive work, to achieve which He came down from heaven teaching and healing.—Canon Liddon.

Godlike works.—When one of the greatest of God’s heroes, one of the most illustrious saints of Christendom, made an oration—preached, as we should say, a funeral sermon—concerning a brother, holy and heroic, whose soul was in paradise—when Gregory of Nazianzum would show unto the people how, though Basil rested from his labours, his works did follow, and he being dead yet spoke—he pointed towards the hospital which Basil had built, and said, “Go forth a little out of the city, and see the new city, his treasure of godliness, the storehouse of alms which he collected; see the place where disease is relieved by charity and by skill, where the poor leper finds at last a home! It was Basil who persuaded men to care for others; it was Basil who taught them thus to honour Christ.”—Dean Hole.

Christ the centre of attraction.—Leaving the Paris Exhibition as the sun went down, I noted an electric light that, revolving round and round, shot its ethereal pencilled rays far across the sky, touching with a momentary radiance the vegetation or the buildings across which they passed; and looking up I noted innumerable sparks wavering, vibrating in the illumination. For a moment I could not think what this meant, for there is scarcely any scintillation, and certainly no sparks, thrown off from the electric light. Then in an instant it occurred to me that these bright lights were myriads of insects attracted from the dark ocean of air round, and which, protected from the burning luminary by the strong glass, were safely rejoicing in the ecstasy of those beams. So here, around the beams of spiritual light and love that radiate from the Saviour, the innumerable hosts of suffering, struggling men and women of that day come within the field of our vision.—J. A. Picton.