the gospel of Mark, in its more urgent, anticipative fashion, presents exactly the same outline of Christ's experience. Matthew's gospel puts chief stress upon the fact that he was Messiah, with much frequency of quotation from the Scriptures of the earlier covenant. The old and the new are bound each to each in the first gospel. But the presentation turns upon the rejection of Messiah by his own nation. This is kept in the foreground throughout. The method of Mark is widely different. He quotes the Old Testament less than any other evangelist. He is too eager to tell all that Jesus did, and to record how he appeared and what were his emotions as he acted, to allow himself to enter at length upon matters of interpretation and fulfillment. But incidentally, with his usual precise touch, Mark from the beginning onward shows the line of cleavage between the Lord and the religious authorities in Jerusalem. The line is not broad and black with emphasis, as in Matthew, but it is there; and its structural office in the gospel is discernible. Though the whole early movement of the second gospel is in Galilee, the frowning shadow of an enraged hierarchy with headquarters in Jerusalem is traceable by its deepening intensity, and by its increasing effects upon the work of Jesus. On the other hand, it is John's gospel which principally emphasizes the opposite development so tersely described in the phrase “the training of the twelve." Mark, true to his method, has none of those long discourses which fill the fourth gospel with the aroma of love and fellowship as between the Master and his disciples. He has a much modified and briefer outline of the discourse on the nature of the kingdom found in full in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew. But so continuously is the group of his own who receive him represented by Mark as surrounding their Master, and so critical a place does their confession of him as Messiah fill in this gospel, that one of the most penetrating writers on Mark is led to say that his might well be called "the disciple gospel." Thus is suggested for reflection Mark's presentation of the Lord's death. In this, also, he anticipates his fellow-evangelists.

In each of the first three gospels the opposition of the hierarchy and the training of the disciples are traced as contemporaneous movements paralleling Christ's approach to the cross. In Mark this is as clear and definite as in the longer and more explicit narratives. In this least of the gospels in size the matter receives unique attention. The baptism is here with its suggestive demand for interpretation as the Lord's anticipative consecration to death, in the light of the clew furnished by himself in the words, "Can ye be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" Here, also, as early as the second chapter of the gospel, is the prediction of the time when the bridegroom will be taken away from his friends. Here, once more, is the reference to the fate of John Baptist as foreshadowing his own. It must ever remain a striking feature of this gospel of the eyewitness that in it alone has been preserved for us, with the delicate precision of a cameo, that incident which one has called "the Lord's transfiguration of self-sacrifice," in contrast with his transfiguration of glory upon Hermon. The record is in the tenth chapter: "And they were in the way going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was going before them. And they were amazed, and as they followed they were afraid." Another has named this "that never-to-be-forgotten incident," and continues, "If anything in the gospels has the stamp of real and live recollection upon it, it is this." We owe the knowledge of it to the primitive, the least theological, the most matter-of-fact of the gospels. It is here as a bit of history; but it is a revelation, none the less, of the cross as the goal which drew our Lord from afar. It is to be read in connection with Christ's numerous predictions of his end contained in Mark. Even more suggestive is it that, this gospel being what it is, it should contain, as it does, two of the most decisive and explicit of our Lord's interpretations of his own death. One of them is the declaration that "The Son of man is come . . to give his life a ransom for many." The other is his word in connection with the passing of the cup at the institution of the supper: "This is my blood of the

covenant, which is shed for many." Surely it is of no small significance that in the earliest, briefest, most condensed, and least doctrinal of the gospels there should be found so clear, pointed, urgent a presentation of the culminating importance of the death of Jesus to his work. He predicts it thus, with iteration. He announces it as his own act though it was to be caused by others. He lifts it into prominence as the chief aim for which he came. He teaches his disciples to think of it as a ransom price paid for many. He instituted a symbolism of a new order to represent its relations, and yet did so on such occasion and in such phraseology as compelled reflective reference to the significance of a preceding ritual of sacrificial worship. And all this in a little gospel least given of any to the association of Christ with Mosaism, and less seldom inclined than others to develop with fullness the matters presented. Accordingly, when Mark comes to tell the actual story of the death of Jesus his manner of procedure becomes, instantly, radically different from all his previous treatment of the separate events of the Lord's life. He has leisure enough now. Every detail from Gethsemane onward is of utmost importance. He who has seemed all along to be unwilling to settle upon any theme or event; who has treated everything hitherto as the bird treats its spray, alightingly, takes two whole chapters to tell this story. Thus by emphasis, not of style of narration, but of length and scope of treatment, he puts himself in the front of the evangelists by his fullness on this theme, in proportion to the bulk of his gospel.

The one long discourse of Mark's gospel is a discourse concerning the last things. In it Jesus, as prophet, appears in a light which some erroneously suppose to be the peculiar and exclusive radiance wherewith the evangelist John transfigures Jesus. But is it so? Here too are found in a far different writing the same self-assertion, authoritativeness of tone as a teacher, and confident knowledge of the future that characterize the discourses contained in John's gospel. Putting this one long utterance of Jesus preserved by Mark,

with its outlooks upon the future and its tone of supreme confidence in the words "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away," into association with Mark's narrative of the resurrection, closing as it should with the trembling and astonishment of the eighth verse of chapter sixteen, and is not one constrained to conclude that Mark's presentation of the Son of God is unique in its close as in its beginning? Both are alike abrupt; both are from that very manner the more impressive. In the opening verse there is the energetic announcement, "The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." In the closing sentences are found an empty sepulcher; a Christ risen from the dead; a group of disciples, trembling, amazed, afraid, who had not yet adjusted themselves to the situation created by the resurrection of their Lord. What then? Is not the condensed Christ, so to speak, presented by Mark the same Christ, feature for feature, as the unfolded Christ portrayed by the other evangelists? He is Son of God and Son of man; servant and Saviour of men; a worker of wonders at the prompting of pity and for the sake of restoration; a teacher and trainer of apostles to whom with confident foresight and full assurance he committed in all patience the Gospel of the kingdom of God well knowing that as seed grows secretly while men sleep and wake (a parable peculiar to Mark) so would be the destiny of his truth and of himself. Surely it means everything for the reality of the Gospel record that the event has so abundantly confirmed that confidence. Surely it means something, even apart from such a vindication, that the earliest, the most germinal, the simplest and shortest of the gospels enables its readers to discriminate satisfactorily the features of Jesus Christ. If there were Mark's gospel only the Light of the world would still shine.

Johut fumipstour.

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ART. VI.-THE FRIENDS OF GOD.

Most readers know that in the fourteenth century a spirit of mysticism pervaded nearly all of western Germany, from the Low Countries to the very borders of Italy, bringing under its influence all ranks and classes of men. Persons identified with this movement were sufficiently like the early disciples, of whom our Lord said, "I have called you friends," to be called the Friends of God. The Friends of God were an unorganized brotherhood of Christian Mystics, especially numerous in Strasburg, Cologne, Basel, Constance, Nuremberg, and Nordlingen. Among their distinguished representatives were John Tauler, Henry Suso, John Ruysboek, and the famous lay preacher Nicholas of Basel. Out of this movement came some of the permanently interesting and most helpful literature of devotional and practical Christianity. The Friends of God were active. Tauler's Sermons, Suco's Biography, the Theologia Ger manica, and Thomas à Kempis's Imitation of Christ are still living and enjoyable books. Their motive is vital and worthy. Their influence is fundamentally and faithfully catholic, as distinguished from Roman or Lutheran. As such they are definitive, expository, assuring, prophetic, and perennial. They are for us all, at all times, intelligible and credible. Their Spirit is identical with the Spirit of Christianity. The Friends of God may be taken to represent the Mystical Spirit of Christianity. Their ruling principles and eminent peculiarities invite consideration. They insisted on self-renunciation, entire consecration to the will of God, the continuous work of the Holy Spirit in believers, the potential Godlikeness of every human soul, the vanity of all religion based upon fear of punishment or hope of reward, the essential equality of the clergy and laity, and the moral necessity of the Church for instruction and discipline. Their psychology seems to have been Pauline: Man's sense of the spiritual is just as distinctive and trustworthy