(3.) Lastly, there is in these words the knowledge of the truth, which is gained by the message of the angel,-"As we have known the incarnation by the message."

Our knowledge of the Incarnation, however, is not derived directly, as that of St. Mary and St. Joseph was, from the evidence of our senses. Nor, indeed, was this the case with the Apostles, and the men of that country and generation. No; the information comes to us through faith, that is, through reasonable belief in a testimony which commends itself to our conscience as a testimony meeting the needs of fallen man, as they have been evidenced by a long experience. And this faith, from its assurance, is sometimes called knowledge: "We have known and believed the love that God hath to us."

But we must not only know and believe, we must go on to act upon our faith; for we are told that "faith worketh by love," and that "faith without works is dead." And, accordingly, we here are taught to pray "that as we have known the incarnation of thy Son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by His cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of His resurrection." By His cross and passion in two ways. Not only by His cross and passion objectively, as the ransom of our souls, which He paid down for us, and which is altogether external to ourselves and our own endeavors-this, of course, but not this alone-but also by our being conformed to His cross and passion by the crucifix

ion of the old man with Him, and by the mortification of our members which are upon the earth.

St. Mark's Day.

O Almighty God, who hast instructed thy holy Church with the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark; Give us grace, that, being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (A. D. 1549.)

HIS Collect also is the handiwork of our

Reformers, and made its first appearance

in the Prayer Book of 1549. With the view of weaving into the prayer some passage of Holy Scripture found in the services of the day, they added three verses to the Epistle in the Missal of Sarum, thus embracing the words, "that we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine."

How is St. Mark's doctrine specially adapted to establish us in the truth of God's holy Gospel? First, there is undoubtedly a vividness of portraiture about St. Mark's narrative, a lifelike coloring, a minuteness of detail, which make us feel that he is narrating what really happened, and so tend to establish us in the truth of Gospel facts. And it is upon Gospel facts that Gospel doctrines are built. The Epistles of the New Testament have absolutely no ground to stand upon, if you cut away the Gospels. Let me

give only a very few out of the thousand lifelike touches, with which St. Mark's narrative abounds. It is he alone who tells us that our Lord in His temptation was "with the wild beasts," thus furnishing one feature of the contrast between the first Adam in the garden and the second Adam in the wilderness. He alone gives us the information that Zebedee had "hired servants" in his fishing-boat, showing us that the social position of Zebedee's sons, before their call to the Apostleship, was by no means one of absolute poverty; they were substantial middleclass people. In the account of the Transfiguration he uses those two lively comparisons-one drawn from nature, the other from art-to express the lustre of our Lord's raiment, "His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them." Of these particulars we should have known nothing, had it not been for St. Mark. Then, again, it is to St. Mark that we are indebted for the actual Aramaic words which our Lord used on several occasions," Ephphatha," "Talitha cumi," "Abba, Father," the effect of all these little details being to give reality and life to the narrative, to assure us that the "things wherein " we have "been instructed" are not "cunningly devised fables," but facts handed down to us by those who were eyewitnesses of them.

But again, "establishment in the truth of the holy Gospel" may mean not merely conviction of the actual occurrence of things recorded by the

Evangelists, but also growth in grace and in experimental knowledge of the truth. This growth is spoken of in the Epistle for the Day:-"But, speaking the truth in love, may grow up into Him in all things." It is beautifully emblematized in the Gospel, which is our Lord's allegory of the true Vine: "I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing." It is implied in the Collect, which is a prayer for establishment in the truth; and how are we to be established in it, but by "growing in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"? That St. Mark wrote his Gospel under the instructions of St. Peter, is not only the uniform tradition of the Church, but a tradition which derives its chief support from the contents of St. Mark's Gospel. That this Gospel must have been written, if not by, yet under the dictation of an eyewitness, is certain from those minute and graphic touches which are everywhere characteristic of it, and a few of which have been cited. But it also exhibits traces of the authorship of St. Peter, as it records several things which must have had a special interest for him. The record that the cock crowed twice, and that the first crowing took place immediately after the first denial, and that thus a warning was given to the Apostle, which had not the effect of immediately reclaiming him, so that the sin was something graver than a mere surprise,—all this rests upon

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St. Mark's authority exclusively. And it is from him also that we learn that Jesus made special mention of Peter in the message which He sent to the Apostles by the women: "Go your way, tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee." On the whole, we need not hesitate to accept the generally received tradition that St. Mark was employed by St. Peter to put on record his testimony to the works and words of Jesus; and that he was very probably my son Marcus," my son in the faith,-who joins in the salutations at the end of the First Epistle of St. Peter. The style of his Gospel being terse, incisive, and Roman-like Cæsar's Commentaries, to which it has often been comparedDr. Isaac Da Costa conjectures (and, if nothing more, it is an interesting conjecture) that Mark was the devout soldier who waited on Cornelius, and was sent to Joppa by him; that he was converted by St. Peter's sermon in the centurion's house, and was one of the group of Gentiles on whom the Holy Ghost fell previously to Baptism. But, whoever the Evangelist may have been, he clearly speaks the language put in his mouth by St. Peter; and in connection with this Collect, which is a prayer for establishment in the truth of the holy Gospel, we may perhaps be allowed to observe that St. Peter's ministry rather represents to us the ministry of edification, while that of his great colleague, St. Paul, would be more justly characterized as the ministry of conversion.