terrestrial career, "Take Mark, and bring him with thee, for he is "profitable to me for the ministry."

Still, as neither Paul nor Barnabas was able to supply, at first hand, the full historic details that were essential to a biographical Gospel, it is not to be wondered at that Mark, having either a purpose, or an instinct, leading him in the direction of an evangelist, should attach himself to Peter, and derive from him the information which he has embodied in his Gospel. And it is still less to be wondered at that 'the ancients,' who spoke of him, and felt interested in him, solely on account of his Gospel, should bring exclusively into view, so far as his authorship was concerned, his ministerial relation to Peter.

It is certain moreover that St. Peter was, from a very early period, on terms of the greatest intimacy with Mark and his mother. See Acts xii. 11-17. Not unlikely it might be by his preaching on the day of Pentecost, or subsequently, that both the lady and her son became acquainted with the true career and character of the Saviour. And it is probably for this reason that we are to account for the peculiarly endearing manner in which St. Peter refers to the evangelist, at the conclusion of his First Epistle, "The church "that is at Babylon, elected together with you, saluteth you; and

so doth Mark my son." There is no reason for doubting that it is our Mark, and Paul's Mark, who is thus so affectionately mentioned. / But there is less than none for imagining, with Heumann1 and Credner, or half imagining, with Pott,3 that he was Peter's literal son.

§ 5. COVERT REFERENCE TO THE EVANGELIST IN THE BODY OF THE GOSPEL.

It is probable that the evangelist makes a covert reference to himself in the body of his Gospel.

His whole narrative indeed, like that of St. Matthew, is remarkably impersonal. Both the writers retire behind their themes, and shut themselves out of view. They are so absorbed 'objectively in their narrations, that they become 'subjectively' oblivious of themselves.

1 Nöthiger Anhang zur Erklärung Marci, pp. 736, 737. He rejoices over the imagination, as over a brilliant discovery.

Einleitung in das N. T., §§ 48, 237.

3 Annotationes in 1 Pet. v. 13.

Nevertheless it is in the highest degree probable that St. Matthew refers to himself by name in the 9th verse of the 11th chapter of his Gospel, and to his home in the 10th verse. It is almost certain too that St. John refers to himself, as one of the two disciples spoken of in the 1st chapter of his Gospel, ver. 35-38. It is certain that it is of himself that he speaks in chap. xiii. 23, xix. 26, as 'the disciple whom Jesus loved.'

6

We believe that it is, in like manner, to himself that St. Mark refers when, in chap. xiv. 51, 52, he makes mention of 'a young man' who had been aroused out of bed by the uproar connected with the conveyance of Jesus from Gethsemane to the residence of the high priest. Full of youthful impetuosity, he had rushed, it seems, out of the house with only a linen sheet thrown around him,' to see what the disturbance was about. The incident was so trifling, intrinsically, that we can scarcely conceive of it being recorded by the evangelist unless he had some private reason for its insertion. But if it touched the vital turning point of his spiritual career we can at once understand why he should delight to link it on, and thus in a modest and covert way to attach his own personal and spiritual history to the great events he was recording. It is worthy of being noted, in addition, that it is not likely that he should have learned the unimportant incident from either Peter or any other of the apostles, for in the immediately preceding verse he states that 'they had all forsaken' the Lord ' and fled.'1

§ 6. THE RELATION OF THE APOSTLE PETER TO THE GOSPEL: PATRISTIC EVIDENCE.

It was the almost unanimous conviction of the fathers' that the apostle Peter's oral discourses were the special source, or well

1 See Commentary, in loc. “Why was a circumstance apparently so trifling," asks Greswell," and certainly so irrelevant, inserted in the midst of so grave an "account? If the young man was the writer of the account, and an eye-witness "of the transaction at the time; partly implicated himself in the danger of our "Saviour; mistaken for a follower or disciple, when not really such; afterwards "converted to the faith; and finally St. Mark the evangelist; I think he might "naturally look upon this as the most interesting circumstance of his life; and "its introduction into the rest of the account, under such circumstances, be"comes anything but foreign or irrelevant."—Dissertations on the Harmony of the Gospels, vol. i., p. 100, ed. 1837.

spring, from which St. Mark drew the information which is communicated in his Gospel.

Not that we need to suppose that he learned nothing from others. He would have ample opportunities in his mother's house and elsewhere for getting information from the other apostles and their coadjutors, companions, and acquaintances. The little paragraph too regarding himself (§ 5) would of course be contributed directly by himself to himself. But still it was the current report and belief of antiquity that he drew upon St. Peter in particular for the great body of the facts which he records.

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(1) Jerome, who flourished toward the close of the fourth century and the beginning of the fifth, says in his Catalogue of Illustrious Men: "Mark, disciple and interpreter of Peter, wrote a "brief Gospel, at the request of the brethren in Rome, in accordance with what he had heard related by Peter. This Gospel, when "read over to Peter, was approved of, and published by his "authority, to be read in the churches."1 Putting no stress upon minutiæ of details in this statement, and bearing in mind that a fact when got hold of was liable, in the course of manipulation and transmission, to be unduly stretched and inconsiderately applied; still it is evident that Jerome had got handed down from the 'fathers' who preceded him, that Mark was indebted, for the contents of his Gospel, to the communications of Peter.

In his Letter to Hedibia he tersely represents St. Peter as the narrator, and St. Mark as the writer, of the Gospel.2

(2) Stepping back from Jerome, we come to Epiphanius, who flourished just a little earlier. He says: "But immediately after 'Matthew, Mark, having become an attendant of the holy Peter in "Rome, had committed to him the task of setting forth the Gospel. Having completed his work he was sent by the holy Peter into "the country of the Egyptians."3 The dependence of the evan

"Marcus, discipulus et interpres Petri, juxta quod Petrum referentem "audierat, rogatus Romæ a fratribus, breve scripsit Evangelium. Quod cum "Petrus audisset, probavit, et ecclesiis legendum sua authoritate edidit."-De Viris Illustribus, cap. viii.

2 "Marcum; cujus Evangelium, Petro narrante, et illo scribente, compositum est." (Cap. xi.)

3 Εὐθὺς δὲ μετὰ τὸν Ματθαῖον ἀκόλουθος γενόμενος ὁ Μάρκος τῷ ἁγίῳ Πέτρα ἐν Ρώμῃ, ἐπιτρέπεται τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ἐκθέσθαι. κ.τ.λ.-Haresis, 41, p. 428.

gelist on the apostle is the substrate, and indeed the sum and substance, of this statement.

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(3) Eusebius preceded Epiphanius, and flourished toward the close of the third century and the beginning of the fourth. He says, in his Evangelical Demonstration, that though the apostle Peter "did not undertake, in consequence of excess of diffidence,1 "to write a Gospel, yet it had all along been currently reported "that Mark, who had become his familiar acquaintance and attendant, made memoirs of his discourses concerning the doings of "Jesus." The distinguished father' then proceeds, after some other details, to take notice of the fact that there is in Mark's Gospel a minute and particular account of St. Peter's lamentable denial of his Lord. After which account he adds: "It is Mark "indeed who writes these things. But it is Peter who testifies them "concerning himself; for all the contents of Mark's Gospel are re"garded as memoirs of Peter's discourses." 3 We need not press the remark regarding Peter's 'excess of modesty.' It was probably suggested to Eusebius by the representations of Clemens of Alexandria, and may have been a subjective conjecture rather than a historical fact. But it is obvious that he got handed down to him as a fact that Mark, in the representations of his Gospel, is to a large extent but the echo of the narrations of Peter.

(4) Origen flourished before Eusebius, in the early part of the third century. In his Commentary on the Gospel according to Matthew he mentions that there were four unchallenged and unchallengeable Gospels received throughout the universal church. "The second of them," he says, "is that according to Mark, who composed it under the guidance of Peter, who therefore, in his "Catholic Epistle, acknowledged the evangelist as his son, saying, "The co-elect in Babylon saluteth you, and Mark my son.' "5 We

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1 δι ̓ εὐλαβείας ὑπερβολήν.

2 Τούτου Μάρκος γνώριμος καὶ φοιτητὴς γεγονὼς ἀπομνημονεῦσαι λέγεται τὰς τοῦ Πέτρου περὶ τῶν πράξεων τοῦ Ἰησοῦ διαλέξεις.-Demonstratio Evangelica, lib. iii., e. 5, p. 120.

3 Μάρκος μὲν ταῦτα γράφει· Πέτρος δὲ ταῦτα περὶ ἑαυτου μαρτυρεῖ· πάντα γὰρ τὰ παρὰ Μάρκῳ τῶν Πέτρου διαλέξεων εἶναι λέγεται ἀπομνημονεύματα.—Id., p. 121. • See Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, lib. ii., c. 15, and lib. vi., c. 14.

• The original is preserved in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History, lib. vi., cap. 25: δεύτερον δὲ τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον, ὡς Πέτρος ὑφηγήσατο αὐτῷ, ποιήσαντα, κ.τ.λ. It is thence transferred by Delarue into his edition of Origen's Works, vol. iii., P. 440.

must not press the sequence that is intimated here in the inferential 'therefore'; but the special relationship of the evangelist to the apostle is unequivocally and unwaveringly asserted.

(5) Tertullian preceded Origen. He was born at Carthage about the year A.D. 160. Converted from heathenism when between thirty and forty years of age, his greatest literary activity was in the early part of the third century. In his book Against Marcion, which was published in the year 207 or 208, he enumerates the four authoritative Gospels,1 noting that we have two of them, namely those of John and Matthew, 'from apostles,' and other two, namely those of Luke and Mark, 'from apostolicals.' He vindicates in particular the apostolical authority of the Gospel according to Luke, and then he adds, " the same authority of the apostolic (or, "in other words, the primitive) churches will likewise endorse the "other Gospels which have been handed down to us in their integrity "from these churches, I mean those of John and Matthew; not "excluding that also which was published by Mark, for it may be "ascribed to Peter, whose interpreter Mark was.' "4

(6) Clemens of Alexandria, one of Tertullian's contemporaries, has also something to say of St. Mark, and his intimate connection as an evangelist with the apostle Peter. In a passage of his Hypotyposes, preserved in the History of Eusebius, he says:-"The "occasion for writing the Gospel according to Mark was as "follows: After Peter had publicly preached the word in Rome, "and declared the gospel by the Spirit, many who were present "entreated Mark, as one who had for long attended the apostle, and "who knew by heart what he had said, to reduce to writing what had "been spoken to them. Mark did so, and presented to his petitioners "his Gospel. When Peter became cognisant of this, he neither "laid an interdict on the undertaking nor urged its fulfilment.” 5

44. · Eadem auctoritas ecclesiarum apostolicarum cæteris quoque patrocinabitur “evangeliis, quæ proinde per illas, et secundum illas, habemus,-Joannis dico "et Matthæi; licet et Marcus quod edidit, Petri affirmetur cujus interpres "Marcus."-Adversus Marcionem, lib. iv., c. 5.

ὁ τοῦ Πέτρου δημοσίᾳ ἐν Ῥώμῃ κηρύξαντος τὸν λόγον, καὶ Πνεύματι τὸ εὐαγγέ λιον ἐξειπόντος, τοὺς παρόντας πολλοὺς ὄντας παρακαλέσαι τὸν Μάρκον, ὡς ἄν ἀκολουθήσαντα αὐτῷ πόῤῥωθεν καὶ μεμνημένον τῶν λεχθέντων, ἀναγράψαι τὰ