Dean Burgon has farther pointed out that, so far as we know the early lection systems, they seem to have contained this passage; but, as we cannot trace them earlier than the middle of the fourth century, at which time it is admitted that the Syrian type of text (which contained these verses) was widely accepted, this fact has small significance for our argument.

In estimating and drawing conclusions from this evidence, our first care must be to avoid lending two votes to one voice. And, since the Syrian evidence is all repeating evidence, and is in no sense independent, we must protect the ballot box, and simplify the problem at once by sifting out the Syrian repeaters. This leaves the testimony standing somewhat thus:

Insert: CAD 33, all Latt. (except Afr.), all Syrr. (except Hcl. Marg.), Memph., Justin, Irenæus, Mac. Mag., etc.

Omit: B (L) (22) manuscripts known to Eus., Lat. Afr., (Hcl. Marg.), (Æth.), Arm., [Clem. Al.], [Orig.], Eus., [Cyr. Jer.], etc.

The sole question to be settled is, “Which of these groups is the weightier?”

Dr. Hort has shown, as the result of a very large induction, that the combination of B and offers a unique criterion of excellence, and that a very large proportion of the readings supported by them in unison are certainly genuine; and it is generally admitted that when B & are supported by other first-rate witnesses they are almost always right. They are here supported by such strong and independent testimony that it is difficult to doubt but that they transmit the true text. The application of the genealogical method will reach the same conclusion. All the witnesses which contain the verses partake of Western corruption, so that it is possible to explain their community in this reading on the hypothesis of a corrupt (Western) origin for it. On the other hand, the documents which omit the verses cannot be all referred to one class: B is neutral, Lat. Afr. is Western, and L is largely Alexandrian. Their community in the omission of the verses cannot be explained, therefore, as a common class corruption. If it be a corruption to which they witness, it is one which had crept into the stem from which all three independent classes diverged before the divergence of any of them. Whether it be the aboriginal reading which they transmit, or not, therefore, it is, so far as our documents are concerned, the original one. The external evidence, therefore, though not without its peculiarities, is decisive as to the spuriousness of the passage. And it is to be observed that this conclusion stands unaffected by the piling up of any number of items of evidence for the genuineness of the verses, so long as they come from Western and Syrian sources. It is the result of weighing rather than of counting heads.

The internal evidence. That the structure of the Gospel, which was evidently intended to observe the limits of apostolic witness-bearing (Acts 1: 22), is broken in upon by the removal of ver. 9-20; that the plan of chap. 16 is left incomplete by their omission; that their omission leaves even the paragraph torn in two, and the jagged and mutilated end of ver. 8 sticking painfully out into space all this is plainly true, but scarcely relevant. It is relevant as proof that the Gospel was not intended to stop at ver. 8; but irrelevant as proof that ver. 9-20 constitute the originally intended ending. True as it is that the omission of this section leaves Gospel, chapter, paragraph, almost sentence, incomplete, it may be equally true that the section must be omitted; and such arguments are valid to the contrary only when urged in conjunction with strong external evidence. No scribe, we may readily admit, could or would have forged so badly fitting a conclusion precisely for the purpose of relieving the harshness of the break. But the argument is, on that very acconnt, equally valid as proof that neither did Mark write it for this purpose. It calls attention, indeed, to two important facts: (1) The section was not made by a scribe for this place, but, if not genuine, must have been adopted by him from some early writing; and (2) Mark could not have written the section for this place. Its insertion does not repair the jagged tear at ver. 8. We have to turn to Matthew and Luke to learn what actually happened after the visit to the tomb. Mark's narrative is like a beautiful arch, one of whose supporting columns has fallen and its place been supplied by another which does not fit. The rough jutting end of ver. 8 points to something other than what is supplied by ver. 9-18. And if there are marks in the arch that its present is not its original prop, so, also, are there marks in the column that the present is not its original position. As ver. 8 demands a different succeeding context, so ver. 9-18 demand a different preceding context. There is no subject expressed in ver. 9, and therefore it originally followed a context in which Jesus was the main subject; in ver. 8, the women are the subject. The “but” with which ver. 9 opens is exactly the opposite of what we would expect from ver. 8. The renewed specification of time in ver. 8, so soon after ver. 2, and so unnecessarily varied in form from it, is surprising, if not even feeble. The

"first" is, in this context, strange; and the description of Mary Magdalene, after ver. 1, inexplicable; while ver. 8 and 10, in the present arrangement, are too nearly contradictory to allow us to lightly suppose that so vivid a writer as Mark could have so expressed himself. If we add that the style and phraseology of this section, although generically like, is yet specifically unlike, Mark's, so that at least twenty-one un-Marcan words and phrases occur in it, while some of his most characteristic expressions do not occur, it must become clear that, so far from the intrinsic evidence rebutting the strong external evidence of the spuriousness of the passage, it adds a weighty confirmation to it.

The transcriptural evidence leads to the same conclusion. To assume that the section was omitted on account of harmonistic difficulties is to assign a remedy much too heroic for the disease; to suppose that a liturgical "The end," at this place, was mistaken for the end of the Gospel, is to commit several anachronisms at a stroke, and brand the early scribes with complete idiocy. It is equally impossible to account for the distribution of the omission on the supposion of a late loss of the last leaf of Mark, containing ver. 9-20, from an important exemplar which then propagated itself in this mutilated condition. On the other hand, it is easy to see how the abrupt ending of ver. 8 would tempt a scribe to find a remedy. That such temptation did exist is clear from the existence of the shorter ending; and it can hardly be asserted that different scribes might not have added different endings. Moreover, the apparent plausibility of the present ending, rounding out the Gospel and hiding the jags of ver. 8 from the careless eye, combined with its actual inferiority, as not really fitting the place into which it is squeezed, is exactly what we expect in the work of a scribe, and clinches the argument that he, and not Mark, is responsible for its presence here. Results. Summing up rapidly the results of this conclusion, we may say:

1. This passage is no part of the word of God. The evidence will prove not only that Mark did not write it for this place, but also that he probably did not write it at all. We are not, then, to ascribe to these verses the authority due to God's word.

2. We have an incomplete document in Mark's Gospel. We do not know how it happens to be incomplete-whether because of an early accident to the book before any copies were taken, or (more probably) because of some interruption to Mark-possibly his arrest, or flight, or even martyrdom-which prevented his finishing it. The important point for us is that, although a

Gospel comes to us mutilated, the gospel does not.

3. We know little of the origin of the fragment which has been thus attached to Mark. We know only that it is very ancient-certainly as old as the first third of the second century-and that it is a fragment of a longer writing, which some scribe thought would furnish a fitting close to the mutilated Gospel. We may conjecture that it originated among the scholars of John in Asia-possibly is a tradition from Andrew or Peter recorded by Papias, and hence attached to Peter's Gospel.

CRITICAL NOTES.

BY THEODORE D. WOOLSEY, D. D., LL. D.

The remaining verses of Mark's Gospel are regarded by many critics of the text, and commentators, as not having originally belonged where they are found. They suppose that either the closing parts of the Gospel were lost in very early times, or that it was left unfinished; and that the verses of this lesson were added by some later hand. The time when this supplement was attached must have been very early. The Christian father Irenæus, who came from Asia Minor and was made bishop of Lyons in 177, cites, in the Latin version, now extant, of his work on heresies, the nineteenth verse as it is in the manuscripts of Mark, except that at the beginning the Lord Jesus stands, instead of the Lord only which most manuscripts contain. We have thus evidence which will run back probably to the earlier part of the second century, that is to within fifty or sixty years, at the most, of the original composition of the Gospel.

This is not a question which divides believers in the general authenticity of the Gospel of Mark from other commentators of another sort. Thus Meyer, Godet, Alford, Plumptre in Ellicott's New Testament, regard them as not written by Mark himself, but as added by an unknown person, either because the end of the Gospel was lost, or was never written. Whether this was so or not, it does not impugn the truth or the inspiration of the rest of the Gospel any more than the various readings do this where their occurrence gives occasion to suspect the text..

The reason for suspecting or denying the authenticity of these verses, so far as they can be given in such brief notes as these, are the following: (1) The two oldest manuscripts do not contain them; and they are wanting in a manuscript of the early Latin, and in several other early versions. In an old manuscript of the Greek text, and in others, another ending is added, containing but a few words, as if the Gospel broke off at that place. (2) About thirty manuscripts contain notes or scholia, to the effect that accurate copies end with ver. 8. (3) The ecclesiastical historian Eusebius gives the same testimony, and some other Greek fathers make similar statements. Jerome, who admits ver. 9-20 into the Vulgate, declares that the testimony of Mark is contained in but a few copies of the Gospel; "almost all the Greek books (that is, manuscripts) not having this section at the end." (4) The sections of Ammonius, a kind of chapters devised at Alexandria in the third century, as well as the canons of Eusebius which accompany them, are not affixed to the last verses beyond ver. 8 or ver. 9, in many of the most important Greek and Latin manuscripts.

Besides these testimonies to the fact that the last eleven verses were wanting in many manuscripts, there are internal evidences looking in the same direction. (1) The end of the eighth verse is so abrupt and without connection with the following text, that one finds it hard to believe that the same writer could have written them both. The ending for they were afraid is really no ending; it is a breaking off in the middle of a narrative, with a very important part left out. And the ninth verse with equal abruptness-now when he was risen early, etc.—omits the mention of the name of Jesus, which looks as if something was appended which had no right to be there. The words in ver. 9 relating to Mary Magdalene are remarkable, as we have already said, if Mark was the writer, when he had been speaking of her principally for a number of verses. (2) The passage "out of whom he had cast seven devils" may be drawn from Luke 8:2; 5: 10, from John 20: 18; 5: 11, from Luke 24: 11; 5: 12, from the account of the journey to Emmaus, in Luke 14:13; but the words in another form do not correspond with "their eyes were holden," in Luke 24: 16; nor the end of ver. 13 in Mark with anything except Luke 24:37. Ver. 14 has nothing corresponding to it elsewhere, where it refers to Christ's appearance to the disciples as they sat at meat. Ver. 15, 16, seem to resemble the end of Matthew, but ver. 17, 18, are in part unlike anything in the other Gospels. The promise that they shall take up serpents with impunity is like Acts 28: 3, but not exactly like it; still less is it like Luke 10: 19. The promise that poisons shall not hurt them is not found nor fulfilled elsewhere. Ver. 15, 19, and 20 are truly Christian, and seem to have been drawn from traditions worthy of trust. On the whole, the passage consists chiefly of condensed extracts from the other Gospels; and of promises which we can scarcely believe our Lord to have uttered. Taking these objections in connection with the objections against the passage which the manuscripts furnish, we can scarcely receive it as proceeding from the author of the main part of the Gospel. If not from his pen, it is still of great value, as showing that the other Gospels existed at a very early time, since in great part it is taken from them.

They shall take up serpents. There is no promise of Christ on which this is founded. Nearest to it comes the promise in Luke 10: 19, "I give you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions." Some have thought that it was suggested by what happened to the Apostle Paul at Malta. But he did not take up the viper And if they drink any deadly thing, it shall in no wise hurt them. There is no evidence of a fulfillment of a promise of this sort in the apostolic age, although an apochryphal story that the Apostle John drank poison without harm is circulated in an early legend.

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