Mark the Steadied

On that night in which Jesus was betrayed, all who were with Him in the Garden forsook Him and fled. But there was one who followed Him though he had not been with Him in the Garden. When the soldiers came out to the public road leading their august prisoner, an obscure young man did what the others had feared to do — took a few steps in company with Jesus. It was only a few steps — his strength was not equal to the strain; when the soldiers laid hands upon his garment he left it in their hands and fled like the rest. Yet he had gone a yard or two further than the men of the Garden in the following of Jesus. He had at least made a movement forward, not backward; and, by that short walk, ‘he, being dead,

yet speaketh.’ I doubt not that the recording 262 angel wrote down his name, or rather his namelessness, as a proof that the obscure may often surpass the illustrious, and that he expressed the sense of his superiority to the watchers in the Garden by affixing the inscription, ‘A day*s march nearer home.’

Now, in the view of tradition this young man was Mark the Evangelist. It is in his Gospel the story is told, and he has been thought by many to be speaking of himself. Let it be understood, once for all, that when I say ‘Mark the Evangelist ‘I mean every man who in the New Testament is mentioned by the name of Mark — whether it be John Mark or the Mark whom Paul summons to Rome or the Mark who resides with Peter in Babylon. I prejudge no question of criticism as to matters of fact. But when the question is simply. What is meant to be conveyed by the artist? I have no hesitation in accepting the belief that in the design of the Gallery they are all one and the same person. My whole province here is to expound the Gallery. I shall start therefore with the assumption that in the Gallery of the New

Testament there is but one figure of the name — a figure which passes through a variety of changes in its transition from youth to maturity — which rises in the heart of Jerusalem and is lost to view in the heart of Rome — which is known to its contemporaries as the nephew of Barnabas and to all posterity as the writer of a Gospel, We shall endeavour to weave into unity these various threads, which at first seem separate and independent, and to present the picture of this man as the representative of a distinct idea and the embodiment of a special thought.

Whether John Mark be or be not the young man described at the egress from the Garden, there can be no doubt that the description suits him. We see there the picture of a splendid advance and a sudden recoil. That is exactly the portrait of Mark. If I were asked to indicate his leading feature, I should define him as ’ the unsteady man. ‘Let me explain precisely what I mean. It is quite a common thing among ourselves to say of a young man, ‘Unfortunately, he is not steady. ‘But when we say that, we always imply one thing — that he is not steady in well-doing. We generally apply the phrase to one who, after walking awhile in pastures green, is found staggering with drink in street and lane. That is certainly an interruption of steadiness; but it is not the unsteadiness of which I here speak, nor that which I attribute to John Mark. In the broad and strict sense of the word, unsteadiness has no more to do with ill-doing than with well-doing. An unsteady young man is a young man who is unable to keep to one definite purpose — who in a brief space deserts it for another. So far as this quality is concerned, it matters nothing whether he wavers between the good and the bad, between the bad and the bad, or between the good and the good; each of these cases alike implies an irresolute will. Many a man turns from one occupation to another with perfect honesty and perfect conviction. He may begin by trying to write history; then he may attempt science; then he may aspire to poetry; then he may take up the work of the artist. We call such an unsteady man. Not one of the conflicting aims is bad — they are each good and noble. But the fact that in the man’s mind they are conflicting, proves him to be unsteady. I do not think that John Mark ever deserted a good cause for a bad; the point is that he was constantly deserting one cause for another. This is why I call him ‘Mark the unsteady. ‘He stands as a representative of the man who does not know his own mind, the unstable man, the wavering man. His impulses are all for good; but they are not long directed toward the same good; it is the blue to-day, the green to-morrow, the red next day. He never sinks to the degraded; but he has no permanent interest in any particular cause which is sublime.

When we first meet the name of John Mark, he is already a Christian. He was in an admirable atmosphere for becoming a Christian. He belonged to a Christian family. His uncle was Barnabas. His mother was Mary of Jerusalem — a woman of worldly means and unworldly piety. Her house in the Jewish metropolis was a place of rendezvous — a salon where met from time to time the leaders of the faith.

Sometimes it was for purposes of prayer, sometimes for exhortation, sometimes for social intercourse. Amid the amenities of this circle young Mark enjoyed great advantages; he learned the nature of Christianity almost from the fountainhead, and he saw it represented in its adaptation to varied minds. The man whom he first met was the man who bound the earliest cord round his heart; it was Simon Peter. The Master had given to Peter the key to many human doors; and the door of Mark’s spirit opened to him of its own accord. There was something in the natures of these men which drew them into harmony. They had both naturally the same mental disease — a wavering will. The causes of the malady were of course very different. Peter was originally timid and was frightened by the first cloud; Mark was constitutionally volatile and was drawn elsewhere by the second sunbeam. Yet the fact of a common disease made a common sympathy, while the difference of its cause created a power of mutual help. If the wavering in each case had come from the same source, Peter and Mark might have been sympathisers; but they never could have been helpers, for mutual help demands that each should possess an element which is lacking m the other. The blended likeness and difference of these men united them on two sides.

Then, by and by, there came to Jerusalem the man who was to become the other figure of the apostolic age — Paul of Tarsus. He was brought by Barnabas as a fellow-worker in the relieving of a great famine. Here Mark for the first time met Paul. I do not think the man of Tarsus made as much impression upon him as Peter had done. There was little resemblance in their characters. If Mark was wavering, Paul was inflexible. If Mark had many objects of attraction, Paul had only one. If Mark was drawn aside by passing sentiment, Paul was bound by the chain of a permanent love. Nor do I think that at this stage the cause of Paul was the cause of Mark. I believe that originally the heart of the latter was not with the Gentiles, but with the Jews. It is not often that the younger generation is less liberal than the older; but I think Mark was far more conservative than his uncle Barnabas. They had lived in a different environment. Barnabas had dwelt in the comparatively free air of Cyprus, and had seen many phases of many minds. He was in the position of the man of travel. He had come to find that there must be allowed a certain amount of latitude for human thought, and that we cannot expect all men to be shaped in one mould. Mark, on the other hand, was a child of Jerusalem. With Jerusalem were linked his earliest, and therefore his fondest, associations. It was the home of his happiest years, the scene of his most cherished memories. Religion itself had come to him there, and had come in a joyous dress — wreathed with social interest and decked with colours gay. Jerusalem was very dear to Mark, and anything that disparaged her, anything that would tend to put her in the second place, must have been strongly distasteful to him. The enthusiasm for the Gentile world was not to him the most joyful of sounds.

Nevertheless, Barnabas requested that his nephew should accompany him in his missionary tour with Paul. I think the proposal came from Barnabas. I think he was afraid that the young man was getting inured to a narrow atmosphere. If Paul had made the request it is probable it would have been refused. But when it came from the uncle, when it was dictated by solicitude for Mark’s mental enlargement, when it was an appeal for companionship by one for whom he cherished an affection and who cherished an affection for him, it spoke to impulses outside of religion and impulses which were fitted to strike the youthful mind. Mark said, ‘I will go. ’

Accordingly, when Paul and Barnabas departed from Jerusalem they took Mark with them. It was a very unpromising beginning for a missionary career. No man should enter on such a career with any motive less than zeal for the cause. Every step of Mark’s journey increased his homesick longing for the Christian Church of Jerusalem. I know that his discontent has been attributed to lower motives. Men have spoken of him as lazy, idle, somnolent, unwilling to put his hand to the plough lest it should be soiled, averse to expose his life lest it should be sacrificed. A more ungenerous verdict was never pronounced — it is refuted by his whole life. Mark was not a selfish man; he was never an idle man; in his later years he was the reverse of a timid man — and these are the only years when he had a real chance of displaying himself. His bane was that he was a man of two ideas — not of one. His was not a struggle between the love of action and the love of ease. It was a struggle with the temptation to act in different ways either of which would in itself be good. It was in the present instance a struggle whether to abide with Paul or to return to Peter. A man of steady will would have battled down the temptation to return. But Jerusalem the Golden, the Jerusalem of his youth, the Jerusalem of his earliest joys, was too strong for him; it kept a corner in his heart and would not let him go.

So, when the little company arrived at Perga, Mark suddenly disappeared. I know not in what manner he effected his departure — whether he simply abandoned them or made an excuse for absence or wrote a respectful letter of resignation. It may be safely said that nothing could confer dignity on his departure. Paul could only receive it as a slight to the cause which was dearest to his heart — a slight all the more impressive and all the more stinging because it came from the nephew of the very man who had been his patron in the hour of need; it was apt to make men say, * If Paul’s own friends desert him, we need not wonder at what his enemies do.’ Mark went back to Jerusalem. He was probably received with contempt — as a rolling stone. A rolling stone he certainly was; but it was not rolling downhill. His was really a case of religious homesickness. He was attached to the Church of his fathers. Their city was to him the sacred city, their temple the model and pattern of the house of God. His heart could not beat in unison with a movement which centred round other cities and bowed the knee at other shrines. He was jealous for the place of his birth, for the school of his religious training, for the associations and memories of his youth; and he was unwilling to bear a part in the injuring of these. There was an element of true loyalty in the weakness of John Mark.

By and by something happened at Jerusalem which modified Mark’s view. A conciliatory council was held there to soften the differences between Jews and Gentiles. As the result of that council the Church at Jerusalem gave a patronising recognition to the Gentiles. Phlegmatic and unaccompanied with enthusiasm as the recognition was, it suggested to Mark the possibility of another rolling movement on his part. Was not Paul put in a new light by this act of the council! Had not the Mother Church taken him under her wing! Had not Jerusalem given him her blessing! Could not Mark now offer his services to Paul without being disloyal to Jerusalem! On the former occasion he had felt like a traitor to the past; but surely that reproach could not exist now! Might he not go back to Paul and say, ‘My Church has publicly recognised the rights of

the Gentiles; I may with a clear conscience 18 return to you ‘! And then, his uncle Barnabas was pleading with him to come back. He missed the nephew’s company. His relations with Paul had become somewhat strained. He had begun to feel alone and unbefriended. He wanted a kinsman — some one to whom he could pour out his heart. When Mark considered all these things he was disposed to return. He allowed Barnabas to make the proposal to Paul. But Paul refused to receive him — and from his point of view he may be excused in so doing. His strong and inflexible nature could not respect rolling stones. He was unwilling to admit into his band of workers a weak and wavering soul. Mark had recently deserted his cause; why in so brief a space should he change his mind again! Was such a rapid reconversion any compliment to that cause, or did it give any security for permanent adherence! Would not the enrolling of such a man be only the introducing into the ranks of an element of weakness and the sowing of unpromising seed in a healthy and fertile field! But if the modern spectator can excuse Paul,

Barnabas could not; he threw up the cause and retired to Cyprus. He did not go alone. He asked Mark to accompany him — which shows that his wish to bring him back had been rather personal than ecclesiastical. And here the unfortunate Mark again changes his front. He goes to Cyprus. He had been a Jew; he had been a Jewish Christian; he had been a Gentile Christian; he had been a Jewish Christian once more; he was well-nigh becoming a Gentile Christian once more. Thwarted in this last resolve, what does he become now.-* What name should we give to him in Cyprus.”^ I would call him the companion to a good man. I think he went neither for Jew nor Gentile, but purely for the sake of Barnabas. I have heard men sneer at this mission to Cyprus. I have seen Christian writers point with scorn to the narrow sphere he had chosen for his labours and the life of laziness he had purchased for his soul. It is an ungenerous sneer. The mission of Mark to Cyprus was not a religious mission. It was a mission of human sympathy — sympathy for a private friend. He went to comfort the grief and cheer the solitude of one who had always loved and befriended him and whose very sorrow had been incurred in the effort to do him service. You may call his journey to Cyprus another movement of the stone; yet it was a movement not toward worldly pleasure but toward Christian sacrifice.

How long Mark remained in Cyprus I do not know — it may have been for years. In any case, it must have been a time of much benefit, moral and intellectual. He met the Gentiles in a field where there was no conflict — the life of social intercourse. He was able to look at them as men and women bearing a common burden — to view them as fellow-citizens apart from creed, apart from sect, apart from church-membership, and to feel that the soul of man was larger than his systems. I doubt not that the days of Mark in Cyprus did him good.

But there was coming to this man a greater good still — an event which was to be the turning-point of his life. There came to him one day a call from across the sea; and the voice that uttered it was that of the man who had attracted his youthful years — Simon Peter. He called on Mark to help him — not as a missionary, but as a secretary. The former fisherman of Galilee knew well the advantage he would reap from superior culture. He knew that Mark had received that culture — that he had possessed from youth all the opportunities which wealth can bring. There had been no hindrance to his education. He had enjoyed the influences of social refinement and the amenities of a happy home. He had not been tossed upon the sea as he himself had been, but had been allowed to pitch his tent upon the hill. His superior leisure had given him superior learning. Peter wanted such a man — one who could clothe his thoughts and interpret them to the people. Mark heard his cry for help, and he said, ‘I will go. ‘Barnabas himself must have urged him to go. All through his life no such suitable opening had appeared for John Mark. It was a place made for him, cut out for him, fitted to bring into bold relief all that was best and truest and noblest within him, and to waken that which had long been asleep in his heart — a definite purpose in living.

Little did John Mark know where in this new occupation his opening was to lie. It was not in having a fixed profession. It was not in being thrown into direct contact with the apostles. It was not even in the companionship with so great a soul as Peter. It was in a greater companionship — that of Christ Himself. Mark received from Peter the notes of a Gospel. When he put these together there emerged a portrait of the Master — the first portrait of the Master that was ever presented to the human eye. As Mark gazed upon the unexpected result of his own handiwork, his spirit was stirred within him. What did he see y The one thing he needed to see — an aim in life. Hitherto he had wavered between Jew and Gentile. As he looked into that face, Jew and Gentile alike vanished, and there shone out only one form — Man. Jerusalem faded; Antioch faded; and over the blank spaces there rose the republic of human souls. As he gazed upon that portrait there dawned on him a great thought — the idea that what gave men equal rights was neither Judaism nor Gentilism, but the common cross of humanity. What was that earliest portrait of the Master which we now call the Gospel of Mark? It was the picture which delineated a great physician — a healer of human woes. It was the portrait of a soul that had put deeds in the place of words — that felt life was too short for verbal controversy and must be approached by the work of the hand. It was the depicting of one who did not ask at the outset, ‘Are you a Jew?” Are you a Gentile .-” * Are you a worshipper of any kind.’” but whose primary question was, * Have you anything requiring to be healed y ’

And this portrait woke Mark’s soul. There rose within him a great resolve — he would follow that picture of the Master. He would stand aside in the question between Gentile and Jew; he would devote himself to a larger problem. He would become a sick-nurse to humanity, a minister to human need. And by and by there occurred a chance for testing his resolve. His old antagonist Paul came to the depths of sorrow. His splendid missionary career was at last interrupted; the bird was arrested in its flight, and caged. The apostle, trapped by his Jewish countrymen, languished within a prison at Caesarea. A thought comes to Mark. Was not this the place in which the definite purpose of his life should begin! Could there be a better time for indecision to vanish and wavering to cease! He had determined to follow the healing footsteps of Jesus; were they not leading him first of all to Cassarea to help his opponent of former days! Paul had doubted the genuineness of his Gentilism; would he doubt the genuineness of his humanity! If he went to him in his poverty, in his bneliness, in his hour of enforced inaction — if he brought wealth to supply his needs, fellowship to meet his solitude, a ministrant hand to assist his weariness — would not Paul at last believe in him! Mark resolves that he will yield to Paul’s adversity the homage which he had refused to his prosperity, and that he will lend to his hours of weakness the service of a slave to his master.

We know how gloriously his promise was fulfilled; there was no faltering, no paltering, no altering, any more. He came to the prison at Caesarea and supplicated permission to serve. I know not how Paul received him. Perhaps at first the gifts appeared anonymously — Paul may have been beguiled into love. But I know that ere long he was conscious of Mark’s nobleness — conscious that at last a steady race had begun. Almost the latest act of his life was to look back on these days at Caesarea, and record his sense of how profitable this man’s ministration had been. He gives him his word of recommendation — he asks the Church to receive him. Nay, there is something more touching still. When the apostle’s last day is drawing near, when death stares him in the face, when most of the companions of his former years have fled, who is it that he asks for, who is it that he longs to see.’’ It is Mark. I can imagine no greater compliment paid by man to man. I should think it worth while to be rejected a hundred times if as a recompense I received such an approach at last. Did Mark go? I feel sure he did. I have no doubt that he went with Timothy to Rome to cheer Paul’s latest hours; and I believe that he remained there to lead the ambulance corps of humanity. There, not inappropriately, we shall leave him — in the city of the steadfast, in the place where of all others men had learned the wisdom of inflexible tenacity. That city will confirm him in his acquired robustness, and he will impart to her somewhat of his original softness; and it may be that from this union there shall at length emerge a beautiful and harmonious blend.

LORD, I should like to join the ambulance corps of humanity. I would rather be a member of that band than either a Gentile or a Jew. Thou art leading our age where Mark was led — to the bearing of the cross. Never has Thy portrait been studied so deeply as now. In past days we studied other portraits, and therefore we aspired to other things than the human. We gazed on Paul and cried, * Great is the mystery of Godhead! ‘We gazed on Peter and said, ‘Show us the things which the angels desire to look into! ‘We gazed on John and exclaimed, ‘Let us see the city of gold! ‘We gazed on Matthew and breathed the prayer, ‘Unroll the book of prophecy! ‘These were aspirings after heaven. But it is only now that we have begun to aspire after earth, have desired to see its mysteries unveiled. It is only in gazing into Thy face that we have seen the face of our brother-man. Thou hast kept the best wine till the last. O Lord. I had been long seeking to pierce the clouds of nature, but I had never pierced the cloud in my brother’s soul — never till I saw Thee. Now there has come to me a new evangel, nay, the old misread evangel. Thou hast said to my soul, ‘Why standest thou gazing up into heaven! the Son of Man is coming down from heaven to earth.’ I asked Thee to open the sky; Thou hast said, * Open the prison doors! ‘I asked Thee for a tabernacle on the mount; Thou hast said, * Heal the demoniac on the plain! ‘I asked Thee for a sign of Thy coming; Thou hast said, ‘It will be man’s humanity to man.’ I asked Thee how I should learn Thy doctrine; Thou hast said, * Feed my sheep! ‘I asked for a gate into the temple; Thou hast pointed to a door in the hospital. I asked for Thy robing-room; Thou hast shown me an orphanage home. I asked to drink of Thy cup; Thou hast sent me to scenes of misery. I asked to share Thy glory; Thou hast called me to restore one fallen soul. The service to my Father has become the service to my brother; give me a place, O Lord, in earth’s ambulance corps!