a snare for the soul;
that he agreed with the proverb "The nearer the Church, the farther from
God;" that he saw very plainly that the masters of the community should
be its servants and not its oppressors and parasites; and that though he
did not tell us not to fight our enemies, he did tell us to love them,
and warned us that they who draw the sword shall perish by the sword.
All this shows a great power of seeing through vulgar illusions, and
a capacity for a higher morality than has yet been established in any
civilized community; but it does not place Jesus above Confucius or
Plato, not to mention more modern philosophers and moralists.

MARK.

THE WOMEN DISCIPLES AND THE ASCENSION.

Let us see whether we can get anything more out of Mark, whose gospel,
by the way, is supposed to be older than Matthew's. Mark is brief; and
it does not take long to discover that he adds nothing to Matthew except
the ending of the story by Christ's ascension into heaven, and the
news that many women had come with Jesus to Jerusalem, including Mary
Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. On the other hand Mark
says nothing about the birth of Jesus, and does not touch his career
until his adult baptism by John. He apparently regards Jesus as a native
of Nazareth, as John does, and not of Bethlehem, as Matthew and Luke do,
Bethlehem being the city of David, from whom Jesus is said by Matthew
and Luke to be descended. He describes John's doctrine as "Baptism of
repentance unto remission of sins": that is, a form of Salvationism.
He tells us that Jesus went into the synagogues and taught, not as the
Scribes but as one having authority: that is, we infer, he preaches his
own doctrine as an original moralist is instead of repeating what
the books say. He describes the miracle of Jesus reaching the boat by
walking across the sea, but says nothing about Peter trying to do the
same. Mark sees what he relates more vividly than Matthew, and gives
touches of detail that bring the event more clearly before the reader.
He says, for instance, that when Jesus walked on the waves to the boat,
he was passing it by when the disciples called out to him. He seems
to feel that Jesus's treatment of the woman of Canaan requires some
apology, and therefore says that she was a Greek of Syrophenician
race, which probably excused any incivility to her in Mark's eyes. He
represents the father of the boy whom Jesus cured of epilepsy after the
t