Old Testament, and its probable adoption by our Saviour in the present instance Whether history bears us out in the application of Supposing parts of the prophetic language to be- long properly to the day of judgment, whe- ther such parts can be reconciled with the Accomplishment of prophecy at the crucifixion Certain miraculous signs which attended the cru- INTRODUCTION. THE following series of readings from the New Testament will embrace St. Mark's Gospel; but continual reference will be made to the narratives of St. Matthew, St. Luke, and St. John, and occasionally their statements introduced. The selection of St. Mark's Gospel is not merely accidental. Its design and character seem to fit it for being first continuously read and studied. St. Mark only has confined his narrative to that portion of Evangelical history which was strictly and properly the Gospel of Jesus Christ-the subject of apostolical testimony. His narrative embraces the period within which Christ's ministry was included-the compass of events for preserving and attesting which the Apostles were ordained witnesses. This period commenced with our Lord's baptism, and ended with his ascension. B Not that St. Mark has attempted to relate all that the Apostles saw and heard of their Master during that time. This indeed is not done by any one, nor by all together. St. John, who wrote last, and, as it is said, with a view of supplying certain omissions of the preceding three-even St. John does not pretend to have completed the full and entire Gospel narrative. He only put on record that, which, together with the accounts before given, was sufficient and right for the guidance of our faith; and this he did, not of himself, but under the superintendence of the Holy Spirit, which was promised to the Apostles in their dispensation of the Gospel. "There are also many other things," writes St. John at the end of his Gospel, "which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written a. a St. Mark indeed relates fewer facts than St. Matthew or St. Luke, and is less circumstantial in his account of those which he does relate than either of the other three Evangelists. The principle, which appears to have been contemplated • John xxi. 25. in his selection of facts, (and the same remark will equally apply to St. Matthew and St. Luke, although not perhaps to St. John,) was this, to preserve the tissue and connected character of our Lord's ministry. As this is a matter of great importance, and as the Gospel histories cannot be rightly understood without continual reference to it, it may be necessary at once to explain what is meant by this tissue-like connection in Christ's ministry. Our Lord, it will be observed, very gradually communicated his revelations to his followers. Whether it was, that their prejudices were so strong, as to require that a display of truths which ran counter to those prejudices, should be very slowly and gradually made-or that it was done agreeably to the rule of "giving to him that hath," of rewarding faith in a little by making the believer acquainted with more-or that both these and other grounds existed; the fact is undeniable. At first, we find him perhaps merely hinting obscurely at some doctrine to be embraced, some event that it was expedient to bring to pass; then, as the first reluctance of prejudice or alarm is a little subdued, the |