Signs
Bishop William Alexander. Mark 16:20 And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. Three signs which follow all effectual preaching — (1) Compunction of file hearers; (2) conversion of sinners; (3) confirmation of the just.CONCLUSION: The figure which stands out from this book is Jesus. It is the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. A man must be holy to comprehend the holiness of Jesus. Let us suppose the case of a sharp man, who has neither taste nor genius, standing before a great picture; he will point out flaw after flaw in Raphael. Place one who has neither musical appreciation, nor modesty to admit it, where he must hear Beethoven. It is an unmeaning noise, which gives him a headache. Even so, the lower the moral and spiritual life may be, the less is Jesus understood and loved. To an easy, soft-mannered, hard-hearted man of the world; to a subtle, bitter, selfish scholar, with the delicate intellectual egotism, and the fatal gilt of analysis a outrance, Gethsemane and the cross may be a scandal or a mockery, The gospel, which seems so poor and pale when we rise from the songs of poets and the reasonings of philosophers, is a test of our spirit. Let some ambitious students in philosophy — some who have been communing for hears with the immortal masters of history, charmed with the balanced masses and adjusted perspectives of the composition, speak out their mind today upon this Gospel of St. Mark. They will not place it very high upon their list. But turn to it tomorrow, when the end of your toil finds you disappointed men; when sorrow visits you; when, as you put your hand upon the wall of your room, memory, like a serpent, starts out and stings you. Then you will recognize the infinite strength and infinite compassion of Jesus. Out of your weakness and misery, out of your disappointment, you will feel that here you can trust in a nobility that is never marred, and rest that tired heart of yours upon a love that never fails St. Mark is the Gospel whose emblem is the lion, whose hero is full of Divine love and Divine strength. It is the Gospel which was addressed to the Romans to free them from the misery of scepticism, from the grinding dominion of iron superhuman force unguided by a loving will. Here, brief as it is, we have, in its essential germs, all the theology of the Church. Had every other part of the New Testament perished, Christendom might have been developed from this. A man's faith does not consist of the many things which he affects to believe or finds it useful to believe (as men are said to be doing in France), but of the few things which he really believes, and with which he stands, fronting his own soul and eternity. This faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is sufficient. Hold it fast, and you shall find the power of one of our Lord's promises which is peculiar to this Gospel. If you are called upon to "handle the serpents," or "to drink the deadly things" of science and philosophy, you shall lift up the serpent as a standard of victory. The cup of poison shall not reach your heart as it reached the heart of Socrates, when the sun was going down behind the hill tops. "It shall not hurt you." Hold fast this gospel in that which tries many who are undisturbed by speculative doubt, in conscious sinfulness, in the allurements of lust. Hold it fast in the din of voices that fill a Church distracted by party cries, and "He who has instructed His Church by the heavenly doctrine of His Evangelist St. Mark, will grant that, being not like children, carried away by every blast of vain doctrine, you shall be established in the truth of His holy gospel." (Bishop William Alexander.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they went forth, and preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following. Amen. WEB: They went out, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen.