I. CHRISTIANITY IS A GOOD MESSAGE FOR ALL MANKIND.

II. ALL WHO HAVE AFFIANCE IN CHRIST ARE MEN CONSECRATED AND SAVED.

III. IF FAITH BE POSSESSED, ALL NECESSARY CONFIRMATIONS OF FAITH WILL BE GRANTED.

IV. IN THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST, THE OUTWARD IS ONLY OF VALUE AS SIGNIFICANT OF THE INWARD AND SPIRITUAL. - J.

It is to men who believe, through their belief, that privileges such as these are to be given. The essence and ground of the promised power is faith. That old word, Faith! That old thing, Faith! How men have stumbled over its definition, and bewildered and ensnarled themselves and those who heard them! God forbid that I should bewilder you today. I want to be as clear and simple as I can; and though I would be far from disparaging any of the subtler and more elaborate descriptions of what faith is, I am sure that we may give ourselves a definition which is true beyond all doubt, and which is full enough to answer all the need of definition which we shall meet today. Faith, then, personal faith, is this, the power by which one being's vitality, through love and obedience, becomes the vitality of another being. Simple enough that is, I am sure, for any man who will think. I believe in you, my friend; and your vitality, your character, your energy, the more I love and obey you, passes over into me. The saint believes in his pattern saint, the soldier believes in his brave captain, the scholar believes in his learned teacher. In every case the vitality of the object of faith comes through love and obedience to the believer. Faith is not love nor obedience, but it works by both. A man may love me and yet not have faith in me. A man may obey me, and yet not have faith in me. Faith is a distinct relation between soul and soul; but it is recognizable by this result, that the life of one soul becomes the life of another soul through obedience and love. Now faith in Christ, what is it? Just in the same simple way, it is that power by which the vitality of Christ, through our love and obedience to Him, becomes our vitality. The triumph of the believing soul is this, that he does not live by himself; that into him is ever flowing, by a law which is both natural and supernatural, a law that is supernatural only because it is the consummation and transfiguration of the most natural of all laws — there is always flowing into him the vitality of the Christ whom he loves and obeys. His whole nature beats with the inflow of that Divine life. He lives, but Christ lives in Him. And then add one thing more. That this vitality of Christ, which comes into a man by faith, is not a strange and foreign thing. Christ is the Son of Man, the perfect Man, the Divine Man. Add this, and then we know that His vitality filling us is the perfection of human life filling humanity. "They that believe" are not men turned into something else than men by the mixture of a new and strange Divine ingredient. They are men in whom human life is perfect in proportion to the completeness of their faith through the Son of Man. They are men raised to the highest power. The man in whom Christ dwells by faith is the man in whom the Divine ideal of human life is perfect, or is steadily becoming perfect, by the entrance into him of the perfect life of the Man Christ Jesus, through obedience and love.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)

These signs shall follow them that believe, them that have the complete human life by me — Christ says, "If they drink," etc. Is that a prize? Is it wages which is offered for a certain meritorious act, which is called faith? Not so, surely! It is a consequence. It is a necessity. Safety and helpfulness. These come out of the full life of Christ in the soul of man as the inevitable fruits. Safety, so that what hurts other men shall not hurt him. Helpfulness, so that his brethren about him shall live by his life. These are the utterances of the vitality of him who is thoroughly alive. It is by life, by full, vigorous, emphatic existence that men are safe in this world, and that they save other men from death. Men everywhere are trying to be safe by stifling life; by living just as low as possible. Men everywhere are trying not to do one another harm, trying to spare each other's souls by tender petting, by guarding them against any vigorous contact with life and thought. "Not so," says the Bible. "Only by the fulness of life does safety come. Only by the power of contact with life are sick and help. less souls made whole. None but the live man saves himself or quickens the dead to life, saves himself or saves his neighbour." It is a noble assertion. The whole Bible, from its first page to its last, is full of the assertion of the fundamental necessity of vitality; that the first thing which a man needs in order to live well, is to live.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)

Let us consider the safety which Christ offers. It is a safety not by the avoidance of deadly things, but by the neutralizing of them through a higher and stronger power. There is no such idle promise as that if a man believes in Christ a wall shall be built around his soul, so that the things out of which souls make sin cannot come to Him. The Master knew the world too well for that. His own experience on the hill of His temptation was still fresh in His memory. He knew that life meant exposure, that sin must surely beat at every one of these hearts. Nay, that the things out of which sin is made, temptation, moral trial, must enter into every heart; and so He said not, "I will lead you through secluded ways where none but sweet and healthy waters flow," but, "Where I lead you, there will be the streams of poison. Only if you have the vitality which comes by faith in Me, your life shall be stronger than the poison's death. If you drink any deadly thing it shall not harm you"....Only those temptations which we encounter on the way of duty, in the path of consecration, only those has our Lord promised us that we shall conquer. He sends us out to live and work for Him. The chances of sin which we meet while that Divine design of life, the life and work for Him, is clear before us, shall not hurt us. When we forget that design, our arm withers, our immunity is gone. It is only when we are about some higher task, only when they meet us as accidents in the service of Christ, that we have a right deliberately to encounter temptation and the chance to sin, and may claim the Lord's promise of immunity. Think in how many places that law applies. Have I a right to read this sceptical book — this hook in which some able, witty man has gathered all his skill against my Christian faith? It is a book of poison. Have I a right to drink it? Who can say absolutely yes or no? Who does not feel that it depends upon what sort of life the reader brings to meet the poison? If in your soul there is a passionate desire for truth, if you do really love and serve Christ, and want to know Him better, that you may love and serve him more, if this book comes as a help to that part of a study by which you shall get nearer to the heart of the truth and Him, then if you drink that deadly thing it shall not harm you. Nay, you may rise up from the reading with a faith more deep. Whatever change your faith may undergo, it shall win a profounder life. But if there is no such earnestness, no such life as this, if it is mere curiosity, mere desire to be fine and liberal, mere defiance, a mere wantonness, then the poison has it all its own way; there is no vigorous life to meet it; and its death spreads through the nature till it finds the heart....And so it is everywhere with all exposure of the spiritual life. "What took you there?" "What right had you to be there?" These are the critical questions on which everything depends. If you are passing through temptation with your eye fixed on a pure, true life beyond it, temptation being only a necessary stage upon your way, so long as you keep that purpose, that resolution, that ideal, you shall be safe. If you are in temptation for temptation's sake, with no purpose beyond it, you are lost.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)

Not only is the man of faith promised safety for himself, but that he shall be helpful to others too. These two things — safety and helpfulness — go together, not merely in this special promise of the Saviour, but in all life. So is the whole world bound into a whole, so does the good that comes to any man tend to diffuse itself and touch the lives of all, that these two things are true. First, that no man can be really safe, really secure that the world shall not harm and poison him, unless there is going out from him a living and life-giving influence to other men. And second, that no man is really helping other men unless there is true life in his own soul. No man can really save another unless he saves himself. It is the good man by his good deeds that gives life to the world. Always it is the living, not the dead, who give life. It is the man not who has sinned deeply, but who has known by intense sympathy what sin is, how strong, how terrible, and yet escaped it for himself, — he is the man who helps the sinners most; he is the anointed who carries on and carries round the Christ's salvation. In their deepest need the wickedest men look to the purest men they know; the deadest to the livest; first to those who they think have most escaped sin, then to those who they think have been most cleansed of sin by repentance and forgiveness. Here is a man in whom I know that the promise of Christ is certainly fulfilled. He is a believer, and through his open faith the life of Christ flows into him constantly, and is his life. Full of that life, he gives it everywhere he goes. The sick in soul touch his soul and are well again. The discouraged find new bravery; the yielding souls are clad anew with firmness. The frivolous grow serious, the mean are stung or tempted into generosity, and sinners hate their sin and crave a better life, wherever this man goes.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)

The power of these life-giving lives seems to be described in these two words — testimony and transmission.

I. THE TESTIMONY WHICH THEY BEAR BY THE VERY FACT OF THEIR OWN ABUNDANT LIFE. They show the presence, they assert the possibility of vitality. Very often this is what souls whose spiritual life is weak and low need to have done for them. Men half alive grow to doubt of the fuller life in anybody. Men try to realize the descriptions of religion which they hear, and, falling short of them, they grow ready to believe that religion is a thing of excited imaginations, and to give up all thought of making it real in themselves. It is not only the badness in the world, it is the dreadful incredulity of good, it is the despair and lack of struggle which tells how low ebbs out the tide of spiritual life. Then comes the man in whom spiritual life is a real, deep, strong, positive thing. The first work which that man does is to bear the simple testimony of his life that life is possible. Already, just in acknowledgement of that, the sick faces begin to revive, and the sick eyes look up to him. The brave and godly boy among a group of boys just learning to be proud of godlessness and contemptuousness of piety — the man of golden principles among the sceptics of the street — the one true penitent rejoicing in a new and certain hope out of the ranks of flagrant sin — these instantly, the moment that they begin to live, begin to bear their testimony of life, and so make life about them.

II. TRANSMISSION. The highest statement of the culture of a human nature and of the best attainment that is set before it, is that, as it grows better, it grows more transparent and more simple, more capable therefore of simply and truly transmitting the life and will of God which is behind it. The thought of a man, as he improves and strengthens, getting the control of his own powers, and becoming more and more a source of power over other men, this thought, which has doubtless its own degree of truth, is limited and vulgar beside the breadth and fineness of the other idea, that as a man is trained and cultured, as the various events of life create their changes in him, as tempests beat him and sunshine bathes him, as he wrestles with temptation and yields to grace, as he goes on through the springtime, the summer, and the autumn of his life, the one highest purpose and result of it all is to beat and fuse his life into transparency, so that it can transmit the life of God. For all good is from God, and He uses our lives, all of them, to reach other men's lives with. Only the difference is this: upon a life of sin, all hard and black, God shines as the sun shines on the black, hard marble, and by reflection thence strikes on the things around, leaving the centre of the marble itself always dark. But on a life of obedience and faith, God shines as the sun shines on a block of crystal, sending its radiance through the willing and transparent mass, and warming and lighting it all into its inmost depths.

(Phillips Brooks, D. D.)

Though the miracle-working power remained in the Church after the ascension of our Lord, Christianity was made less dependent on such external signs and tokens, and more and more on the moral and spiritual power of the Word itself. With this promise compare the still more general one of Psalm 91. Such signs as are indicated here are not needed in this age, when the Divine nature of Christianity is witnessed by such historical evidences as are afforded by the moral, the religious, the social, the political, and even the commercial development which has everywhere attended on and resulted from its progress. I can hardly conceive that occasion ever can arise for the further fulfilment of this promise. Christianity is itself a greater sign than any the apostles wrought.

(Abbott.)

James, Jesus, Mary, Peter, SalomeGalilee, Jerusalem, NazarethAiling, Deadly, Drink, Evil, Hands, Harm, Hurt, Ill, Infirm, Injure, Lay, Pick, Poison, Recover, Serpents, Sick, Snakes, Venomous, Whatever, Wise1. An Angel declares the resurrection of Jesus to three women.
9. Jesus himself appears to Mary Magdalene;
12. to two going into the country;
14. then to the apostles;
15. whom he sends forth to preach the gospel;
19. and ascends into heaven.

Mark 16:18

     4687   snake
     5132   biting
     7372   hands, laying on

Mark 16:15-18

     8020   faith

Mark 16:17-18

     1416   miracles, nature of
     2012   Christ, authority
     5333   healing
     7953   mission, of church
     8105   assurance, basis of

Mark 16:17-20

     8427   evangelism, kinds of

The World-Wide Commission
'Every creature.'--Mark xvi. 15. The missionary enterprise has been put on many bases. People do not like commandments, but yet it is a great relief and strength to come back to one, and answer all questions with 'He bids me!' Now, these words of our Lord open up the whole subject of the Universality of Christianity. I. The divine audacity of Christianity. Take the scene. A mere handful of men, whether 'the twelve' or 'the five hundred brethren' is immaterial. How they must have recoiled when they …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Enthroned Christ
'So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.'--Mark xvi. 19. How strangely calm and brief is this record of so stupendous an event! Do these sparing and reverent words sound to you like the product of devout imagination, embellishing with legend the facts of history? To me their very restrainedness, calmness, matter-of-factness, if I may so call it, are a strong guarantee that they are the utterance of an eyewitness, who verily saw …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Perpetual Youth
'And entering Into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment.'--Mark xvi. 5. Many great truths concerning Christ's death, and its worth to higher orders of being, are taught by the presence of that angel form, clad in the whiteness of his own God-given purity, sitting in restful contemplation in the dark house where the body of Jesus had lain. 'Which things the angels desire to look into.' Many precious lessons of consolation and hope, too, lie …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

Love's Triumph Over Sin
'Tell His disciples and Peter that He goeth before yon into Galilee.--Mark xvi, 7. This prevailing tradition of Christian antiquity ascribes this Gospel to John Mark, sister's son to Barnabas, and affirms that in composing it he was in some sense the 'interpreter' of the Apostle Peter. Some confirmation of this alleged connection between the Evangelist and the Apostle may be gathered from the fact that the former is mentioned by the latter as with him when he wrote his First Epistle. And, in the …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Incredulous Disciples
'And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint Him. 2. And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. 3. And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? 4. And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great. 6. And entering into the sepulchre, they saw …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Angel in the Tomb
'They saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were aifrighted. 6. And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted. Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: He is risen; He is not here; behold the place where they laid Him.'--Mark xvi. 5,6. Each of the four Evangelists tells the story of the Resurrection from his own special point of view. None of them has any record of the actual fact, because no eye saw it. Before the earthquake and the angelic descent, …
Alexander Maclaren—Expositions of Holy Scripture

The Christ Crowned, the Fact
"When God sought a King for His people of old, He went to the fields to find him; A shepherd was he, with his crook and his lute And a following flock behind him. "O love of the sheep, O joy of the lute, And the sling and the stone for battle; A shepherd was King, the giant was naught, And the enemy driven like cattle. "When God looked to tell of His good will to men, And the Shepherd-King's son whom He gave them; To shepherds, made meek a-caring for sheep, He told of a Christ sent to save them. …
by S. D. Gordon—Quiet Talks on the Crowned Christ of Revelation

Baptismal Regeneration
Our Lord having thus given us an insight into the character of the persons whom he has chosen to proclaim his truth, then goes on to deliver to the chosen champions, their commission for the Holy War. I pray you mark the words with solemn care. He sums up in a few words the whole of their work, and at the same time foretells the result of it, telling them that some would doubtless believe and so be saved, and some on the other hand would not believe and would most certainly, therefore, be damned, …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 10: 1864

Unbelievers Upbraided
On Thursday Evening, June 8th, 1876. "He . . . upbraided them with their unbelief."--Mark 16:14. I SHALL not dwell so much upon this particular instance of the disciples' unbelief as upon the fact that the Lord Jesus upbraided them because of it. This action of his shows us the way in which unbelief is to be treated by us. As our loving Saviour felt it to be right rather to upbraid than to console, he taught us that on some occasions, unbelief should be treated with severity rather than with condolence. …
Charles Haddon Spurgeon—Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 50: 1904

Sermon for Ascension Day
This third sermon on the Ascension tells us how man ought continually to follow after Christ, as He has walked before us for three and thirty years, passing through manifold and great sufferings, before He returned unto His Father. Mark xvi. 19.--"So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." AFTER the Son of God, Jesus Christ, had eaten with His disciples upon the Mount of Olives, and reproved them, that they had been so long time …
Susannah Winkworth—The History and Life of the Reverend Doctor John Tauler

The Necessity of Faith for Justification
1. THE LUTHERAN HERESY VS. THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH.--The Protestant Reformers, notably Luther and Calvin, did not deny that justification is wrought by faith, but they defined justifying faith in a manner altogether foreign to the mind of the Church. a) They distinguished three kinds of faith: (1) belief in the existence of God and the historical fact that Christ has come on earth, suffered, and ascended (fides historica); (2) the sort of trust which is required for exercising the gift of miracles …
Joseph Pohle—Grace, Actual and Habitual

Fifth Appearance of Jesus.
(Jerusalem. Sunday Evening) ^B Mark XVI. 14; ^C Luke XXIV. 36-43; ^D John XX. 19-25. ^b 14 And afterward ^c as they spake these things [while the two from Emmaus were telling their story] , ^b he was manifested unto the eleven themselves as they sat at meat; ^d 19 When therefore it was evening, on that day, the first day of the week, and when the doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews, Jesus ^c himself ^d came and stood in the midst, ^c of them, and saith unto them, Peace …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Third and Fourth Appearances of Jesus.
(Sunday Afternoon.) ^B Mark XVI. 12, 13; ^C Luke XXIV. 13-35; ^E I. Cor. XV. 5. ^b 12 And after these things he was manifested in another form [i. e., another manner] unto two of them, as they walked, on their way into the country. ^c 13 And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus [Several sites have been suggested, but the village of Emmaus has not yet been identified beyond dispute. Its location is probably marked by the ruins called el Kubeibeh, which lies northwest …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

The Ascension.
(Olivet, Between Jerusalem and Bethany.) ^B Mark XVI. 19, 20; ^C Luke XXIV. 50-53; ^E Acts I. 9-12. ^b 19 So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken unto them, ^e 9 And when he had said these things, ^c he led them out until they were over against Bethany: and he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. 51 And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he parted from them [it is significant that our Lord's gesture, when last seen of men, was one of blessing], and ^e as they were looking, he was taken …
J. W. McGarvey—The Four-Fold Gospel

Obedience to the Last Command
Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations.' --Matt. 28:19. Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.'--Mark 16:15. #8216;As Thou didst send Me into the world, even so send I them into the world' -- John 17:18; 20:21. Ye shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be My witnesses unto the uttermost parts of the earth.'--Acts 1:8. All these words breathe nothing less than the spirit of world conquest. All the nations,' all the world,' …
Andrew Murray—The School of Obedience

Baptism, a Divinely Appointed Means of Grace.
When we inquire into the benefits and blessings which the Word of God connects with baptism, we must be careful to obtain the true sense and necessary meaning of its declarations. It is not enough to pick out an isolated passage or two, give them a sense of our own, and forthwith build on them a theory or doctrine. In this way the Holy Scriptures have been made to teach and support the gravest errors and most dangerous heresies. In this way, many persons "wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction." …
G. H. Gerberding—The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church

Of the Places of Burial.
There were more common and more noble sepulchres. The common were in public burying-places, as it is with us: but they were without the city. "And through that place was no current of waters to be made; through it was to be no public way; cattle were not to feed there, nor was wood to be gathered from thence." "Nor was it lawful to walk among the sepulchres with phylacteries fastened to their heads, nor with the book of the law hanging at their arm." Some sepulchres were extraordinary; that is, in …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Baptism.
Literature. The commentaries on Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:16; John 3:5; Acts 2:38; 8:13, 16, 18, 37; Rom. 6:4; Gal. 3:27; Tit. 3:5; 1 Pet 3:21. G. J. Vossius: De Baptismo Disputationes XX. Amsterdam, 1648. W. Wall (Episcopalian): The History of Infant Baptism (a very learned work), first published in London, 1705, 2 vols., best edition by H. Cotton, Oxford, 1836, 4 vols., and 1862, 2 vols., together with Gale's (Baptist)Reflections and Wall's Defense. A Latin translation by Schlosser appeared, vol. I., …
Philip Schaff—History of the Christian Church, Volume I

Christ Risen
"And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, bought spices, that they might come and anoint Him. And very early on the first day of the week, they come to the tomb when the sun was risen. And they were saying among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the tomb? and looking up, they see that the stone is rolled back: for it was exceeding great. And entering into the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in …
G. A. Chadwick—The Gospel of St. Mark

The Ascension
"So then the Lord Jesus, after He had spoken unto them, was received up into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen." MARK 16:19-20 (R.V.) WE have reached the close of the great Gospel of the energies of Jesus, His toils, His manner, His searching gaze, His noble indignation, His love of children, the consuming zeal by virtue of which He was not more truly the …
G. A. Chadwick—The Gospel of St. Mark

Of Baptism.
1. Baptism defined. Its primary object. This consists of three things. 1. To attest the forgiveness of sins. 2. Passages of Scripture proving the forgiveness of sins. 3. Forgiveness not only of past but also of future sins. This no encouragement to license in sin. 4 Refutation of those who share forgiveness between Baptism and Repentance. 5 Second thing in Baptism--viz. to teach that we are ingrafted into Christ for mortification and newness of life. 6. Third thing in Baptism--viz. to teach us that …
John Calvin—The Institutes of the Christian Religion

Dispute with Whitefield
1741. Sunday, February 1.--A private letter, written to me by Mr. Whitefield, was printed without either his leave or mine, and a great numbers of copies were given to our people, both at the door and in the Foundry itself. Having procured one of them, I related (after preaching) the naked fact to the congregation and told them, "I will do just what I believe Mr. Whitefield would, were he here himself." Upon which I tore it in pieces before them all. Everyone who had received it, did the same. So …
John Wesley—The Journal of John Wesley

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