Scaurus continued as follows: “I now come to a passage where Mark represents Christ as saying, ‘Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him.’ This suggests to me for the first time (re-perusing these strange books after an interval of more than twenty years) that I may have been blaming Mark for not doing what, as a fact, he had no intention of doing—I mean, for not giving a collection of Christ’s utterances in connexion with the ‘good news.’ If we were to question Mark about the expression ‘me and my words,’ and to say, ‘What words do you refer to?’ perhaps he might reply, ‘I do not profess to give Christ’s _words_, but only their tenor.’ Perhaps Mark has in view a person, or character, rather than any gospel of ‘words.’ And I think I ought to have explained that, at the very outset of his work, Mark described a divine Voice (a thing frequently mentioned in Jewish traditions of the present day about their rabbis) calling from heaven to Christ, ‘Thou art my beloved Son.’ It is this perhaps that Mark may consider a ‘gospel,’ namely, that God, instead of sending prophets to the Jews, as in old days, now sends a Son.” This did not seem to me a complete statement of the fact. “Gospel,” as I have said above, seemed to me to have meant, in Mark, the gospel of forgiveness of sins promised by Isaiah. And Scaurus himself was justly dissatisfied with his own explanation, for he proceeded, “Still, this is not satisfactory. For ought not the Son to have a message, as a prophet has? Nay, ought not the Son to have a much better message? The Voice from heaven is repeated at the stage of the gospel at which we have now arrived. But both before and now, it is apparently heard by no unbelievers. Nor does Christ himself ever repeat it to unbelievers. He never says, ‘I am _the Son of God_,’ nor even, ‘I am _a Son of God_.’ He simply goes about, curing diseases, and saying ‘The sabbath is made for man,’ and, on one occasion, ‘Thy sins are forgiven thee,’ and, ‘The son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins,’ and a few more things of this sort. What is there in all this that would induce Christ to use such an expression as, ‘Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of _my words_’? I could understand his saying ‘of me,’ but not ‘of _my words_.’ Surely it would have been better to say, ‘Whosoever shall be unjust, or an adulterer, or a murderer, I will be ashamed of him’.”