It was even to have been expected, from what is found to have been universally the method in other parts of Scripture,—(for it was of course foreseen by ALMIGHTY GOD from the beginning that this portion of His Word would be, like its Divine Author, in these last days cavilled at, reviled, hated, rejected, denied,)—that the SPIRIT would not leave Himself without witness in this place. It was to have been anticipated, I say, that Eternal Wisdom would carefully—(I trust there is no irreverence in so speaking of GOD and His ways!)—would carefully make provision: meet the coming unbelief (as His Angel met Balaam) with a drawn sword: plant up and down throughout these Twelve Verses of the Gospel, sure indications of their Divine Original,—unmistakable notes of purpose and design,—mysterious traces and tokens of Himself; not visible indeed to the scornful and arrogant, the impatient and irreverent; yet clear as if written with a sunbeam to the patient and humble student, the man who “trembleth at GOD’S Word.”(313) Or, (if the Reader prefers the image,) the indications of a Divine Original to be met with in these verses shall be likened rather to those cryptic characters, invisible so long as they remain unsuspected, but which shine forth clear and strong when exposed to the Light or to the Heat; (Light and Heat, both emblems of Himself!) so that even he that gropeth in darkness must now see them, and admit that of a truth “the LORD is in this place” although he “knew it not!” (i.) I propose then that in the first instance we compare the conclusion of S. Mark’s Gospel with the beginning of it. We did this before, when our object was to ascertain whether the _Style_ of S. Mark xvi. 9-20 be indeed as utterly discordant from that of the rest of the Gospel as is commonly represented. We found, instead, the most striking resemblance.(314) We also instituted a brief comparison between the two in order to discover whether the _Diction_ of the one might not possibly be found as suggestive of _verbal_ doubts as the diction of the other: and so we found it.(315)—Let us for the third time draw the two extremities of this precious fabric into close proximity in order again to compare them. Nothing I presume can be fairer than to elect that, once more, our attention be chiefly directed to what is contained within the twelve verses (ver. 9-20) of S. Mark’s _first_ chapter which exactly correspond with the twelve verses of his _last_ chapter (ver. 9-20) which are the subject of the present volume. Now between these two sections of the Gospel, besides (1) the obvious _verbal_ resemblance, I detect (2) a singular parallelism of _essential structure_. And this does not strike me the less forcibly because nothing of the kind was to have been _expected_. (1.) On the verbal coincidences I do not propose to lay much stress. Yet are they certainly not without argumentative weight and significancy. I allude to the following:—