citizens in their obedience to the reigning powers, and in the practice
of those virtues that render a State happy" ("Eccles. Hist," p. 87). We
discover Charlemagne enforcing Christianity among the Saxons by sword
and fire, hoping that it would, among other things, "induce them to
submit more tamely to the government of the Franks" (Ibid, p. 170). And
we see missionaries among the savages usurping "a despotic dominion over
their obsequious proselytes" (Ibid, p. 157); and "St. Boniface," the
"apostle of Germany," often employing "violence and terror, and
sometimes artifice and fraud, in order to multiply the number of
Christians" (Ibid, p. 169). Thus do "villains" very often "teach
honesty." Nor is it true that these apostles were "martyrs [their
martyrdom being unproved] without the least prospect of honour or
advantage;" on the contrary, they desired to know what they would get by
following Jesus. "_What shall we have_, therefore?... Ye which have
followed me shall sit upon twelve thrones" (Matt. xix. 27-30); and,
further, in Mark ix. 28-31, we are told that any one who forsakes
anything for Jesus shall receive "an hundredfold _now in this time,"_ as
well as eternal life in the world to come. Surely, then, there was
"prospect" enough of "honour and advantage"? These remarks apply quite
as strongly to Mark and Luke, neither of whom are pretended to be
eye-witnesses. Of Mark we know nothing, except that it is said that
there was a man named John, whose surname was Mark (Acts xii. 12 and
25), who ran away from his work (Acts xv. 38); and a man named Marcus,
nephew of Barnabas (Col. iv. 10), who may, or may not, be the same, but
is probably somebody else, as he is with Paul; and one of the same name
is spoken of (2 Tim. ii.) as "profitable for the ministry," which John
Mark was not, and who (Philemon 24) was a "fellow-labourer" with Paul in
Rome, while John Mark was rejected in this capacity by Paul at Antioch.
Why Mark, or John Mark, should write a Gospel, he not having been an
eye-witness, or why Mark, or John Mark, should be identical with Mark