Dr R. E. McIntyre in his recent Warrack lectures tells of a minister, who made the boast, ‘I am an evangelist, thank God, and not a theologian’. The writer of this article can make a similar claim without the thanksgiving, ‘I am a preacher, and not a Biblical critic’. The learned men of Biblical Criticism have, however, set for us preachers a problem in Christian ethics. The findings of Biblical Criticism being what they are, can we go on preaching in the way that we have been doing? Most of us in our preaching imply, if we do not explicitly state, that the words attributed to our Lord in the New Testament are translations of words that Jesus actually uttered during His life on earth. Indeed, we try to bring out every possible meaning of these words in the light both of the circumstances in which they are said to have been uttered and in the light of the whole religious heritage of the Jews which Jesus shared. There is a similar problem in preaching from any part of Scripture, but, in this article, I shall confine myself for the most part to sayings attributed to our Lord Himself. One reason for doing so is the very practical one that I have found a rich mine of examples in Dr T. W. Manson's recently reprinted work, The Sayings of Jesus; another reason is that whatever we discover to be right method in the case of the sayings attributed to our Lord is likely, with necessary changes, to be right method in the case of the rest of the Scripture records.

There are few doctrines which Christians handle with less assurance than the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. The major causes of this embarrassment are a failure to think Biblically and a failure to think Trinitarianly. We confess a Trinitarian creed, but we think as Binitarians. One symptom of this error is the frequent interpretation of the Holy Spirit's work in terms of inspiration.

The difficulty of this chapter is notorious. ‘No one will deny’, writes Dr V. Taylor, ‘that Mark 13 presents one of the unsolved problems of New Testament exegesis.’ Professor A. M. Hunter goes further and says: ‘Mark 13 is the biggest problem in the Gospel.’ In Part I of this study we shall attempt to expound the chapter as it stands, as far as possible reserving the discussion of the main critical questions for Part II. This procedure is, of course, not altogether satisfactory; for it means that our exposition will be provisional and may need subsequent correction from the insights gained from the critical approach. Nevertheless it has certain advantages. For one thing, it may serve to remind us that a saying of Jesus, the authenticity of which has been questioned by critical research, has not thereby ceased to be part of Scripture but may still be the vehicle of the exalted Christ's conversation with His Church.

In their homiletical expositions of the Scriptures, the patristic writers freely employed symbolical methods. Origen, for instance, understood the two miracles with which we are concerned here to signify the giving of the Word of God to the Gentiles; whilst Augustine held that the feeding of the five thousand symbolised that salvation was for the Jews, and that of the four thousand its offering to the Gentiles. Many modern scholars say that Augustine's exegesis would, in this respect, have been Mark's view of these two miracles.