Mark iii. 4: “He saith, Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath-days, or to do evil?” In St. Matthew's Gospel, before performing a miracle, Christ argues the necessity of showing mercy on the Sabbath-day, and supplies what is wanting in St. Mark—the conclusion, “Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath-days” (xii. 12).
Mark iv. 12: “That seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not hear.” This seemed harsh to the compiler of St. Matthew. It was as if unbelief and blindness were fatally imposed by God on men. He therefore alters the tenor of the passage, and attributes the blindness of the people, and their incapability of understanding, to their own grossness of heart (xiii. 14, 15).
Mark v. 37: “The ship was freighted,” in St. Matthew, is altered into, “the ship was covered” with the waves (viii. 34).
Mark vi. 9 “Money in the girdle,” changed into, “money in the girdles” (x. 9).
Mark ix. 42: “A millstone were put on his neck,” changed to, “were hung about his neck” (xviii. 6).
Mark x. 17: “Sell all thou hast;” Matt. xix. 21, “all thy possessions.”
Mark xii. 30: “He took a woman;” Matt. xxii. 25, “he married.”
But if it be evident that the author of St. Matthew's Gospel laid under contribution the material used by St. Mark, it is also clear that he did not use St. Mark's Gospel as it stands. He had the fragmentary memorabilia of which it was made up, or a large number of them, but unarranged. He sorted them and wove them [pg 178] in with the “Logia” written by St. Matthew, and afterwards, independently, without knowledge, probably, of what had been done by the compiler of the first Gospel, St. Mark compiled his. Thus St. Matthew's is the first Gospel in order of composition, though much of the material of St. Mark's Gospel was written and in circulation first.
This will appear when we see how independently of one another the compiler of St. Matthew and St. Mark arrange their “memorabilia.”
It is unnecessary to do more to illustrate this than to take the contents of Matt. iv.—xiii.