Mark 6:13

(13) Anointed with oil.—St. Mark is the only Evangelist who mentions this as the common practice of the disciples, but we learn from James 5:14 that it was afterwards in use, at least, in the churches of Jerusalem and other Jewish communities. It was partly analogous to our Lord’s treatment of the blind and deaf (Mark 7:33; Mark 8:23; John 9:6), i.e., it was an outward sign showing the wish to heal, and therefore a help to faith; but as the use of oil was more distinctly that of an agent recognised as remedial in the popular therapeutics of the time, it had also the character of uniting (and devout minds have since so regarded it) the use of natural outward means of healing with prayer for the divine blessing. It need scarcely be said that it had not the slightest affinity with the mediæval so-called sacrament of extreme unction, which, though it may still retain, in theory, a partial secondary connection with the cure of the diseases of the body, is practically never administered till all hope of cure is abandoned. The development of the latter aspect of the usage was obviously the after-growth of a later time, when the miraculous gift of healing was withdrawn, and when it became necessary to devise a theory for the retention of the practice.