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DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

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Si quis PENITUS POSSET introspicere afflatus
Prophets, videret in singulis verbis caminos
ignis et vehementissimos ardores esse. Luther.

JOHN THE BAPTIST.

THE CONGREGATIONAL UNION LECTURE
FOR 1874.

HENRY ROBERT REYNOLDS, D.D.

" AMONG THEM THAT ARE BORN OF WOMEN THERE HATH NOT RISEN A GREATER
THAN JOHN THE BAPTIST: N^Q^ffTSSISCKraMS^HE THAT IS LEAST IN THE KINGDOM
OF HEAVEN IS GREATER/

JLonHon t
HODDER AND STOUGHTON,
PATERNOSTER ROW.
1874.

[All rights reserved.)

'Eyevero av6pomo<; cnreaTa\fievo<; irapd
Qeov, ovofia avr& 'Icodvvyi. ovro<; r)\6ev
ek fiaprvpiav, iva fiapTvpijcrr; irepl tov
cficoTds, iva iriivre<; tnarevo-cnai Si avrov- St. John.

Agnum monstrat in aperto,
Vox clamantis in deserto,
Vox Verbi praenuncia.
Ardens fide, verbo lucens,
Et ad veram lucem ducens,
Multa docet millia.
Non lux iste, sed lucema,
Christus vero lux ssterna
Lux illustrans omnia. Adam of St. Victor.

Mele e locuste furon le vivande
Che nudriro '1 Battista nel deserto;
Per ch' egli e glorioso e tanto grande
Quanto per 1' Evangelio v' e aperto.
Divina Commedia. Purgatorio xxii.

Where is the lore the Baptist taught,
The soul unswerving and the fearless tongue ?
The much-enduring wisdom, sought
By lonely prayer the haunted rocks among?
Who counts it gain his light should wane,
So the whole world to Jesus throng. Christian Year.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

PREFACE.

WHEN I was honoured by the request of the
committee of the Congregational Union of
England and Wales to prepare a treatise which might,
by their favour, be placed in the well-known series of
works entitled " Congregational Lectures," that re
quest was coupled, on the part of the committee, with
a considerate recognition of the probability that the
public delivery of the lectures would have, in my case,
to be foregone.
I have now to state that the " Congregational
Lecture "here offered to the public has not been de
livered to a larger audience than a select class of
students in a theological college. This may account
for some peculiarities of treatment.
My choice of theme was in part determined by
observing the comparatively small space in biblical
literature which has been devoted to the mission of
John the Baptist. This has seemed to me remark
able, considering the unique position occupied by him
in the history and order of Divine revelation.
Modern speculation has compelled us to ask with
deep seriousness — Whether the Lord Jesus Christ was

vi Preface.
a development of humanity or a manifestation of God
to the human race ?— whether He was the natural out
come of a previously existing combination of circum
stances and institutions, or whether human nature
was Divinely reconstituted in Him? Was the Old
Covenant merely reformed, or, on the other hand, was
a New Covenant made with humanity in His blood ?
The answer to these questions turns in part upon
the character of the prophet who was ordained to be
" the clasp of the two covenants." Moreover, John
was not simply- a Hebrew prophet : he was an Eastern
sage, and his affinities with Oriental speculation pro
voke much inquiry, and demand close investigation.
As he heralded the Hope of the world, as well as the
advent of Messiah, the Vox Clamantis is charged
with a message to every generation. His personal
relations with Jesus have brought his form into a
dazzling, and perhaps confusing light, but they have
also conferred peculiar value upon the indubitably his
toric position conceded to him. The great words at
tributed to John demand special exegetical treatment.
His life, his death, and the prolongation of his influ
ence, in various forms of theological speculation and
ecclesiastical usage, even to the present day, are en
hanced in importance by the circumstance that our
Lord bore especial testimony to John, claimed him as
His forerunner, adopted his method, endorsed his
baptism and his teaching, and yet at the same time
declared that " he that was least in the kingdom of
heaven was greater than he."
The institutions, ideas, and tendencies of both He
braism and Christianity must of necessity be inter
sected at many points by any endeavour to sketch the

Preface. vii
relations of John the Baptist with the kingdom of
God. An adequate account of the offices he filled,
of the teaching attributed to him, and of the definite
work said to have been done by him, cannot fail to
become, to some extent, an introduction to the Life
of Christ; and, moreover, such a sketch involves
the discussion of so many questions of interest to
theologians, as almost to expand into a cursus theolo-
gicus. The prime difficulty of my task has consisted
in the selection of those topics which were essential
to my plan.
I have especially desired to exhibit the judgment
pronounced in the life, person, and work of John upon
some of the main features of the Old Covenant, and to
discover some canons of criticism by which the tran
sitory elements of Hebraism may be discriminated
from those which are of perpetual significance. This
inquiry has not failed to suggest the delicate task
of discriminating between the more and the less es
sential elements of Christianity itself. It is scarcely
necessary to say that these studies have led to deeper
confidence in the reality of the kingdom of God, to a
profounder belief in the supernatural character of the
revelation of God in holy Scripture, to a more over
powering sense of the claims of the Lord Jesus
Christ on our loyalty, our trust, our worship. I have
written for those who sympathize in these convictions.
It would have been congenial to my deepest personal
feeling to have fled the "loud stunning tide" of con
troversy, and to have sat at the feet of this great saint,
simply to learn some .of the deep lessons which he
has to teach in this nineteenth century as well as in the
first; some of the lovely and lofty things touching

viii Preface.
the Divine life which might be gathered from his vigo
rous conscience, his ascetic self- repression, his pro
phetic insight, his tremendous expectation, his mighty
deeds, his bravery, his testimonies, his doubts, and his
martyrdom. Sympathizing in the strenuous desire of John to
realize the lofty ideal of holiness, to extirpate the seeds
of evil, to commune with the Living God, it would
have been a welcome task to have dwelt long and
patiently on his personal and moral greatness, to have
accepted his spiritual mission, and have yielded to the
severe discipline by which he would prepare in our
modern world a way for the Lord ; to have offered the
prayer which Bishop Jeremy Taylor has left on record.
" 0 holy and most glorious God, who, before the
publication of Thy eternal Son, the Prince of Peace,
didst send Thy servant, John Baptist, by the examples
of mortification, and the rude austerities of a peni
tential life, and by the sermons of penance, to remove
all the impediments of sin, that the ways of his Lord
and ours might be made clear, ready, and expedite ; be
pleased to let Thy Holy Spirit lead me in the straight
paths of sanctity, without deflections to either hand,
and without the interruption of deadly sin ; that I
may, with facility, zeal, assiduity, and a persevering
diligence, walk in the ways of the Lord. Be pleased
that the axe may be laid to the root of sin, that the
whole body of it may be cut down in me ; that no fruit
of Sodom may grow up to Thy displeasure. Tho
roughly purge the floor and granary of my heart with
Thy fan, with the breath of Thy diviner Spirit, that
it may be a holy repository of graces, and full of bene
diction and sanctity ; that when our Lord shall come,

Preface. ix
I may at all times be prepared for the entertainment
of so divine a Guest, apt to lodge Him and to feast
Him, that He may for ever delight to dwell with me.
And make me also to dwell with Him, sometimes re
tiring into His recesses and private rooms, by contem
plation, and admiring of His beauties, and beholding
the secrets of His kingdom ; and at all other times
walking in the courts of the Lord's house, by the dili
gences and labours of repentance and a holy life, till
Thou shalt please to call me to a nearer communica
tion of Thy excellences ; which then grant, when, by
Thy gracious assistances, I shall have done Thy
works, and glorified Thy holy name, by the strict and
never-failing purposes and proportionable endeavours
of religion and holiness, through the merits and mer
cies of Jesus Christ. Amen."1
My theme has, however, thrown me into the skirts
of the great storm which is thundering over every idea
and institution of Christendom. There are mighty
currents of thought which compel us to handle our
craft with circumspection, to put a reef into some
sails, and to protect ourselves against new, and at one
time uncontemplated dangers.
The possibility of " supernatural religion " is now in
debate. Nay, the personality of God and the immor
tality of man are brought, in scientific congresses, into
open discussion. The credibility of any document that
implies a miraculous element is boldly disputed. The
historical student is encouraged to doubt the accuracy
of every statement that has been made in any ancient
document whatever, and to test the trustworthiness of
an authority by the inherent probability of the facts it
'Bishop Taylor, Life of Christ. Works, Ed. by Heber, vol. ii. p. 158.

x Preface.
may record. He is warned against any hypothesis
which might have the effect of confirming the truth of
a biblical narrative, lest he should exhibit a theologic
bias and an ignorance of the spirit of true historic
criticism. On the other hand, the invention or imagi
nation of a purely hypothetical author of one of the
histories or letters of the New Testament, and the dis
covery of a nucleus of antique matter embedded in the
pages of some well-known history, are not visited with
very harsh condemnation. On the contrary, so delicate
are the senses of the literary critic, and so fine is his
tact, that he assumes the power of dogmatically deter
mining the extent to which the hypothetical nucleus-
say of the book of Leviticus or the Gospel of Luke —
has been tampered with by its unknown author. Criti
cism even goes so far as to profess a knowledge of what
was actually a part of the original nucleus, but has been
left out of it by the editor of the composite document.
These powers, if genuine, are very wonderful ; more
so, we submit, than the miracles of Scripture ; and
it must be allowed that they have been freely applied
to the Zendavesta as well as to the Pentateuch, to the
Koran as well as to the Gospel, to the poems of Homer
as well as to the Psalms, to Plato and Shakespeareas
well as to St. Paul. I wish to render all honour to the
honesty of purpose, as well as to the vast learning, to
the amazing ingenuity, and to the candour with which
many scholars — the latchet of whose shoes I am un
worthy to loose — have applied their principles of spe
culative reconstruction to the documents of our holy
faith. At the same time, I have been unable to see
the justice of the theory which eliminates all honesty
and value from the authorship of the four Gospels. I

Preface. xi
cannot understand why an hypothesis which tends to
solve an historic difficulty, and to save the credit both
of a document and of its author, is necessarily and
prima facie untrustworthy and prejudiced, — while an
hypothesis which charges inadvertence, ignorance, par
tisanship, or gross miscarriage upon (say) the author
of the fourth Gospel, indicates breadth of thought and
fine critical acumen.
As every step of my inquiry has been beset by spe
culations and hypotheses which are inconsistent with
the simple truth of the evangelic narrative, I have felt
compelled to adopt, somewhat reluctantly, an apolo
getic tone. I have not dared to close my eyes to the
variously -conducted attack upon the sources of our
evangelic history.
While not presuming formally to handle this many-
sided question, I have ventured to think that a dis
cussion of some of the problems which the life of John
the Baptist presents, though they do not carry the
solution of questions of far greater moment, yet can
hardly be decided in either direction without insti
tuting a precedent that will apply with force to a still
grander theme. To take one illustration. If the syn
optic and Johannine portraitures of the Baptist can be
shown to be mutually consistent, it appears to me that
one of the gravest difficulties besetting an admission of
the authenticity of the fourth Gospel is removed. It
would have been clearly superfluous for me to have
given in this work even a resume ofthe great controversy
on this subject. If I have appeared to treat the author
ship of the fourth Gospel as an open question, it has
been because I have felt that the progress of my argu
ment has a legitimate tendency to establish its authen-

xii Preface.
ticity. The use of the term "fourth Gospel " has been
dictated by an obvious convenience.
The specific treatises on John the Baptist are few in
number. The Bampton Lecture for 1783, by Robert
Holmes, the brief treatises of Witsius, Van Rohde,
J. G. Ernst, Hartwell Home, and Huxtable, Sermons
of Nicholas of Clairvaux and E. Irving, and the articles
in Winer's Realwortevbuch, Herzog's Encyclopadie, Tille-
mont's Memoires, the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists,
and in the recent Dictionaries of the Bible, so far as I
have been able to discover, complete the list. The
biblical commentaries, however, and the " Lives of
Christ " which have dealt more or less completely with
the career of the Baptist, are very numerous. Augus
tine, Chrysostom, Bonaventura, and Jeremy Taylor,
Sepp and Strauss, Schleiermacher, Mill, Milman, Stier,
Hausrath, Schneckenburger, Hase, Neander, Schen-
kel, De Wette, Meyer, Da Costa, and Alford, Renan,
Ewald, Lange, Langen, Davidson, De Pressens6,
Keim, Beecher, Farrar, and many others, have been
consulted. I profess no first-hand acquaintance with
the Talmudical literature, and have been thankful to
avail myself of the labours in this department of
Lightfoot, Schottgen, Danzius, Eisenmenger, Gfrorer,
Jost, Gratz, Ginsberg, and Etheridge. In references
to those works either of patristic or foreign theology
and history that have been translated into English,
I have quoted for the most part from the transla
tions that are easily accessible.
Not until these- pages had nearly passed through
the press, have I had the opportunity of reading the
anonymous work entitled " Supernatural Religion."
My main argument is untouched by this treatise.

Preface. xiii
Profound belief in a personal God, in " One who
thinks and loves," appears to me, both in logic and
history, anterior to the reception of any "revelation"
by miraculous interposition. The sphere of the
supernatural is much wider than that which this
writer contests. Life, mind, history, and the evolu
tion of thought have offered supernatural phenomena
to our faith. We need no miracle, properly so called,
to convince us that the twenty-third Psalm and that the
parable of the Prodigal Son came from the source
of all beauty, righteousness, and love. If I had pre
viously read this learned author's examination of the
external evidence of the authenticity of the four
Gospels, I should have spoken in different terms of
the present state of the controversy. But if Mar
cion's Gospel were demonstrated to be independent
of Luke's, this conclusion would not disprove the
integrity of the third Gospel. If the existence of an
ancient document at any particular date is dependent
on the extent or accuracy of presumed " quotations "
from it, I fear it would be difficult to prove the ex
istence of the Septuagint in the second century, and
the genuineness of all ancient literature would rest
on the most insecure foundation.
Many questions which, to some minds, may appear
to be closely connected with the ministry of John, I
have avoided. It did not seem to me that I was
called upon to discuss the nature, the mode, or the sub
jects of Christian baptism, or to advance beyond the
prior question of the validity and essential character
of baptism as a Christian ordinance. The " Baptism
of John" has certain interesting relations with each
of these great controversies. I have endeavoured to

xiv Preface.
indicate the inferences that may be drawn from the
historic origination and symbolic significance of water-
baptism. In the concluding lecture, on the Results, Echoes,
and Lessons of the Ministry of John, I have stated at
greater length some of the conclusions that may be
derived from the whole discussion.
It is with extreme diffidence that I offer to the
Church of Christ, to the honoured brethren who have
encouraged me to undertake the task, and to the
beloved students of my theological class who listened
to an abridged form of these prelections — these im
perfect results of my very limited studies on this sub
ject. My one desire is that they may aid some in
their interpretation and exposition of God's Word, and
may quicken in many hearts the yearning for that
baptism of the Holy Spirit of which the baptism of
John was the expressive prelibation.
It is a pleasure and duty gratefully to acknowledge
the valuable help I have derived from the Rev. J.
Radford Thomson, M.A., who has kindly assisted the
passage of the work through the press.

H. R. REYNOLDS.

Cheshunt College,
November, 1874.

ADVERTISEMENT
By the Committee of the Congregational Union
of England and Wales.

"F^HE Congregational Union Lecture has been
¦*¦ established with a view to the promotion of
Biblical Science, and Theological and Ecclesiastical
Literature. It is intended that each Lecture shall consist of
a course of Prelections, delivered at the Memorial
Hall, but when the convenience of the Lecturer shall
so require, the oral delivery will be dispensed with.
The Committee hope that the Lecture will be main
tained in an unbroken Annual Series ; but they promise
to continue it only so long as it seems to be efficiently
serving the end for which it has been established, or as
they may have the necessary funds at their disposal.
For the opinions advanced in any of the Lectures,
the Lecturer alone will be responsible.
18, South Street, Finsbury,
January, 1874.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
Preface  v

LECTURE I.
The Significance and Sources of the Biography of
yoHN the Baptist.
§ I. — THE ANTECEDENTS OF GREAT MEN EXPLANATORY
OF THEIR INFLUENCE  I
The antecedents of Confucius — Socrates — Shakespeare.
The portraitures of Holy Scripture demand a study of
their antecedents. Moses — Jesus.
Comparison of the ethics of the New Testament with
those of heathen writers.
The reaction of nations on individuals.
The dependence of the grand movements of humanity
upon great men.
The influence of the Hebrew prophets.
The least in the kingdom of God greater than they.
John the Baptist the point of comparison between Chris
tianity and the sum total of the effects of Hebraism.
§ II. — THE ADVANTAGES OF STUDYING THE MISSION OF
JOHN THE BAPTIST  13
I. The historic character of John.
2. Its comparative freedom from the crux of modern
scientific criticism. " John did no miracle."

xvi Contents. PAGE
3. Failure to discover the historical position of John
comparatively unimportant.
4. Comparison involved between John and Jesus.
5. The discovery herein afforded of the presence of the
1 Johannine element in Christian institutions.
§ III. — THE DIFFICULTIES BESETTING THE STUDY OF
JOHN'S LIFE  19
1. Chronological.
2. Supposed mythical character of circumstances at
tending his nativity.
3. Psychological difficulties ; involving among other
things the contrast between the witness by John to
the person and work of Jesus, and his subsequent
doubts.
§ IV. — THE SPECIAL PORTRAITURES OF THE SYNOPTIC
AND FOURTH GOSPELS  27
Discussion of the comparison in the case of John the
Baptist — Thomas — Simon — John the son of Zebedee
— the Christ.
General conclusions as to the Johannine portraiture of
John the Baptist.
§ V. — THE POLITICAL SURROUNDINGS OF THE CAREER
OF JOHN  38
Contrast between the history of Palestine in the pages
of Josephus and the Evangelic narrative.
The unexplained hints of the Gospel narrative.
The political changes affecting John's career.
The historic names with which his recorded career
brings him into contact.
§ VI. — EXTERNAL TESTIMONY TO JOHN THE BAPTIST ... 52
Testimony of Josephus.
The allusions of Josippon or Gorionides.
The evidence afforded by the continued existence of a
Johannine sect.
The latter a type of similar protractions of an exhausted
method, doctrine, or institution.

Contents. xvii PAGE
LECTURE II.
Examination of the Biblical Record of the
Nativity of yoHN the Baptist. ... 63
The general and special preparation for the coming of
" the Second Man."
Distinguished position of John as His forerunner.
Discussion of the integrity of the Gospel of Luke and
genuineness of first chapter.
Recent speculations as to the dependence of Luke's
Gospel on that of Marcion.
Theories of Schleiermacher and Strauss reviewed.
Probable author of the first chapter of Luke's Gospel.
Examination of the narrative in detail with special re
ference to the rationalistic and mythical hypotheses.
Discussion of biblical angelology in its philosophical,
scientific, and literary aspects.
Significance of the angelic oracle.
Luke's record contrasted with the Apocryphal Gospels.
Examination of the Magnificat and Benedictus, and
their bearing on the education of John.
Absence of other definite sources of information.
LECTURE III.
John the Exponent of the Old Testament
D is pens a tion.
A review of those elements which were due to the age —
to the race — and to the civil and religious life into
the midst of which John was cast.
§ I. — THE PRIEST  123
Special evidence that John belonged to the priestly race.
Origin of priesthoods.
Principles of selection.
The Hebrew priesthood an hereditary caste.
Discussion of the Levitical legislation.
The rebellion of Korah.
Functions and duties of the priest.
a. Sacrificial.

xviii Contents. PAGE
b. Ministerial.
c. Military.
Essentially temporary nature of such a caste.
Bearing of these several priestly characteristics on the
mission of John.
No reproduction of the priestly order in the New Cove
nant.
Growth of the sacerdotal idea in the Christian Church.
The least in the kingdom of heaven greater than the
last and greatest of the priests.
§ II.— THE JEWISH ASCETIC  ISI
I. The Nazarite.
A link of connection between the priesthood of the Old (
Covenant and the priesthood of consecration to the
will of God.
John an ascetic.
Examination of his food, clothing, and manners.
Essence of asceticism.
Oriental philosophy.
General protest against it in the Old Testament.
Contrast between Jesus and John in respect of ascetic
practice.
The law of the Nazarite and the Rechabite.
Instructive contrast between these laws and the teaching
and life of our Lord.
2. The Essenes.
Were John and Jesus Essenes?
Divergent opinions as to whether the Essenes were of
Hebrew or of Gentile origin.
Points of resemblance and of difference between the
Essenic and Buddhistic theory of perfection.
Principal characteristics of the Essenes — in doctrine —
and discipline.
Striking resemblances between the teaching and man
ners of John and the " theoretic " Essenes.
The important part played by asceticism in the history
of civilization.
The mingled blessing and curse caused by the introduc
tion into the Christian Church of this portion of the
Johannine idea.

.Contents. xix
PAGE
III. — THE PROPHET OF THE LORD  ' 183
1. Intellectual faculty and method by which the human
race has approximated the absolute truth of things.
2. The part which this faculty has taken in the founda
tion and conservation of religious systems.
3. The prophetic order and office among the ancient
Hebrews.
The nature of the inspiration of Hebrew prophets.
Meaning of the word Nabi.
General characteristics.
4. Special characteristics embodied in the ministry and
mission of John.
a. Personal independence of the prophets.
b. An order called into existence by their common re
lation to the same realities of truth and righteousness.
c. Psychological methods by which they were fur
nished with their revelations.
d. Definite prediction of future events. Special pre
diction of John.
Contrast in these four respects between the prophetic
position of John and the prophetic life of every
believer.
Another and a limited meaning of "prophet" in New
Testament usage.

IV. — MORE THAN A PROPHET  2l6 '(¦ \
Origin and significance of the phrase.
Jewish expectation of the coming of Elijah.
Examination of various passages bearing on the Elijah-
ship of John.
LECTURE IV.
The Preaching in the Wilderness ... 231
The scenes of John's early ministry — the topics of his
discourse.
I.^-THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN AT HAND  233
The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God.
The origin of these expressions.

J

xx Contents. PAGE
The biblical idea and its frustration.
The expansion of the kingdom into the future life.
The divergent teaching of the Apocrypha, the Book
of Henoch, and the writings of Philo.
The effect of John's proclamation of the kingdom.
Corrective influence of our Lord's teaching.
The deeper truth proclaimed by Christ.
§ II. — THE CALL TO REPENTANCE  244
Teaching of the Old Testament concerning repentance.
Doctrine of the Rabbis and of Philo on the same subject.
Contrast between the Old and the New.
§ III. — THE WRATH TO COME  248
John's prediction of wrath illustrated from Jewish lite
rature.
John gave expression to a widely spread, though vague,
fear of judgment.
Effects of his warning.
§ IV. — THE ABOLITION OF HEREDITARY AND ABRAHAMIC
PRIVILEGE  251
Illustrations of Jewish pride in Abrahamic descent.
John's anticipation of evangelic truth.
His individualism.
§ V. — THE FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE  255
I. Works of mercy.
The teaching of the Old Testament and of other Hebrew
literature.
Contrast between John's position and that of our Lord.
2. Justice.
Address to the publicans.
Righteousness between man and man an invariable
accompaniment of all true revival of religion.
3. Honour and self-restraint.
Address to the soldiers.
§ VI.— THE NEAR APPROACH OF MESSIAH  261
Messianic ideas of the Jews as gathered from the New
Testament.

Contents* ixxi
How far due to the teaching of John.
Faint indications of Messianic hope in Josephus and
Philo.
The elements of John's conception of Messiah, or c
the Christ.
His personality.
His humanity.
His might.
The baptism with the Holy Ghost.
The baptism with fire.
The meaning John attributed to the fire.
The whole of John's preaching in the wilderness —
A Gospel.
LECTURE V.
The Transitional Work of yoHN.
I. — BAPTISM  ... 277
Neither necessary nor possible to claim for John origin
ality in his choice of symbolic ritual.
Ethnic ablutions.
Ablutions of the Hebrew ritual.
Vain traditions.
Silence of Old Testament — Josephus — Philo — touching
any ceremonial corresponding with that adopted
by John.
Proselyte baptism — dispute as to its antiquity.
Statements of the Talmud recited.
Authority of Maimonides.
Customs of the Essenes — Sabeans — Elchesaites.
John's baptism " from heaven," although he may have
adopted a well-known custom.
What is involved if John had taken any existing rite as
his model.
Testimony of Josephus to the baptism of John and to its
significance, —
Apparently contradicted by the statements of the Evan
gelists.
The baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.
John not the source of a new life in our humanity.
Controversy as to the relation between the water-baptism
of John and of Christ.

xxii Contents. PAGE
The baptism of the Holy Ghost independent of baptism
with water.
Reference to the re-baptism of John's disciples.
The Johannine and subordinate character of baptism
with water.
Repentance and remission of sins proclaimed by John,
but only partially explained.
Baptism of John necessary for minds in a certain stage
of development.
Sacramental system Johannine rather than Christian, yet
being rooted in truth, in human nature, and apos
tolic precedent, has its place in Christianity.
The effect of the baptism of John.
The baptism of Jesus, its final cause.
§ II.— THE BAPTISM OF JESUS  313
Discussion of the apparent discrepancy between the
Gospels of Matthew and John as to the previous
relations subsisting between John and Jesus.
Early controversy as to the motive of our Lord in seek
ing baptism.
Examination of the position of Strauss.
Attempt to show that our Lord's baptism is compatible
with the Divine Sonship, by an examination of the
conditions implied in the baptism of John.
a. Faith in the coming of Messiah.
b. Faith in the near approach of the kingdom of God.
c. Special discussion of Christ's confession of sin, and
examination of its compatibility with His Divine
humanity.
§ III.— THE ACCOMPANIMENTS OF THE BAPTISM OF JESUS 330
Difficulties of the narrative reduced by taking them all
into consideration.
Preparation of John to receive the sign that was to be
given to him.
The fourth Gospel freer from the supernatural element
than the earlier traditions.
The Baptism chosen by its author in preference to the
Transfiguration.
Agreement between Matthew and John.

Contents. xxiii PAGE
Mark and Luke to be interpreted with the key provided
by John.
The " bodily shape."
The opened heavens. The Shekinah.
The voice.
The significance of these manifestations to John.
Theological difficulties suggested by the transaction.
i. The explicit testimonies of John to the Divine Sonship
of Jesus.
2. The supposed incompatibility of the miraculous con
ception of Christ with the descent of the Spirit.
Bearing of this difficulty on the authenticity of the
narrative. Strauss's argument proves too much.
3. Supposed identification of the Pneuma and the
Logos by the Evangelist John.
4. The Gnostic speculation touching the baptism of
Jesus.

LECTURE VI.
The Later Ministry and Special Revelations
of the Baptist.
§ i. — the son of god  358
The early confessions of the Divine Sonship of Christ
probably suggested by the Baptist.
Significance of the declaration.
John does not claim the dignity for himself.
" Bethany beyond Jordan."
The return of Jesus from the wilderness.
The deputation of priests and Levites.
The answer they received.
John the confidant of Jesus.
The effect produced upon the Baptist by the agony and
humility of the Son of God.
§ II.— THE LAMB OF GOD  369
Earlier and later interpretations of this testimony of
' John.
Sacrificial lamb.

xxjv Contents. PAGE
Septuagint version of Isaiah's oracle.
"Ecce Homo."
Vicarious suffering of Messiah not foreign to the Hebrew
mind.
Vast importance and significance of this revelation.
Effect of it upon John's disciples.
The nameless disciple— Andrew— Simon Peter— Philip
— Nathaniel.
The conduct of Jesus.
Continuation of the ministry of John.
§ III.— THE BRIDEGROOM  3^6
Circumstances under which the third and last great
testimony was uttered.
yEnon near to Salim.
First baptismal controversy.
Reference of the dispute to John.
Perplexing explicitness of John's final testimony.
The fourth Gospel furnishes the principal key to its
solution.
Examination of the words of John.
Insight into the character of John.
LECTURE VII.
The Ministry of the Prison. ... 405
John's denunciation of the sin of Herod.
The Levirate law.
Reconciliation of Josephus and the Synoptics.
John imprisoned in Machaerus.
Machserus described by Josephus.
Recent identification of the site.
Imprisonment of John.
His disciples not disbanded.
Their association with the Pharisees in an assault upon
Jesus.
Christ's use in His reply to them of John's final testi
mony.
The doctrine of Christ regarding fasting and prayer.
The message from the prison— various interpretations.

Contents^. xxv PAGE
Was Jesus the final and completed manifestation of all
that John had predicted ? Answered in the negative.
The reply of our Lord to John's inquiry a solution of
the difficult problem started by the message from
the prison.
I. Jesus vindicates the personal character of John —
his unwavering integrity.
2. He asserts all the official grandeur of John.
3. He declares that John has not entered His
kingdom.
The distinction between "the bride," the "children of
the bride-chamber," and the " friend of the bride
groom."
4. He regards John as the embodiment of the law
and the prophets.
5. He illustrates the violent assault upon the kingdom.
The modern analogues of this assault.
The different estimate formed of John by various classes
of the Jewish people — the Pharisees — the Sanhe
drists — the Lawyers — the Publicans.
The parable of the two sons.
Confirmation from the fourth Gospel of the synoptic re
presentation of the reception accorded to John.
The political complication and the court intrigue.
The banquet at Machasrus.
The execution of John.
Herod's subsequent alarm.
Contrast between the nascent myth of John's resurrec
tion and the narrative of the resurrection of Christ.
Comparison of the significance of the death of John
with that of the death of Jesus.

LECTURE VIII.
Results, Echoes, and Lessons of the Ministry of
yoHN the Baptist.
§ I. — RESULTS OF THE MINISTRY OF JOHN  453
I. The judgment of the people as to the guilt of Herod
testified by Josephus

xxvi Contents. PAGE
The testimony of our Lord after His resurrection as to
the relation of the ministry of John to the dispen
sation of the Holy Ghost.
Similar testimonies borne by Peter and Paul.
The Ebionites.
Criticism of Baur's statement concerning the re-baptism
of the Ephesian disciples.
Discussion of the relation of Apollos and of John's
disciples to the Christian Church.
The Clementine " Homilies" and " Recognitions."
Estimate of John by early Christian writers — Justin
Martyr — Tertullian — Chrysostom — Apocryphal
Gospels — Augustine.
Modern controversies concerning the baptism of John.
§ II.— ECHOES OF THE MINISTRY OF JOHN  474
I. In the existence of obscure Johannine sects.
2. In the honour done to his name in the Roman Church.
3. In the position assigned to him in Christian art
§ III. — LESSONS TO BE DERIVED FROM THE ENTIRE DIS
CUSSION  485
The bearing of this discussion on —
1. The authenticity of the historical books of the New
Testament.
2. The originality of Christ.
3. The superiority of the kingdom of God — as revealed
in the life and work of Christ — to the Old Covenant.
4. The preservation, in the organization and theology of
the Christian Church, of elements due to the Bap
tist rather than to the Christ.
A. The illegitimate prolongation of Johannine thought
seen in —
I. The false position that Christianity is only a re-
edition of the law of nature or of the law of Moses.
2. The exaggeration of Ceremonialism and Symbolic
ritual.
3. The elevation of Asceticism into a rule of life.
B. The legitimate elements of John's position repro
duced in Christian thought and. work.

Contents. xxvii PAGE
I. John as a great Preacher of righteousness.
2. John as a Herald of the future.
3. John as the Interpreter and Prophet of Divine inter
position.
4. John as the instrument and precursor of religious
revivals.
Conclusion and prayer.
APPENDIX.
A. The data of a chronological arrangement of the principal
events in the career of John ; with a Table. 530
B. Baptismal rites of the Vai shnava sect of Brahmins. 540
C. Quotation from Hippolytus. 543
D. Extract from Cardinal Wiseman's Dissertation on the
Divided Skull of John the Baptist. 545
E. Mr. Ruskin's description of Tintoret's picture of the
Baptism of Jesus. 547

John, than which man a sadder or a greater
Not till this day has been of woman born ;
John, like some iron peak by the Creator
Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.
This, when the sun shall rise and overcome it,
Stands in his shining desolate and bare,
Yet not the less the inexorable summit
Flamed him his signal to the happier air.
Frederick W. H. Myers.

The last and greatest herald of heaven's King,
Girt with rough skins, hies to the desert wild ;
Among that savage brood the woods forth bring,
Which he more harmless found than man, and mild.
His food was locusts and what there doth spring,
With honey that from virgin hives distill'd,
Parch'd body, hollow eyes, some uncouth thing,
Made him appear, long since from earth exiled.
W. Drummond of Hawthornden.

LECTURE I.
THE SIGNIFICANCE AND SOURCES OF THE
BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

LECTURE I.
THE SIGNIFICANCE AND SOURCES OF THE BIOGRAPHY
OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
§ i. Great Men and their Antecedents.
THEOLOGIANS are assured by certain exposi
tors of physical science that the universe, at
every moment of its history, contains within itself all
that is necessary to account for the next moment of its
complicated being. The scientific spirit shrinks from
the hypothesis of newly-created energy, endeavours
to bridge over all chasms by a conjectural evolution,
and to discover the law of every observed anomaly.
We are continually told that there are no isolated
facts, no absolute commencements, no creative re
newals, no Divine interpositions in the universe. It is
not my intention, nor does it come within my province,
to dispute this widely admitted canon in the realm of
physical science. The doctrine of development need
not, if accepted, deprive the theist of his God ; indeed,
the whole hypothesis will force the devout mind into
continual fellowship with the sleepless, boundless,
transcendent Intelligence, which has been evolving in
the abysses of eternity the conditions of every mole
cule, and which presides over the law and measure of
every wavelet of the universal energy.
Whatever be the final conclusion of science with
2 *

4 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.>
respect to the origin of species, or the mode in which
the first human spirit clothed itself in the dust of the
earth, it is more than probable that the intellect and
will of man, the conscience and emotions of the
human race, the evolution of humanity as a whole,
will yet for ages refuse to come under the domain of
cognizable law. The destiny of the human race has
at certain moments been entrusted to the feeblest ma
terial, has been suspended by the strength of a thread
over a chaotic abyss ; while the self-will, the caprice,
the speculations, and audacity of individual men, have
affected for good or evil all subsequent generations.
There is considerable danger in the modern resolve
to solve all the mysteries of greatness by tracing all
the antecedents of great men. The physical causes of
genius, the external provocatives of inspiration, the
hereditary predispositions to excellence may prove
deceptive. We may easily become too jealous of
originality, and do grievous dishonour to our heroes,
legislators, and prophets. Still it is obvious that there
are physical and moral antecedents, extraneous ele
ments and recognizable forces at work, which do
contribute to that grand result, — the life-work of a
great man.
A mountain viewed from a distance often gives the
impression of unrivalled majesty, but when approached
it is seen to be so surrounded and dwarfed by its brother
mountains, as to be hardly distinguishable from them ;
so, ' a great man ' loses something of his sublimity and
uniqueness as we press along the plains and by-paths
of history, and come, as it were, close to him. The
figures of some of the heroes of the past, if severed
from their antecedents and contemporaries, if viewed

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 5
apart from the reaction between themselves and the
age in which they lived, do assume supernatural di
mensions, or at any rate look so colossal as to appear
super-human. If we simply look at the influence and
recorded words of Confucius, and leave out of sight the
sages who preceded him, and the standard of virtue
that had become recognized, if not popular in his day ;
if we ignore the parallel influence of Mencius, Laotse,
and Sakya-Muni, to say nothing of Zoroaster and
Mohammed, we might think that his form loomed
across the eastern horizon with a grandeur approach
ing the supernatural, and we could hardly wonder
that Chinese philosophers should have written thus of
him : —
"All-embracing and vast, he is like heaven. Deep and active
as a fountain, he is like the abyss. He is seen, and the people all
reverence him ; he speaks, and the people all believe him ; he
acts, and the people all are pleased with him ; therefore his fame
overspreads the middle kingdom, and extends to all barbarous
things. Wherever ships and carriages reach ; wherever the strength
of man penetrates ; wherever the heavens overshadow, and the
earth sustains ; wherever the sun and moon shine ; wherever frosts
and dews fall ; all who have blood and breath unfeignedly honour
and love him. Hence it is said, ' He is the equal of heaven.' " x
If we could imagine Socrates apart from the philoso
phers and poets who prepared his advent; if we could
ignore the group of marvellous men who surrounded
him; if the dialogues of Plato constituted the earliest
fragment and relic of Greek literature, and we had
nothing to compare with them but the rhetorical
flourishes and mystic speculations of later ages, we
should be disposed to think of Socrates as more than
man. The vigour of his conscience and the penetration
of his intellect would surprise us into something akin to
1 The Chinese Classics, translated by James Legge, D.D. Vol. i. 293.

6 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
worship. If the plays of Shakespere were the only
memorials of the Elizabethan age ; if we had nothing
to throw light on the education and dramatic feeling of
the period ; if we knew nothing of the foreign "influences
that had been affecting the English stage, nothing of
the outburst of imprisoned energies in that marvellous
spring-time of the human intellect, Shakespere would
be a thousand-fold more incomprehensible than he is.
The same principle is applicable to the pages of
Holy Scripture. If we take its single portraitures
apart from the long train of high and subtle influences
which accompanied the development of the kingdom
of God, we obtain a one-sided view of the philosophy
of Solomon, the poetry of David, the legislation of
Moses, the prophetic insight of Isaiah, and — though
we say it with profoundest reverence — of the origi
nality of the teachings of our blessed Lord. We do
injustice to the Lord Jesus if we attribute to Him,
as to the fontal source and sole original, ideas which
a closer study of the Hebrew Scriptures proves to have
been the voice of the older revelation. We honour
Him vainly and unworthily if we are unwilling to
admit that the Jewish sages of His time made use of
apologues, and uttered gnomonic sayings which have
a strong resemblance to His own. Let us accept
with gladness the statement of a great Oriental scholar,
who tells us that " the relationship of man to God was
pregnantly expressed by those most familiar words
which occur from one end of the Talmud to the other,
' Our Father in heaven.' " l The same writer quotes,
from this strange fossil forest of Hebrew thought, a,
gracious spiritualization of " the serpent in the wilder-
1 Literary Remains of Emanuel Deutsch. 1S74. P. 148.

i-] Biography of John the Baptist. ?
ness," an apologue not unlike the parable of the wed
ding feast, the proverb, " One contrition in man's
heart is better than many flagellations ; " and he
reminds us that Hillel informed a heathen that the
substance of the law was, " Do not unto another what
thou wouldest not have another do unto thee." ' It
is still more interesting to find in "The Confucian
Analects," and in "The Doctrine of the Mean," quite
as close an approximation to the golden rule. One
of the disciples of the great master asked, " Is there
one word which may serve as a rule of practice for
all one's life?" The master said, "Is not reciprocity
such a word ? What you do not want done to your
self, do not do to others."2
The long list of resemblances between the ethics
of the New Testament and the maxims of Seneca,
Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius,3 may sometimes dis
compose those who have not yet learned that the Divine
teaching of our race has to a certain extent been an
evolution from humanity, as well as a fresh manifesta
tion to it ; that our greatest men have in much of their
greatness been the expression of What before their
appearance was implicitly contained in human nature ;
that they have rescued from darkness and neglect
thoughts and ideas of priceless value, but which are
1 Literary Remains of Emanuel Deutsch. 1874. pp. 3r, 55, 57.
" Chinese Classics, by J. Legge, vol. i. ; Proleg. p. no ; C. Analects, pp. 41
and 165.
3 Lightfoot's Commentary on Epistle to the Philippians ; Dissertation on St.
Paul and Seneca ; Sir A. Grant on The Ancient Stoics, in his edition of Aris
totle's Ethics ; Farrar's Seekers after God. I select a few of the most striking.
Seneca, Ep. Mor. lxxxvii. 2r : "The mind, unless it is pure and holy, compre
hends not God. " De Beneficio, ii. 10 : * ' This is the law of a good deed between
two ; the one ought at once to forget that it was conferred, the other never to
forget that it was received." — " Good does not grow of evil, any more than a
fig of an olive tree." Ep. Mor. xlvii. 18 : "Love cannot be mingled with
fear." De Vita Beata, 15 : " To obey God is liberty."

8 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
nevertheless the common property of the moral
nature of man — " the work of the law written in the
heart." An exclusive study of antecedents and analogies of
genius, and an absorbing attention to the physical
genesis of Divine inspirations, may become however
as hopelessly one-sided and misleading as the too
credulous admiration of the isolated grandeur of our
great men. For it is purely impossible to measure,
and almost as difficult to exaggerate, the influence of
these mighty spirits on the formation of their age, and
on the course which the world has taken under their
counsels. It is true that sometimes a whole generation
has felt the impulse of some blessed hope, has been
roused to some deed of enfranchisement to be effected
by its own passionate yearning for a better day. Thus
the westward movements of the self-governing peoples,
swarming off from the theocratic despotisms of the
east, and laying the foundation of the modern world;
the strange unearthly glow which inspired mediaeval
Europe to drive back the curse and the shame of Islam
from the sites dear to Christian memories ; and the
varied and multiform efforts of the European mind in
the sixteenth century to throw off spiritual despotisms,
all indicated the participation by vast multitudes, in
certain potent sentiments, as though some vague at
mospheric effect had been breathed over a continent.
While nations have thus sometimes moved as with one
common impulse, such movements can occasionally be
traced with distinctness to the passionate convictions
of a few individuals. If we imagine non-existent the
life and influence of Sakya-Muni, of Homer, of Aristotle
and Descartes, of Benedict, of Peter the Hermit, of

i-] Biography of John the Baptist. 9
Francis of Assisi, of Luther and Wesley, of Alexander
and Csesar, of Charlemagne and Cromwell, we must
also imagine the whole history of the world rewritten.
The spirit of an age may account for what the little
men do ; may gather up into itself the average ability
and thinking of a period ; but the laws of men, the
grand movements and triumphant forces of humanity
have gone forth from kingly centres, from the unique
and creative energies of the heaven-sent teachers and
leaders of human thought.
Now the Hebrew people were instinct with the con
viction of their own high destiny. Though in common
with other nations they cherished elevated conceptions
of the golden age of their nation and of the world, yet
more than any people they lived in the future, they
anticipated a triumph of the theocratic principle, they
foresaw the establishment in the earth of the kingdom
of God. Though the gorgeous vision was built up of
materials presented to them by their own national
history and cultus, yet their most gifted seers often
associated it with the utter disappointment of their
favourite plans and with the fall of their national
independence. No one doubts that Hebrew prophecy
had much to do with the faith of Christendom. If we
could accurately sum up the moral influence exerted
upon the mind of Israel by the prophetic mission of a
succession of great public teachers, and by the prophetic
aspect of its ordinary religious observances; if we
could find a test of the degree to which the Old Tes
tament dispensation had prevailed over the thought
of Israel, we should have a key to the extraordinary
rapidity with which the main truths of the Christian

io The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
revelation took possession of the minds of men.1
There were antecedents and preparations within and
beyond the limits of Judaism for the coming of the
Incarnate God, and there were channels fashioned in
the thoughts and expectations of men along which
the river of living water might flow. The Most High
devised His bounteous gift, and prepared the intel
ligence of man to receive it. To understand and esti
mate these several departments of the Divine working,
is to become possessed of a valuable key to the inter
pretation of the past history of the world.
Nothing, however, is more worthy of regard, than
the fact that the antecedents of the gospel, the pre-
paratio evangelica, the prophetic hope about the Christ,
the various anticipations, the conscious and uncon
scious predictions of the main features of the new
kingdom and of the great King, all fell short of the
revelation of the truth in Him. The promise was
fundamentally different from, as well as less than, the
fulfilment. Near as some of the prophets and psalm
ists seem to have approached the idea of a spiritual
King, a Lamb of God, a good Shepherd, a perfect
Sacrifice, and a loving, lovable Lord and God; perhaps
there is hardly one of them who would not, from his
own exclusive standpoint, have said to Jesus, "Art
thou He that should come, or look we for another ? "
From Moses and Samuel to David and Isaiah, from
Jeremiah to John the Baptist, the same solemn word
1 Compare Jost. Geschichte des Judenthums—Entstehung des Christenthums,
v. pp. 394, ff., where a learned Jew, looking upon Christianity as the child of
the idea of Divine revelation and the kingdom of God current in Judaism
boldly says that not to contemplate the course of the Christian Church in a
history of Judaism " would be a sin against the spirit of history."

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. n
may have been uttered of the wisest and best of
them :— " He that is least in the kingdom of God is
greater than he."
The revelation of the mind of God concerning the
coming of the Second Man was not insignificant nor
valueless, but when the sun arose the morning star
was lost in His radiance.
A careful study of the preliminaries of Christianity,
of the antecedent circumstances, prophecies, and por
tents which ushered it into the world, is absolutely
needed to account for so large a conception of God
and man becoming the heritage of the world; but
there is no study which reveals so clearly the unique
glory of the Christ. We may try to read by star
light; if we succeed, we shall find that there was
no surer way of understanding the immeasurable
difference between the star-beam and the noontide
splendour. Consequently, few meditations will bring
into clearer light the majesty of the mind of Christ
than a comparison of His thoughts with those which
the highest embodiment of Judaism, the noblest expo
nent of the Old Testament creed had reached before
Him. John the Baptist comes very near to Christ. He
was an orthodox and honoured functionary; he stood
in close relation to the Divine plan for accomplishing
the Incarnation, and for the revelation of the fact to
the holy people ; his influence, his career, his martyr
dom, his posthumous fame and sway, afforded a historic
parallel to the character and work of the Christ. We
see in John an impressive specimen of what, with the
assistance of popular adhesion and the direct sense of
a Divine commission, could be evolved out of Judaism.
We have in him, therefore, a point of comparison

12 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
with the Christ and Christianity. There is no other
character mentioned in the canonical history who can
vie with John in this respect. All the writers of the
New Testament are obviously excluded by the simple
fact that they do but repeat or transmit the signifi
cance of the life and work of Christ Himself. Without
Him they can do nothing.
The Old Testament prophets and kings, on the other
hand, each contributed something to make up what we
mean by Judaism. John may fairly be regarded as
the clasp of the two Testaments, the heir of all past
ages, and as occupying in the development of the king
dom of God a position which transcends theirs. The
relation of John's position to the various tendencies of
Jewish thought constitutes him their partial exponent
and divinely-sent critic. He was himself possessed of
all their advantages, while he is placed on a vantage-
ground above them. To judge of them, we may make
use of any accessible sources of information we please.
Pharisee, Sadducee, Essene, may be separately brought
into comparison with the Christ, but they can be fairly
judged without any reference to John the Baptist. But
as John the Baptist cannot be understood without
some estimate of them, he becomes in his entirety a
much higher and later and more suggestive evolu
tion of Judaism than either of these sects or parties
in the Jewish commonwealth.
There are, moreover, other reasons which render the
career of John the Baptist worthy of special considera
tion. It is full of significance that Judaism, by its
most venerable authority, should announce its own
.transitional purpose ; that he who took up the torch of

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 13
Hebrew prophecy, and for the last time waved it before
the darkness of the future, should have it in his power
and in his heart to say, " The object of all prophecy,
the purpose of all law-giving, the end of all sacrifices,
the desire of all nations, is at hand."
Before undertaking to discuss some of the questions
suggested by the mission of John the Baptist, let me
indicate a few of the advantages, and some of the
difficulties, that attend the inquiry.

§ 2. The Advantages.
These consist mainly (1) in the indisputably his
torical character of John. He is doubtless the subject
of much mythical and legendary narrative, and we
cannot deny that Oriental fable has done its part in
obscuring the facts of his life ; but these are so clearly
pourtrayed by Josephus (to say nothing of Josippon
Gorionides), that if we had no evangelic narrative, and
had never heard of Jesus Christ, we should not be ig
norant concerning some of the salient points of John's
career. In this way his history becomes a powerful
point d'appui for the synoptic narrative.
(2) When dealing in these days with the first prin
ciples of Christian evidence, we are ready to allow that
a class of argument once considered irrefragable and in
dispensable is now of value only to those who from other
reasons hold the holy Scriptures to record the voice and
will of God. The miracles must first be established as
facts, and their presence justified by the moral teaching
they suggest. It cannot be concealed that Christianity
is accepted by some, rather in spite of the miraculous
element which is inseparably intertwined with it, and

14 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
which so abundantly illustrates it, than because of the
evidential value of the miracles themselves. The mi
racles are, as a matter of fact, accepted, under a kind of
protest, because of the transcendent value of the truth
which they accompany and suggest. Now this is an
unreasonable feature of modern thought, and forms one
proof that, with all its boast of adequate method for the
discovery of truth, it is superficial and inconsistent.
No revelation so-called, however momentous may be
its theme, can really be other in its first inception than
the invincible conviction of some great thinker. It could
not become a thought, or take the form of a communi
cable idea, without conforming to this condition. By
some means or other, that which has been thought or
said by Moses, by Isaiah, by Jesus, by' Paul, by John,
has been believed by others to be the thought of God,
but it has come through the medium of the minds of
these men. There must have been a fontal source for
the thought as human thought. Even if the thought has
been the gradual impression produced on a generation
by a series of wonderful events, those events, which in
their relation to one another constitute a history, are
not a revelation of Divine intention to mankind until
some minds have become alive to their significance,
have perceived their inner meaning, have discovered
the law of their occurrence, and have uttered it to the
world. Now the authentication of particular men as
teachers and revealers of Divine thought to the human
race has, in many instances, been supposed to be
associated with supernatural power ; nor can a teacher
secure rational assent to the position that he is a God-
sent man unless he has some attestation of his claims.
This attestation may be nothing more than the com-

i] Biography of John the Baptist. 15
plete verification of his words by the consciences and
hearts of his hearers. Still this method of attestation
restricts the character of his communications to that
which is capable of being thus verified. His words
may be the sublime of common sense, or the utterance
of great principles which are more or less affirmed by
every conscience. His teaching may involve a clear
understanding of the " signs of the times," and thus
have the same effect — to. compare large things with
small — which an obvious solution of a difficult riddle
has upon the proposer of it, or which the sudden insight
into the motive or character of another sometimes
supplies. In such circumstances, again, the matter
of the revelation is limited, and the Divine feature of
the transaction rendered somewhat dubious by the
criticism, that a careful culture of rare gifts of under
standing and heart is sufficient to account for the sudden
light that has broken in upon the darkness of Divine
Providence. But when the prophet has clearly foreseen
some apparently contingent event, when he is able to
predict the future, not only in its averages or in the
law of its evolution, but in its detail, then in the fulfil
ment of the prediction there is strong confirmation of
his claim to be the mouthpiece of the Lord Himself.
The future is so absolutely in the control of God, that a
knowledge of it, which is neither a fortunate guess nor
a scientific prevision based on the uniformity of Divine
law, suggests a superhuman, a Divine source. Further,
when a word thus uttered is neither a proposition that
can be logically demonstrated, nor a prophecy that can
have a detailed fulfilment in this life, but touches on
the unseen and transcendental region that lies so close
to every one of us, I do not see how we can believe

1 6 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
the assertion to be more than the guess of a worthy
man, the expectation of a wise teacher, the intuition
it may be of a penetrating intellect, unless there is
something about this man which attests his Divine
commission, and gives him a right to speak. Now
such attestation is found in the region of the super
natural, in miracle, and in the signs (avpeia) of
alliance with the Divine intelligence and will.
The " impossibility of miracle " is perhaps one of the
strangest and most unscientific conceits of modern
times. Nevertheless it would be uncandid to proceed
with any discussion of Christian evidence, while ignor
ing the circumstance that some of the ablest scientific
men of the nineteenth century appear, by their training
and methods of inquiry into nature, utterly unable or
quite unwilling to concede the possibility of miracle.
Now the career of John the Baptist is distinguished by
a curious absence of the miraculous element. "John
did no miracle." 1 Such Divine attestations as he
enjoyed, and the proofs we have that " there was a man
sent from God whose name was John," lie in another
region ; nor are they difficult to find, either in the
matter of his communications, in the fulfilment of
his prophecies, or in the order of men to whom
he claimed to belong. This peculiarity, however,
renders his biography freer than many other por
tions of Holy Writ from prima facie objections. If
we establish the historical position of John, we vin
dicate for a notable portion of the evangelical narra
tive an unquestionable place in the history of the
world. (3) It is reasonable to class among the advantages
1 John x. 41.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 17
of this inquiry, the circumstance that failure to estab
lish the indubitable place of John in the history would
be comparatively unimportant.
Christ had " other witness than that of John," and
though John " was a burning and shining torch," " he
was not that light," he was not the effluence of the
archetypal and veritable Light of the World. [ The
withdrawal of the light of his teaching would not
plunge us in utter darkness; nevertheless, any fresh
and deep realization of the work of the forerunner
cannot fail to have its uses. If he whom all held to be
a prophet, and about whom many mused whether he
were the Christ ; he who was neither " a reed shaken
with the wind," nor a place-loving courtier " clothed
in soft raiment," but the greatest born of women, and
one " sent from God; " if John can be so rescued from
the glare of light in which he is practically lost, that
he maybe heard saying in this nineteenth century what
he said with such significance and power in the fifteenth
year of the reign of Tiberius Csesar, some difficulties
besetting the study of the life of Christ will be re
duced. (4) In undertaking this task, we shall bring to light
the extent and degree to which Old Testament faith
had been carried; we shall ponder the most brilliant
point in the deep darkness of Christ's contemporary
history ; we shall find the Hebrew faith unperverted
by party, singularly free from personal prejudice,
brought into comparison, not merely with Apostolic
Christianity, but with the teachings and life of Incar
nate God. The opportunity will thus arise for investi-
1 " Lucerna non lux," as Augustine h'as it. Av%vog Katofttvoc; Kat faivhiv
not To filf to d\i]9iv6v. Cf. John v. 35 with i. 9.
3

1 8 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
gating the contrast between the spirit of John and
Jesus, and we shall see the abundant reason that exists
for the conclusion that the main function of John was
to teach, and that of Jesus to be; that whereas they
both suffered at the hands of the secular power, the
death of John contributed in no way to his life-work,
while the death of Christ was the corner-stone of
Christianity, apart from which the whole subsequent
history of the gospel and of the Church would have
been impossible.
(5) Again, a study of the ecclesiastical position of
John involves a contrast between it and the religious
organisation which grew out of the Divine life that
there was in Christ. It seems that some of the purely
temporary characteristics of the religious life of Juda
ism, and some of the transitional elements of the fore
runner's office and the imperfect aspects of John's
theology, have actually passed over into Christianity
from John rather than from Jesus. It may then be of
considerable advantage to detect their presence in sub
sequent ages of Christian thought, and so to analyse
the composite character of certain institutions and
ideas, as to refer them to their true origin.
But as the successive generations of the Church and
the various fields of Christian enterprise may resemble
the Jewish community in the days of John the Baptist,
it becomes a question whether the Church as a whole,
and the ministers of the word of God, are justified in
an effort to imitate the mission of the Baptist, to
repeat his work and follow his methods. If this
position be affirmed, the question might then arise,
what are the necessary safeguards of such a Johannine
Christianity ? and what is to prevent the Church from

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 19
providing a profitless substitute for the gospel, the life,
the baptism, and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ ?

From this review of the probable advantages of a
monograph on the career and mission of John the
Baptist, it becomes obvious that there are also diffi
culties of no ordinary kind which in their turn must be
fairly assailed, and either overcome or candidly admitted.
{a) There are certain chronological perplexities which
I shall endeavour to grapple with in detail ; but I may
premise that the extreme brevity of the period during
which John produced the remarkable effect upon his
fellow-countrymen is of the nature of the miraculous,
and can hardly be accounted for on the ordinary prin
ciples of human development. Dr. Young, in his
" Christ of History," has laid great stress upon the
extraordinary brevity of the period of our Lord's
ministry, and has contrasted it with the prolonged
activities of the prophets and sages of antiquity. He
has thus produced a strong argument for the super
natural power with which the life of Christ must
have been charged. The period of our Lord's public
life leaves more ample space for His marvellous deeds
and words than the brief six months during which the
young prophet of the wilderness induced Pharisees
and Sadducees, publicans and soldiers, to come to his
baptism ; forced the Sanhedrim to investigate • his
claims ; compelled the haughty potentates who sat on
the petty thrones of Palestine to tremble at his moral
earnestness and prophetic gifts ; and left a name
and an influence that will never perish out of the
3 *

20 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
world. The notes of time furnished by the synoptic
narrative are in some respects perplexing, and the co
existence during some months of the ministry of John
and of our Lord is also not without its moral diffi
culties, (b) The narrative of the circumstances which
preceded and attended the birth of John must be ad
mitted to belong to the class which provokes criticism.
It provides material upon which the rationalism of
Paulus, the higher criticism of Schleiermacher and
Strauss, and the ingenuities of the Tubingen school,
have been freely exercised. If the virtually historic
character of the transactions detailed in the first chap
ter of Luke can be maintained against these various
opponents, a position is secured of much collateral im
portance to the biblical student ; — for the process of
verification and the method of proof are of wide ap
plication in the study of the four Gospels, (c) There
are psychological difficulties, which, if the narrative
were free from all suspicion of mythical handling, and
moved completely in the region of the natural, are
declared by Strauss and De Wette to be incompatible
with the truth of the synoptic and Johannine records.
They may be briefly stated thus : —
(i) It is difficult to believe that an ascetic reformer,
a Nazarite from his birth, a representative of the
ancient orders of priest and prophet, a man who in
his style and method resembled the fiercest of the
old Hebrew seers, should have looked with any com
placency upon the career of one who in many respects
was his precise moral opposite, and whose work to a
large extent would be subversive of his own.
(2) It is very perplexing to find one who believed
himself to be the object of prophecy, and the herald

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 21
of Jehovah, at the same time firmly convinced of the
temporary character of his own mission. It is difficult
to believe both, because of the well-known and all but
universal selfishness of human nature, and because the
two beliefs seem incompatible with each other. It is
difficult on historical grounds, because if his influence
over the people was as impressive as both Josephus
and Luke imply, the effect of his labours seems hardly
to correspond with the loftiness of his claims and the
clearness of his testimonies.
• (3) Further, if the Gospel of John be trustworthy, and
the Baptist did bear such remarkable witness to the
Person and Work of Jesus as that contained in the first
and third chapters of the fourth Gospel, then his subse
quent doubts in the prison, as recorded by St. Matthew,
become very perplexing. If he perceived that the Lord
Jesus was "from above," and "above all;" that He was
"the Son of God," "the Lamb of God," and "the
Baptizer with the Holy Ghost," how could it be true
that "the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater
than he " ?
(4) The student of this theme is compelled to grapple
further with the wider question of the divergent por
traitures that characterize the synoptic and Johannine
Gospels. There are others beside John the Baptist
whose names occur in the fourth Gospel. The question
arises, Are the portraitures of Peter, of John the son of
Zebedee, of the Virgin Mary, to say nothing here of that
of our Lord, so peculiar to the fourth Gospel, that there
are irreconcilable contradictions between them and those
representations of the same individuals which occur in
the synoptic narrative ? Examination will, we believe,
show that the portraitures, though different, are not

22 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
inconsistent, and that they possess many subtle and
wonderful signs of representing the same, and not
different individuals. If so, these differences of repre
sentation become a proof rather than a violation of
historic veracity. No doubt the character of every
great man is somewhat mythical, and the representation
of it is unconsciously modified by the view taken of him
by his contemporaries, and by the spirit with which his
biographers have set about their task. It is necessary to
analyse the composite elements in any such portraiture,
and to exclude from it what may have distorted the
picture ; yet we often find that even the deliberate
presupposition with which a biographical narrative has
been produced affords the clue to the understanding of
its difficulties.
- All great men are many-sided, and the position of the
observers, and sympathy with the object of their study,
will open the eye of some to peculiarities altogether
overlooked by others. The old parallel of the Xeno-
phonic and Platonic conception of Socrates is not yet
worn out. Let Izaac Walton and Samuel Johnson
give us their conceptions of George Herbert ; let
Clarendon and Mrs. Hutchinson pourtray the career
of Cromwell ; let the letters of Cecil and those of
the Spanish Ambassador at St. James's be our guides
to the character of Mary Stuart; and the differences
of representation are enormous, without necessarily
involving on either side deviation from perfect ve
racity. The synoptic tradition gives the external features of
John the Baptist, his public ministry, his moral influence,
his official work, his cruel martyrdom. The author of
the fourth Gospel communed more closely with John's

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 23
inner life, the more spiritual side of his being, and saw
him in the light reflected from the face of Jesus.
The subjective elements present in the synoptic por
traiture of John the Baptist are singularly colourless.
It would be a difficult task to say which of all possible
influences is dominant in the representation that has
come down to us. There is no striking accord between
the narrative and the sentiments of the people from
whom on any mythical hypothesis the entire portraiture
must have unconsciously proceeded. It is not credible
that the traditions of John could have originated among
his own unconverted disciples, for the view of his
character and mission which is throughout presented
in the four Gospels is diverse from their known view of
his prophetic standpoint, and is inconsistent with their
remaining aloof from the disciples of Jesus. Again, the
synoptic tradition does not bear the mark of Christian
influences. If the records of the first chapter of Luke
had been composed in the middle of the second cen
tury, it is incredible that some stronger Hellenic
influence should not have been present, e.g., in the
song of Zacharias, and in the baptismal teaching of
John himself. The legends of the Apocryphal Gos
pels, and particularly the Protevangelium Jacobi, which
go over a part of the same ground, show what the
mythical tendency traceable in all historical literature
has actually done with a substratum of positive fact,
and how profoundly different it is from the spirit which
produced the evangelic narrative.
The fourth Gospel does however present some special
difficulties which must not be ignored. It is undeniable
that those particular words and ways of the Baptist are
marshalled by the Evangelist which are calculated to

24 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
exalt the person and character of the Incarnate Logos,
while his moral earnestness and prophetic denunciations
of sin are omitted. More than this, the forms of expres
sion which are attributed by the Evangelist John to the
Baptist, closely resemble in style and tone those which
he describes as proceeding from the lips of Jesus, and
which it must be admitted resemble his own style of
expression when commenting on the words of either
the Baptist or the Lord. This is particularly the case
with the closing testimony of John, recorded in John iii.
It would not be difficult to believe that the style of
John did actually resemble that of Jesus. It is clear
that there was considerable similarity in the themes of
their early ministry. We have only to compare the
first message and mission of the two, to see the re
semblance. This is curiously confirmed by the fact that
Herod Antipas entertained the impression and fear that
Jesus could be none other than the John whom he had
beheaded. This exclamation of Herod given in the
synoptic narrative1 might seem to be somewhat my
thical in its tone. The question might easily be asked,
How should the Evangelists ever become acquainted
with the secret fears or court-gossip of the tetrarch
of Galilee ? But it is interesting, if not conclusive, to
find, that in the company of the women who waited
upon the Lord Jesus, one is mentioned by name,2
" Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward," who
would be more likely than any other to have heard
the exclamation of the profligate prince. Now
this testimony of Herod confirms, in an incidental
fashion, the general similarity that prevailed between
1 Matt. xiv. 1-3 ; Mark vi. 14-16 ; Luke ix. 7-9.
2 Cf. Luke viii. 1-3 and Matt. xiv. 1. See Blunt's Scriptural Coincidences,
p. 283.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 25
some of the early teachings of the Baptist and of
Jesus. If this be so, it lessens the difficulty that
one who represents himself as being personally and
intimately acquainted with both, when dealing with
some of the deeper mysteries of their common teach
ing, should also reveal the similarity of their modes
of expression and choice of words. If these apparently
dissimilar representations of John the Baptist are alike
historical, he must have been himself a more complex
character than has been sometimes supposed. There
were diverse aspects of his life and mission that must
be taken into account before we can understand him
fully. This circumstance ought not to prejudge the
inquiry as between the synoptic and Johannine narra
tive, for the simple reason that the synoptic narrative,
taken by itself, and compared with that of Josephus,
gives rise to the same suggestion, though with less
explicitness. Thus, in Matthew's account taken alone,
we find the Baptist represented as saying, " I am not
worthy to bear the sandals of Him that is mightier
than I;" "I have need to be baptised of Thee, and
comest Thou to me ? ni and yet as during his imprison
ment sending His disciples to ask, "Art Thou he that
should come, or look we for another?"2 John the
Baptist undoubtedly took independent views and ex
pressed himself impulsively, and in terms that showed
how exposed he was to the violence of strong gusts of
feeling. Some of these utterances of his, when placed
side by side, may appear mutually inconsistent. Now
the author of the fourth Gospel selected for his illustra
tion of the self-revelation of the Christ those circum
stances which had been omitted by previous writers.
1 Matt. iii. n, 14. 2 Ibid. xi. 13.

26 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
He brought to light the early ministry of our Lord in
Jerusalem, Galilee, and Samaria, before the imprison
ment of the Baptist ; and he detailed the affecting re
lations of our Lord with His disciples under the
shadow of the cross, and after His resurrection. It is
worthy of inquiry, whether the peculiarity of his re
presentation of John the Baptist arises simply from
his having adopted a similar plan with reference to
him. The fourth Evangelist begins where the synoptic
Gospels close their detailed representations of the
Baptist. The baptism of Jesus was over when the San
hedrim sent their deputation to John,1 and all that is
said of his ministry in the fourth Gospel is confined
to the period that elapsed between the interview that
he had with Jesus and his own imprisonment. It
therefore bears the impress of the confidences of Jesus
and the dazzling glory of the parted heavens. It
was, moreover, at the time when the impression was
strongest upon him, that "the nameless disciple"
heard his esoteric and more intimate outbreathings
of new and bewildering faith.
There is, I believe, no single expression attributed
by the writer of the fourth Gospel to the Baptist that
is not compatible with the character of the forerunner
of the Lord Christ and with that of the last of the
Hebrew prophets.
The tendencies of a transitional and preparatory pe
riod are better comprehended after they have done their
work than during the process of their evolution ; and,
in like manner, truths", the meaning of which the Bap
tist did ndt himself fully apprehend, stood forth in
'John i. 19.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 27
remarkable clearness to the mind of the fourth Evan
gelist. They are, however, essentially Hebrew utter
ances, and it is only their starlight brightness and
comparative isolation that suggest a more thoroughly
Christian standpoint for the Baptist than he appears
to occupy in the pages of the synoptic narrative or in
those of Josephus.
That there are difficulties and incongruities, I do
not deny, but let us compare two hypotheses that have
been advanced for their explanation. One is, that the
author of the fourth Gospel dramatised the character
and teaching of John, and conscious of the new colour
ing he was giving to an established tradition, drew his
portrait in bad faith, in order to accomplish a theo
logical purpose; and that he also endeavoured to make
his fancy portrait pass current as the work of one
peculiarly qualified to state the whole case with accu
racy. It must be added, that this same theological
purpose was to describe one who was full of grace and
truth, and to induce hearty, entire, implicit faith in
Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
The other hypothesis is, that the Baptist was not
fully represented, either by Josephus or by the synoptic
Evangelists, and that one who knew him better than
they has preserved for us a portraiture of him, at a
particular epoch of his life, without which he cannot
be adequately appreciated. I cannot dismiss the sub
ject without some examination of a more general
theme, viz. : —
§ 4. Special Portraitures of the Fourth Gospel.
The fourth Evangelist inserts graphic touches with
reference to other celebrated characters mentioned in

28 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
the synoptic narrative, of which that narrative would
not suggest the faintest idea. It is thus that we learn
much concerning Philip, Andrew, Bartholomew, and
Thomas, to which, apart from the fourth Gospel,
we should have been utter strangers. The author
moreover indicates salient points of character by a
few suggestive words. The whole conception of the
character of Thomas is due to certain utterances attri
buted to that apostle, which only in their combination
reveal successive stages of passionate but desponding
love, of exacting scepticism, of adoring and triumphant
faith. Without this record we should never have
known the depth of feeling and the vividness of in
tuition with which that restless and speculative mind
was charged. There is however nothing in the re
presentation inconsistent with the statements of the
synoptic narrative. Again, John the son of Zebedee
is pourtrayed in the first three Gospels with somewhat
hard outline. He is described as a fisherman, a friend
and partner of Simon, a brother of James. " He is a
son of thunder," ' though what that phrase means we
do not certainly know. He was ready, like Elias, to
call down fire from heaven upon the enemies of Christ ;
he was so far ignorant of the spirit of the new king
dom, as to forbid the independent follower of Christ
from casting out daemons in his Master's name; he did
not prevent his mother Salome from coming to the
Saviour with a vain and presumptuous request on his
behalf.2 At first sight all this is profoundly different
from the representation given of himself by the author
of the fourth Gospel, as the disciple especially loved by
Jesus ; the confidant of the Lord's deepest suffering and
1 Mark iii. 17. 2 Luke ix. 54 ; Matt. xx. 20.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 29
bitterest reproach; the friend to whom the mother of
Jesus was especially entrusted, and one whose own words
breathe a sweetness and fragrance unrivalled in all litera
ture. It would be wrong to ignore the conclusions which
many great scholars have deduced from this contrast.
They have coupled the synoptic portrait of John with the
leadership of the Jewish party in the Church at Jerusa
lem (Gal. ii.), with the traditional account of his sym
pathy with Jewish feeling on the Paschal controversy,
with the Hebrew and prophetic character of the Apoca
lypse, and have said that " the disciple whom Jesus
loved," who professes to have written the fourth Gospel,
is altogether another personage. It can scarcely be
doubted that the author means to pass for the son of
Zebedee, therefore we have to choose between the two
fold representation. While I do not pretend to discuss
the vast question of the authorship of the fourth
Gospel, it is necessary to my present task to touch
briefly on the validity of its portraitures, and the ad
ditions the author is in the habit of making to the
conception of every individual to whom he refers.
This he does notably with reference to himself. But
is the new light thrown upon the character of the
Apostle John really incompatible with the older re
presentations? In our opinion, both the synoptic and
Johannine representations reveal also some very mar
vellous coincidences. We must not forget that it is
Matthew, Mark, and Luke who assure us that Peter
and James and John were the three most highly-favoured
of the apostles ; that John was admitted to the closest
intimacy with the Lord, and permitted to witness His
loftiest triumphs and His deepest humiliation. On the
other hand, the fourth Gospel, notwithstanding all the

30 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
tenderness of its tone, yet contains most unsparing
condemnation of unfaithfulness, unbelief, and unfruit-
fulness. The language of our Lord, as recorded in the
Gospel of John (vii., viii., ix.), goes far to explain the
enthusiastic severity with which the son of Zebedee
would have dealt with inhospitable Samaritans. The
fourth Gospel makes us acquainted with the fact that
" the other disciple," who is the author of the Gospel,
was one of the earliest followers of the second Elijah,
and this may not be without significance when we trace
elsewhere a representation of the harder and narrower
side of the Baptist's nature. The fact is that the repre
sentation which the fourth Evangelist gives of himself
is compatible with, and complementary to, the outline
of his own life and character preserved by the synoptists.
The difference and supposed inconsistency of the two
portraitures are more apparent than real. We are not
justified in rejecting either the one or the other, but
believe ourselves bound to blend them in our conception
ofthe son of Zebedee. The gentleness and tenderness
of his soul must have been capable of kindling into
fervent enthusiasm ; his narrowness, and the limited
range of his sympathies, when viewed from some stand
points, are not incompatible with the intensity of that
love which could press into the judgment hall, and fol
low the Master to His shame and His cross. With the
synoptic narrative in our hand, we should not have
given John the son of Zebedee the credit of writing
the philosophic prologue to the Gospel, or arranging his
material with such artless skill that it has the effect of
consummate art, or of holding in his mind for a gene
ration the conversations and discourses of the Baptist
and the Lord Jesus. But it should be borne in mind

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 31
that whilst Caiaphas, Pilate, the family at Bethany, and
the Magdalene, when they are seen through the medium
of this writer's mind, all alike receive touches of por
traiture for which we look in vain elsewhere ; still,
they are not so strange nor so new as to be incom
patible with history.
A study of the double portraiture of Simon Peter
will confirm the conclusion. M. Renan has charged
on the fourth Evangelist l a personal antagonism to
Peter, and a jealous desire to represent him as
occupying a less distinguished position than he really
filled. This statement is not accurate. It is the
fourth Gospel that tells us of the earliest interview
between our Lord and Simon, and of the penetration
of his true character by the Master.2 It is in John
vi. 67, 68, that Peter's memorable utterance is pre
served, " Lord, to whom shall we go ? Thou hast
the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure
that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God."
Synoptists, rather than John, record the melancholy
presumption with which Peter would have dissuaded
his Master from spiritual sacrifice, and also the mo
mentous condemnation which the Lord pronounced
upon him : " Get thee behind Me, Satan, for thou
art an offence to Me."3 The occurrence described by
1 Vie de Jesus. Introduction, xxvii. "Les relations en somme fraternelles
quoique n'excluant pas une certaine rivalite' de l'auteur avec Pierre . . semblent
percer 5a et la. On est tente' de croire que Jean, dans sa vieillesse, ayant lu les
recits evangeliques qui circulaient, d'une part, y remarqua diverses inexacti
tudes, de l'autre, fut froisse' de voir qu'on ne lui accordait pas dans l'histoire
du Christ une assez grande place ; qu'alors il commenca a dieter une foule de
choses qu'il savait mieux que les autres, avec l'intention de montrer que dans
beaucoup de cas ou on ne parlait que de Pierreu, il avait figure' avec eta vartf
lui." The same thing is repeated p. 159, the passages referred to being John
xviii. 15, xix. 26-27, xx. 2, xxi. 7-21.
2 John i. 42. 3 Mark viii. 29-33.

32 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
John* as having taken place at the Last Supper,
though showing the impulsive eagerness of Peter's love
to his Master, is perfectly compatible with his entire
character as pourtrayed by the synoptists. There is not
a trace of bitterness in the record. The melancholy
failure of Peter's faith in the palace of the high priest
is told in substantially the same form by the four
Evangelists, but less reproachfully by John than by
Mark. The former throws a little blame upon himself
in the matter, and though he does not speak of Peter's
repentance, he devotes space to the delineation of the
whole mind and conduct of Peter on that memorable
night,2 and details the special honour that was con
ferred on Peter after the resurrection.3 But while
nothing can be less true than the presence of an anti-
Petrine animus in the fourth Gospel, it is with singular
interest that we trace through the entire narratives —
including the Acts of the Apostles — intimations of a
rare complexity and originality in the character of
Simon Peter. John simply gives new and confirmatory
illustrations. An important parallel is perceptible in
the revelation of Peter's character which appears in
the synoptic narrative of his walking upon the sea, on
which John is strangely silent, and the remonstrances
and instructive mistakes made by Peter when the
Master offered to wash his feet, and which John alone
records. The extraordinary disposition on the part of
Peter to take the initiative even with the Lord Jesus,
to remonstrate even with his Master, as in the vision
of the descending sheet,4 to hurry into mistake, to
make promises and proposals he was unable to fulfil,
1 John xiii. 6-9. 2 Ibid. 23, 36-38 = xviii. 10, n.
3 Ibid. xx. 2 ; xxi. throughout. 4 Acts x. n.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 33
together with his impetuosity, intensity, and forward
ness, his prominence and dignity, his weakness and
strength, are all revealed in the fourth Gospel. Yet
they are presented under a new class of illustrations
of far greater depth and significance than in those of
the earlier tradition.
It is foreign to the purpose of the present inquiry to
enter upon the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, or dis
cuss the leading features of the synoptic and Johannine
Christ. There are conspicuous differences between
them, but they are differences due to the many-sided
ness of the great life, not to the bad faith and theo
logical motive of the fourth Evangelist. They are due
to different choice of materials, to a different eye for
facts, and to the essential difference between a partially
traditional and an expressly personal biography. An
oral gospel,1 and probably written documents preserv
ing the words of the Lord, must have been in wide cir
culation before it was possible for three writers, without
concert or comparison of their several works, to have
produced biographies which are characterised alike by
strange and numerous verbal coincidences as well as
by grave differences.2 On the other hand, John's Gospel
1 The various hypotheses which have been hazarded to account for the verbal
coincidences and discrepancies of the first three Gospels, from the complicated
theory of Eichhorn and Herbert Marsh down to the ingenious speculation of
Smith of Jordanhill, leave grave suspicion upon the mind. No system of
arrangement is satisfactory, notwithstanding the ingenuity of the theory as
wrought by Griesbach, Gresswell, De Wette, and Meyer, by which either
Matthew, or Mark, or Luke is supposed to have been the producer of the
original document, and to have afforded the nucleus on which the others have
laboured. The effort of Keim to discover a separate original kernel of both
Matthew and Luke is singularly arbitrary. — Life of Jesus of Nazara, by Theod.
Keim, D.D. Vol. i. pp. 67-115 of E. translation, 1873.
2 Dr. A. Norton, on The Genuineness of the Gospels, 2 vols. , propounded in
detail the theory of the origin of the first three Gospels, which Davidson, r848,
Alford, Westcott, in part accepted, based upon the facts of the extraordinary
prominence of verbal' coincidence in the rppo^tprl speech, and of divergence in

34 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
betrays throughout the record of an eye-witness, who
detailed the conversations and incidents which were
apparently entrusted to his memory alone. The length
of some of the discourses is not a valid objection to their
genuineness, if alleged, as is often the case by those who
accept the synoptic Gospels as authentic and reliable, be
cause Matthew and Luke alike, on their sole authority,
preserve discourses of equal length and importance.
Schenkel, Renan, Keim and Strauss, Tayler, Dr.
Davidson,1 and many others, have laid emphasis on
the completeness and full development of the Christ of
the fourth Gospel from the beginning of His ministry.
They say there is in the fourth Gospel no growth, no
development, no evolution of the claims and ideas of
Jesus. His appearance in His earliest ministry in Ga
lilee, is like the dawning of an unclouded sun on the
horizon; and such as He proclaims Himself in the first
chapter of this Gospel, He continues to the last. But —
(i) Such a representation ignores the progress of
Christ's teaching in the fourth Gospel. It is enough
to contrast, e. g., the language He addresses to the
Jews in the temple (chap, ii.) with that which He
utters, at a later period, in the presence of the Greeks;
or His conversation with Nicodemus with His infer
tile narrative portions. That the words of Jesus should very early have been
handed from lip to lip, and preserved with extraordinary accuracy in the form
of \oyta, XtxQwrct, is in harmony with all that we know ofthe habit of record
ing and preserving in memory the words of great Hebrew teachers.
1 Sketch ofthe Character of Jesus, a Biblical Essay by D. Schenkel, translated
from third German edition, 1869, pp. 23, ff. "In the fourth Gospel, there is no
trace of a gradual development of His religious and Messianic self-conscious
ness, or a perceptible growth of His inner life. He is already at the first what
He continues to be at the end." The Fourth Gospel, by J. J. Tayler, pp. 4, Si
to the same effect. Keim, l.c. pp. 155-139. gives another character to the
purpose or aim of the writer, but speaks of ' ' the immovable, constant, and
monotonous figure which is preserved by means of artistic heightening of all
kinds until the end. " Introduction to the Study of the New Testament, by
S. Davidson, D.D. 1868. Vol. ii. 343.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 35
cessory prayer in which he reveals the union between
Himself and His disciples.
(2) The representation of the Christ, whether by the
first three Evangelists or the fourth, does not profess to
introduce Him to us during the period of His physical
or intellectual growth. He is brought before us by
each Evangelist in the fulness and completeness of His
manhood. The entire length of His ministry, if we
confine ourselves to the chronology of the synoptists,
barely exceeds a single year. It is not reasonable to
expect rapid or conspicuous changes of front, or varia
tions in his methods of self-revelation ; nor can we
suppose, even on the humanitarian hypothesis, that
one who exercised such potent influence upon His con
temporaries, and upon the whole history of our world,
should have entered on His work as a reed shaken
with the wind, ready to be flattered by affectionate
response, moulded by political opposition, or forced into
new attitudes by the changing breath of human appre
ciation. The eighteen years that elapsed between His
first appearance in the temple and His subsequent
cleansing of the consecrated courts, must have been
passed in deep pondering of His course and vivid an
ticipations of the reception which awaited Him. It is
incredible that the first period of His Galilean ministry
should have elapsed before He discovered what was the
temper of the generation that He came to save. There
is nothing approximating the unhistorical in a repre
sentation of so original and life-giving a Teacher as
Jesus of Nazareth appearing from the first to the last
of His brief ministry as one who perfectly understood
what He Himself was, what He intended to accom
plish, and how His great work must be effected. The
4*

36 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
strength of this position is augmented a hundredfold
when we see that the " presupposition " of the fourth
Evangelist is, that Jesus was the incarnation of the
Logos, the dwelling-place of the eternal Spirit, the
only begotten Son of God, who was conscious, while
He walked the earth, of being " in heaven," of being
" in the bosom of the Father," and of remembering "the
glory He had with the Father before the world was."
In the career of such epoch-making men as Socrates,
Augustine, Luther, or Calvin, we expect to trace the
growth of their ideas and character. In the case of
Christ, over the whole period of His mental and physical
development a veil is thrown by Divine Providence.
(3) The entire method by the application of which
such a growth and development of ideas is attributed by
some modern writers to the synoptic Christ, is liable to
grave exception. It is effected by an arbitrary arrange
ment of the chronological outline of our Lord's life. It
is enough for Renan or Schenkel to find a joyous,
bright, hopeful word of Jesus, to refer it at once to the
first year of His ministry ; if they discover a melancholy
utterance, one trumpet-note of wrath, a scathing criticism
of formalism, a word of warning or of doom, they refer it
with equal certainty and confidence to the later period
of His ministry, i. e., after He had encountered the
practical rejection and murderous malice of the Jews.
This appears to me to set at nought the entire order
of the synoptic narrative, to misread the Sermon on
the Mount, to ignore the early rejection by the Naza
renes, to overlook the sad, upbraiding tone of some
of the very earliest instructions .of the Lord,1 the
1 Matt. vi. 2-5 ; vii. rs- 22 ; x. 16-27, 34 ; xi. 16-24 ; xii. 14 ; with parallels in
other Gospels.

i.J Biography of John the Baptist. 37
sublime jubilance of portions of His latest parables, '
and the sweet pity and Divine tenderness of the pa
rables recorded in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, and
of the scenes in the houses of Zacchseus, Simon, and
Lazarus. The same general remark may be made with re
ference to the Johannine portraiture of the Baptist.
It is a matter for devout thankfulness that such eyes
as those of John the son of Zebedee were employed
to perceive the meaning of the ministry of John the
Baptist.2 It is not every man who has the chance of seeing an
Alpine sunrise, and of those who do, there are com
paratively few into whose souls the stupendous majesty
and pathetic beauty of the mountains freely pass; but
of those whose spirits are transfigured, or even touched
by the " mountain-glory," still fewer can so describe
what they have seen as to awaken corresponding
emotions in other hearts.
Now, of all the multitudes who saw the Lord or heard
the Baptist in the wilderness, comparatively few were
deeply impressed by their words. A large proportion
1 Luke xiv., xv. ff.
2 I venture to hazard the confident conviction that the assault on the genuine
ness of the fourth Gospel has failed. Surely Liicke answered the criticisms of
Bretschneider and Strauss ; and Ebrard, Tholuck, and Luthardt have de
molished the speculation of Baur. It is full of interest to observe that Renan
is not shaken from his position of its virtual authenticity; that Keim, l.c. pp.
184-196, has, notwithstanding his relinquishment of its apostolic origin, done
much to establish its antiquity ; and in opposition to Zeller, Volkmar, Baur,
and even to Ewald, he justifies belief of its traces in Justin Martyr, and in
the writings of those Gnostics that are referred to in the Philosophoumena, in
the Shepherd of Hermas, and Barnabas, and justly asks, "What older and
better witnesses have we for the synoptic Gospels?" Dsr. Davidson's (l.c. i.
pp. 320-468) elaborate treatment of the subject admits that " it is difficult to
arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. He inclines to an innocent and even
sublime forgery of " a great unknown," who has "seized the Spirit of Christ
better than an apostle."

38 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
of avowed disciples were still ignorant, narrow-minded,
selfish, unsympathetic. Even among the twelve apos
tles there were fundamental differences of perception
and reproduction, and within that little group there
was a narrower circle still, which was admitted to the
closest friendship and deepest intimacy with the Lord ;
while of these it may be said that few men could have
been less alike in the fundamental element of their
inspiration than Peter and John. The minds of Peter
and Matthew may have easily appreciated the signifi
cance of the early and prophetic ministry of John the
Baptist, up to his introduction to the Messiah, and
there they may have stopped. It is, however, a happy
thing, that that " other disciple, " who had been his
follower for several months, and who witnessed the
baptism of Jesus, and saw the effect of it on the
Baptist, should have recorded words and traits of cha
racter which escaped the less meditative and more
hasty judgments of his companions.
§ 5. The Political Surroundings of the Career of John.
Before making use of the evangelic narratives as our
chief sources of information with reference to the
history and character of John the Baptist, I shall
endeavour to set forth the political and historical sur
roundings of the prophet, and to exhibit the grounds
on which, independently of the New Testament, he
takes his place in history.1
1 Compare Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, vol. iii. ; Jost. Geschichte des Juden-
thum und seinen Secten, 1857 ; Keim, l.c. vol. i. , 229, ff. ; Kitto's Pictorial
History of Palestine ; M. Schneckenburger, Vorlesungen iiber Neutestament-
liche Zeitgeschichte. 1862, pp. 190, ff. ; Heinrich Ewald, Geschichte Christus
und seinen Zeit. 2te. Ausg., 1857, pp. 11-60 ; Milman's History of the Jews,
vol. ii. 1-91.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 39
The history of Palestine during the lifetime of John
the Baptist, if read in the pages of Josephus, forms
a strange contrast to the scenes and eventsi recorded in
the evangelic history. There are in the latter, faint
hints of turmoil and civil strife, of dynastic change and
licentious intrigue, and also of angry political and re
ligious excitement; but the period of the ministry of the
forerunner and his Lord is suffused in the sacred re
cords with the glow which is reflected from the Divine
Person of the Lord, while deep shadows fall from
every other personage and incident, concealing from
our view the ordinary daily life of the people and their
leaders. Thus we hear of the death of "Herod the
king;" and one act of superstitious fear and one freak
of mad cruelty consistent with his known character are
attributed to him. The " hegemony " of Cyrenius, the
reigns of Augustus and Tiberius Cassar are mentioned,
together with the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate.
Several members of the Herodian family just flit
across the sacred light, for a moment are visible to
our gaze, and then are lost in darkness. Thus Arche
laus, the son of Herod, is referred to as the successor
to the power of Herod in Judasa. The apparent ex
pectation of Joseph,1 that another prince might have
been sitting on Herod's throne, is not explained by the
Evangelist, nor is it stated by him that the dominions
of Herod were at his death divided among his sons.
Josephus details at length the outbreak of sedition on
the part of the Jews, the testamentary dispositions of
Herod, the final decision of the emperor in favour of
Archelaus, and the fact that Herod Antipas, another
son of Herod by the same Samaritan woman Malthace,2
1 Matt. ii. 22. 'Antiq. xvii. I. 3. 8 ; B. J. ii. I, 2.

z;o The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
who had originally been designed by his father as his
successor, was, by the last change of Herod's will,
made tetrarch of Galilee and Persea.
We hear in the evangelic narrative of the adulterous,
illegal, incestuous union of this Aitipas with the wife of
his half-brother Philip, and also of Salome the daugh
ter of this woman by her first and still living husband ;
but we must go elsewhere to see the full point of the
reproof of the Baptist, the aggravation of the guilt
of Antipas, how he had been for some years the hus
band of the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia, and
how the wrongs of the divorced wife ultimately led to
the chastisement of Herod, and to the slaughter of
the army which he sent to resist the Arabian invader.1
Again, we hear of Galileans whose blood Pontius
Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices, thus out
raging the feelings of the Jews, and the amour-
propre of Herod, the tetrarch of Galilee ; and we hear
also how Pontius Pilate and Herod became friends
by the effort which Pilate made on a memorable oc
casion to show respect for the jurisdiction of Herod.
We hear of Herod's licentiousness and craft, of his
senseless oath, and of his crime in keeping it, when
he thereby sacrificed a brave man whom he could
not but respect. We must go to Josephus for fur
ther information on the character and deeds of this
Galilean prince, his magnificence, his costly architec
tural schemes, the cities which he founded in Galilee,
the fortress he built in Peraea, his ambition, and its
disappointment and ultimate failure.2 Once the evan
gelic narrative speaks of him as King Herod 3 — a title
1 Antiq. xviii. 5. I. ' Ibid, xviii. 2. 3. 6 ; Vita, 9 ; B. J. ii. 9. i.
3 Mark vi. 14. See also B. J. i. 33.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 41
bestowed in courtesy, though never secured by the
crafty prince. This is a touch of reality, because we
learn elsewhere that it was Herod's feverish desire
to emulate the title of king — a rank which Agrippa,
his nephew, acquired from his friend the Emperor
Caligula — that cost him his tetrarchate, and led to
his disgrace, exile, and death.1
The Gospels indicate very clearly the fact that the
civil and religious authority of Palestine, whether
wielded by native princes or not, whether concentrated
in high-priestly hands or not, was, alike in matters
of tribute, of forced labour, of coinage, of military ser
vice, and of supreme political executive, thoroughly ab
sorbed by Roman absolutism. We see traces of strong
party feeling and antagonism to Roman domination,
as when it appears that a question of great practical
moment had arisen, "Is it lawful to pay tribute to
Caesar ? " The Lord Himself used an illustration that
all the inhabitants of the various tetrarchates of Pales
tine must have thoroughly understood, when he said,
"A certain nobleman went into a far country, to
receive for himself a kingdom and to return." 2
There was a moderate party in the state, who
sought, through all the long and bloody contest that
ensued, to reconcile their fellow-countrymen to the
inevitable burden of Roman occupation, and were thus
irreconcilably opposed to the fanatical outbursts of wild
patriotism which Josephus chronicles, and to which
the sacred writers are compelled frequently to refer.
Thus we hear incidentally of Judas in the days of the
taxing, and of Theudas,3 and of the Egyptian whose
wild, ill-judged outbursts of patriotism were crushed
1 B. J. ii. 2. 2 Luke xix. 12. ^ Acts v. 36, 37.

42 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
by a combination of Roman and native power;1 and
there were always in the Sanhedrim men like Caiaphas,
who thought that mighty deeds and grand ideas,
such as those of Jesus, would ultimately lead to such
a conflict between Rome and Judaea as could ter
minate only in the utter overthrow of their national
life.2 There were Pharisees like Gamaliel, who were
always ready to let things take their course, who
could recognize the hand of God in national uprisings,
and were unwilling to be found fighting against God.3
The knell of national independence was indeed sounding
when the excited priesthood and turbulent mob, who
were seeking by turns to cajole or terrify Pilate, brought
him to do their bidding on the true Messiah by the
base cry, "We have no king but Csesar."4 There is
a hint of the fact that the gorgeous temple of Herod
was in process of erection, and we hear once of "the
beautiful gate of the temple ; " we read of prayer and
sacrifice within its courts ; of the priestly service and
sacramental rites; of the great national feasts of the
Passover, of Tabernacles, and Pentecost, and also of the
feast of the Dedication of the Temple, and possibly of
that of Purim. But we must turn to the narratives of
other writers for a full exposition of the stupendous
and glittering pile of buildings in which these festivals
were celebrated. The period that is crowded with events
that are of such imperishable interest to us, is charged
with political excitement of another kind. Between
the birth of John and his "showing unto Israel," while
Jesus, "subject to" his parents in the village of Naza-
¦ Acts xxi. 38.
' "If we let Him thus alone, all men will believe on Him, and the Romans
shall come and take away both our place and nation. "—John xi. 48.
3 Acts v. 34-39. ¦» John xix. 15.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 43
reth, was "fulfilling all righteousness," and approving
Himself to God as the beloved and only begotten Son,
in whom the Father was well pleased, events of
mighty import were taking place in Palestine. The co
existence of such different and apparently incompatible
elements is not peculiar to these great lives. The inner
life of many a saint and sage has been passed far out
of hearing of "the stunning tide" of this world's sin and
greed. The plash of many a fountain has made year
after year a secret music for itself in some hidden dell,
while the roar of the torrents and the thunder of the
breakers, the tempest and the earthquake, have been
elsewhere doing their dread work. The parents of John
and of Jesus must have endured the stormy and dread
magnificence of Herod's reign. They must have realized
all the indignation of the priestly race over the murder
of Aristobulus, and the cruel death of Mariamne and her
sons and of the aged Hyrcanus. They must have felt
the grinding oppression and extortion which enabled
Herod to cover the land with fortresses and palaces,
and to lavish Jewish wealth on foreign cities. They
must have watched the growth of Gentile customs,
games, and unlawful symbolism, which almost made
Csesarea into a pagan city, and dared to place the Ro
man eagle on the main entrance of the temple. When
Herod pillaged David's tomb, when he practically
abolished the great council of the nation, when he
blinded Jochanan the scholar of Hillel, and when
from his hideous death-bed he issued his last bloody
edicts of wholesale massacre, the gentle spirits of
those who were waiting for the consolation of Israel
must have been lacerated and bewildered by a sense
of unutterable wrong. The massacre at Bethlehem,

44 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
unmentioned by Josephus, might easily be overlooked
amid the long catalogue of horrors, even if the his
torian had no other reason for his reticence.1
The troubled accession of Archelaus to the throne
of Judasa, and the division of Herod's dominions into
several tetrarchies, doubtless brought back to their
minds the old rivalries of earlier days. At one time
the extortions of Archelaus were being tried by impe
rial tribunals in Rome, and Antipas was rushing post
haste thither, hoping to supplant his brother and secure
his inheritance. During the absence of the Herodian
princes, Roman procurators were gradually assuming
supreme power in Jerusalem. Thus Sabinus seized the
citadels, and provoked the desperate animosity of the
people. Slaughter and the crucifixion of thousands fol
lowed the insurrection, and ultimately crushed it. The
wish of the people, openly expressed, to have a Roman,
ruler rather than Archelaus, reveals the bitter hatred
inspired by the tyranny of Herod. " At no time of
their history, not even after their return from exile,
had the nation been more wretched."2
" There were " (says Josephus, in his usual tone of exaggeration)
" ten thousand other disorders in Judaea, which were like tumults,
because a great number put themselves in a warlike posture, either
out of hope of gain to themselves, or out of enmity to the Jews.
In particular, two thousand of Herod's old soldiers, who had been
already disbanded, got together in Judaaa itself, and fought against
the king's troops, although Achiabus, Herod's first cousin, opposed
them ; but as he was driven out of the plains into the mountainous
parts by the military skill of those men, he kept himself in the
fastnesses that were there, and saved what he could." 3
In similar style we are told of the sack of Herod's
city of Sepphoris, by men of the same wild fanatical
spirit, under the leadership of Judas of Gamala, pos-
1 Antiq. xv., xvi., xvii. See Milman's History, chap. xi. 2 Keim, l.c. i. p. 251.
3 Antiq. xvii. 10. 4.

i.J Biography of John the Baptist. 45
sibly the Theudas to whom Gamaliel referred ; of the
burning, by the party of Simon, of " the royal palace
of Amathus, near the river Jordan." We hear of the
giant Athronges and his four brethren, who by sheer
physical strength usurped the title and honours of
royalty, and came into direct conflict with the repre
sentatives of Archelaus. " Judaea," says Josephus, "was
full of robberies, and as the several companies of the
seditious lighted upon any one to head them, he was
created a king, in order to do mischief to the public."1
It became more and more apparent that these semi-
native princes were mere puppets in the hands of
Rome, that the sceptre of the Hasmonean dynasty
had fallen from its grasp, and had for ever departed
from Judah. At length even Josephus tells, without
a blush,2 of the deposition of Archelaus, of the arrival
of Roman procurators in his place, and their succes
sion under the suzerainty of the pro-consul of Syria.
Roman noblemen of various degrees of excellence make
their appearance on the scene, while Josephus simply
says, " Coponius, a man of equestrian order, was sent,
together. with him (Quirinus), to have supreme power
over the Jews."
The effort of Quirinus to enforce and accomplish the
census of the people (a.u.c 759-760) roused the wildest
resistance, and Judas the Gaulonite, with Zadok the
Pharisee, might have anticipated the final revolt against
Rome, if there had not been a division of interests in
the Pharisaic camp. As it was, the help of the Syrian
army enabled Coponius to crush Judas and his zealots,
1 Antiq. xvii. io. 7.
2 Ibid. xvii. 13. 3. Josephus affects to soften the matter by a dream, which,
in the opinion of an Essene who endeavoured thus to interpret it, portended
the result.

4 6 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
and leave the seeds of undying hatred to the Roman
slavery germinating in the national conscience.1
Few things are much more affecting than to read
Josephus's unimpassioned account of the succession of
procurators of Judasa, and their immediate interference
with the occupants of the high-priestly office. Thus
the names of Coponius, Marcus Ambivius, Annius
Rufus, Valerius Gratus, and Pontius Pilate, are barely
mentioned, and, with the exception of the last, little
more is said of them.
During the remaining years of Augustus a policy of
something. like reconciliation prevailed, and his contri
butions to the temple worship produced partial restora
tion of better feeling. It was during the procuratorship
of Annius Rufus that Augustus died (a.u.c. 767). The
representatives of Tiberius who followed, viz., Valerius
Gratus and Pontius Pilate, carried the tyrannical spirit
of their master into their relations with Judaea.
Valerius Gratus frequently changed the high priests,
until he satisfied himself that in the person of Caiaphas
he should find a ready instrument of his will. The
haughty insolence of Pilate, and his endeavour to bring
the effigies of the Csesar into Jerusalem, roused such
stern and desperate animosity, such a willingness on
the part of the Jews to die rather than defile their
sacred city, that Pilate desisted from his unwise inten
tion, and presently commanded the images to be carried
from Jerusalem to Caesarea.2
1 In the careful treatment of the career of Judas the Gaulonite, in Ewald's
Christus, pp. 18-30, he says truly: "Dass der Gaulonaer mit seinem engem
Anhange sich dennoch nicht unterwarf und offenen Austand zu erregen suchte,
versteht sich vonselbst : doch Josephus geht schweigend fiber sein Ende hin.
Wir wissen aber sonst dass er durch Waffengewalt unterging und sein ganzer
Anhang zersprengt wurde, ferner dass er obwohl jung gefallen seine Gesinnun-
gen auf seine in spateren Jahren ahnlich umkommende Sbhne vererbte."
3 Antiq. xviii. 3. r.

i. J Biography of John the Baptist. 47
The Jews refused the benevolent intention of Pilate
to supply Jerusalem with water, mainly because he
proposed devoting to the purpose some of the temple
treasure. They suffered grievously for their seditious
outbreak, but the intensity of their hatred smouldered
on until, in the tenth year of his presidentship, Pilate
was recalled to Rome, which however he did not reach
until Tiberius was dead.
Among other scattered incidents, we hear of the gross
peculation of which some few Jews resident in Rome
were guilty, which led to the expulsion, by Tiberius,
from the metropolis, of no fewer than four thousand
Jews, who thus became the scape-goat of their breth
ren's sins. Incidents like these must have been detailed
in the market-places of the crowded cities and villages of
Galilee,1 and deeply stirred the sacred fellowship of the
hill country of Judaea. The priesthood had degenerated
into the mere tool of the Roman president. The throne
of David had once more been trampled into dust. Pro
fligacy and cunning had usurped the place of bold and
spiritual patriotism. A fringe of Gentile forces and
influences had surrounded the sacred institutions of
Judaism. Greek games had been celebrated in Caesarea,
if not under the very shadow of the temple of Jeru
salem. The tower of Hyrcanus, where the high-priestly
vestments were kept, had been transformed into a great
Roman fortress, and had been so built into the very
enceinte of the temple, as to dominate over its worship.
The great council of the nation was made dependent
upon the whim of a Roman official for the execution
of its most solemn decrees. Tumults, collision of
1 See two remarkable articles, by Rev. Selah Merrill, on " Galilee in the
time of our Lord," in Bibliotheca Sacra, January and April, 1874.

48 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
personal interests, war and bloodshed, uncertainty and
haunting fear of something worse, vexed the daily life
of the people. Even the mountain solitudes, where
John was pondering his Divine commission, must have
often been thronged by red-handed ruffians and reli
gious fanatics ; and the villagers of Galilee must have
seen the building and the demolition of the glittering
palaces and flourishing cities in the spurs of Lebanon
or on the banks of the great inland lake.
The circumstance that the father and mother of Jesus
heard of the occupation of the throne of Judasa by
Archelaus,1 is given as at least one of the reasons why
they should turn aside into parts of Galilee. There
was doubtless a sufficient justification in the mind of
Joseph for this change of plan and abode. His pre
vious residence in Nazareth, as described by Luke,2 may
have been the chief reason of this choice, but there
was an obvious difference between the character of
the ethnarch of Judaea and that of the tetrarch of
Galilee. With the one exception of Antipater, Arche
laus was the most tyrannical and selfwilled of the
sons of Herod ; and he was more likely to carry out
the bloodthirsty design of his father than was Herod
Antipas, who, as Roman representative in Galilee,
would have far less reason than Archelaus to dread
a supposed claimant to his throne. For forty-three
years, at least, Antipas held the position which is
assigned to him in the New Testament. We might
know this from the existence of a coin which was
struck in the forty-third year of his reign, and which
couples his name with that of Caius, as the Augustus
of the Roman world.3 During these forty-three years
1 Matt. ii. 22. ' Luke ii. 4. 3 Gresswell's Dissertations. Vol. i. Diss. 6.

I.] Biography of John the Baptist. 49
violent revolutions took place in the political position
of the subject princes. Archelaus had fallen, and
the succession of the Roman governors had ruled
Judaea with iron hand. Herod Antipas had married
and lived for many years with the daughter of Aretas,
a king of Arabia Nabataea. The name is a common
one, frequently occurring among those of Arabian
princes. Once the temporary triumphs of this very
man placed Damascus under his jurisdiction ; and
an Arabian ethnarch, representing the authority of
this prince, seconded the efforts of the Jews to ap
prehend Paul. The known relations of Aretas with
Herod Antipas throw a little light upon this some
what difficult statement of St. Paul.1 How long Herod
was faithful to the daughter of Aretas does not ap
pear, but it is certain that Herodias, the sister of
Agrippa and the ambitious and voluptuous wife of
Herod-Philip his half-brother, captivated his affections
when on a visit to him in Rome. I call him Herod-
Philip : it is well known that his designation in
Josephus differs from that of the synoptic narrative.
In Mark vi. 17, he is described as Philip simply. If
we take the text of Tischendorf and Alford, neither
Matthew nor Luke mentions his name.2 Josephus
speaks of him as Herod the son of Mariamne the
daughter of Simon.3 The name Philip need not
induce us, with the subjoined text of Josephus in our
hands, to conjecture that he was identical with Philip
the tetrarch of Iturea, Trachonitis, and Gaulonitis, who
1 2 Cor. xi. 32.
2 Tregelles preserves, in Matt. xiv. 3, the name Philip, but expunges it from
Luke. 3 Antiq. xviii. 5. ±. " When Herod the tetrarch was once in Rome, he lodged
with Herod, who was his brother indeed, but not by the same mother ; for this
Herod was the son of the high priest's daughter."
5

50 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
was the son of Herod the Great by Cleopatra of Jeru
salem.1 It is true that Jerome, in his commentary on
Matthew xiv., confounded these two Philips ; but this
is not remarkable, seeing the exclusion from the will
of Herod the Great of the son of Mariamne, in con
sequence of her complicity in the plot to poison him.2
The obscurity of Herod-Philip I.,3 and his non-appear
ance in political life, may account for the supposition
that the Philip of Mark's Gospel was the tetrarch of
Iturea. There is really no greater difficulty in the
coexistence of two Philips in the family of Herod,
than in the similar concurrence of the names of Antipas
and Antipater.
It is not so easy to determine the date of the
celebration of the marriage of Herodias with Herod
Antipas. The divorce of the Arabian princess, and
Herod-Philip's divorce of Herodias, must have pre
ceded this event. The intention of Herod became
known to the daughter of Aretas in time for her
to escape to the castle of Machasrus. This fortress is
stated by Josephus to have been at that time subject
to her father.4 But he also tells us that Machaerus
was the scene of the imprisonment and execution of
"John that was called the Baptist."5 Consequently,
during the whole of that period, it must have belonged
to Herod, and not to Aretas. This makes it appear
probable that the solemn injunction of John addressed
to Herod — "It is not lawful for thee to have thy
brother's wife " — may have been addressed to the pro-
1 Antiq. xvii. *. 3. See Luke iii. 1.
2 Basnage thought and argued that Josephus was mistaken in speaking of
Herod-Mariamne as the husband of Herodias, endeavouring to prove that he
died before his father. But see Lardner, Credibility. Part I. book ii. c. 5.
3 B- 7- '• 3°- • Antiq. xviii. 5. 1. s Ibid, xviii. 5. *.

i.] Biography of John the Baptist. 5 1
fligate prince between the secret espousal and the
marriage. Herod's great desire was to keep the
matter secret, and hence, before his visit to Rome, he
shut up John in Machaerus. It is possible that the
disgraceful compact was somewhat delayed by the in
terposition of John ; and not until the grand banquet
at which the fate of John was sealed, was the public
announcement made to the lords and chief estates of
his realm of his adulterous and incestuous relations with
Herodias. Shortly afterwards Machaerus must have
fallen into the hands of Aretas, * and there, where the
blood of the martyr had been shed, means were taken
by the father of the outraged wife to revenge the insult
offered to her by her husband. The reprisals were
severe. Aretas and Herod had other grounds of dis
agreement as to the boundaries of their respective
dominions, but the marriage of Herodias was the
ostensible cause of war between them. Through the
treachery of some fugitives the whole of Herod's army
was cut to pieces. Herod, grieved and angry, wrote
to Tiberius and secured his sympathy. It came in the
shape of an order to Vitellius, the governor of Syria,
to make war upon Aretas, and give him no quarter.
Before this raid upon Idumaea and Northern Arabia
was effected, great changes occurred. Vitellius, was
jrevented, by the fanatical opposition to the images
which the Jewish populace displayed, from march
ing through Judasa, and with Herod Antipas visited
Jerusalem, to do ceremonial honour to Jehovah in the
1 It may have previously come into his hands, and have been wrested thence
by Herod after the escape of his first wife and his marriage with Herodias.
See, on the other hand, the elaborate dissertation of Gresswell on the " date
of the marriage of Herodias." Gresswell's Dissertations. App. Diss. X. Vol. iii.
413. ff- 5*

52 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
Herodian temple. Pilate was recalled, the high priest
Annas deposed. Tiberius died, and the power to make
war on Aretas was withdrawn or suspended. With
the fall of Tiberius and the accession of Caius Caligula,
the fortunes of Herod Antipas were strangely changed.
His jealousy could not endure the extraordinary eleva
tion of his nephew and brother-in-law Agrippa to the
royal dignity, and he endeavoured, at the instigation
of Herodias, to attain from Caius a similar honour.
The result of his ambitious project was his political
extinction. Thus, within a few years of the transac
tions in which they occupy this conspicuous position
on the pages of the evangelic narrative, Pilate, Herod,
and Herodias were dragging out a miserable existence
in exile. §6.
It is in connection with this breach between Herod
Antipas and Aretas, that the famous passage referring
to John the Baptist occurs in Josephus. An important
testimony is thus given to the historical position and
i public character of John, which is independent of any
statement contained in the Gospel narrative. It is
introduced without any admission of the higher func
tions of John, and simply because his conduct and
fate were supposed to have some political reference.
The passage is as follows : —
. " It seemed to some of the Jews that the army of Herod had been
destroyed by God, who was thereby very justly punishing or chastis
ing him by way of retribution for John called the Baptist. For
Herod killed him, who was a good man, and exhorted the Jews by
preaching virtue, and by cultivating righteousness towards one
another, and piety towards God, to assemble for baptism ; for thus
the baptism would be (appear) acceptable to Him, when they made
use of it, not for the remission of certain sins, but for the purification

i.J Biography of John the Baptist. 53
of the body, inasmuch as the soul had been sanctified beforehand
by righteousness. When many others had rallied round him — for
they were greatly excited by listening to his words — Herod fearing
lest his great influence over them might lead to a rebellion or revolt
— for they seemed to act in all things according to his advice —
thought it much better, before any revolutionary movement issued ¦
from him, to seize and put him to death, rather than to fall into
trouble and repent when the change had occurred. And he, owing
to the suspicion of Herod, was sent bound to Machaerus, the fort
ress before mentioned, and there put to death. It seemed to the
Jews that destruction befel the army byway of retribution for him,
God being angry with Herod." 1
The discrepancies between this narrative and that
of the Gospels consist simply in the circumstance that
they severally mention certain matters which are
peculiar to themselves, and each suffers by omission.
They do not contradict each other. The record of the
principal event is more detailed by the Evangelists
than by Josephus. The private pique and personal
resentment felt at John's reproof of Herod's vicious
habits and intentions, are distinctly given as the
occasion of the imprisonment, and the vehement
hatred of Herodias is made the occasion for his exe
cution. It is perfectly compatible with this, that if
1 Fl. Josephi, Opera Omnia. Tom. iv. 158. [Oxford Ed. 1720.] Antiq.
xviii. 7. 2. Of the genuineness of this passage in Josephus there is no
question. It is quoted by Eusebius, Hist. EccL lib. i. cap. 2, who, more
over, refers it to the 18th Book of the Antiquities. It is quoted by Origen
contra Celsum, i. § 47, in the following words : " I would like to say to Celsus,
who represents the few as accepting, somehow, J ohn as a Baptist, who baptized
Jesus, that the existence of John the Baptist baptizing for the remission of sins
is related by one who lived no great length of time after John and Jesus. For
in the 18th Book of his Antiquities ofthe Jews, Josephus bears witness to John
as having been a Baptist, and as promising purification to those who under
went the rite." — Ante-Nicene Library : Works of Origen, vol. i. p. 447. Jerome,
de Vir. III. c. xiii. [Ben. Ed. 1706 ; Hier. Opera. Tom. iv. pt. 2, p. 107 ; Cat.
Script. Eccl.], also makes reference to the same passage and its contents. "Hie
in decimo octavo Antiquitatum libro manifestissime confitetur, propter magni-
tudinem signorum Christum a Pharisaeis interfectum: et Johannem Baptistam
vere prophetam fuisse, et propter interfectionem Jacobi Apostoli, dirutam Jero-
solymam.

54 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
Herod's violation of the law had excited the indigna
tion of John, the tetrarch might fear the influence
of the prophet with an excitable populace, and be
anxious to prevent the outbreak of sedition during
his visit to Rome, by deporting him from the scene
and shutting him up in prison. Josephus mentions
Machaerus as the fortress where the imprisonment
and death of the Baptist took effect. I reserve the
discussion of this subject for its proper position in my
narrative. This is not the place in which to discuss the nature
of John's baptism. It is enough to say here, that in
dependent evidence exists to the effect that a certain
man, good, virtuous, and brave, in the days of Antipas
tetrarch of Galilee, was an uncompromising moralist,
acquired great influence over the people, demanded
from them virtue, mutual fidelity and piety towards
God, and recommended them to seek baptism at his
hands, and thus to secure certain religious advantages
by a more simple process than that which had been
the immemorial and Pharisaic custom. We know,
further, that for some political reasons, and in conse
quence of his power over the people, Herod imprisoned
and executed this man, and that the Jews regarded
the punishment of Herod's caprice and tyranny as- an
event of evil omen. Thus much we should have
learned if there had been no New Testament.
We are not left without other testimony to the same
effect. Thus : —
Josippon — called Josephus Gorionides or Joseph Ben
Gorion — a Jewish writer of the ninth or tenth century,
who, though he personated Flavius Josephus, and en
deavoured to palm off his Hebrew chronicle as a much

i.J Biography of John the Baptist. 55
more ancient and valuable work than it really was, had
undoubted access to Jewish as well as to Christian lite
rature.1 He professed familiarity with the writings
of Nicolas of Damascus, Strabo, Livius, Cicero, with
Jewish histories since lost, and national traditions
which have been transmitted orally, the Alexandrian
library, &c, &c. ; but he unintentionally revealed the
forgery which he practised by many fictions and blun
ders, and by speaking of later nations and countries,
e. g., of Danes, Turcomans, and Goths, of emperors,
popes, and bishops. It is however certain that this
remarkable work, with its numerous interpolations and
imaginative clothing of the skeletons of the past, re
veals a certain source of Hebrew tradition, which
Steinscheider describes as the " offshoot from the fully
developed Midrash of Arabian and Latin literature."2
Josippon does not allude to Jesus Christ or to James
the Just, but he does refer to John the Baptist in the
following terms, which in two or three respects are
more in harmony with the evangelic tradition than the
often quoted passage from Josephus:3 — "Herod mar
ried the wife of his brother Philip, while his brother
was still living, although she had children by his
brother: he, I say, positively married her. But he
put to death many wise men in Israel. He even slew
1 See Lardner's Works, vol. vii. p. 162, ff., Jewish Testimonies, c. vi. ; where
the opinions of Scaliger, Fabricius, Gagnier, Basnage, on the character of Josip-
pon's work, are recited and compared.
2 See Dr. Ginsburg's notice of Josippon in Kitto's Cyc. Vol. ii. 661.
3 Lardner. Vol. vii. 119. "Ipse accepit uxorem Philippi fratris sui adhuc
viventis in uxorem, licet ilia haberet filios ex fratre ejus ; earn, inquam, accepit
sibi in uxorem. Occidit autem multos sapientes Israel. Occidit etiam Jochanan
sacerdotem magnum ob id quod dixerat ei : ' Non licet tibi accipere uxorem
fratris tui Philippi in uxorem.' Occidit ergo Jochananem Baptistam." —
Josipp. sive Josephi Ben Gorionis, Hist. Jud. Lib. sex, ex Hebraeo Latine vertit,
J. Gagnier, 1706. lib. vi. cap. 63, p. 274.

56 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
Jochanan, the chief priest, because the latter had
said to him, ' It is not lawful for thee to marry thy
brother Philip's wife.' Therefore he slew Jochanan
the Baptist."
In this short passage, Josippon attributes to John
the Hebrew modification of his name, the title of Bap
tist, his family rank (magnus sacerdos), and his well-
known personal character (sapiens Israel). He also
assigns the specific cause of his death, and this in
perfect harmony with the language of the Gospels.
Moreover, he helps to preserve the tradition that
Herod, the son of Mariamne, had also the name of
Philip. It must be admitted that Josippon made
serious blunders as to the history and chronology of
Herod's reign, and he may have blended here the
information given by Josephus, with a few hints deriv
able from the Gospels ; but it is more than probable,
from his general silence with reference to Christian
history, that the origin of his statement is indepen
dent of these sources. If so, it is a secondary testi
mony to the historical position of John.
Other sources of information fail us here as they do
in the case of the history of our Lord. We have no
contemporaneous records beyond those which are fur
nished in the four Gospels. The Apocryphal Gospels
and the Koran represent the growth of the legendary
element, to which we shall subsequently refer. However,
notwithstanding very striking external parallels with
the outline of the life and death of Jesus, the mythopceic
faculty has not engendered a cycle of miracles around
the simple story, nor has it given to John the honours
of virgin birth or resurrection glory. This is more
remarkable if the mythical hypothesis be a correct

i.J Biography of John the Baptist. 57
exposition of the evangelic narrative, because there are
indubitable traces of the existence of a community of
John's disciples long after his death, even if the Chris
tians of St. John, confounded with the Sabeans and
Mendeans of Oriental history and travel, are proved to
have no historic relations with the great prophet of
the wilderness.
It may be said that any distinct community of
John's followers extinguishes the value that has been
set upon the testimony of Josephus to the historical
validity of John's position ; that if the evangelic nar
rative represents the religious side of John's character,
and also his relations with Jesus, he himself and all
his followers ought to have been absorbed in the Chris
tian community ; that he must have been the most
famous and the noblest of the disciples of Jesus ; and
that the narrative is inconsistent with itself. This,
however, though practically assumed, is not the language
of the New Testament. Careful investigation of the
numerous references it contains to the memory, work,
and testimonies of the Baptist, are all a comment on
the words of Jesus, " He that is least in the kingdom
of God is greater than he." If, however, the pro
longation of the direct influence of John were much
greater than it proves to be, we must remember that
the prolongation of the influence of that which is essen
tially temporary is part of the imperfection of our nature.
If an impression has to be made upon humanity, deep
enough to secure with certainty a temporary result of
great importance, it is always found too deep to be
erased when that result is accomplished. The subse
quent appearance of the disciples of the Baptist, while
confirming the historical name and place of their

58 The Significance and Sources of the [lect.
founder, is a type of all similar protractions of an
exhausted method or doctrine or institution.
If this conservative disposition were not prevalent,
alongside of the opposing tendency to expansion and
change, no truth would be inviolable. If sound and
healthy criticism were always able to destroy the life of
that which had done its work, the progress of the human
mind would be feverish, and would continually tend to
exhaust itself. Every phase of truth has been a prepara
tion in the minds of men for the phases of truth that
were to follow it. For the majority of such truths there
has only been a temporary need. For the majority of
human institutions there has only been a temporary
requirement. They have had to make way for those
that came after them. If those who have been gazing
through the blinding mists of earth to the veiled face
of truth had always had the virtue, courage, and self-
sacrifice to say that they had not grasped the eternal,
absolute, and objective reality, it is more than pro
bable that they would never have conceived the ideas
necessary to the development of truth with sufficient
energy to have secured even the temporary ends as
signed to them by Divine Providence.
On the other hand, it must not be forgotten, that
with temporary and changing forms of thought and in
stitution, there have been often intermingled absolute
changeless truths which were never meant to pass
away. . Criticism, in assailing the obstructive and
transitory form of some life-giving ideas, has not infre
quently aimed at the destruction of that which is impe
rishable. Its delicate weapons have thus been often
shivered against the hidden adamant, and so some
parasitic untruth which it was competent to cut away

i.J Biography of John the Baptist. 59
has taken a new lease of its life. Thus Mosaism,
Prophetism, Priestism, Asceticism, Hierarchies, schisms
of all kinds, and philosophies and scepticisms of many
a name, have all one by one had valuable work to do.
They have been links in the chain of human progress.
Each in its turn has had to surrender much of its ex
ternal form to make way for other and nobler forms of
life ; yet each has had an eternal truth underlying it,
which criticism, to its own infinite damage, has lost
sight of in its eager haste to remove the obnoxious and
obstructive form. This has been most signally the case
with the Johannine dispensation. The world in every
generation must hear from prophetic lips God's condem
nation of sin. A moment comes to every man when
the vox clamantis must sound in his ears, and the
kingdom of God on earth is ever needing the revival
and realization of which John was the messenger.
Never more than now did the Church need the cry,
"The Bridegroom cometh."
In like manner the eternal truth and divine life of
Christianity itself have been confounded with some of
its temporary modes of expression, and criticism in its
haste to be rid of dogmatic intolerance is often running
the risk of utter suicide.
We see both tendencies at work in our own day.
Many of the strictly temporary elements in the older
dispensation, many of the transitory features of the
Baptist's ministry have been preserved almost intact
within the doctrines and institutions of Christendom.
These have been fungous in their growth and deadly in
their diffusive influence ; against them the spirit of the
gospel is a protest. Useful, imperatively necessary as
they were, they have cumbered the ground. They

60 Biography of John the Baptist. [lect. i.
have outlived the necessity for their own existence,
they must be tenderly removed out of the way of the
new and heavenly life. But they must not be roughly
uprooted and crushed ; there is divine life wondrously
intertwined with them. In rooting out the tares, the
wheat may be easily sacrificed. There is indeed a vast
element of this older revelation which is divine and
eternal, and which was meant to be re-embodied in new
forms. There are abiding elements in the ministry of
Moses, of Aaron, of Isaiah, and John, which cannot yet
be dispensed with. The Christ has still the Law, the
Promise, the Prophet, the Elijah, to prepare His way.
It is my aim to discover and discriminate these ten
dencies.

LECTURE II.
EXAMINATION OF THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF
THE NATIVITY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

LECTURE II.
EXAMINATION OF THE BIBLICAL RECORD OF THE
NATIVITY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.
THE introduction of the first man into the world,
whether we accept ancient traditions, modern
science, or speculative philosophy, as the best repre
sentation of the grand phenomenon, was an event of
transcendent interest, a dividing line between the
eternities. God had thenceforward a living image, a
possible companion and spectator, an object on whom
love might be lavished, and an agent through whom
His eternal purposes and designs might be effected.
All, therefore, that heralded and prepared his way, all
the prophetic anticipations of his mental and moral
qualities, which the sagacity, ingenuities, and instincts
of earlier races revealed, were charged with consum
mate interest to the student. It is not presumptuous to
believe, on high authority, that in the "beginning of His
way" God's delight was with the sons of men, and that
He rejoiced in the habitable parts of His earth.1 From
the moment of the appearance of man upon the stage
of being, from the time of that convulsive conflict and
frustration of ideal involved in the outcome of moral
' Prov. viii. 30, 31.

64 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
probation, a process of preparation and education of
the whole race was going on, which eventually issued
in the appearance of the Second Man, the Lord from
heaven, " God manifest in the flesh."
The "moments" of this preparation are the epoch-
making men, events, and days of human history.
The theologies of Egypt and India, the ceremonial of
Assyro-Babylonian worship, the blending of Oriental
dreams and Greek logic at Alexandria, the Buddhist
asceticism, the Confucian morals, the diffusion of the
Greek language and the constitution of the Roman
empire, formed an integral portion of the one purpose
of God, closely allied with the selection of a particular
people to receive the Hope of the world. We have to
deal with only a small portion of this vast subject, that
which refers to the special national preparation for the
Second Man. The Christology of the Old Testament
has frequently been discussed with conspicuous erudi
tion, and often criticised with keen-eyed jealousy. The
typology of the early Scriptures has formed the theme
of extended meditations and of comparisons (often
more ingenious than sound) with the institutions of the
New. The effect of these ideas upon Jewish literature
and society, as well as upon the currents of contem
porary opinion, has often been pondered: the present is
a much more modest task than that of reviewing these
learned and oft-repeated labours. Many of them are
more or less involved in that which it is here proposed
to do, but my simple aim will be to pourtray in con
crete form the prophetic anticipation of the Christ,
to study such elements as are involved in the "fore
runner" of the Second Man. It is my purpose to
study the career of one who did more than all the

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 65
prophetic men and types of his people accomplished,
to render the idea of the Christ, and of His work,
conceivable to mankind. Sacred and secular history
alike warrant us in sitting at the feet of one who gathers
into himself the various elements of this millennial
preparation for the Saviour, and who • in one grand
figure represents the sages of the East, and the pro
phets, priests, and rulers of his own people in all their
conscious and unconscious preparation of the way of
the Lord.1
Before proceeding to our task we are confronted with
a page of biblical record which critics of a certain
school of history unhesitatingly reject as legendary and
as comparatively valueless. The supernatural element
involved in it, is sufficiently strong to throw some
suspicion on the historic validity of the narrative, and
the intertwining of the nativities of John and Jesus
has for some minds enveloped both in a haze of
mystery and myth. We must therefore pay attention
to the special difficulties which have been felt by
some writers as to the validity of this chronicle.2
1 Sermons du PereBourdaloue, de la Compagnie de Jesus, pour les Festes des
Saints. — Tome premier, Paris, 1712. Sermons pour la Feste de Saint Jean
Baptiste, pp. 379, 380. " De plus, dans l'ordre des divins decrets le temoignage
de Saint Jean estoit necessaire pour l'etablissement de nostre foy. Car le
mesme Evangehste qui nous apprend que Jean est venu pour rendre temoig
nage a la lumiere, Ut testimonium perhiberet de lumine, en rapporte aussi-tost
la raison ; ut omnes crederent per ilium, ann que tous crussent par luy. D'ou
il s'ensuit que nostre foy, je dis nostre foy, en J6sus Christ, est done originaire-
ment fondee sur le temoignage de ce grand Saint, puisqu' en effet e'est par luy.
que nous avons cru, par luy que la voye du salut nous a este' premierement
revelee, en un mot par luy que nous sommes Chretiens."
2 Thus Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, Band. iii. p. 219, dismisses in the follow
ing words thewhole narrative : — Speaking of John, he says : "Seine Jugendges-
chichte dass er der Sohn eines Priesters Zacharias gewesen, welchen die betagte
Frau Elizabeth ihrem ebenfalls alten Gatten geboren, und dass er aus der
Priesterklasse Abia gewesen, sowie andere seiner Geburt vorangegangenen und
nachfolgenden Wunder sind spatere Dichtungen ; das einzig Geschichtliche in
dieser Darstellung ist wohl der Zug, dass Johannes ein Naziraerleben gefuhrt,
d. h, zu den Essaern gehort hat. " 6

66 Explanation of the Biblical Record [lect.
It is admitted that the first chapter of the third
Gospel is the only available testimony to the facts that
are there said to have occurred. The legends of the
Protevangelium Jacohi and of the Koran do not augment
the evidence in our possession, nor increase our con
fidence in Luke's Gospel of the infancy. Sundry
mythical adornments of the nativities of John, of Mary,
and of Jesus, did doubtless arise among Christian be
lievers of the second and third centuries, which asso
ciated themselves with later forms of the narrative.
Our first inquiry is as follows : — Is the first chapter
of the third Gospel an integral portion of that docu
ment, or is it not ? If it could be thrown off from the
body of the third Gospel as a spurious addition, and
if it came to us solely on its own merits, as a very
ancient and independent fragment, then the super
natural element introduced into it, the lyrical effu
sions that abound in it, and the extraordinary
mental elevation of the humble personages described
by the chronicler, might well make us pause before
admitting the historical character of the transactions it
records. If, however, this document can be shown to
be an integral part of the most finished and elaborate
book in the New Testament; if it can be maintained
that he who has preserved it for us is none other than
he who [Trap-rjKoXovB'rjKOTi avmdev iraaiv aicpifiws} traced
up accurately all matters to the fountain head, and who
wrote his entire book on the authority of " eye witnesses
and ministers of the word," and who did this in order
to supply certainty concerning those things which even
before he wrote his Gospel were confidently held, and
had also formed the matter of "catechetical " r instruc-
1 Luke i. 1-4 : 'iva sirtyvife tripi dv K<ir7JX'/t''K' Xoytuv Trtv dcsfaXttav.

n.J of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 67
tion in the early community; then the value of this first
chapter is greatly enhanced, and the trustworthiness of
the whole narrative is less open to cavil. It then be
comes part of a record which in other places does not
shrink from the supernatural, the proem of a unique life
in which the manifestation of superhuman excellencies
and powers seems not only not incredible, but ante
cedently probable. We shall have to examine this
record in detail and judge it on its own merits, and
we shall do so knowing that any proof of its untrust-
worthiness or mythical origin will reflect discredit on
the whole Gospel. Without allowing this considera
tion unduly to influence our judgment, it is obvious
that a portion of a famous historical treatise carries
with it more weight than an isolated fragment can do.
Now the only strong objection ever taken to the inte
grity of the Gospel, turns on the non-existence of this
passage in the proem of that used by Marcion, and
which we have every reason to believe vs^as a muti
lated form of the third Gospel.
It is well known that Marcion, who was a contem
porary of Justin Martyr,1 and who visited Rome be
tween 130 and 140 a.d., did make use of one Gospel,
which he called " the Gospel of Christ." He did not
recognize St. Luke as its author. His dogmatic pur
pose was abundantly apparent in the selection he made
of this Christian document, and in his mutilation of
its contents to suit his purpose. The fourth book of
" Tertullian adv. Marcionem " is an elaborate attempt
to prove the motive and the extent of the mutilations
of Luke's Gospel effected by Marcion. It was contrary
to the philosophical hypothesis of Marcion that Christ
TApolog. i. c. 26. 58.
6 *

68 Eamination of the Biblical Record [lect.
should have had a human parentage or genealogy,
that He should have been circumcised, baptized, or
tempted ; and it is not remarkable that, seeing he ex
cised other portions of the Gospel which contradict
his views, he should have repudiated the first and
second chapters, as well as such portions of the third
and fourth as refer to facts which contradict his theory.
With considerable, though profitless ingenuity,
Ritschl* and Baur2 have attempted to argue, from
those passages of Marcion's Gospel that have come down
to us in the writings of Tertullian and Epiphanius,
that this document, instead of being a mutilation
and modification of Luke's Gospel, was the original
material which some later hand had expanded into
the canonical third Gospel. Baur defends the position
of Ritschl, and argues at great length in favour of the
originality of the text of Marcion, on the ground of the
omission by Marcion of passages, which, as he says, dis
turb the sense. It is curious that these omitted pas
sages, according to the showing of both critics, almost
uniformly contain some reference to the Old Testa
ment, and the deference paid to it by our Lord. This
was contrary to the intense anti-Judaism of Marcion,
and there were obvious reasons in his Gnostic dogma
tism for the mutilation of the original text. Baur sup
poses that Marcion's text and the canonical Luke are
both of them modifications of an original text which
has not come down to us. It is not improbable that
some peculiarities of Marcion's text, where no dog
matic prejudice has influenced him, represent a genuine
1 Das Evangelium Marcions und das Kanonische Evangelium des Lucas.
1846. 2 Kritische untersuchungen iiber die Kanonischen Evangelien. pp. 397-424,

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 69
form of the original text of Luke, and when sustained
by other quotations and any valuable manuscripts, may
possibly represent the true reading. As we have
said, Marcion's Gospel is destitute of the first three
chapters of Luke's Gospel. After quoting a portion of
Luke iii. 1, it proceeds abruptly to chapter iv. 31. It
opens thus : " In the fifteenth year of the reign of
Tiberius Cassar, God J came down to Capernaum, a
city of Galilee, and was teaching on the Sabbath day."
Very numerous other omissions and mutilations are
notified by Tertullian,2 and explained from the theo
logical position of Marcion.3 The speculation of Baur
has, according to Dr. Davidson,4 been absolutely re
futed by Volckmar, and therefore all arguments built
upon the supposed higher antiquity of Marcion's Gospel
are rendered valueless. With them disappears the
prejudice against the first two chapters, which were
supposed to be in themselves a completed poem added
by a later hand to the original fragment of Marcion.
The doubt felt with reference to the first chapter, if
based on Marcion's reticence, ought however to have
been extended to the second, third, and part of the
fourth chapter of Luke's Gospel, and would thus have
covered portions where Luke is amply confirmed by the
other Evangelists. It must be added that no question
is raised by the condition of the text. These chapters
are found in all the old MSS. which are of any value,
and have recently been confirmed by the reading of the
codices Sinaiticus and Zacinthius. There is, there-
1 Evangelium Marcionis ex auctoritate veterum monumentorum descripsit
Augustus Hahn. See Thilo 's Codex Apocryphus, N. T. i. 401. Cf. Baur. p. 403.
2 Tert. adv. Marcionem. Lib. iv. § 7-43.
3 Westcott. Introduction to Study of the Gospels. Appendix D.
* Introduction to New Testament. 1868. Vol. ii. p. 51.

70 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
fore, not a shadow of diplomatic doubt thrown over
the integrity of the third Gospel.1
Strauss, in the later editions of his " Leben Jesu," with
drew his previous statements on this subject. Schleier
macher2 considered that the first chapter, from 5-80,
forms a connected whole, and "was originally a little
poetical work rather than a properly historical narra
tive." His reason was the completeness of the chapter,
its poetical termination, its supernatural machinery, its
rhythmical flow, and the lyrical effusions that enrich
it. The slight difficulties in the apparently prosaic
portions, as, e. g., in the chronological details, seemed
to him the result of the poetical exigencies of the
writer. Thus the relative date of Mary's visit to
Elizabeth, the length of her stay, the month named
by the angel as that of Elizabeth's pregnancy, the
birth of John from aged parents, the commencement
and close of Zacharias' dumbness, the outburst of the
inspired canticles at moments not peculiarly suitable
to their utterance, have all been made to indicate an
unhistoric character.
Strauss used the circumstances here described as
an illustration of those psychological anomalies which
reveal the handling of the mythopceic tendency and
the presence of the non-historic element. Schleier
macher, falling back upon deliberate and well-meant
fiction, attributes the whole poem, as he styled it, to
1 Dr. Davidson says firmly : " It was once thought that the first two chapters,
with the exception of the preface, were not written by the Evangelist. The
only argument worth mentioning which was adduced against this portion is its
absence from Marcion's Gospel. But Tertullian says that the same document
wanted the third chapter, and the fourth as far as the thirty-first verse. Thus
the argument proves too much. Besides, Marcion's Gospel was a mutilated
copy of Luke's."
2 Critical Essay on the Gospel of Luke, by Frederick Schleiermacher, pp.
20-29. Translated, with a preface by the translator. 1823.

il] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 71
some "Christian ofthe more liberal Judaizing school."
He supposed the object to have been to bring over
some unconverted disciples of John to Christianity,
"by pointing out, on the ground of facts and of
general tradition, John's real highest destination in
his relation to Christ." This special conjecture is
of course beyond the scope of demonstration. It is,
however, encumbered with difficulties. The supposi
tion is that the whole story was fashioned with a
specific purpose to conciliate the disciples of John.
Why then should the author invent the disparaging
incident of the dumbness, which would be likely to
excite unnecessary prejudice ? The Judaizing Chris
tian party would not be the class from whom one
might expect the circumstantial account of the miracu
lous conception by the Holy Ghost of our blessed Lord.
If the Judaizer believed in "the triumph and aggran
dizement of the nation by the second coming of
Christ " — though there is no hint whatever of a second
coming — it is most extraordinary that in the songs of
Mary and Zacharias not even the faintest suggestion
should be given either of the hour of apparent overthrow,
or of the facts of the crucifixion, the resurrection, the
ascension, and the spiritual claims of the Christ. The
writer, if fashioning these records by his poetic in
stincts, would scarcely have avoided all reference to the
death and apparent extinction of both John and Jesus.1
Professor Mill drew some interesting parallels be-
1 The theory of Keim as to the sources of Luke's Gospel, that an original
Ebionite document was overlaid and interlineated by a disciple and friend oi
Paul, who is personally referred to in a variety of passages, which reveal a
strong animus against the spirit of the twelve, bears in a very remote way on
our present argument, and is nothing but a loose and plastic hypothesis
which is utterly beyond demonstration. Keim, Geschichte Jesu von Nazara
frei untersucht und ausfiihrlich erzahlt. Bde. i. p. 72. Eng. Tr. i. 100, ff.

72 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
tween the evangelic canticles contained in this chapter
and the poetic utterances of the well-meaning forgers
of the second and third centuries, and proved that in
cases closely similar to that which Schleiermacher
imagined to have taken place here, ex post facto allusions
were frequently made ; z and, moreover, that the wish of
the fabulist in detailing, e.g., the miraculous nativity of
Mary, * to associate it with other remarkable births in
the Old Testament, is abundantly and diffusely explained.
The same thing is evident in the earlier and more re
spectable Apocryphal Gospel entitled Protevangelium
Jacobi. The same may be said of the " Testament of
the Twelve Patriarchs," the writer of which was a
Jewish Christian of the age of Hadrian. Levi is re
presented as saying to his posterity, " A blessing shall
be given thee and all thy seed, until the Lord shall
visit all nations in the tender mercies of His Son for
evermore. Nevertheless thy children shall lay hands
upon Him, to crucify Him. And therefore have coun
sel and understanding been given to thee, that thou
mayest give thy sons to understand concerning Him :
for he that blesseth Him shall be blessed, but they
that curse Him shall perish." 3
Very numerous illustrations might be produced of
the same kind of imaginary anticipation of issues and
events which were known by the writer to have
occurred, all of which form striking contrasts with
the reticence of these evangelic canticles.4 Each of
1 Observations on the Attempted Application of Pantheistic Principles to the
Theory and Historic Criticism ofthe Gospel. By W. H. Mill, D.D. 1855.
2 Evangelium de Nativitate Marice, c. 3. Evang. Apoc. ed. Tisch. p. 108.
3 A.-N. Library, vol. xxii. p. 23. Test of Levi, c. 4.
4 Speaking of another portion of Levi's testament to his descendants, in
which the sorrows of Israel and the call of the Gentiles are clearly pourtrayed
from the standpoint of the writer's experience, Professor Mill remarks, l.c.

il] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 73
these noble hymns presents a vivid picture of the
blessedness of the new kingdom, without travelling
out of the Old Testament region of thought, and
without forestalling the cycle of events which, in the
belief of the imagined fabulist, must subsequently have
been of such transcendent interest to the supposed
interlocutors. Schleiermacher's ingenious supposition, to which we
have already referred, is moreover hampered by the
difficulty of time. From the triumphant Oid Testa
ment ring of the canticles, it is clear that they could
not have been fashioned by a poetical Jew after the
fall of Jerusalem, or during the terrible conflict with
Rome ; so that we are thrown back into the lifetime
of the apostles for the composition of this chapter.
We are not careful to avoid the conclusion of Schleier
macher, that chap. i. 5-80 is a complete history in it
self; that Luke, who professes to have traced accurately
to the fountain-head the sources of his information, may
have received it entire from Mary herself. She who
uttered the Psalm " Magnificat " was surely capable,
even judging from a purely human standpoint, of the
idyllic and archaic beauty of the whole narrative, with

part ii. p. 49 : " Moreover, he cannot avoid making the patriarch announce
the calling of the Gentiles, and the supercession of his own descendants, in a
far more precise and specific manner than we find those facts enunciated even
in the most evangelical of the prophets. What was thus inevitable to this
author, when ascribing to Levi the presentiment of truths so well known in
their detail to himself, would have been doubly so to St. Luke, had his object
been similar, namely, to supply to the immediate father of our Lord's precursor
the sentiments proper to his circumstances and to the far closer contact with
the same truths which the annunciation of his son's birth afforded him. It is
impossible but that some detail analogous to those in the preceding extracts
must have been imputed by the author of the mythus to Zacharias ; impossible
but that, as there, he must have inserted in the hymn some intimation of the
literal Israel's rejection, — the excision from the actual blessings of the coming
kingdom of those to whom it was especially proclaimed."

74 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
all the details of which she must have been intimately
acquainted. Schleiermacher had to invent a character whose
subjective qualifications for the work of composing the
first chapter of the third Gospel embrace all the leading
tendencies of the sub-apostolic age. Strauss does
little more than repeat and expand the perplexities
into which Schleiermacher allowed himself to fall, in
working out his main theory of the composite character
of the third Gospel. Schleiermacher and Strauss were
equally opposed to the rationalistic explanations which
Paulus had given concerning the angel, and the dumb
ness and its cure ; but while the former believed in a
vague substratum of fact, and thought he had found out
the well-meaning falsarius who had so long imposed on
the credulity of the world, Strauss referred every pecu
liarity and each statement, with perhaps the exception
of the name of the Baptist, to the myth-creating ten
dencies of the age, and involves the entire origin of the
narrative in his " potent wreath of mist."
If we start from the hypothesis that no variation from
the known laws of nature is conceivable or credible ;
if evolution from previously existing and recognized
antecedents must explain every peculiarity of human
affairs, then some explanation, such as that of Schleier
macher or Strauss, or even Paulus, may be required to
interpret this portion of the New Testament. For be
lievers in a living God it is not difficult to grant that
there is a direct intermingling of the Divine and the
human in the development of Providence, and that we
have here the record of the birth of one who was
destined to perform a conspicuous part in the revela
tion to mankind of the most momentous of all facts,

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 75
the most glorious of all personalities. The antecedent
improbability of certain deviations from the ordinary
career of mortals occurring under such circumstances,
is not therefore great. To find impossibility in imagin
ing such a direct exercise of the Divine will upon the
human will as is here described, is only the misfortune
of certain minds. In reviewing the narrative, we shall
endeavour to determine whether the internal improba
bilities are strong enough to invalidate the powerful
evidence at hand to show that it is a genuine fragment
of the apostolic age.
Scarcely any critic is prepared to deny that the con
ception and birth of John may have taken place, as
Luke tells us, in the days of Herod the king. This un
questionably leaves a broad margin of thirty-six years ;
but the narrative before us, by placing a brief interval
between the birth of Jesus and that of John, limits the
period of both events to the closing days of the reign
of Herod. All that it concerns us here to know, is that
before the death of Herod, which is well ascertained to
have occurred before the Passover in the year A.u.c
750,1 it became the duty of a priest, Zacharias by
name, to discharge in the temple of Jerusalem the
function of the priestly class to which he belonged.2
1 Wieseler's Chron. Synopsis, pp. 56, 57 ; Arnold, in Herzog's Encyclopddie,
art. " Herodes ;" Ellicott's Historical Lectures, p. 63.
2 The classes into which David originally divided the priests of his day were
twenty-four in number : eighteen of these were of the family of Eleazar, and
six only of that of Ithamar. The great difference between the two families may
be partly accounted for by the slaughter of the sons of Eli and of the people
who with them carried the ark into the camp (1 Sam. iv. 10). The arrangement
of the several classes and the order they should follow were determined by lot
(r Chron. xxiv. 6). The first of the classes as decided by the lot was that of
Jehoiarib, the last that of Maaziah, and the eighth that of Abijah. The order
seems to be observed by Hezekiah (2 Chron. xxix. 25, 26) ; but during the cap
tivity in Babylon, not only was the order interfered with, but not more than
four of the twenty-four classes of priests could be found. Great numbers must

76 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
There is frequent mention of these orders or classes
occupying for a week their place in the priest's office,
the individuals of the class being chosen by lot for
offering the morning and evening sacrifice, and the
presentation of sweet incense before the Lord.1
The supposition that Zacharias was the high priest,
though made by many eminent scholars, and sustained
by the statement that he is represented as offering
incense in the holy place, cannot be justified. The
simple fact that he was of the class of Abijah is in it
self enough to show that he was not the high priest, as
this distinguished functionary was entirely independent
of the succession of the orders, and was at liberty,
without any casting of lot, to offer incense whenever
he thought fit. But it can be proved that Simon, the
have been destroyed, and others must have chosen to remain in Babylon. The
class of Abijah was not one of these four. They belonged to the children of
Jedaiah, Immer, Pashur, and Harim (Ezra ii. 36-39 ; Nehem. vii. 39-42).* In
Nehem. xii. 17, where individual fathers are mentioned as priests that went
up with Zerubbabel, Abijah's name occurs, and we learn that the twenty courses
were reappointed with their old names under the authority of Nehemiah.
1 The whole set of twenty-four courses would occupy twenty-four weeks, or
one hundred and sixty-eight days, in the successive discharge of their duties.
If the class of Jehoiarib could be known to be performing these functions at any
one date, then one hundred and sixty-eight days, before or after that date,
Jehoiarib's course or class would once more be found at the same duties. We
know from the Talmud + that when the temple was destroyed, on the 9th of Ab
in the year a.d. 70, or 823 A.u.c. , the week was the week of Jehoiarib, and there
are many subordinate reasons which make this traditional date reliable.— Jos.
B. J. vi. 4. S- 8. It is easy to calculate from this backward, and we should
• find in the year 748 that the course of Jehoiarib would be in office from the 16th-
23rd of Ab, the course of Abiah from the 6th-r3th of Tisri. This is in singular
coincidence with the date for the conception and birth of Jesus arrived at by a
variety of other independent calculations. Wieseler, 1. c. p. 144, very nearly
corresponds with Gresswell in his calculation as to the actual day of the
departure of Zacharias from the temple.

*Jedaiah was the second, Immer the sixteenth, and Harim the third of the
original courses. Pashur is probably the representative of Malchijah (1 Chron.'
ix. 12).
+ Tract PfySn, fol. 29. i, quoted by Scaliger, Bengel, and Wieseler. See
the latter, Chron. Syn. p. 141.

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 77
father of Mariamne (one of the wives of Herod), or
Joazar, his son, and therefore the brother of Mariamne,
was at this period enjoying the high priest's dignity.1
The incense offered by Zacharias was that which it
was the function of the ordinary priest to present before
the Lord in the daily service. The wife of Zacharias
had a name signifying " the oath of Elohim," and it
is not improbable that, in Hebrew fashion, the priest
refers to the circumstance in the grand hymn with
which he will be for ever associated.2 The home of
this priestly pair was in a " city of Juda," identified by
Reland with the Juttah of Joshua xv. 55, and xxi. 16,
which, though assigned to the priests, is not included
among the lists of 1 Chron. vi. 57-59. Robinson has
discovered its site, and entertains no doubt that the
home of Zacharias can still be identified south of
Hebron.3 In what way Elizabeth was related (o-vyyevijs) to
Mary, who is spoken of as of the house of David, can
not be determined with accuracy. We know that dis
tinguished priests, like Aaron himself and Jehoiada, did

1 Lightfoot, in his Ministerium Templi, gives the following as the list of the
high priests, from Aristobulus onwards : — Jesus, the son of Faneus ; Simon,
the son of Boethus, the father of Mariamne ; Matthias, son of Theophilus ;
Joazar, son of Simon ; Eleazar, appointed by Archelaus {Antiq. xvii. 6. 8.
15) ; Jesus Joazar, a second time during the taxing ; Ananus, appointed by
Cyrenius ; Ishmael, by Valerius Gratus ; Eleazar, the son of Ananus ; Simon,
the father of seven sons who all occupied the post ; Caiaphas. Selden, De
Successione in Pontificio, cap. xi. ; Petavius, De Doctrina Temporum, lib. x. c. 55,
quoted by Witsius, De Vita Johannis Baptistas ; Miscellanea Sacra, vol. ii.
exerc. xv. p. 475. See also Smith's Diet., art. " High Priest."
2 V 327,l?N E\tTaj3er was the name of Aaron's wife, which Strauss regards
as sign of mythical handling. Zacharias, H'H.a'j, being interpreted, is "re
membered by Jehovah." Compare Luke i. 72, 73.
3 See Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, art. "Juttah ; " Robinson's Biblical
Researches, vol. ii. 195, 628. Keim, 1. c. Bde. i. p. 472 ; Ewald, Christus, sup
pose that Hebron was intended.

78 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
marry women of other tribes.1 It is on a thoroughly
Hebrew platform that the writer stands, when he tells
us of this pair, " that they were both righteous be
fore God, and walked in all the ordinances and com
mandments of the Lord blameless." Similar language
is used of Noah, Levi, and Job, and the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews deals in analogous terms with
a great cloud of witnesses.2
If we may judge from the utterance of his deepest
convictions, this gift of righteousness, this life of obe
dience, was deeply rooted in a holy faith. Zacharias
believed in " the tender mercy of our God, through
which the Branch of Light should irradiate those sitting
in darkness and the shadow of death." Reconciled with
the will of God, he looked through the portentous signs
of the times to their hidden meaning. He knew that it
was only in the fulfilment of the promises made to the
fathers, in the covenant made with Abraham and his
seed for ever, in the accomplishment by some unex
pected means of the hopes of his mysterious race, that
deliverance and salvation would come to Israel. The
old sources of consolation failed him. The house of
prayer was gorgeous enough to gratify any national va
nity, but it was being adorned by a heartless sycophant
of Rome, and gilded by a despot's gold. The yearning
must have been intense — as it is now, though in some
what different circumstances — that the Lord Himself
might come suddenly to His temple, and thoroughly
purge its floor from the corruption of the times. Coupled
with the desire of offspring, and the long and now hope-
1 Exod. vi. 23 ; 2 Chron. xxii. ir.
2 Gen. vi. 9 ; Deut. xxxiii. 8 ; Job i. 8 ; Heb. xi. 2, Si 7, 33- Prolix and
elaborate dissertations on this statement may be seen in Drusius, De tribus
sectis, i. 11. See also Witsius, 1. c. 481.

n.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 79
less disappointment of that desire, it is not unreasonable
to suppose that he should with prayers and tears have
sought to be associated in some, as yet unknown, way
with the development of the kingdom of God.
Strauss pointed scoffingly to the similar stories of
Old Testament heroes being born of aged and barren
parents. The births of Isaac, of Samuel, and of Sam
son, with their attendant circumstances, are thought
by him to be the literary basis of this mythic repre
sentation of the birth of John. Schleiermacher x sup
posed that the author sought thus to bring his narrative
into harmony with that of several heroes of Hebrew
antiquity. Others have compared it with the super
natural conditions attributed in secular legend to the
births of Buddha, Pythagoras, and Plato. Now it is
very remarkable that no trace of this connection of
thought appears on the surface of the narrative. No
use is supposed to be made by the angel of this pecu
liarity of Old Testament history. Here the record of
Luke differs materially from the tone of the Apoc
ryphal Gospels.2 In the Gospel of the " Nativity of
Mary,"3 the angel of the Lord is represented as re
moving the doubtfulness of Joachim, the father of the
Virgin, by references to the Old Testament.
" Was it not the case that the first mother of your nation, —
* Sarah, — was barren until her eightieth year, and nevertheless, in
extreme old age, she brought forth Isaac, to whom the promise
was renewed of blessing to all nations. Rachel also, so favoured
by the Lord, and so beloved by holy Jacob, was long barren, and
yet she brought forth Joseph. . . Who among the judges was either
stronger than Samson, or more holy than Samuel ? and yet the

1 Lib. cit. p. 28. 2 Professor W. H. Mill. Lib. cit. p. 27.
3 Apocryphal Gospels: Ante-Nicene Library, p. 54; Evangelium de Nativitate
Mar ice ; Tisch. Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 108.

80 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
mothers of both were barren. If then the reasonableness of my
words does not persuade thee, believe in the fact that conceptions
very late in life, and births from barren women, are usually attended
with something wonderful " (c. 3).
This worthless story of Joachim and Anna, which is
certainly of late origin, which exists only in the Latin
language, and which was not accepted by the most
credulous of patristic writers, works up some of the
mythical narrative which had gathered round the per
sons of the father and mother of Mary, and dresses up
into the long angelic harangue (part of which I have
quoted) the sentiment which in the much earlier work
called Protevangelium Jacobi was put into the mouth of
Joachim himself, who is there said (c.i) to have "called
to mind how God, in his last days, gave to the patriarch
Abraham his son Isaac." Now, upon Strauss' principle,
it is very wonderful, that as the source of the myth is
actually approached, there should be no indication given
by the poet (to whom we are assumed to be indebted for
the story of the birth of John) of any such association
in his mind between the birth of the heroes of anti
quity and the birth of the Baptist.1 It appears to us
that we have here nothing more than a simple narra
tive of an extraordinary fact, which is not, strictly
speaking, supernatural, but which is another illustra
tion of the way in which God chooses the weak
and despised and forgotten things of this world to
confound the strong and the famous.
When the week arrived for the course of Abijah to
minister in the temple, Zacharias was chosen by lot to
1 It is true he uses the phrase irpofi^KOTiQ iv rate jjpspaic ctvrwv r)cmv,
which corresponds with LXX. description of Abram and Sarah. Tlpttrfttnpoi
irpoftefiijKoreg rjfifpwv. Gen. xviii. n.

ii. J of the Nativity of John tlie Baptist. 81
minister "before the Lord " according to the custom l of
the priesthood.
Morning and evening the sweet incense was burned
by the officiating priest. It seldom fell (so ran the
Jewish proverb) to the same priest to perform these
functions twice, so great was the number of those who
competed for the honour ;2 for this was a highly-coveted
and honourable duty, and, according to Jewish belief,
provided an occasion when special communications
were made by God to His servants.3
The whole multitude remained without in the open
courts. As several of the priestly courses consisted of
thousands of individuals, who were always present in
Jerusalem or Jericho during their week of office, the
crowd of worshippers may have been largely composed
of the sacerdotal class, with a sprinkling of the laity.
The word "multitude" suggested to Lightfoot4, the
idea that the day so memorable to Zacharias was the
Sabbath. However this may have been, the silver
trumpets were sounded, the smoke of the evening
sacrifice ascended, the murmur of prayer from a thou
sand voices resounded through the gilded courts, and
Zacharias went near to the altar of incense to present
before the Lord the symbol of offered and answered
prayer, to perfume the bloody sacrifice with holy frag
rance. It is here that the narrative becomes specially
crowded with difficulties. The cause of the antagonism
1 Kara to Woe, i.e., not according to law, but the arrangement originated
by David for this purpose.
2 Lightfoot, Ministerium Templi, cap. ix. § 5, describes the whole process
and duties of the priest on this occasion.
3 Antiq. xiii. 10. 3 ; Hieros. Joma. fol. 42. 3. Simon the Just is said to
have received from the lips of an angel, on the Great Day of Atonement, the
prophecy of the time of his own death. Lightfoot, Opera, ii. p. 490.
4 Ibid. vol. i. p. 265.

82 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
and hostile criticism is the recorded appearance to the
priest Zacharias of the angel of the Presence. The
rationalistic school admitted the substratum of fact, but
supposed that the aged priest, dizzy with incense and
ecstatic with hope, mistook a gleam of light for an
angel, and the murmuring of his own voice for the
revelations of Gabriel. A cerebral attack, producing
deafness and dumbness, followed his ecstasy, and was
unexpectedly removed on the occasion of the circum
cision. Schleiermacher thought it more probable that
this strange story should have been invented by a
poetical chronicler, than that any man should have
committed so great a blunder. The fit of paralysis
scarcely harmonizes with the obvious vigour of Zach
arias in other respects. In the estimation of both
Schleiermacher and Strauss, Paulus utterly failed by
this explanation to free the narrative from a variety of
other supernatural occurrences. Strauss especiallyurged
that if the angelic appearance were removed from the
narrative, yet enough remains on the ordinary natural
basis to make the story improbable and inexplicable.1
He considered the simple mention of the angelic appear
ance an unhistoric trait, and repudiated, as a worn-out
or exploded hypothesis, the very conception of an order
of heavenly or spiritual beings occupying some place
intermediate between the highest God and His human
creatures. Such beings do not and cannot come within
the range of scientific observation : reason cannot assert
their existence. If that is sufficient to condemn this
narrative, we must be content to part with it and accept
some of the various hypotheses that have been framed
for the composition of the story. In accordance with
1 Life of Jesus. E. T. Vol. i. pp. 100-108.

ii.J of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 83
the motive I have in now dealing with this page of
Scripture narrative as bearing on Christian theology,
and introductory to the life of Christ, it is well to
remember that our rejection, on such a principle, of the
narrative of the birth of John, involves the repudiation,
on the same ground, of part of the evidence of the re
surrection of Christ as well as of many other passages
of Scriptural revelation. The plea therefore deserves
and demands inquiry.1 Let me then premise that if
reason and induction and scientific experiment cannot
verify the existence of spiritual agencies, they cannot
disprove their existence. This much is certain, that
between man and the lowest forms of animal life and
intellectual development, there is every conceivable gra
dation of being. An infinite series of weaker and less
furnished intelligences comes into view, whose hold
upon matter, and whose power of originating sensations
and perceptions in us, vary all but infinitely. It is an
unwarrantable conjecture that the human intelligence
is the highest form of mind, and that the human and
physical method of operating upon nature is the only
method of such operations. It is unreasonable to as
sert that no personages higher than man exist, whose
faculties of dealing with light and sound, with form and
force, are fundamentally different from those which
come under our daily experience. Belief in a personal
1 See Steudel, Die Theologie des Alten Testament, pp. 215-239, where the
idea of the " angel " in the Old Testament is carefully elaborated, as also the
form of its manifestation in the apocryphal books. Joseph Langen, Das
Judenthum in Palestina zur zeit Christi, p. 297, ff. Hermann Schultz,
Alttestamentliche Theologie, Band. ii. p. 129, ff., discusses the doctrine of the
prophetic period concerning Angels, the broad and grand generality of the
prophetic ideas, as embodied in Psalms, Job, and earlier prophets ; and this
is contrasted with the growing phantasy of the representations of the apo
cryphal books, p. 321, ff, including the whole hierarchy of " Watchers, " or
" Holy Ones " of Daniel and Henoch, as well as the "Angel" ideas of New
Testament. Compare Reuss, Thiologie Chritienne, vol. i. p. 463.
ij *

84 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
God seems to favour the hypothesis that between His
infinite and uncompounded being and our own, there
must be a hierarchy of varied powers, a gradation of
personal intelligences, who either perform or dispute
His will. From the Pseudo-Dionysius ' to our own
day, this hypothesis has been proved liable to gross
superstition and very varied development. The nature,
orders, and functions of angelic beings must be matters
of pure imagination, and the light thrown upon this
subject by the holy Scripture is faint and flickering;
yet we find enough there to bring our narrative within
the category of a vast range of observed phenomena,
possessing great interest and beauty. Strauss objected
to the idea of " a graduated scale of created intelli
gences " as the substitution of a " modern notion" for
the Jewish representation. This " modern notion "is
only introduced when a negative modern speculation
denies the credibility of such a class of beings. The
" parallel representation " is a conjecture, and we
frankly admit it ; but it is no more conjectural than
the dogmatism which denies the possibility of the
angelic, supersensuous world. " Belief in angels," says
Strauss, "has its source in the desire that the universe
should contain a higher amount of intelligence than is
realized in the human race, but which is now satisfied
by a conviction that other worlds are inhabited as well
as our own." But this conviction is at present nothing
more than a conjecture, which does not rest upon a
particle of evidence, and is quite as shadowy as is
belief in the spiritual world itself. Let us not forget
that with intuitive certainty we belong to the world
' For a clear and succinct account of the Areopagite's Angelology, see Mil-
man's History of Latin Christianity, vol. ix. p. 57, ff.

n.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 85
of spirit as much as we do to that of sense. The
discoveries of modern astronomy, the revelations of
the telescope and spectroscope, are furnishing us with
more accurate intelligence touching the forces and the
chemical elements that are actively at work in the far-
off stellar spaces; but while they proclaim thus the
unity of the kosmos, they justify belief in the boundless
forms of existence, whether physical or spiritual, with
which the universe is charged. Strauss urged that
effects previously ascribed to angelic beings can now be
set down to natural causes, thus showing that belief in
them is a lifeless tradition, since we have discovered
the presence and universality of these causes. He
ridiculed the idea of the throne of Jehovah as Micaiah
saw it, with " all the host of heaven standing on his
right hand and on his left," as importing into the region
of pure thought, pagan mythological notions borrowed
from the court of an oriental despot.
It is however tolerably clear that the Jewish mind,
even in the visions of the fourth book of Esdras, or in
those of the book of Daniel or of Henoch, or the
Apocalypse, did not so blunder into mythology as to
suppose that these exalted visions represented objec
tive fact in some one portion of astronomical space.
When the Hebrew spoke of the "arm," the "hand,"
the "voice," the "eye," or the "finger of God," he
was not intending to convey the notion of the physical
parts of the Most High, but of the moral perfections
of His nature. In like manner, the idea of some cen
tral court or throne, surrounded by angelic presences
after the manner of some great earthly potentate, was
a genuine condescension to the weakness of man's
understanding, not the revelation of an objective fact.

86 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
It is moreover ascertained, that in a vast number
of passages of Holy Scripture, angelic ministry and
manifestation are spoken of all but interchangeably
with descriptions of the activity of the Divine Being.
" The angel of the Lord " is spoken of as Jehovah
Himself, and is distinguished from the created angel
to whom at times He delegated His authority, but
whom He discriminated from His own "presence."1
There are many other passages of Holy Scripture
where the various operations of the Divine hand,
such as the creation of the world, the guidance and
consolation of His people,2 the giving of the law,3
the Providence which smote the host of Assyrians,4
and watches over the little child, 3 and encamps
round about those who fear God,6 the protection af
forded to Elisha, the convoy of the deathless prophet
to his heavenly home;7 the consolation offered to the
only-begotten Son in His agony,8 the rolling of the
stone from the door of the sepulchre, the deliver
ance of Peter and Paul from deadly peril, and the
harvesting at last of the souls of the righteous,9
are, though attributed to angelic personalities, un
doubtedly methods of representing the exceeding ac
tivity of the Divine will and grace. God does indeed
act through agents, but agents who are, from their
absolute obedience and submission to His will, only10
1 Gen. xxviii. 12 ; xxi. 17 ; xxii. 13, ff. 2 Ibid, xlviii. 16.
3 Acts vii. 53 ; Gal. iii. 19. 4 2 Chron. xxxii. 21 ; Isa. xxxvii. 36.
3 Matt, xviii. 10. * Psa. xxxiv. 7.
1 2 Kings ii. 11 ; vi. 17. 8 Luke xxii. 43 ; xxiv. 4 ; Acts xii. 7 ; xxviii. 23.
9 Matt. xiii. 39.
10 Ezek. i. 12 : "Whither the spirit was to go, they went ; and they turned
not when they went ; . . . and the living creatures ran and returned like as the
appearance of a flash of lightning." Psa. ciii. : " Bless the Lord, ye his angels,
that excel in strength, that do his commandments, hearkening to the voice of
his word ; ... ye ministers of his that do his pleasure."

it.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 87
forms of His own agency. Special protection and guid
ance for nations were from very early times attributed
to angelic powers. This was supposed, by the rabbi
nical writers, to be the meaning of Deut. iv. 19.1 The
sublime personage who wrestled with Jacob, and con
ferred upon him his new name, was described as
" the angel which redeemed me from all evil," and
referred to in Isaiah Ixiii. 9 as " the angel of the pre
sence." It is this same mighty agency which comes
into such frequent prominence throughout the entire
history of the chosen people; as "the angel of the
Lord," when with drawn sword he arrests the career of
Balaam;2 as " Captain of the Lord's host," when he
reveals special grace to Joshua,3 and manifests him
self as the deliverer of Israel to Gideon, Manoah, and
David.4 The Psalms frequently refer to the blessed
ness and security afforded by the presence of this
wondrous power of God. Though the manifestations
of the supernatural power were various, and came in
different and wondrous ways into the consciousness of
the people and prophets of God, they are all closely re
lated to each other, they melt and blend into one grand
conception. They are the Xoyoi of the one eternal
X070?; they are modes of activity of the one Infinite
and all Holy One. They were conceived by Philo to
be the ideas of God Himself, constituting, indeed, when
loolced at in their totality, " the spiritual world,"
and all summed up in the sublime essence of the
X070?, but they are seldom referred to by Philo.3
1 See quotation and discussion in Von Bohmer's art. " Engel," in Herzog's
Encyclopdde. 2 Numb. xxii. 22.
3 Josh. v. 12-15. * Judg. vi. n-13 ; xiii. 8-23 ; 1 Chron. xxi. 15.
s See Langen, Judenthum Zur Zeit Christi, p. 305. Philo, De Gig. § 4, declares
angels," "souls," " daemons, " to be convertible terms, and messengers between

88 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
As to their personality and their spirituality, it is
impossible to doubt that Scripture is any less explicit.
They are "ministering spirits."1 Their will is lost in
the Divine Will, though it may be conceived of as
spontaneously rendering an absolute and unchecked
obedience. Yet they are all inferior to the only-
begotten Son. When He is brought into the world,
they worship Him ; 2 they sing His advent ; they
announce His incarnation ; they minister to His suf
fering flesh and broken spirit ; they assist His triumph;
they are the fulgurations of His power-; they sound
the great trumpet of His wrath ; they are distinct
from, though one with Him. The main difficulty of this
biblical thought does not lie in the mere conception
of the angelic world ; indeed, it is almost impossible
for the most materialistic mind to rid itself of some
equivalent speculation. We cannot but think of the
supreme and eternal Power in its separate manifesta
tions. It is easier to imagine a delegation of the
Divine Will to a variety of co-operating agencies in
Nature, Providence, and History, than not to do so.
The chief difficulty arises from lack of the proof of such
existences. Our forefathers may have said that angels
ministered to them, but how can the testimony of the
senses determine the reality of such an event ? Our
limited experience will not permit us to deny the possible
existence of such beings as those which Scripture de
scribes as the personal activities of Jehovah. But it is
certain that whatever violates the unity or the omnipre-
God and man — and in De confus. ling. § 33, and De opific. mundi, § 24, he
refers to the companion-assistants of God in creation of the world. In Fragm.
Qucestiones, i. in Gen. he said, wvtvp.aTtKri Se r) tSiv dyyiXwv ovata, but he
nowhere asserted their distinct personality. Cf. Martensen, Christian Dog
matics, § 68. Clark's Trans. * Heb. i. 14. = Ibid. i. 6.

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 89
sence of God would be at variance with all just concep
tions of the Hebrew religion and of biblical thought; nor
are these revealed modes of the Divine operation open
to this charge. The form in which they have come into
consciousness is beset with difficulty. Still, in accept
ing the assurance of the agency of an angelic mes
senger, and even in believing that such a presence
has been seen and heard by God's servants, we do not
trespass very far beyond what we know of the inti
mate relation that subsists between our own spirits
and the forces of nature. Our bodies are but the
transient clothing of spirits, which under the force of
the inner, supersensuous life, are ever rapidly vanish
ing into thin air. An angelic spirit makes a more
curt and much easier use than we can do of the
functions of matter in its most etherial form. When
it has done its work, the decomposition and dissolution
of the temporary form is immediate. All these an-
gelophanies were surely anticipations of the ultimate
adoption of our humanity by the Eternal Logos, and
were manifestations of the Christ before He came in
the flesh — the light shining in the darkness, before it
came into the world.1
It may have required a peculiar state of mind to
become conscious of so Divine a presence as that of
the angel of the Lord. All eyes cannot discern the
stars at midnight, to say nothing of midday. All men
could not have seen what Jacob, or Joshua, or Zacha
rias saw, when the angel of the Lord appeared to them.
Some may have their spiritual eyesight so sharpened as
John i. 5-9, 14. See Lange's Das Leben Jesu, vol. ii. p. 41, ff., "Der Engel
Gabriel."

90 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
to see more of the unseen world than others do, even
though these may not be blind to the presence of such
manifested glory. Thus, when one angel has been seen
by a mind prepared for such a manifestation, another
might have perceived a multitude of the heavenly host.
Such experiences, though corresponding in some de
gree to objective fact, must be determined more largely
by subjective experiences than are the ordinary cir
cumstances of life. On the other hand, it must not
be forgotten that if the poet, the scientific explorer, the
artist, the historian, the uneducated peasant, were to
climb Olympus one after the other, they would in
reality see such different objects, that, though in face
of the same definitely objective facts, their independent
experiences would be far from identical. Certainly
there are many philosophic divines who, if they had
been with Zacharias in the holy place of the temple,
would have seen nothing but the curl of the incense,
and heard only the murmuring of the praying crowd.
It may be asked, — If the higher spirits of the crea
tion, those in such immediate union with God that
they always do what pleases Him, are at all within the
range of human consciousness, how can we account for
the long waste of years during which, if the record
of such appearance comes to us, we call it at once
fictitious or romantic? Has not spirituality equal to
that of Zacharias, or Mary, or the shepherds, often pu
rified human hearts ? Has not ecstatic trance, noble
as that of the women who went to embalm the Lord,
passed over holy women in lonely cells, in perilous
hours, amid the excitements of martyrdom and sacrifice?
Why then have not the ministering spirits made their
glory and their unrequited service felt by these ? Our

n. ] of the Nativity of John tlie Baptist. gi
answer is, we are not certain that they have not ! Be
that as it may — and superstition and romance have told
us many lies — it is not unreasonable to argue, that as
the true Light has now dawned, and the real Sun has
risen on the world ; now that the strange eclipse of His
beams is overpassed; now that the sorrows of His birth,
the humiliation of His passion and His burial, the pang
of His departure, the glories of His resurrection, and
the troubles of His infant Church are over, there are
deep reasons why the most striking of the spiritual
manifestations of His grace should be made in a
totally different region of human experience.
Some of the opponents of the biblical narrative urge
that the angelology of the new Testament was a
Persian tradition ; that the names of the angels were
the reflection of Zoroastrian influences ; and that if
they contain genuine revelations cf great objective
facts, we owe these to the Persian sages, and not to the
holy people of God's covenant. How does the matter
stand ? The angel describes himself to Zacharias as
Ta/3pirj\6TrapecrT7]ica><; Ivunriov tov Oeov.1 Now Micaiah's
vision, to which we have already referred, makes us
familiar with " all the host of heaven standing by Jeho
vah on his right hand and his left."2 A great angelic
messenger describes himself to Joshua as " prince ofthe
host of the Lord ; "3 and thus, long before the supposed
date of what it has become the fashion to call the
" Maccabaean Daniel," there was biblical phraseology
which would justify the authenticity of Zacharias' reve
lation without calling in the aid of Persian mythology.
Strauss and others quote Lightfoot's citation of Rabbi
Simeon, to the effect that " the names of the angels
1 Luke i. 19. z 1 Kings xxii. 19-22 ; 2 Chron. xviii. 18-21. 3 Josh. v. 13,14.

92 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
ascended with Israel from Babylon;"1 that whereas in
Isaiah we hear of one of the seraphim, in Daniel ix.
and x. we hear of the " man Gabriel " and " Michael
your prince." Professor Mill justly remarks that this
rabbinical writer only mentions an unquestionable
fact, when he says that the names of these angels
first occur in the book of Daniel and after the Captivity,
but this is very different from the admission that the
names were borrowed from the Pagan systems. The
curious fact is that each of these celebrated names
is pure Hebrew; it is neither Aramaic, Chaldsean, nor
Zendic in its shape, having no relation to the Persian
forms of thought or expression.2 The often quoted
passage from the book of Tobit (xii. 15), where another
angel " Raphael " is introduced as " one of the seven
holy angels, who enter in before the glory of the Holy
One," 3 is used by Strauss to prove that the number
seven leans for its origin on the Persian representation
of the seven Amshaspands, who, inclusive of Ormuzd,
form the centre of the great dominion of light and
glory. If such resemblance exists in the apocryphal
Tobit, it does not appear in Daniel's prophecy or in
Luke's Gospel. The book of Henoch names six of the
angels of the presence, and speaks elsewhere of the
seven stars, and in c. 40 adds to the Michael, Raphael, and
Gabriel of Daniel and Tobit, the name Eanuel. The
exceeding prevalence throughout the Biblical writings
of the number seven, with its moral rather than its
1 HorcB HebraiccB in Evang. Luces, c. I.
2 Langen, l.c. p. 313, ff., discusses the different representations of the Book
of Henoch, the Book of Jubilees, and Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs,
with reference to the angelic world.
3 'Eyai eifit Pa0ar)\ ei? sk tuiv 6-jrra ctyiwv ctyykXuiv 61 irpooavatykpovtn Tac
irpoaivxcig t&v ayimv Kat ticirootiovTai Ivibittov ttjq SoKvq tov ayiov.

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 93
arithmetical significance, renders the supposition ex
tremely gratuitous that a Hebrew writer should have
borrowed the number seven from Persian sources.
There are other uses of the number seven, and refer
ences in Zechariah and in the Apocalypse to " the
seven spirits of God ; " I and we are not wrong in
attributing to Hebrew thought and to the Hebrew
Scriptures, rather than to the Persian symbolism, the
use of this peculiar digit and its multiples, to denote
the perfection and fulness of Divine manifestation.
Moreover, a comparison of various Jewish authorities
shows that there was in the apocryphal and rabb i-
nical literature no fixed number of seven archangels
common to Jewish thought.
All that can be said with fairness or truth, is that
the Hebrews during the Captivity did learn to give
greater definiteness to their views of the angelic
ministry, and to clothe in their own language, and
not in that of their conquerors, some of these more
definite thoughts. The name is but the human method
of recording something thought believed and felt, and
the significance of the name of Him who unfolds these
'Professor Mill, I.e. p. 58, quotes from Pirke Rabbi Eliezer : "There are
four armies of angels of ministry, singing praises before the Holy and Blessed
One. The first is the host of Michael, on his right hand ; the second, that of
Gabriel, on his left ; the third, of Uriel, in front of him ; the fourth, of Raphael,
behind ; and the (Shekinah or) glorious Presence of the Holy and Blessed One
is in the midst." This account, making Raphael one of four attendant arch
angels (not, as in Tobit, one of seven), agrees with the older one of the Book
of Henoch, which, as cited by Syncellus [Chronograph, p. 22), speaks of the four
great archangels, Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel. The corresponding
text of the Ethiopic version of that book, chap. ix. 1, gives the names as it
should seem corruptly, Michael, and Gabriel, and Suriel, and Uriel (though
the name Raphael appears afterwards in chap. x. 4) ; and the translations of
hoth De Sacy and Lawrence of the former place, inserting both Raphael and
Suriel, make five archangels instead of four. Lawrence's Book of Enoch,
pp. 7, 194, 206 ; and Das Buch Henoch, ub. v. Dillmann, who gives in c. ix.
Surj&n and UrjUn for Suriel and Uriel, pp. 4, 83, 97.

94 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
deep secrets, and foretells these high destinies, is a
witness to the preparation that was being made for a
still higher, nobler, and fuller blending of the Divine
and human in the person of Him who should fulfil
the words of the heavenly messenger. The name of
Gabriel signifying the man of God, or the God-man,
reveals one of the most momentous aspects of the
coming revelation. It is the human side of the Divine
plan, it has to do with the definitely human form and
accompaniment of the greatest of all revelations.
But we are not careful to exclude the presence, either
here or in other parts of Holy Scripture, of the foreign
influences to which the culture and circumstances of
the favoured people may have exposed them. It
would argue supernaturalistic blindness, indeed, to
fail to see the influence of Egyptian, Oriental, Greek,
Roman, Essenic, Rabbinical thought in Holy Scrip
ture. More than that, the fact that the mind of
God has specially revealed itself to a certain succes
sion of men in a particular nation, does not involve
the denial of all other direct communion with God,
nor necessitate the repudiation of all other revelations.
What was the precise objective fact which assumed
this form in the deep conviction of the early Church,
cannot be gathered from a few passages of Jewish or
Christian literature ; but so grand a persuasion will not
be demolished by merely comparing it with the angel
ology of Henoch or of the Zendavesta or of the Koran.
When the angelic vision broke upon Zacharias he was
prostrated with fear. The soul of man does fear and
tremble exceedingly when it draws near the realm or
manifestation of pure spirit.1 When his prayer was
1 Gen. xv. 2, 12 ; Judg. xiii. 6, 22 ; Dan. x. 8 ; Matt. xiv. 26 ; Rev. i. 17.

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 95
on the point of being realized, he shrank from the
method in which God called him into the secret pur
poses of His love. His fear was rebuked, and he was
told that his wife should bear a son, but that his name
should be called, not Emmanuel, or God with us, but
John, or "Jehovah is favourable." z This child is to be
a source of joy and gladness to his parents, and many
shall rejoice at his birth (ver. 58, 66). He shall be great
before the Lord, i.e., in view of his spiritual functions.
Like Samson of old, he is to be a Nazarite from his
birth, and neither to drink wine nor strong liquor
(criKepa), and he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit
from the hour of his birth.2 A grand contrast is in
tended here, as in Eph. v. 18, between the sensational
excitement which may be created, as in the Dionysiac
rites, by alcoholic stimulus and pampering of the
flesh, and the Divine energy given by the Spirit of
God.3 The full significance of this prediction of the
angel will come before us subsequently. I may simply
remark here, that though John should be born of priestly
race, he would as a Nazarite stand to the sacerdotal
order in a relation almost equivalent to that in which
the priest stands to the rest of the nation, and as a
1 This name was an old Hebrew form. 7?J7"''"'1. Jehochanan, from HirP
and idy, to be gracious or favourable. It is' rendered by LXX. luiavctv in
1 Chron. iii. 24 and = luva 2 Kings xxv. 23 ; Iwai/jjc 2 Chron. xxiii. 1. In
Cod. Vat. here one of the ' ' v's " is elided secunda manu.
2 'Ee KoiXiac, not iv KoiXtct. The Catholic expositors, and Olshausen joins
them, are eager to find here the communication of the Divine afflatus to the
great forerunner while yet unborn. In this view Maldonatus refers to Origen,
Cyprian, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Maximus, Chrysostom, and others, and
declares that the interpretation ab infantia sud, is only a gloss of the heretics.
Cyprian, e.g., Ep. lxxiii. [Oxf. ed. 25], speaks of "John filled with grace even in
his mother's womb ; " but see for the scriptural usage, Matt. xix. 12 ; Acts iii. 2 ;
xiv. 8 ; Gal. i. 13 ; Psa. xxi. 10 (LXX.) and Ixxi. 6.
3 Bengel, in loco, says: "Similiter ebrietati plenitudo in Spiritu opponitur."
Eph. v. 18.

96 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
prophet he should still further become conscious of
a Divine commission and be burdened with the word
of the Lord. The angel further assured Zacharias that
he should turn many of the sons of Israel to the Lord
their God, and should go before the coming Lord (ac
cording to the prophecy of Malachi) in the spirit and
power of Elijah. No metempsychosis was intended by
this. It was not said that this child should be a second
birth of the glorified Tishbite, but that he should do for
that generation what Elijah did for his. He should
have the spirit, and therefore the power to " turn the
hearts of the fathers to the children ; " not, as Kuinoel
suggested, to bring the mind of the patriarchs to return
to their posterity, nor exactly, as Augustine supposed,1
that the sons should be taught to understand the law
as their fathers, their prophets, even Moses himself
included, had understood it ; but rather that the
fathers of the people should, under his powerful teach
ing, be turned in heart to the mass of the people from
whom, by their ceremonial sanctity and traditional
usages, they had separated themselves. Then, adding to
the words of Malachi, the angel continued, " He shall
turn the disobedient, i.e., the unbelieving, sceptical, and
unspiritual souls, unto the true wisdom of the righteous,"
and thus prepare a people for the Lord. The Lord was
' indeed drawing near, but His way was only in part pre
pared. The Divine powers of the ancient priesthood,
the insight and thunder of the prophetic order, the vows
and self-sacrifice of the Nazarite, must be once more
recapitulated, and in a concentrated form made to bear
' De Civitate Dei. xx. 29. "Est sensus ut etiam filii sic intelligant legem,
quemadmodum patres earn intellexerunt, id est prophetee, in quibus erat et ipse
Moyses."

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 97
upon the heart and society of Judaism. As Elijah at the
head of a prophetic order had done for the kingdom
of Israel what all the priests and Levites and ascetics
of the olden time had failed to accomplish, so the har
binger of the Christ should bring forth into strong
relief, and apply with irresistible force to the conscience
of Israel, the significance and the purport of the Old
Covenant. Severe and hostile animadversion has been launched
against this foreshadowing of a human life, even by
the messenger of the holy God. The objection that
such a preliminary sketch of a future life is an " out
rage upon the human will," applies with still greater
force to the hypothesis of any prevision of the future,
even by the Infinite Mind. If the knowledge of the
Creator is to be taxed as an outrage upon His crea
ture, there is an end of theology, and a term is put to
all religious thought and life. Assault upon a specific
prophecy becomes frivolous when it proceeds from a
writer who charges the very conception of prophecy
as immoral. On the other hand, modern physical
philosophy does something in this respect to modify
the pride of dogmatic metaphysics. The thought of
the eternal God cannot be limited by the conditions
cf time. The apparent contradiction involved in the
term the eternal now is no greater than that of
any other similar attempt to represent in thought the
union of the infinite and the finite. The sublime
expression of St. Peter, "One day is with the Lord as
a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day,"
strains to express that fulness of knowledge which
must embrace all seeming contingencies. " The arc
of an infinite circle is a straight line," and this is

98 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
true how rigid soever we may try to make our defini
tion of the circle or of the straight line. The fore
knowledge by an infinite intelligence of the operations
of a perfectly free will is in one aspect of it a blank
contradiction in terms, but it is none the less impos
sible to refute the fundamental verity involved in it,
if we adequately apprehend what we mean by such
terms as infinite and eternal.
The doubt or difficulty felt by Zacharias himself has
been the occasion of much speculation, especially con
sidering that the subsequent infliction upon the aged
priest is intentionally represented as a punishment.
The notion of a self-imposed silence is contrary to the
spirit of the entire narrative and to the meaning of the
words.1 The significance of the name assumed by the
angel here deserves special remark. The probability is,
as we have seen, that Gabriel means "man of God," or
"God-man," and is introduced to set forth more clearly
the functions of one who in earlier times2 had proved
himself to be the agent and manifestation of Divine
love to Israel. He who had erewhile proclaimed the
advent of the true Son of man will not now brook the
vestige of unbelief. If heavenly promise falls thus on
human ears, and additional sign is required of its
truthfulness, that sign shall be the deafening of such
unwilling ears, the fettering of such unwilling tongue.
Because 3 Zacharias did not believe the angel's words,
he must thus learn the danger of his cavil and his
1 Theyare threefold. Ver. 20, tttuiirwv toy fir) Swd/iEvog XaXijacu, repeated in
ver. 22, ouk r/Sivaro XaXfjoat, with the word Km foe, which is used for both dumb
and deaf. So also the expression, ver. 64, 'AvvpxBri dk rb trrojua airov TapaxpiJtta
ical 1) yXSaoa avrov. As De Wette says, the nairiov indicates the fact, and /«/
Svv. XaX. the effect. * Dan_ viii. 16 ; ix. 21.
3 avff (bv is no Hebraism. Matthias, § 480. See also Luke xix. 44 ; Acts
xii. 23.

n.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 99
doubt. Many opponents of the authenticity of the
narrative insist upon the injustice of the penalty, as
compared with the manner in which Abraham and
Sarah were treated under similar circumstances. But
notwithstanding a certain similarity, there were some
grave differences. Abraham's faith in this matter is
one of the commonplaces of Biblical thought. Neither
Abraham's laughter nor his wife's can be put down
to unbelief. St. Paul1 gathered from the narrative a
totally different impression. The name given by Abra
ham to the child of his old age, " Isaac," meaning
laughter, may have implied joy, amazement, and sur
prise, but not incredulity. Moreover, as Witsius well
observes, in Abraham's case there was far more reason
for hesitation. This kind of birth was in his day a new
thing in the earth. But Zacharias must have been
familiar with the history of Abraham, Manoah, and
Hannah, and if he used the same expression of doubt
fulness, the "Whereby shall I know this?" of Abraham,
He who searches the heart saw fundamental differ
ence in his posture of mind.
De Wette, who sympathized with Strauss in his
attack upon this part of the record, introduces a sen
tence z which does much to refute the mythical origin
of the narrative in Luke. The difference, says he, is so
great between the two cases, when taken in their en
tirety, that the one could not be a copy of the other.
The somewhat similar inquiry subsequently made
by the Virgin Mary,3 was perfectly consistent with her
submission of herself to the Divine will. But Abraham,
1 Gen. xvii. 17 ; xviii. 9-15 ; xxi. 6, 7 ; Rom. iv. 18-21.
2 Exeg. Handbuch. Lucas, i. 18.
3 Not Kara ri yvwaop.at, but simply ttuiq iorat tovto.
8 *

ioo Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
Mary, and Zacharias, might each have used precisely
the same words, yet their motive and inner feeling
might have been profoundly different. The rebuke of
the angel points to a characteristic difference. ' The
dumbness, the inability to speak, was full of significance.
For a while all garrulous proclamation of the fact was
interdicted. It was a school wherein the spirituality
of the priest was both quickened and completed.2 It
would have led to heart-searching and high aspira
tion. Strauss complains "that the infliction failed of
its effect, as Elizabeth clearly knew the name that
had been given to the child by the angel." This is
simply absurd. It was impossible that the mother of
the child could have been kept ignorant of the angelic
message. Means were at hand for communicating
with Zacharias. The writing-tablet was in use in the
family, and though Elizabeth knew the name, she had
to some extent voluntarily shared the punishment of
her husband, for their friends and acquaintances were
kept in entire ignorance of the transaction. Thus,
so far from the dumbness having failed of its purpose,
it had in fact gone beyond its original design, and by
voluntary reticence communicated itself to another.
While Zacharias .tarried in the temple, the people
began to fear some Divine infliction upon the priest
for a ceremonial informality, and when they saw him,
the impression made upon them was that he had seen
a vision in the temple. Such a vision was still in their
imagination the precursor of death or calamity. They
had not yet learned the Divine meaning of their own
1 Lange, Das Leben Jesu, ii. Band. 2 Abtheilung ; Witsius, 1. u. Excercitatio,
xv. §22.
2 L. Von Rohden. Johannes der Taufer in seinem Werken und Leben iar-
gestelt, p. 29.

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 101
psalm, " In thy presence is fulness of joy." His
excited manner, his silence, and his gestures partly ex
plain themselves. Time alone can reveal the grandeur
ofthe hope that is being kindled in his doubting breast.
When the days of his ministration are completed, he
retires to his home in the hill country of Judaea.1
The Apocryphal Gospel of St. James2 refers to the
dumbness of Zacharias as a well-known fact occurring
during the period in which the parents of Mary were
seeking a resting-place for her, and persuading Joseph
to act as her temporary protector. Zacharias is spoken
of, moreover, as the high priest, an office which it is
clear from our narrative and from the lists of the
high priests he could never have filled. The period
during which Zacharias is said to have kept silence
was while Mary was weaving, under his sanction, a
portion of the veil of the temple, " the scarlet and the
true purple " portions of the material having fallen by
lot to her. The tarrying of Zacharias in the temple,
and the anxiety of the people lest harm should have
befallen him, are given in connection with the account
of his cruel murder by Herod's officers. The cause
of the murder is stated to be that Herod sought for
the young child John, on the pretext that he was
destined to be king over Israel, and that Zacharias
1 Lightfoot and Witsius beautifully contrast the possibilities of this dumb
service in the temple with the abundant gift of speech with which the preachers
and ministers of the New Covenant must have been endowed to do their won
derful work of convincing the understandings and saving the souls of men.
Quandoquidem in plerisque illius partibus manuum prsecipue usus erat ut
tolerabilior linguae defectus esset. Casterum Evangelii ministerium, quum
potissimum in verbi prasdicatione consistat, per mutos peragi non potest :
quamobrem principes illius prsecones, patriam solum linguam primitus edocti
et aliarum gentium respectu muti, extraordinario multarum linguarum dono
munifice et mirifice locupletati sunt, nullis ut gentibus muti essent. — Witsius,
1. c. §24.
2 Tischf. Evangelia Apocrypha— Protevangelium Jacobi, cap. 8-1 1 and 2\.

103 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
refused to say where he was, and was consequently
slain in the vestibule of the temple of the Lord about
daybreak. And the sons of Israel did not know that
he had been murdered.1
The numerous historical blunders crowded into this
chapter, together with the entire tone of the narrative,
form a striking contrast to the dignified record of St.
Luke. The statements made in the Koran are less
discrepant. 2
After the return of Zacharias to Juttah, in the hill
T The following translation of Prot. Jac. c. 24, is given in the Ante-Nicene
Library, vol. xvi. p. 14 : " But at the hour of the salutation the priests went
away, and Zacharias did not come forth to meet them with a blessing, according
to his custom. And the priests stood waiting for Zacharias, to salute him at
the prayer, and to glorify the Most High. And he still delaying, they were all
afraid. But one of them ventured to go in, and he saw clotted blood beside
the altar ; and he heard a voice saying, ' Zacharias has been murdered, and
his blood shall not be wiped up until his avenger come. ' And hearing this
saying, he was afraid, and went out and told it to the priests. And they
ventured in, and saw what had happened ; and the fretwork of the temple
made a wailing noise, and they rent * their clothes from the top even to the
bottom. And they found not his body, but they found his blood turned into
stone. And they were afraid, and went out and reported to the people that
Zacharias had been murdered. And all the tribes of the people heard, and
mourned, and lamented for him three days and three nights. And after the
three days, the priests consulted as to whom they should put in his place, and
the lot fell upon Simeon ; for it was he who had been warned by the Holy
Spirit that he should not see death until he should see the Christ in the flesh."
2 Alkoran, c. iii. Sale's translation. " Zacharias called on the Lord and said,
Lord, give me from Thee good offspring, for Thou art the hearer of prayer.
And the angels (Gabriel, say the commentators) called to him while he stood
praying in the chamber, Verily God promiseth thee a son, named John, who
shall bear witness to the Word which cometh from God, an honourable person,
chaste, and one of the righteous prophets. He answered, Lord, how shall I have
a son, when old age hath overtaken me and my wife is barren? The angel
said, God doth that which He pleaseth. Zacharias said. Lord, give me a sign.
The angel said, Thy sign shall be that thou shalt speak to no man for three
days, otherwise than by gesture. Remember thy Lord often, and praise Him
evening and morning." See also a repetition of the same matter, with small
alteration, t. xix.
* There are two readings of this passage. Tischf. prefers rai avrot mptsaxi-
csavro airo avui8ev 'iuig Karui : the reading of C. BivsxicravTO ra 'tpana avTSiv
is preferred by the translator. The former, with its ungrammatical form, may
be an apocryphal reference to the rending of the veil of the temple.

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 103
country of Judaea, Elizabeth conceived, and for five
months concealed herself. Whatever other reasons
may be conjectured for this course, we are distinctly
told that she was full of thanksgiving because God
had condescended to take away what had been the
curse of her childlessness. In the beginning her pious
hope went no further than this. Before the birth of
her child, she was made aware of the still more
exalted destination of her kinswoman, and was fa
voured with the society of the lowly maiden who had
been selected by Eternal Love to become the mother
of the Son of God.1 Elizabeth was auditor of that
burst of psalmody which came from the heart and lips
of Mary when she found herself in the home of her
aged relative. From her lips came the exulting cry,
" Blessed be thou among women, and blessed be the
fruit of thy womb." 2
1 The visit* and journey of the maiden was an unusual proceeding, but it
cannot be said that she was not accompanied by mother or sister. There is
no necessity to suppose the circumstances of Matt. i. 17-20 to have occurred
as yet. Lange, Leben Jesu, ii. 85 ; EUicott, H.L. p. 51.
2 The supposed recognition of Mary by the unborn child of Elizabeth is an
unnecessary exaggeration of the narrative on which some patristic and Roman
Catholic writers enlarge with much unction. Maldonatus quotes Ambrose
Bede, Origen, Chrysostom, and many others, who speak of this event as sign
of the prophetic gift having been bestowed on John before his birth. Augustine
refers to the exultation of John, "who not as yet had seen the light, as a thing
not to be believed as possible except by the direct inspiration of the Holy
Spirit." Augustine had too much sense to lay emphasis on the idea of John's
pre-natal inspiration ; but it seems to be a. point of high importance in the
Catholic theology, as it provides an analogyto the supposed fact of the immacu
late conception of the Virgin Mary herself. Bourdaloue, 1. c. , in his Discours pour
le Feste de S. Jean Baptiste, says : ' ' Car ne pensez pas qu'il ait attendu jusqu'au
temps de sa predication pour rendre temoignage au Sauveur du monde. D^s le
sein de sa mere il avait deja commence1. Ce tressaillement que ressentit Eliza
beth trois mois avant la naissance de ce fiis si cher et donne de Dieu ; cette joye
dont il fut saisi et qu'il fit sensiblement paroistre ce furent les premiers temoig-
nages qu'il rendit a son Dieu. Fervens Nuncius s'ecrie St. Pierre Chrysologue,
qui ante ccepit nuntiare Christum quam vivere. " Keim, 1. u. p. 478, compares
the supposed inspiration of the unborn John with an extravagance of the Book
Sohar on Exodus, where the unborn children of Israel were said to have praised
God at the Red Sea. But this is not justified by Luke's narrative.

104 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
The recent history of Elizabeth had prepared her for
the Divine communication : she was filled with the
Spirit, both to speak and to listen, and probably it was
on the ears of Elizabeth alone that the song of Mary
fell. We cannot pass it without comment, for the
simple reason that it expresses the tone of religious
life and thought prevalent in this sacred home, and
that it is therefore a guide to the earliest influences
that were brought to bear upon the mind of John. It
is formed on the Old Testament model. It is a psalm
of triumph, in which the ring is heard of the songs
of Miriam, Hannah, and Deborah, while the spirit of
many ofthe psalms of Mary's minstrel ancestor breathes
through it. It has often been said that it is almost
a transcription of Hannah's song.1 This is by no
means the case. There are hardly two words of it
identical with the LXX. translation of that song.
There are phrases in it which recall the prayer of
Hannah,2 and others which correspond with expres
sions in certain Psalms,3 but there is an originality in
the arrangement, and a freshness in the poetical spirit
of this burst of sacred minstrelsy, which are all its own.
If every phrase had been a biblical fragment, this
would not have militated against either its originality,
appropriateness, or authenticity ; it would simply have
assisted us to picture to ourselves the home life in
many a village in Judaea and Galilee, where the
thoughts of inspiration were household words; and
have told us that one whose heart and life and person
were to perform so solemn a part in the redemption
of the world, poured forth, in the hallowed words of the
older revelation, her hope for her country and mankind.
1 i Sam. ii. i-io. 2 Ibid. i. ii. 3 psa. ciii. 17 ; cxix. 21.

u.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 105
The remarkable circumstance, to which special atten
tion has already been called, is that it speaks of a state
of feeling and of hope in which we cannot discern one
trace of the cross, nor one hint of the humiliation and
agony through which the world's Saviour must pass to
His victory. A later hand, in the second century,
forging the Virgin's song for her, could scarcely have
concealed the current feeling which must have pre
vailed in the Christian community.
The spirit of Mary's song was this : —
" My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit has
abundantly exulted in God my Saviour." This is a
loftier burst of praise than Hannah's, which com
menced with these words : " My heart (icap&ia.) is
strengthened in the Lord, and my horn is exalted in
my God." The joy of Mary's spirit {irvev/jia) is a
nobler confession than the self-satisfaction of Hannah
in the lifting up of her horn of beauty, fame, renown,
or pride. The mouth of the old Hebrew mother was
enlarged against her more fortunate rival, and she was
delighted with her {awTnpiav) deliverance from re
proach. The mother of the Lord was exulting in the
love of God her Saviour. She saw her low estate,
and did not boast of her humility ; but in the circum
stance that God looked upon her lowliness with tender
compassion, she felt, from the inward throbbing of her
heavenly love, and the glances of prophetic light which
fell on her, that from that moment of her being {onto tov
vih) all generations would call her happy. Then she
proceeds to give the reason for this exalted conscious
ness of her high functions. " The Mighty One (6 Swarbs),
He who is the source of all power, hath wrought great
deeds in me; but the power is not overshadowing His

106 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
true nature ; it is none other than the Holy One of
Israel who has done it, and power and holiness reach
their highest expression in His ' mercy upon them that
fear Him.' " In that phrase Mary forcibly reminds us
of the Psalm from which she quotes "the mercy of the
Lord is from everlasting, and his righteousness unto
children's children." How sublime then was that
conception of God on which, as the current Biblical
thought, the infancy of John and Jesus must have been
nourished ! Power, Holiness, and Mercy, these are
His perfections. He is, moreover, a Saviour, a Lord,
worthy of unbounded praise, gratulation, and love ;
even making His claim felt throughout the whole
region of the soul and spirit, linking generations to
gether in His love of man. In the remaining portion
of the song, in which Mary blesses God, there is a
striking correspondence in general drift, but not in
its expression nor even in its spirit, with Hannah's
detailed reference to the will of God of all reverses
in the providential government of the world. Mary
recognizes, in the fact of the great things (jieyakeia)
wrought in her, the essential elements of God's judg
ment of the world. She here anticipates the Lord's
own language, " Now is the judgment of this world,
now shall the prince of this world be cast out." She
feels that if the holy thing that will be born of her
shall prove to be the Son of God, — if He shall be born
of her, the lowly maiden of a decayed and forgotten
house — born of her, the tender herb out of a dry
ground, in that very fact the self-consciously great, the
self-exalted, those who are peering above the heads of
others in the imagination of their hearts, the intel
lect ual tyrants of mankind, will be scattered like chaff

n.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 107
before the wind. What a foretaste this of Christ's
great beatitude on the meek ! Already, she continues,
" Great potentates has he hurled from their thrones,"
and her prophetic glance foresees as accomplished the
fall of the dominant powers of the world, the punc
tilious priest, the sumptuous prince, the venerable
scribe, the gods and kings of the nations. The meek
shall inherit the earth, the humble ones shall hear
thereof and be glad. All lowly, lofty brows shall be
crowned, in her crowning. The hungry shall be fed,
the rich sent empty away, and thus a reversal of the
common maxims of the world shall be effected in the
simple fact of the incarnation of God. He who knew
her better than any other save her Son, exclaimed,
" Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that be
lieveth that Jesus is the Son of God ? "1 The song was
not completed without more specific reference to the
fact that God's servant Israel was hastening to his irre
mediable ruin ; but God is faithful, and all the mercy
promised to Abraham and his seed for ever is still in
His heart, and He has come at length to strengthen,
sustain, and save His people.2 Thus she links the
mighty thing done in herself with the oath and promise
given to the fathers. Blessed be God, they did not die
in hopeless illusion. They were trusting in no shadowy
dream of future glory to their race. God's oath is
inviolable, His mercy endureth for ever.
After the utterance of this wondrous psalm of hea
venly hope, Mary remained with her kinswoman almost
until the birth of the child of Elizabeth.3 When this
1 1 John v. 5. 2 avreXafltTO IcrparjX iraidbg avrov.
3 Unnecesary difficulty has been made about this chronology. Five months
Elizabeth hid herself, in the sixth month the annunciation was made to Mary.

108 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
joyful event occurred, neighbours and friends congra
tulated the priestly pair. The Lord was believed by
them to have magnified His mercy. It is remarkable
that though the parents of this child entertained such
a lofty conception of his destiny, and spake much of
their happiness in thus having the Hebrew reproach
of childlessness taken away from them, they do not
appear to have dreamed of his being the promised
Messiah. The name that he was to receive was
neither " Jesus," nor " Emmanuel," but " John." He
was sent from God, but was not the life and light of
the world, and it is implied that they knew it.
This name was given on the eighth day, when the
ordinance of circumcision was administered. In place
of the classical lustratio,1 and dies lustricus or nominalis,
there was on this occasion solemn admission by cir
cumcision into the theocratic family. Zacharias and
Elizabeth were not following any special custom in
formally assigning the heaven-sent name to their child
at his circumcision, but they certainly established a
precedent that has been widely followed in the Chris
tian Church ; they mingled prayers, praise, holy sacra
ment, and consecration, with the open utterance of the
name. The dispute between Elizabeth and her neighbours
about the name, led them to refer the matter by signs
Since Mary remained with Elizabeth three months, and left Judsea before the
birth of John, the discovery of her pregnancy could not have been made by
Joseph until after her return to Nazareth. This is the order of the Evan
gelium de Nativitate Mario;, cap. 9-11. See Greswell, Diss. 14; Ebrard's
Gospel History, §34, E. T. ; EUicott, His. Lee. p. 51. The difficulty Strauss has
found in the comparison of Matthew's account with Luke's is quite gratuitous.
1 It was customary for Greeks and Romans to give their names to children
on the eighth, ninth, or tenth day. Many of the solemnities of these days are
referred to by Isaac Casaubon, Ad Satyr, ii. Persii ; Doughtceus, in Analectis
Sacris, part ii., quoted by Witsius, Exercit. Sac. p. 498; art. "Nomen,"
Smith's Diet. Antiquities, p. 802.

ii. J of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 109
to the father. He took the writing-tablets and con
firmed the name of John.1 We cannot doubt that the
Evangelist represents the deaf-muteness of Zacharias
as having been brought to a miraculous termination by
this expression of his faith in the goodness and faith
fulness of God. There is nothing supernatural in the
fact of such dumbness, nor in its sudden cessation :
the supernatural feature is the timing of the infliction
and its correspondence with the prophetic words of an
angel. That a man who contributed so great a gift
to the kingdom of God, should have been thus lifted
above the ordinary experiences of humanity, does not
make a very serious demand upon the faith of any
one who believes in a living God, or in a revelation
of His will, through the intelligence of certain in
dividuals. Whether Zacharias must be deemed infal
libly correct in his explanation of what happened
to him in the temple, may be an open question ; but
there is a remarkable indication that he was filled
with the Holy Spirit in the burst of inspiration that
subsequently broke from his lips. The hymn of Zacha
rias was in substance poured forth at this culminating
moment of his life. There is no serious difficulty in
this, unless we come to the conclusion that the human
soul, in its loftiest moments, and when consciously alive
to the part it is playing in the evolution of the great
world-plan of God, cannot rise above commonplace
either in thought or diction. There is no greater psy
chological puzzle here than may be found in the records
of a thousand bursts of unprepared eloquence which
1 If Zacharias wrote in Greek [lirrt rather tha lo-ra t], it would, as Grotius
observed, be a further expression of the confidence he had in his own heavenly
vision ; but as he probably wrote in Hebrew, "\StS pnV, there was no neces
sity for any note of time.

no Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
have fallen from human lips under the pressure of
strong emotion. A certain ordination and parallelism
of thought, a rhythm and measured flow of words,
were the appropriate accompaniments of the utter
ance of such a man at such a moment. The silent
months during which restraint had been put upon the
vocal thanksgiving of the Hebrew priest, provide all
the opportunity needed, on the purely human side, for
such an outburst of holy song.
It is not only a gift of the spirit of prophecy to the
Christian Church, and therefore rightly adopted into
her worship, but it is a further hint of the kind of
influence to which the youth of John was subjected.
It is distinctly claimed as a prophecy, and Zacharias
is declared to be " filled with the Holy Spirit." A sim
ilar qualification is ascribed in ver. 41 to Elizabeth,
and the angel predicts the same grace as one of the
chief features of John's own character. This mode of
expression is applied to the twelve, to the whole
Church : to the apostles Peter and Paul.1 The Spirit
was not poured out on old men and maidens, nor on
humanity at large, nor was it made the chief method
of the dispensation of grace until the Christ was glori
fied, until He shed forth that which the outside world
could see and hear.2 Then it became the law of the
Spirit of life that believers should be filled 3 with the
Spirit, and that fellowship with unseen and eternal
things, a lofty unworldly impulse guiding them to
perfect satisfaction and rest in God, a holy imitation
of Jesus, a full assurance of faith, a Divine power of
suffering and patience, a deep humility, a gentle sweet
ness and meekness, a holy wrath against evil, with
' Acts ii. 4 ; iv. 8, 31 ; xiii. 9. » John vii. 38, 39 ; Acts ii. 33. 3 Eph. v. 18.

il] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. in
compelling and persuasive speech, should all find their
abundant realization in the gift of the Holy Ghost.
The Holy Spirit was not given in fulness until it was
poured forth abundantly by the risen Christ, yet the
prophets of the Old Testament had been taught the
source of their inspiration.1 The sweet singer of Israel
cried, " The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his
word was in my tongue." 2 Moses prayed, " Would
God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that
the Lord would put his spirit upon them;"3 and the
Spirit of God came upon Balaam,4 Saul,5 Azariah,6
and Ezekiel.7 Job8 recognizes the Spirit of God as the
source of human life and understanding, and the Spirit
of God is described in the Proverbs as the means of
Divine communication to man.9
The prophecy of Zacharias was Hebrew in its tone
and phraseology, and the LXX. version of the Old Testa
ment will supply parallels for many of its expressions.
I am not in the least disposed to accept the arrange
ment of the song into strophes and antistrophes, after
the fashion of Bishop Jebb,10 nor to adopt his position
that much light is thrown upon its grammatical diffi
culties by making it to consist of two songs or sets of
semi-choruses interwoven with each other, which may
be separated from one another, and translated in closer
harmony with Greek grammar. Any such artificial
arrangement appears utterly at war with the historical
origin of the song, while the grammatical roughnesses
1 Schottgen, HorosHeb. i. 255, says of the phrase, "LocutioJudasisfamiliaris."
Bammidbar Rabba, § 13, fol. 221-4, de Mose et lxx. senioribus Israelis, ' ' Ipse
et illi omnes'impleti sunt Spiritu sancto. " 2 2 Sam. xxiii. n.
3 Numb. xi. 29. * Ibid. xxiv. 2. Si Sam. x, 10 ; xix. 23.
6 2 Chron. xv. r. i Ezek. xi. 24. 8 Job xxxii. 8 ; xxxiii. 4.
' Prov. i. 23. I0 Jebb's Sacred Literature, §21.

112 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
or ellipses favour the idea that we have before us the
simple and fervent outpouring of a surcharged soul.
It is not only that Zacharias sees before him the child
of his old age, the herald of a brighter day, the Elijah
of the kingdom of God, but he knows the secret of
Elizabeth and Mary. He believes that God has come
to succour and to save His people in some new and
wonderful fashion. He is alive to the special favour
shown to the humble heiress of the throne of David,
and he blends all the rapture of his own heart and hers
in his utterance of praise. " Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel (probably in Hebrew, Jehovah the God of Israel),
for he hath visited his people (iirecrice-^raTo, with the fami
liarity of a friend and the tenderness of a physician),
and hath -wrought redemption (XvTpacriv) for them." He
was not confining his thought to deliverance from
political servitude, for, as we see later on, sin and
death, bewildering unrest and spiritual bondage, are
some of the tyrannies from which he believes salvation
possible. This redemption is at once referred to " the
horn of salvation raised in the house of his servant David."
The horn is the image of strength and safety rather
than of ornament or beauty. "The horn of David"1
was doubtless the source of the expression, the visit and
revelation of Mary, the cause of his congratulation.
More than a slight hint is thus given of the belief
held by Zacharias and by Luke (whatever difficulties
the genealogies may present), that Mary was of the
house and lineage of David. When he at once asso-
2 Schottgen, Horce Heb. i. 259, cites Mechilta. fol. 29, *. "Quum audirent
gentes, quod Deus extulisset cornu Israelis eosque in terram detulisset tunc
cceperunt irasci ; " with many other proofs that the horn of salvation was a
phrase which the rabbinical writers associated with the time of Messiah. Psa.
cxxxii. 17. Comp. Ezek. xxix. 21.

n.J of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 113
ciates the fact of the approaching birth of the heir of
David with that which God had proclaimed by the lips
of holy prophets from the beginning of the ages, going
right back to the protevangelium uttered in paradise,
he feels that he is one of the glorious brotherhood who
have linked the generations hand in hand. The torch
of prophecy flames up as he lights it at their forgotten
altars. Zacharias then defines more fully the salvation
which has been accomplished, as a " deliverance from
our enemies and from the hands of all that hate us." With
the history of Israel in his memory, its strange vitality
and innumerable falls, and all the hatred, the scoff, and
tyrannous rule of the great nations and powers of the
world, such "salvation" (o-cornpiav) justifies his burst
of praise. With a fervour that does not stop for Greek
prepositions, he hurries on, " so as to have exercised
mercy towards our fathers,"1 i.e., not merely by the ful
filment of promises on which they lived and died, to
have made it clear to us their children that they did
not live and die upon a shadowy, illusive hope ; but
also actually to have affected their present position,
and completed the redemption which, as conscious
beings, they are still awaiting. Further, " let him be
blessed for ever that he has remembered his holy covenant,
even the oath'1 which he sware to our father Abraham,
that he would grant that we, being delivered out of the
hands of our enemies, might worship him without fear, in
' See a similar grammatical usage, Luke x. 39.
2 1 prefer, with Winer, Bleek, Meyer, and Alford, to regard opxov as the object
of p.vr\oQrpiat. There is an instance (Isa. Ixiii. 7) where this verb is seen to
govern the accusative, but if that cannot be pressed, it may be attracted, by the
ov which follows it, into the accusative. The opKOV is in apposition with the
StaDrjKrig. God's oath is His side of the covenant, and that part of it which He
has specially remembered. It is true that optvivat is often constructed with a
dative, but not exclusively so. Acts vii. 17 ; James v. 12.

114 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
holiness and righteousness all the days of our life." In
the bitter memories of captivity and Divine forsak
ing, Israel might well have lost heart, but not while
such faith as this was lighting her altar fires. Holi
ness and righteousness ; loving, fearless worship ; de
liverance from the oppressor's hand, from cruel exile,
from threats of profanation or extinction at the hands of
Antiochus or Caesar, and a lifelong rest in God — such
are the visions that float before the priest, and which
gather like an aureole of light around the head of the
little child of his old age. Is it incredible and unhisto
rical, because perhaps it is not common-place, that in
holy song Zacharias should have gone still further, and
foreshadowing the future destiny of the child about
whom such hopes had been kindled, should have cried
— and "thou little child shalt be called" that is, be recog
nized as well as be, " a prophet of the Highest"? Then he
took up the language of Malachi and Isaiah, similarly
blended afterwards by John himself, " thou shalt go before
the face of the Lord to prepare his ways."1 In the hearts
of the people, in the institutions of Judaism, the Lord
Himself needed that preparation should be made, before
the sublime truth of the Incarnation, before the gift of
the Holy Ghost, could be received.2 The preparation of
the ways of Jehovah is made to consist of two things.
(a) The giving knowledge of salvation to His people in
the remission of their sins, the salvation consisting of
the remission.' (b) The guiding or right directing of
their feet, their mode of life and conduct, into the way
' Mai. iii. i and iv. 5 ; Mark i. 2, 3.
2 If we try to catch the order of the remaining thoughts, we must observe
that ver. 77 and the latter clause of ver. 79 are alike introduced by a genitive
article with the infinitive, and probably stand in close relation, if not of appo-

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 115
of peace ; so that God's way becomes man's way,
God's salvation becomes man's peace. Whence can
such blessed (yva>ai<;) knowledge come ? How shall
"the way of peace," which according to both prophets
and psalmists the sinner never could find, be revealed ?
On what does " the salvation, even the forgiveness of
sins," really depend ? With a flash of inspiration,
Zacharias sees that it approaches us through the tenderly
compassionate mercy of our God, in the full exercise of
which a branch of light from the highest heaven has
appeared to give light to those that sit in darkness and the
shadow of death.
The kind of influence and education to which this
strangely-gifted child was submitted may be partially
gathered from these two songs. Nor would this in
ference be very seriously impugned, if we should grant
the correctness of Schleiermacher's or Keim's theory
as to the composition of these noble New Testament
psalms.2 The early home of John was the priestly family of
Zacharias, with all its sacerdotal habits and converse,
its religious excitement and ritual, and frequent asso
ciation with the temple service and worship. Connected
on the mother's side with the tribe of Judah and the
1 The verb dvariXXut is used for the rising above the horizon of sun or
stars, and of the rising out of the ground of the sprout and germ of living
vegetation : avaroXri is used by LXX. to translate r"!J2;f, which is also pro
geny of man, and acquires a technical meaning, as given to the great Son and
Heir of David. Jer. xxiii. 5, xxxiii. 15, civaarriaoi rSi AavoieiS avaroX^v StKaiav.
AvaroXtjv is used by Zech. iii. 8. But both ideas of the word are blended in
Isa. lx. 1, ^ S6£a Kvpie iiri n't avariraXKev. Mai. iv. 2, the Sun of Righteousness,
dvanXct ipXv. The difficulty of preserving dvaroXr) in either of its primary
significations is difficult from the addition i£ tii//otrc, i.e., from the zenith rather
than the horizon, and the obvious significance of the bursting forth of light is
prominently preserved in the passage both in the liritpavat, &c. , which follows,
as well as the KarniQuvat k.t.X * Keim, 1. c. pp. 471-478.
9 *

116 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
house of David, the political aspirations of the people
would often be breathed loudly in his hearing. The
feverish expectation of a political Saviour, a Messiah-
Prince, a Deliverer from Roman bondage, would find
frequent expression in the home of Zacharias and Eliza
beth. They believed that the train of circumstances
had been already laid that would ultimately issue in a
full realization of the promises made to their fathers.
They knew that they were associated with the suc
cession of events which would bring in the fruition of
glorious visions on which their fathers lived and died.
They must have been peculiarly sensitive to the faith
fulness of God, and the sacredness and vitality of the
true Israel. The canticles reveal a vivid interest in,
and acquaintance with, the canonical Scriptures. The
phraseology of the older histories, of the Psalms of
David, of Isaiah and Malachi, were household words
in that mountain home. The story of Abraham would
be often recited in the neighbourhood of the sacred
cave of Machpelah. The career of David could not
have been unfamiliar to a youth who was often wander
ing over the slopes of Hebron and the fields of Bethle
hem, and hunting for wild honey in the wilderness of
Judsea. The gates of the spirit-world had often been
opened to the parents of John and Jesus. This may
have added some weird and ghostly fancies to the
tenor of their daily life, and possibly had something
to do with the special vocation assigned to the youth of
John. He must have learned that God's judgments
upon human nature are supreme and final, reversing
the common estimates of men. He must have been
educated in the belief of the approach of radical
changes in the body-politic, in the introduction of a

ii.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. 117
r^ew standard of holy living. The God whom he was
taught to worship was intensely personal, was faithful
to promise, accessible to prayer, was the highest God,
who yet condescends to come very near to His people.
He was rendered peculiarly alive to the misery of sin,
the possibility of its forgiveness, the ground of that
forgiveness in the loving compassion and kindness of
the Highest One, who was nevertheless their God. The
condition of Israel itself was one of comparative dark
ness and shadow of death. It was a matter of faith
to him that persecution, that the repression of religious
hopes, and that the perils and fears amidst which his
fathers had worshipped, would pass away, and that this
great, holy, compassionate God, would prove to be their
Saviour, Deliverer, and Friend.
How soon after the birth of John his parents died
cannot be determined, but we are told that the child
was in the desert, ever waxing strong in spirit until
the day of his public appearance, his official inaugu
ration, his open assumption of his prophetic mission
— until the day of his (dvaSei^eo}<;) showing to Israel.
The full significance of this expression may require
further exposition. It is enough to say here that
he must very soon have acquired personal indepen
dence. His wants were religiously limited, his tastes
simple, and his dependence on his brother-men there
fore reduced to a minimum. Taught from the first
that he was to become a prophet of the Lord, he would
ponder the lives and words of the heaven-sent men
of old. Aware of the fact that he was to be asso
ciated with tbe fulfilment of the great hope of the
nation, he could not have misconstrued the prophetic
words on which the nation lived. He must have

118 Examination of the Biblical Record [lect.
sighed in secret over the profanation of holy things,
the subserviency of the Sanhedrim and priesthood to
foreign rule, the corruption of all classes, the fierce
bigotries, the aberrations of heart with which the
people were torn and divided, the severance between
the fathers and the children, the leaders of the people
and the multitude. He must have anticipated the
great and terrible day of the Lord, the coming of the
King of glory and majesty, with awful reverence and
dread emotion. So far as we know, religiously fulfilling
the vow of the Nazarite, separated from human society,
cut off from the ordinary converse of men, he derived
little advantage from the doctors of the law, from
whom Jesus, at twelve years of age, is represented as
receiving instruction. We do not imagine that he was
trained in any of the existing schools. His education
was the memory of his childhood and the knowledge
of his commission, and was effected by the Spirit of
the living God. His schoolmasters i were the rocks of
the desert of Judaea, the solemn waters of the Dead
Sea, the eternal Presence that fills the solitudes of
nature, the sins, the shame, the vows, the hopes, the
professions of his countrymen. The Messianic hope
of the people must have taken deep root in his mind.
We shall have hereafter to assay and estimate its
quality, but if we may glean anything from the
specimens afforded by the Gospel of the infancy, con
cerning the religious influences of his home, there
was no reference to the personal suffering or vicarious
sacrifice of the Messiah, no anticipation of the cross
or the resurrection of the Christ. This much was
burned in upon his soul, that the kingdom of the
Messiah would be independent of the ordinary asso-

n.] of the Nativity of John the Baptist. ng
ciations of majesty ; that the hungry, the needy, the
lowly, the obscure, would become the rulers in this
kingdom, and that the meek would inherit the earth.
Light and salvation and deliverance would follow the
visit of a Divine Friend ; One born of woman would
yet appear like a descent from highest heaven of a
new luminary upon the world. If we may add to these
influences such thought as presents itself in the words
of the aged Simeon or Anna, we then trace the idea that
the heavenly light was expected to shine upon the Gen
tiles as well as on the people of Israel. By the prophetic
words of Simeon, treasured in the heart of Mary, John
may have known that the manifestation of the Christ
would occasion the fall as well as the rising again of many
in Israel, and be a sign to be spoken against. Admitting
that there is more trace of later authorship in the
language of Simeon than in that of Zacharias or Mary,
it yet breathes the same archaic spirit, and reflects the
tone of feeling to which the mind of John may have
been subjected.
The general effect of the whole of these influences
appears in the manhood and ministry of John. All that
we are definitely told is, that "the child waxed strong
in spirit." This was the main characteristic of his
development. The spirit was mightier than the flesh,
the outward circumstances gave way to the purpose
of his life. His will was stronger than the wills of
those with whom he came into contact, and he nursed
in the desert his hope of preparing the way of the
Lord. A solitary verse of Luke's Gospel is the only
detail of the early life of John. Those who reject the
poetic embellishment of the narrative are not unwilling
to accept this statement as historic. The Koran con-

120 The Nativity of John the Baptist. [lect. ii.
tains a few verses which are not inconsistent with the
Biblical narrative.
" We (the angels) said unto John the son of Zacharias, O John,
receive the book of the law with a resolution to study and observe
it. And we bestowed on him wisdom while yet a child, and mercy
from us, and purity of life ; and he was a devout person, and dutiful
towards his parents, and was not proud or rebellious. Peace be on
him, the day whereon he was born, the day whereon he shall die,
and the day whereon he shall be restored to life." I
1 Chap. xix. of Sale's translation.

LECTURE III.
JOHN THE EXPONENT OF THE OLD
TESTAMENT DISPENSATION.

LECTURE III.
JOHN THE EXPONENT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
DISPENSATION.
JOHN may not unreasonably be regarded as the
voice of some of the unconscious prophecies of
heathendom. Oriental influences were to some extent
focussed in his consciousness, and came through him
into historical relations with Christ and His apostles ;
but the literature and institutions of Israel provide the
main conditions of His mission. He has new truth to
utter, and a special office to fulfil, but we shall not
understand either of these, without a review of those
elements which are due to the age, to the race, and to
the civil and religious life in the midst of which his
lot was cast. These elements may be briefly stated
as fourfold. He was a Priest, he was a Nazarite, he
was a Prophet, and he was "more than a Prophet."
An investigation of the significance of these qualifica
tions of John, as the forerunner of the Christ, will
furnish us with some of the theological and ecclesi
astical lessons involved in his career.
§ i. The Priest.
We are told by the Evangelist Luke,1 that at a date*
which he asserts to have been contemporary with the
1 Luke iii. r, 2. 2 See Appendix.

124 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, with the tetrarchate
of Herod Antipas in Galilee, and the procuratorship
of Pontius Pilate in Judasa, with the high-priesthood of
Annas and Caiaphas, and the tetrarchates of Philip
and Lysanias — John the son of Zacharias came preach
ing in the wilderness of Judaea. The simple mention
of John's parentage is an assurance of his priestly
. birth, and since the biblical history of his nativity '
turns upon the sacerdotal functions of his father, we
are reminded at once that John belonged to the conse
crated tribe, and to the sacred family which had been
entrusted with the sacrificial cultus, the religious in
stitutions, and much of the teaching power of the
theocracy. It is true that we have no record2 of his
taking any part in the temple service, and no express
reference to his priestly functions; yet, in the simple
fact of his birth, there is some light thrown upon his
position, and some explanation of the hold which he
rapidly gained upon the sympathies and attention of his
contemporaries. It was not uncommon for prophets
to be chosen from among the priests. Thus, Jeremiah
and Ezekiel,3 though called to a still higher office, and
empowered to criticize and reform the national life and
their own religious order, had doubtless a higher power
of utterance, and felt that their prophetic authority was
augmented in force, by the circumstance that they had
a prescriptive right to speak to Israel in the name
of Jehovah. They belonged to the family and to the
1 See passage from Gospel of the Ebionites, preserved by Epiphanius adv.
Hser. xxx. 13 [Epiph. Opera, ed. Petavius, 1682 ; vol. i. p. 138]. Iwdwijs oc
tXiytro iivat f.K y'tvovs Aapwv rov Upsuig.
2 No scriptural record. We have seen in the extract from Jos. B. Gorion.
that he was regarded in one form of the Jewish tradition as magnus sacerdos.
3 jer. i. 1, 2 ; Ezek. i. 3.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 125
order and institution which exercised an hereditary
influence of consummate importance during the child
hood of the theocracy. They were priests. Ezra,1
the great historical character of the restoration, com
bined in his own person the characteristics of the
priest and the scribe. His literary work, his political
duties, his relation to the canon of Scripture, his con
spicuous place in the restoration of the national life,
were promoted by the fact that he was entrusted by
birthright with solemn responsibilities, and belonged to
an order of men from which he could not disengage
himself.2 Prophets, kings, and scribes were, as such, a
nobler class than the priests, not only by reason of the
special functions they were primarily called to dis
charge, but by the higher freedom and spontaneity of
their call, and by the variety of the duties to which they
were summoned or impelled. This is not the place to
discuss fully either the law of the sacerdotal appoint
ment, the purpose for which the priesthood continued
to exist, the strange and even revolting rites to which
the priests were inured, the history of the office in the
national development, the fundamental antithesis be
tween the prophet and the priest, or the capability
which the priesthood possessed of engrafting upon
itself other responsibilities. Still, a few words upon
this theme are necessary to a right apprehension of
the career of John.
1 Ezra vii. 1-5.
2 Ewald, Geschichte des Volkes Israel. Band 4, p. 145. " Diese priesterliche
Abstammung war fur ihn zwar ein machtiger Hebel sein kraftiges Streben und
Wirken gerade auf die Religion und Wissenschaft seines Volkes zu richten :
und da er das Muster eines solchen Priesters wurde wie ihn diese Jahrhunderte
verlangten, so tragt er in der Geschichte auch den Beinamen des Priesters
schlechthin, ein Beiname welcher sonst bei keinem anderen gebornen Priester
eine so hohe Bedeutung empfangen hat. Ezra vii. 11, 21 ; x. 10, 16 ; Neh.
viii. 2-9 ; xii. 26. Im. cod. Alex, tragt das I. Buch Ezra (sonst Ezra Apocryphus
oder EzraGrcecus genannt), die iiberschrift 0 'lepiiig.

126 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
A priesthood was probably contemporaneous with
the earliest division of labour. M. Comte1 assigns the
origination of priesthoods to fetishism when it is pass
ing from the worship of mere earthly or animal charms
to the cultus of the celestial fetish, i.e.., of heavenly
bodies, of sun, moon, stars, planets, and of the great
forces of nature. But this interpretation of the origin
of the religious idea is arbitrary and unverified. It is
true that man, as a religious being, eagerly seizes on
the help which confident pretension is always offering
to his instinctive mysticism. Men are naturally de
pendent, and resent by instinct all enforced isolation;
they delight to roll on the shoulders of others the
burdens that belong to their own. Hence the most
uncultivated as well as civilized races have divided
their common duties amongst themselves, and have
thus called into existence orders, castes or classes of
men, upon whom they have devolved the duty of
propitiating the Deity, of worshipping His awful
name with an appropriate' ceremonial, of preserving
the sacred traditions of their tribe or nation, and of
producing by force, fraud, argument, or persuasion,
unanimity of ethical and transcendental convictions.
Various principles of selection have been in vogue,
but they have all sprung from a primary sense of
universal responsibility. The hereditary principle was
commonly adopted in Egypt, India,2 and Palestine,
1 On reconnoitra, que le Ktichisme ' est alors essentiellement parvenu a l'etat
d'astrolatrie, qui constitue son plus haut perfectionnement propre, et sous lequel
s'effectue sa transition generate au polytheisme proprement dit. Or, cette
phase plus eminente, mais aussi beaucoup plus tardive du fetichisme fonda-
mentale, tend, en effet par sa nature spiciale, a provoquer directement le
developpement distinct d'un vrai sacerdoce. A Comte. Cours de Philosophit
Positive. Tome v. p. 58. See the argument of the whole Lefon, 52.
2 Diodorus, i. 73. Herodotus (ii. 143) declares that both to Hecatssus and
himself the Theban priests had indicated the hereditary succession and genea-

m,] Dispensation: the Priest. 127
and was not confined to the religious order of things ;
but, anterior to any such determination of an here
ditary guild or caste of priests, there is clear proof
that the personal, or at least the family responsibility
of offering sacrifice and worship to God, was widely
recognized. The word designating in the Hebrew Scriptures the
person entrusted with these responsibilities, does not
appear to have a clearly-defined meaning, and fluctu
ated in its earliest usage. Expositors differ as to its
etymology.1 The head of each household, in the
earliest times, is represented as a priest, and the
patriarchal and princely are hardly distinguished from
logical lists of their predecessors. See also Wilkinson's Notes to Rawlinson's
Translation, vol. ii. p. 224, and Manners and Customs of Egyptians, vol. i.
p. 316, from which it appears that the son of a priest was not compelled to
follow his father's profession. Kenrick's Ancient Egypt, vol. ii. c. T4. Man
ning's Ancient and Mediaeval India, vol. i. p. 69, ff. Roman priests were
originally appointed by the kings, but colleges of priests had the right of filling
up their numbers by cooptatio. See art. " Sacerdos, " Diet. Antiq. S. B. Gould.
Origin and Development of Religious Belief . Vol. i. p. 198, ff. , on the relation
of theocracies to caste. Hindu Tribes and Castes. M. A. Sherring. Chap. i. —
"The Brabman is the priest of the Hindu religion."
1 (IP is referred (1) by Schultens, Origg. Heb. p. 228 ; Vitringa, Comm. in
Jes. ii. p. 974 ; Cocceius, Lex. s.v ; Plumptre, art. " Priest " in Smith's Diet, of
Bible ; Bahr, Symb. ii. 15, to an Arabic root meaning "to be near" — making
" cohanim " those who draw near to God ; but this particular function is de
scribed by another word, when the order was fully developed. Lev. x. 3 ; Ezek.
xl. 46; xiii. 13. (2) Hitzig, Comm. Isa. lxi. 10 ; Fiirst, Lex. s.v ; Ewald,
Alterth. p. 272. Oehler, Herzog's Ency. art. " Priesterthum, " xii. p. 174 ; Hup-
feld on Psa. ex. 4, derive it from I'D, " to stand by," to assist. (3) A probable
etymology is from Arabic root " cahan," to predict, with its " cahant," " art of
presage," as the office of priest and prophet were in earliest instances combined.
This is the view preferred by Gesenius. Lex. s.v. and Kalisch. (4) Again, others
have referred 1<73 to a similar Arabic root, meaning to "serve, to minister,"
and especially to minister to a king. In this sense it is supposed to be used
Gen. xii. 43, 50 ; Exod. ii. 16 ; Job xii. 19 ; 2 Sam. viii. 18, where, though
frequently translated in LXX. and A. V. by phrases denoting political eminence,
the religious functions lay at the background. Thus Melchizedek, Jethro, the
sons of David, are undoubtedly declared to be in some sense " priests." The
etymology being doubtful, the connotation of the word is developed by cir
cumstances, and the office as such is ultimately differentiated from that of the
prophet and the prince.

128 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the sacerdotal functions. The patriarch builded his
altar, slew his victims, offered his sacrifices, and gene
rally directed the religious ceremonial of his house
hold.1 Thus Melchizedek, the king of Salem, was
a priest of the highest God,2 and Balaam, a prince
and prophet of Moab, is represented as offering a bul
lock and a ram on the altars erected for him.3 Every
head of a household was commanded in the first in
stance to slay the paschal sacrifice,4 and therefore to
perform priestly services ; and the household priest
hood5 was clearly recognized before the selection of
any tribe or family for the purpose. We see no trace
of the hereditary principle till in the first instance
Moses,6 then his family,7 and then the whole tribe to
which he belonged, were invested with functions which
were morally incumbent on every offerer.8
Levi occupied the same relation towards his brother
tribes as did the family of " Aaron the Levite " to the
rest of that tribe, both in respect of sacerdotal dignity
and temporal support. The whole dignity was at length
concentrated on the person of the high priest, the here
ditary representative of Aaron. It is, however, interest
ing to observe that the whole congregation of Israel 9
offered up the tribe of Levi as a sacrifice to Jehovah,
and by laying their hands upon the representative Le
vites, were supposed to have transferred their Divine
responsibility to the sacred family. The true source of
1 See Gen. xii. 7, 8 ; xiii. 4 ; xxii. ; xxviii. 19 ; xxxi. 54 ; xxxv. 7, 13 ; Job i. 5.
2 Gen. xiv. 18. 3 Numb, xxiii. 2, 14, 30. * Exod. xii. 7-22.
s Ibid. xix. 22-24. 6 Ibid. xxiv. 6. 7 Ibid, xxviii.
8 Numb. i. 49, 30'; iii. 6-10 ; viii. 8-22. Ewald, History of Israel (Eng. trans.),
vol. ii. p. 141, ff., regards the history of the priestly dignity of the Levites as
unhistorical ; and Dr. Colenso, Pentateuch and Moabite Stone, has carried the
scepticism of the validity of the narrative into many details.
9 Numb. viii. 5-22.

in.] Dispensation ; the Priest. 129
their holiness, of their consecration, of their sublime
function of "drawing near to Jehovah," was the choice,
the need, the previous responsibility of the entire people,
who were in fact " a kingdom of priests."1 This par
ticular tribe was chosen for the purpose as being the
tribe of Moses and Aaron, and it was made a substitute
for the first-born of Israel who were made holy unto
the Lord in virtue of the terrible devotion to God
of the first-born of the Egyptians. This circumstance
furnished the grandest conception of sacrifice and con
secration which is to be found in the Old Testament.
It was doubtless a division of labour, a voluntary
relinquishment on the part of a whole people of their
natural right to a large proportion of the fruits of
their productive toil, in order that they might secure
a certain satisfaction of their religious instincts and
needs ; that the worship of God might be rendered
adequately; and that the sacrifices, the incense, and all
the cumbrous ceremonial might be strictly attended to
without flaw or defection. It was also a proof that
Israel in the olden time — as Christendom has done in
these last days — shrank back in fear and trembling from
its high calling, and needed a long process of education
for this priestly work. The tribe of Levi was thus
thrown on the charity, on the religious sensibility, on
the loyalty of the other tribes. It appears, even from
the ' Mosaic narrative, that "the Levite within the
gates" of their cities was the poor and needy class, the
dependant, and mendicant. He had no other inheri
tance among Israel than that which the sufferance of
his brethren and their reverence for religious and tra
ditional custom provided for him. Scattered like the
1 Exod. xix. 6.
10

130 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
members of a sacred caste through the population, the
Levites were a perpetual reminder to the people of the
Divine idea, and kept up a continual relation with the
mother city. Even Micah the priestmaker, with his
fetishistfc notions of God and His worship, and not
withstanding his degraded moral tone, was comforted
and satisfied so long as he secured &. Levite to be his
-^•iest ; * tho ugh in later times the priests must have
rendered a divided allegiance to their national faith, and
fWAs=e often the most deadly transgressors of the law,
' feothin its ritual and moral aspects.2 All the Levites
-werernot priests, t hough all the orthodox Jewish priests
-were ILevites ; and" very frequently the biblical nar-
• rative called particular attention to the fact. Aaron,
• the -head of the entire hierarchy, was often described
¦as "the Levite."2 " The priests the Levites" is the
• term continually used to denote the family of Aaron.
'There was however an early development of sacerdotal
feud:4 Korah was a Levite, but he was backed by a
^powerful party of chiefs and princes, such as Dathan
and Abiram, who were of the tribe of Reuben. These
-sustained him in his assault, both upon the special
¦ dignity of the priesthood and upon the supreme au
thority of Aaron. Probably the fact that his associates
were of the tribe of Reuben, the first-born of the patri
archs, furnished ground for the assault upon a tribe
which may have been thought to have usurped its func
tions. In some respects Korah was in advance ©f his
day and time. He was ambitious, disloyal, rebellious
against the recently constituted hierarchy; but his
"gainsaying" rested upon what was a fundamental
•Judg. xyil x«il
2 Isa.. xxviii. 7, 8 ; lvi. 10-12 ; Jer. viii. 1, 2 ; Ewald, Geschichte des Velkes,
lit 704, 3 Exod. iv. 14. 4 Numb. xm.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 131
truth, that all the congregation was holy, that the
whole nation was priestly, and that he, as a Levite, had
been offered to the Lord. Moreover, Levite as he
was, he may have felt indignation against the here
ditary privileges conferred upon his own tribe, and
probably shared the opposition of the other tribes to
this solitary illustration in the Mosaic code of the
strictly hereditary principle. J The prophets subse
quently took higher ground than he had done ; and
they rebuked the assumptions of the priestly class,
and denounced even the divinely-appointed sacrifices
when these had ceased to express religious consecration.
If Korah had succeeded in his attempt to undermine
the authority of Aaron, and to establish the broad and
grand principle, " Every man his own priest," the con
centrated and inflexible character of the national re
ligion might have been destroyed at the outset. The
people had not then been educated to understand all
that was involved in the unity of the sanctuary, nor had
the idea or practice of holiness been universally appre
hended, nor could the typical character of the great
ceremonies and of the altar of burnt-offering have been
taught by the doctrine of individualism. If that lesson
had been lost, or never impressed upon the minds of
the people, much of the sacred mission of Israel to
the world would have failed of realization. In a fearful
catastrophe which Moses foresaw, and treated as a
special mark of Divine displeasure, Korah and all that
appertained to him were destroyed by earthquake, and
two hundred and fifty Levites were consumed by fire
1 Alexandre Weill, Moi'se et le Talmud, p. 120, ff. , agrees with Spinoza,
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, in attributing to the hereditary honours of the
tribe of Levi and family of Aaron the principal calamities and ultimate fall
of Israel.

132 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
from heaven.1 A remarkable difference characterized
the treatment of illegitimate aspirants to the prophetic
and priestly offices. When Eldad and Medad prophe
sied in the camp, and one ran and told Moses, and
when Joshua said, " My lord Moses, forbid them,"
the reply was, " Enviest thou for my sake ? would
God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that
the Lord would put his spirit upon them ! " 2 When
Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, encouraged perhaps by
these grand words of the great lawgiver, attempted to
invade the functions of Aaron, his language was, "Ye
take too much upon you, ye sons of Levi." The
political and religious end of the great disaster was
that the brazen censers of these rebellious men were
made into broad plates for a covering of the altar, to
be a memorial unto the children of Israel, that no
stranger which is not of the seed of Aaron should come
near to offer incense unto the Lord.3 Consequently
the hereditary principle was by express commandment
sanctified for these symbolic and ritual purposes, and
inability to show descent from Aaron was sufficient to
exclude from the priesthood.4 It might have been dif
ferent if the priestly functions had been of a prominently
moral or spiritual kind. It is true, that after settlement
in the Holy Land, the priest was regarded as the na
tional instructor and guardian of the law of God. We
read5 that the Lord spake to Aaron and to his sons, as
1 Numb. xvi. 20-35. Bishop Colenso (Pentateuch and Moabite Stone) has
striven to tear the entire position to fragments, to establish the late date of the
Levitical legislation, the still later introduction of the idea of the sanctity of
the house of Aaron, and of any discrimination between the priests and the
Levites. This is done by implying falsehood and other base motives as breath
ing through almost every line of the Mosaic and prophetic histories of the
Old Testament. See particularly Lectures 16 and 17.
2 Numb. xi. 26-29. 3 Ibid. xvi. 40.
< Ezra ii. 62 ; Neh. vii. 64 ; Jos. c. Apion, i. 7. s Lev. x. 8-11.

hi.] Dispensation : the Priest. 133
a statute for all generations, that they should abstain
from wine and strong drink, with other restrictions ;
that they might teach the children of Israel all the
statutes which the Lord had spoken unto them by the
hand of Moses ; and we see in the last of the prophetical
books,1 that " the priests' lips should keep knowledge,
that they (Israel) should seek the law at his mouth,
for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts." There
are instances given of dereliction from this high duty,
nor should the sublime scene of public humiliation be
forgotten when the Levites read the law in the hearing
of the people, and offered the marvellous prayer and
praise contained in Nehemiah ix. These ministerial
duties had peculiar reference to the ceremonial law,
and to questions of casuistry, ritual, or controversy.2
All these services are clearly referred to by Ezekiel,3
and they were coupled with minute ceremonial re
strictions of diet and dress. " They shall teach my
people the difference between the holy and profane,
and cause them to discern between the clean and un
clean. And in controversy they shall stand in judgment ;
and they shall judge it according to my judgments :
they shall keep my laws and statutes in all my assem
blies, and they shall hallow my Sabbaths." Moses, in
his general summary of the duties and destinies of the
tribes,4 when blessing Levi, said, " They shall teach
Jacob thy judgment and Israel thy law." In the
great reformation, in the days of Hezekiah, we remark
the eagerness of the Levites to discharge the duties of
1 Mai. ii. 1-7.
2 See Deut. xxi. 5 ; so also xvii. 8-12, where they are said to show the sen
tence of judgment in hard cases ; and xxxi. 10-13, to recite the law once in
seven years at the Feast of Tabernacles.
3 Ezek. xliv. 23, 24. 4 Deut. xxxiii. 8-12.

134 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the family of Aaron, and the higher devotedness of the
tribe as a whole as compared with the official and con
secrated priests.1 " The Levites were more upright in
heart to sanctify themselves than the priests."
"The priests the Levites" were not limited to sacri
ficial or to occasional ministerial duties ; they were the
body-guard of the tabernacle and the temple, and were
accustomed to bear arms in defence and protection of
religious rites. * The tribe of Levi began its career
with the treacherous slaughter of the Shechemites. It
was by the javelin that Phinehas asserted the Divine
vengeance, made an atonement for the vile sin of his
brethren, and secured for himself " the covenant of an
everlasting priesthood." 3 So we find the sons of Obed-
edom able to keep ward in the house of the Lord;4
so did Azariah the priest, with fourscore priests of Jeho
vah that were valiant men.5 Their musical instruments
were warlike, and they blew the blast on rams' horns
and silver trumpets, and shouted the war-cry, " Rise
up, O Lord, and let thine enemies be scattered."
Hophni and Phinehas fell in battle. Abiathar, Zadok,
Ahimaaz, Benaiah, the priests, were all warriors.
The priests were the trumpeters of Abijah's army.6
Jehoiada gained his victory over Athaliah with a cohort
of priests. The Maccabees were priests;7 Josephus,
1 " The teaching functions of the priest have," says a writer in Smith's Diet.,
' ' probably been unduly magnified by writers like Michaelis, who aim at bring
ing the institutions of Israel to the standard of modern expediency (Comm. on
Laws of Moses, i. 35-52), as they have been unduly depreciated byjahn and
Saalchiitz." See Oehler, in Herzog's Encyc. Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums, i.
148, urges that the rise of the order of scribes under Ezra, to whose special care
was entrusted the preservation and interpretation of the law, and who were not
confined to the Levitical tribe, had the tendency to confine the sacerdotal func
tions to ritual, and to limit the moral and intellectual duties of the priesthood.
2 Exod. xxxii. 26, 27 ; Dean Stanley's Lectures, series ii. pp. 407-410.
3 Numb. xxv. 11. 4 1 Chron. xxvi. 6-13. 5 2 Chron. xxvi. 17.
6 Ibid. xiii. 12. 7 2 Mace. viii. 1.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 135
the defender of Jotapata, was a priest as well as a his
torian ; and through the entire life of our Lord we see
how actively the priesthood combined with and wielded
the secular power to carry out their purposes of envy,
hatred, and malice. They were not the aged, worn
out, exhausted members of the sacred tribe that were
on active service: they were permitted to commence
their ministrations at twenty, and were not allowed to
continue after they were fifty years of age.1 Hence the
reference in Psalm ex., thus translated by Delitzsch ;
" Thy people are most willing on thy field day, in
holy festive garments. Out of the womb of the morn
ing cometh the dew of thy youth." They had need
of muscular strength, of youthful energy, of brave heart,
and fiery zeal, to fulfil the duties assigned to them.
From the time that they declared against the worship
pers of the golden calf, until the fall of Jerusalem, "the
priest the Levite" makes his frequent appearance as
the stern avenger of national apostacy; as deaf to all
pleadings of pity or of nature, as uncompromising in
his denunciation of idolatry, and in his vindication
of the sanctity of the law. The priests exacted the
fiercest vengeance on all who trifled with their theo
cratic order; and as Moses said of Levi, "he said unto
his father and to his mother, I have not seen him;
neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his
own children : for they have observed thy word, and
kept thy covenant."
The specific duties of the priests, the vicarious ap
proach to God by sacrificial rites, on behalf of the
entire people, created for them a vast and complicated
' The physical strength and completeness of the priest were matters on which
great emphasis was naturally laid. Lev. xxi. 16-24. See Oehler's art. " Priester-
thum im A.T." Herzog's Encyc.

136 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
round of service, which was neither ministerial nor
military. It was wholly independent of the moral in
struction of the people or the subjective condition of
the priest. They had to do certain things which no
other members of the sacred nation were at liberty
to perform. They were ceremonially fitted and provi
dentially honoured ta take into the presence of God the
gifts and sacrifices of the people, and to bring back
from the Lord His benediction and absolution. A cere
monial of cleansing and sacrificial atonement for their
own sins and imperfections, was in the first place
laid down, so that the dim symbol might be given of a
spotless and sinless nature prepared for high vicarious
duties. This was followed by investiture in the costly
robes in which their individuality was lost, and the type
was thus supplied of a mediatorial function that could
only be adequately realized when the true High Priest
should come, whose Divine person should be clothed
with human nature, who should enter into the heavenly
places, having obtained eternal redemption for all the
royal priesthood. The sacrificial atonement made for
all the sins of the priest himself, at his dedication to
the office, was repeated once every year, on the Day of
Atonement, in order to cancel all the iniquity and un
cleanness of the entire priesthood which might have
been previously unnoticed; while "the demand for
sinlessness was further symbolically expressed in the
demand for physical perfection, as the indispensable
prerequisite to any active participation in the service of
the priesthood."1
It is foreign to the purpose of these lectures to de
scribe the various kinds of offerings that a priest thus
• Kurtz, Sacrificial Worship of the Old Testament, p. 37 ; Lev. xxi. 16-24.

m.] Dispensation : the Priest. 137
consecrated was permitted to present. The majority of
them consisted of bloody offerings, made in whole or
in part by fire unto Jehovah. The offerings were the
recognition of the responsibility of the whole people;
and they felt, in all the symbolic ritual of the priest
hood, that they were themselves represented and reca
pitulated in the sacrificing priest. He was in the first
place himself a sacrifice, a victim on which they had
laid their hands for this purpose. The jewelled breast
plate, with the names of the tribes engraven upon it,
was a perpetual memorial of the whole people when it
was borne by the high priest into the holy place ; and
all the revolting rites of the temple service must have
continually reminded the worshippers that, even in his
daily ministry, the priest was relieving the people of
responsibilities of almost intolerable offensiveness. The
killing of the first-born of oxen, of sheep, and of rams,
in the huge shambles of the temple courts ; the per
petual moan of the tethered cattle ; the pouring out of
the blood, the red symbol of the offered and sacrificed
life; the removal of the reeking entrails; the atten
tion necessary to the great altar of burnt-offering ;
the vast banqueting tables, where the priests were
living on "the sin" ofthe people; the august cere
monial of the Passover and of the great Day of
Atonementj to say nothing of all the minute direc
tions with reference to the " sin-offering," the " burnt-
offering," the "peace-offering," the "trespass-offering,"
as well as to the bloodless sacrifices, all combined to
confer the dignity of a special caste upon the Jewish
priest. He had certain ministerial and military duties,
but he had mainly to perform in the sight of the
people an acted parable, which he was not called

138 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
on to explain, but which was capable of enforcing
some very solemn and awful lessons. In the pre
sentation of the sin-offering, the burnt- offering, and
the peace-offering, there was alike the presentation of
the victim, the imposition of hands with the transfer
of guilt, the expression of dedication to the will of
Jehovah, and the slaughtering of the animal. The
sprinkling of the blood, either on the horns of the
altar, or towards the veil of the holiest of all, or on
certain occasions on the Mercy-seat, was the cul
minating act of the sin-offering, and kept alive the
sense of the need of expiation and justification ; the
burning of the whole or part of the victim was the cul
minating point of " the burnt-offering," and expressed
the duty of self-surrender to Jehovah ; while the " sa
crificial meal," which was the grand and special
peculiarity of "the peace-offering," represented the
idea of communion and fellowship with the reconciled
Jehovah.1 It is only too certain that familiarity with
a ritual like this must have had a strange and peri
lous influence over a great proportion of those who
engaged in its performance. The awful holiness of Je
hovah, which needed for His service the perpetual re
cognition of violated law and of offered life, and which
symbolized consecration to His service by the holocaust
of the bleeding lamb, became, as we know, obscured by
the mere ritual. The religious significance of the temple
service was veiled amid the riot and feasting of multi
tudes, and amid the harsh thoughts of God engendered
by semi-barbarous ceremonies. Nevertheless, the psal
mists and prophets who denounced the profanation, and
used language which might savour of open antagonism
1 Kurtz, Sac. Sys. 0. T., p. 174, ff.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 139
to the ritual, were not blind to the real and typical
meaning of the sacrifices. Thus the grand utterance of
Asaph in the fiftieth Psalm, which is sometimes treated
as a burning denunciation of the bloody sacrifice, as a
refusal on the part of God to justify the hecatomb or
the burnt-offering, declares that "the mighty Elohim"
had called together, for special instruction, those that
had made a covenant with Him by sacrifice. Again, we
find in the fifty-first Psalm the sobbing of a broken
heart, and, moreover, the wounds of such a heart as
David's healed by the conviction that its contrition was
the " sacrifice " which God would accept. Strong as
was the feeling of the Psalmist, that the moral element
transcends the ceremonial, yet the Psalm closes with
a prayer and a promise which show that the priestly
functions and the whole burnt-offering were still impe
rative and indispensable.1 So Isaiah denounces mere
ritualism in his first chapter, and the author of chapter
liii. uses its symbolism to denote the sublimest aspects
of the servant of God. The author of chapter Ixvi.
makes mention of personal sacrifice, of the blending of
the offerer with the victim, and of the offering of the
people, sanctified from all nations, unto the Lord, as
resembling the offering which the children of Israel
bring in a clean vessel into the house of the Lord; and,
saith the Lord, " I will also take of them for priests
and Levites."2 Moreover, Ezekiel when he describes
1 De Wette, Delitzsch, and many others, maintain the integrity of Psalm li. ,
and conclude that the closing verses are not out of harmony with the spirit which
breathes through the earlier verses.
2 This argument is of no avail with those who refer the oracles of Isaiah to
several authors, nor with those who simply separate the first thirty-nine chapters
from the rest of the book. Still, the spiritual significance put upon the sacrificial
symbolism — at a time when the priestly work was, in the opinion of modern
critics, creating the books of Chronicles and Leviticus, and interlarding the
whole canon with sacerdotal fictions — is very remarkable.

140 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the glory of the latter days, not only pourtrays the
dimensions and ornaments, the courts and the altar
of the holy temple, but the ordinances for the priests
and the law of the burnt-offering,1 with every detail
of the temple service. When Amos11 bursts forth in
the name of the Lord with vehement detestation of
the sacrificial service, it should be remembered that he
was a prophet to Israel, and was there speaking, pri
marily, not of the temple worship, but of the rival calf
worship of Bethel, and of a ceremonial service that was
dividing the unity of the altar, and blending Egyptian
and Phoenician idolatry with the worship of Jehovah.
Functions of transcendent importance were performed
by the Jewish priest, and he was the last of the great
national institutions of Israel to disappear in the fire
and blood of the closing days of its national life.3
All religions based on the localisation of Deity, on the
sanctity of things, or on fetishism in any form, however
refined, have required the consecration either of a caste
or order of men to perform the rites and celebrate the
mysteries demanded by such a belief. As the moral ele
ment entered more and more strongly into religious ideas
and worship, and consequently threw the ceremonial
into the background, or left it only a secondary place,
priestly perfunctoriness gave way to prophetic impulses,
and the principle of an order began to develop itself, first
within the enclosure of the hereditary caste, and then
altogether independently of it. So we find it in the
1 Ezek. xliii. xliv. " Amos v. 21-27.
3 "The Hebrew priesthood witnessed the fall of the .Egyptian, Assyrian,
Babylonian, P&rsian, and Greek empires. It formed the rallying point of the
Jewish nation in the immense void of the return from the Captivity, in the
death-struggle with Antiochus ; and in the last agony of the nation, the high-
priesthood is the last institution visible before the final crash of the system."
— Dean Stanley, Lectures on Jewish Church, sec. series, p. 427.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 141
history of Greek religion and priesthoods: — so also in
the protest made by Buddhism against the Hindu sys
tem which treated special races of men as peculiarly
related to Deity. The sublime conception of "huma
nity" as being, in all its various nations and individuals,
equally acceptable to God, is closely associated with
the doctrine of the personal access of every soul
to the eternal Father, and therefore cuts at the root
of the priestly functions of either caste or class. If
God is everywhere, and at all times accessible to man,
then no ceremonial performed by a special man or
class of men can be permanently required. There
was a time when the most favoured people of antiquity
were being taught the lesson of God's sanctity and
nearness, and the method by which the judicial barrier
that separated between God and man should be ulti
mately done away. There was a period in the Divine
education of the race, when temple, altar, sacrifice,
blood, incense, and divers purifications were all neces
sary to awaken the consciousness of God, the sense of
sin, the knowledge of the curse of separation from God ;
and during the whole of this period the priest was neces
sary to teach, to conserve, and to enforce these lessons,
to keep up a living parable of the way in which, even
tually, all might behold the glory of the Lord with un
veiled face. Though a conviction of helplessness and
ignorance tends to obliterate the sense of individual re
sponsibility, yet before conscience has responded to the
call for personal consecration, and so long as men enter
tain dread suspicions of the character of God, and shrink
from direct communion with Him, they will throw upon
a priesthood the obligations really incumbent upon
themselves. So was it with the people of Jehovah.

142 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
Carnal ordinances of this class were imposed upon Israel
until a Life should be enacted before their eyes of such
sanctity and comprehensiveness, that it would contain
within itself all the significance of the temple and the
Shekinah ; until One should come who would Himself
be the Priest and the Victim, the offering and the of
ferer, the altar and the fire; who would at once provide
the blood and the incense, the holy place and the veil,
and be Himself the Sabbath, the Passover, the Atone
ment, and the Jubilee — all the defence, all the shield,
all the sword that the kingdom of God on earth would
require. The mystery of His life, the fulness of its
meaning and office, would not have been perceived
apart from this agelong preparation for Him. He be
came the fulfilment of the hope that was cherished
and expressed in all the costly and mysterious cere
monial of Judaism, and the comprehensive and con
clusive answer to the questionings which had been
propounded in the priesthoods of all nations.
It is worthy of peculiar attention that John should
have been carefully set forth as the son of Zacharias,
and therefore as one of the last representatives of the
Aaronic priesthood ; that he should have been a conspi
cuous exponent of the law of hereditary sanctity and
prescriptive religiousness; that his prophetic calling,
like that of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, should have ex
panded and developed itself on a sacerdotal basis ; if
only that we might see with more distinctness one at
least of the meanings of the Lord's own language, —
"Among them that are born of women, there hath not
risen a greater than John the Baptist : nevertheless,
he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater
than he."

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 143
The priestly characteristics, to which attention has
been called, will account for some of the features of the
son of Zacharias. There is no proof that it ever fell
to his lot to burn incense in the temple ; that he
ever put on the linen ephod or the gorgeous robe of the
officiating priest ; or that he ever lifted knife to slay
the sacrificial victim : still he alone, among all the
immediate contemporaries of our Lord, was explicit
in his reference to the expiatory character of Christ's
work, in those memorable words, " Behold the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world." We have
no proof that he went through the long and elaborate
lustrations required from the priesthood before the per
formance of any of their special functions ; yet it is
highly instructive that the historic origin of baptism
should date from his ministry, and that he should have
summoned all men indiscriminately to the reception
of ceremonial cleansing. The consecration of the
whole tribe of Levi to the service of the tabernacle,
involved the principle that the priest was himself the
offering of the whole people, and that the. high priest
was the offering of the entire Aaronic family. John's
special consecration to God from his birth, receives
illustration from this incident in the history of his
house.. It was because he. had been himself theoreti
cally "made an offering to God as by fire, for all the
people in all their tribes," and had deeply pondered it,
that he referred with such startling emphasis to the
priestly and sacrificial character of God's Lamb. The
teaching function of "the priest the Levite" would
form the basis of his prophetic duties. It was by
Divine enactment the hereditary function of John to
teach God's people the difference between the holy and

144 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the profane, to cause them to discern between the
clean and the unclean, and in controversy to stand
in judgment, answering the question from lawyers,
soldiers, and scribes, — " Master, what shall we do ? "
— to judge according to Jehovah's judgment, to keep
His laws, and to hallow His Sabbaths.1 The same re
lation explains the special injunction given by the angel
to Zacharias, with reference to his being a Nazarite
from his birth. " Neither shall they shave their heads,
nor suffer their locks fo grow long  neither shall
any priests drink wine when they enter the inner
court."2 We shall have occasion presently to deal with
the lifelong vow of asceticism laid upon John, but tbe
character of it is obviously derived from the consecra
tion of the priest for his august and solemn duties.
John was always to be characterized by a separation
from worldly ways, which only occasionally was de
manded from the priest who was chosen by lot for the
discharge of these high functions. Still further, the
military character of the Jewish priesthood may do
something to explain the uncompromising tone with
which in the first instance he made his appeal to the
consciences of the people and princes, to Pharisees and
Sadducees, to soldiers, publicans, and harlots. He pro
bably learned much of his vehement speech from the
traditions of the sons of Levi. He belonged to that
fierce tribe which had, on certain occasions, by deeds
of bloody vengeance, proclaimed itself "on the Lord's
side." We do not know that he carried a sword or
sacrificial knife beneath his robe of camel's hair, or
suspended from his leathern girdle ; but we do know
that he spoke of summary testing processes, of "the
1 See Ezek. xliv. 23, 24. * Ibid. xliv. 21 ; cf. Lev. x. 9 ; xxi. 5.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 145
axe" at the root of all trees, of the destruction of those
that were fruitless, and of the burning up of use
less chaff with unquenchable fire.1 His austerity of
demeanour induced some of the fickle crowd to cry,
" He hath a devil;"2 and the hardness and vehemence]
of his denunciations of certain vices led to his impri
sonment and death. Much then which was peculiar
to John's career finds a justification and an explana- If
tion in some of the known characteristics of the '
priestly order.
The declaration of our Lord, that among those of
woman born there had not risen a greater than John
the Baptist, pointed (not obscurely) to his hereditary
dignity as a priest, and to the circumstance that, like
other great prophetic priests, he had looked beyond the
order, or the caste to which he belonged. Neverthe
less, when He added, "he who is least in the kingdom
of God is greater than he," it was equivalent to the
assertion that the kingdom of heaven on earth was
established* on a different basis, and He uttered the
spiritual principle that all the people were holiness to
the Lord. The priest with his ceremonial duties, his
material temple, and his " ministration of death," had
once had a work to do, an office to fulfil, a glory of
his own, which glory was to be done away ; but the
Aaronic priesthood would henceforth have no glory by
reason of the glory which excelleth. Hence in the
New Testament and in apostolic practice no provision
was made for the reproduction of the priestly office.
The entire body of believers was described as a "royal
priesthood."3 All the members of the Church in Rome
were besought to offer themselves as "living sacri-
1 Matt. iii. io, 12. 2 Ibid. xi. 18. 3 1 Pet. ii. 3-9.
II

146 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
fices," z holy and acceptable to God. All the members
of the entire seven Churches of Asia are described
as having been made priests and kings 2 unto God ;
but no reference in the New Testament can be twisted
into the proof that any order of men existed in the
Christian Church who arrogated to themselves the
right to offer spiritual sacrifices for their brethren,
or vicariously to present themselves before the Lord
on their behalf. Apostles, prophets, bishops, pres
byters, pastors, evangelists, teachers, angels, deacons,
ministers, and servants of the Church are referred to,
but never on a single occasion do we find them regarded
as officially interchangeable with the old and estab
lished order of iepeis. Nor is the Christian ministry
ever entrusted with the function of mediating between
God and man, nor represented as exercising the pre
rogative of absolution or forgiveness of sin. Christian
worship and institutions were fashioned, not on the
model of the temple, with its localised Deity and
sacred things, its sacrificial rites and brazen altar,
but on that of the synagogue, the place where the al
ready existing ecclesia assembled for worship, for prayer
and praise, for reading the Word of God, and listening
to expository comment.3 It would be beside my pre
sent purpose to develop the rise and growth of the
1 Rom. xii. 1. = Rev. i. 6.
3 Dr. Jacob, Ecclesiastical Polity of the New Testament, selects from Vitrin-
ga's exhaustive treatise on The Synagogue the long list of similarities between
the Christian Church and the Synagogue in matters where there was con
spicuous disagreement with the Temple system. (1) The names of office
bearers ; (2) the multiplicity, not unity, of place of worship ; (3) no different
degrees of sanctity ; (4) absence of special vestments ; (5) open ministry, &c.
See also Catholic Thoughts on the Church of Christ and the Church of England,
by Fred. Meyers, pp. 86-95 ; Christian Sacerdotalism viewed from a Layman s
Standpoint, by John Jardine, LL.D. 1871 ; Archbishop Whately on The
Kingdom of Christ Delineated, p. 108 ; the dissertation of Professor Light
foot in his Commentary on Epistle to the Philippians ; The Christian Ministry
—" The Ministry not a Priesthood:" Rev. Thomas Binney.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 147
priestly assumptions of the Christian minister. It is
unquestionable that very early the germs of sacer
dotalism made their appearance ; that there are traces,
even in the writings of the genuine apostolic fathers,
of the claim which the Christian pastor was making
to represent the authority and discharge the duties of
the Old Testament priest. l The sacerdotal tone of the
so-called Ignatian Epistles, though these documents do
not possess the antiquity which the Pseudo-Ignatius
claimed for them, reflects the spirit of the close of the
second century. It is however very remarkable, that
notwithstanding the fulsome method adopted to extol
the episcopal order over that of the presbyterate, yet
no undoubted proof occurs of the adoption even by
this writer of the sacerdotal nomenclature for the
Christian ministry.2
Justin Martyr3 vindicates for all Christians the func
tions of the high priest, in virtue of their union with the
great High Priest, "the first-born son of God;" and
even Irenseus, a generation later, acknowledges only "a
priesthood of moral holiness, a priesthood of apostolic
self - denial ; " whilst Clement of Alexandria abstains
from any reference of priestly titles or functions to the
Christian ministry. Tertullian was the first to hold a
sacerdotal view of the Christian ministry. He restricts
the right of administering baptism to the summus sacer-
dos qui est episcopus, although he subsequently modifies
1 Clemens Romanus, i Ep. ad Cor. caps. xl. xii. , reveals some attempt to
father on the Christian Church the limitations and orders of the Jewish priest
hood. But while he refers to these priestly functions he does, as Professor
Lightfoot observes, "keep the names and the offices distinct." Polycarp has
an opportunity of introducing the confusion, but ' ' he says nothing of any
sacerdotal privileges which claimed respect, or of any sacerdotal sanctity which
had been violated. "
2 Compare here Jardine, l.c. pp. 54-89, with Lightfoot, l.c. p. 249. Green
wood, Cathedra Petri, i. p. 73. ' Dial. «.. Tryp. c. 116, 117.
II *

148 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the statement ; % and Origen, while urging a spiritual
interpretation of the priesthood, specially applies its
phraseology to the ministry. Cyprian, on the other
hand, boldly transfers to the ministry the titles, digni
ties, and duties of the Aaronic priesthood.2 From this
time forward the most rapid development takes place.
The well-known treatise of Chrysostom, De Sacerdotio,
shows how completely the identification of the priest
hood and the ministry had taken place, how awful were
the responsibilities, how tremendous the mysteries of
the Christian priest.3 The Lord's Supper becomes a
mystery and ministry more awful than Elijah's on
Mount Carmel, a sacrifice which the Christian priest
rather than a Christian community can offer. Absolu
tion and remission of sins against God, as well as
against the Church, are entrusted to a sacrificing
priesthood ; a new fetishism has developed itself in
the house of Christian assembly. The model of the
temple is substituted for that of the primitive syna
gogue, and the dogma or fiction of apostolic succession
and of sacramental order begins to be treated as an
essential condition of the unity of the Church.
The formidable organization of the Levitical priest
hood fell to the ground with the extinction of the
Jewish temple. Both had done their work when they
had been instrumental in explaining and illustrating
some of the boundless powers entrusted to Him who
was greater than the temple, and who once for all dis
charged the functions of High Priest of humanity. It
cannot be denied that the temple preserved to men the
truth of the presence of the Lord of the whole earth ;
1 De Baptismo, u. 17. ,
2 Epp. 3. 4. 43. 54. 39. 64. 66 ; De Unitate Ecclesia, c. 17, and many other
places. 3 Lib. ii. c. 4.

in.] Dispensation : the Priest. 149
that the Levitical order quickened the sense of sin,
exalted the notion of the holiness that was becoming
in the worshipper, by continually drawing the dis
tinction between the clean and the unclean. The
conscience thus stimulated, was aroused from utter
torpor into activity, and did its part in preserving to
the world the awful sense of righteousness. The bless
ing of the people, the absolution, the bloody sacrifice,
the holy incense, and the weird ceremonials of the great
feasts, were for many ages the conservers of historic
facts, and witnesses to the reality that Jehovah is slow
to anger, ready to forgive, and mighty to save. It is,
therefore, all the more remarkable, that concerning the
only distinguished New Testament character who is
known to belong to the family of Aaron, the only man
of whose priestly birth we have any assurance what
ever, — the Master should have said, " He that is least
in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he."
I admit that through the dark conflicts of Paganism
with Christianity, when Catholic truth was threatened
by the bigotry of Arian emperors, and during the cen
turies when civilization was surrounded on all sides
with aggressive barbarism, the close order and corpo
rate institutions developed in the theory and practice
of Christian priestcraft had a providential work to do,
and were by no means an unmixed evil. In fact, mo
narchies, aristocracies, corporations, hereditary rank,
jealously guarded privilege, have had a work to do for
human nature, such as it is. Honour and office in
vested with supernatural powers have responded to the
unspirituality of worldly tastes. The willingness of the
multitude to relinquish irksome duty, to acquiesce in
undemonstrable claims, has provoked priesthoods into

150 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
activity, and has almost condoned the assumptions and
devices of priestcraft. Thus the wrath of man is made
to praise Jehovah, and the follies and even the sins of
men are overruled by the infinite grace of God. Simi
larly, we dare not assert that in the days when the un
protected serf could not otherwise have maintained his
right to live, feudalism was an unmixed curse ; or that
slavery, when introduced as a substitute for the indis
criminate slaughter of all the victims of successful war
fare, had no educational or protecting work to do. We
place slaveries and priesthoods on the same ethical
plane, as alike involving fearful possibilities, which
were endured for a while, by reason of certain second
ary advantages ; they were doubtful expedients for doing
a certain amount of good. They belong alike to the
childhood and to the dotage of society, not to its youth
or manhood. The least in the kingdom of heaven
is greater than the proudest priest, as such. The
institution of priestly order, dignity, and power, was
fulfilled in Christ, and in the grace of His outpoured
Spirit. The resuscitation of the dead priesthood was
part of a melancholy despiritualization of Christianity,
a return to the beggarly elements of the world. It
would have been just as reasonable and more impres
sive to have stolen from Judaism the defunct rites of
circumcision and bloody sacrifice. The argument that
Christian ministers are representative of the whole
Christian body,1 and thus have a priestly function cor
responding with that of the Aaronic priesthood towards
the holy nation, contains its own refutation, in the
1 Tracts for the Day, by various authors, edited by Rev. Orby Shipley, p. 133,
where the Korah and Dathan argument is elaborated with much unction. In
deed, every page of this volume is devoted to the establishment of the transcen
dental qualities of God's priests of the Anglican branch of the Catholic Church,

in.] Dispensation: the Nazarite. 151
manifest incompatibility of the representation. How
can one man offer the spiritual sacrifice which it is the
duty of every man to present for himself? The func
tion of the ideal priest could only be fulfilled by One
whose power, understanding, and sympathy were in
finite. Well said the last illustrious priest of the house
of Aaron, " He must increase ; I must decrease."
§ 2. The Jewish Ascetic.
1. The Nazarite.
If the priestly rank of John is open to question, there
can be none with regard to his ascetic and solitary life.1
The Evangelist calls attention to the fact that he was
to resemble "a Nazarite from his birth ;" that he was
habitually to do what the high priest and the sons of
Aaron were compelled by law to do, when they were
engaged in the performance of ceremonial rites. It
was predicted that the life of this man should be not
only a perpetual priesthood, but the perpetual discharge
of priestly duties.2 The Nazarite was a link of connec
tion between the priesthood of the Old Covenant and
the priesthood of consecration to the will of God. We
find that John could live up to the ideal which angelic
voices had assigned to him only by rushing into the
desert, and there cultivating the stern virtues of absti
nence. The angel announced to Zacharias concerning
the child of his old age, " He shall be great in the sight
of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong
1 Das einzig Geschichtliche in dieser Darstellung ist wohl der Zug dass
Johannes ein Naziraerleben gefuhrt d. h. zu der Essaern gehbrt hat. — Gratz,
Geschichte der Juden, iii. Bd. 220.
2 Philo, De Victim, § 13 ; Maimonides, More Nevochim, iii. 48 ; Mischna,
Nasir, vii. 1, where Num. vi. 5, ff., is brought into relation with Lev. xxi, 11.
See Gratz, l.c. p. 80. Eine art freiwilliger Priester.

152 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
drink, and he shall be filled with the Holy Ghost from
his mother's womb."1 We learn further that "the child
grew, and was in the deserts until the day of his public
and official appearance to Israel."2 We have the as
surance of Matthew and Mark that his dress and food
were of the coarsest description, the latter such as was
appreciated and used only by the very poorest of the
population. " He was clothed with," he had " raiment
of [Matthew] camel's hair " (the rough hairy garment
worn by the recluse and the prophet).3 He had a
leathern girdle about his loins, and his nourishment
(rpocpri) was locusts and wild honey."4 The Lord Jesus
1 Luke i. 15. a Ibid. i. 80. 3 Zech xiii. 4. Bepptv rpiytvrpr.
4 Many of the early expositors endeavoured to explain away the fact that
locusts were the food of John. Even the Gospel of the Ebionites, quoted by
Epiphanius, Hcer. xxx. p. 138, A., confounds aKpiStg, locusts, with tyKpideg,
cakes made of manna with oil. This substitution was denounced by Epipha
nius. Others have supposed that the pods of the "locust-tree" (Ceratonia
siliqua), still called "St. John's bread" by the monks of Palestine, were re
ferred to. Others have imagined that xapiSeg, ' ' shrimps, " ought to have been
the reading. Hase, in his Leben Jesu, § 44, refers to six or seven learned dis
sertations published in the .seventeenth century " de victu et amictu Johannis
Baptistse," and specializes Conrade Olte, Andr. Glauch, Chremnitzius, Stolberg,
Paul Rabe. The article in Winer's Realworterb, " Heuschrecke, " and those
in Smith's Dictionary oti "Locust," and in Kitto's Cyclopaedia on "Arbeh,"
"Chagab," "Chargol," " Saleam," "Gazam," "Gob," and "Yelek" (Hebrew
words translated by dicptg, fipovxog, drraKog, arrkXafioc, ipvmfiTj in LXX.),
give much valuable information. Winer considers 21D, " Gob, " to be the
generic name for the whole face of locusts. The word, however, only occurs
three times in the Hebrew Bible, — Amos vii. 1 ; Nahum iii. 17 ; Isa. xxxiii. 4.
The word fr?"^, " Arbeh,'' occurs twenty times in the Hebrew Bible, and is
rendered in LXX. by the four Greek words mentioned above. It is expressly
noticed for its predatory powers, but is expressly mentioned (Lev. xi. 22) as
an article of food ; so also is the E???' "Saleam," translated by LXX. by
drraKog, and "bald locust " in A.V. The descriptions of this creature in the
Talmud are said to be unrecognisable in any known species. The ^H^i
" chargol," is also given for food, Lev. xi. 22, where bftopaxng stands in LXX.,
and " beetle " in A.V. See art. " Chargol," in Kitto's Cyc. These two words
occur nowhere else in the Bible. The last kind mentioned is ^?P, " chagab."
In Num. xiii. 33 this word, translated ciKptg in LXX., seems chosen from its
diminutiveness. It occurs Isa. xl. 22 and 2 Chron. vii. 13. It is translated
" locust " in this last place in A.V., but by " grasshopper " elsewhere. Identi
fication with known species is very hazardous. Kalisch, on Lev. xi. 22, dis-

in.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 153
Christ, moreover, when speaking to the multitudes con
cerning John, said: "What went ye out into the wilder
ness to gaze upon ? a reed shaken by the wind ? but
what went ye out to see ? a man clothed round with soft
(luxurious) raiment ? Behold they who wear soft things
are in the palaces of kings."1 Again our Lord declares:
" John came neither eating nor drinking," and tells us
that the effect upon the people was, " They say he hath
a devil." These hints and express declarations enable
us to picture to ourselves the son of Zacharias. There
was some outward resemblance to the appearance and
manners of the mysterious Elijah. The older recluse
was described as " a hairy man, and girt with a girdle
of leather about his loins."2 His home was often in
cusses at great length what he describes as the error of the author of Leviticus
in speaking of the four (instead of six) legs of these insects , and supports by
this passage the theory of the late origin of the Levitical legislation, showing
with much ingenuity that the author wanted a place to introduce a justification
of the custom of eating "locusts," which was virtually forbidden by Deut. xiv.
19, and he found it here. This speculation need not detain us. It is certain, from
the time of the composition of Leviticus, whether it were the earliest or latest
book of the canon, that locusts were an article of food, and believed by John
to be ceremonially clean. See also Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 35 ; Diod. Sic. iii.
29 ; Jerome, Adv. Jovinian. ii. 6. They are treated in many ways ; dried in
the sun and sold in the markets ; cooked in a great variety of methods ;
ground into flour and made into bread ; and are often the source of nourishment
for whole tribes. The Jews in Yemen buy and eat them freely. Dr. Kitto, Pict.
Bible, note Lev. xi. 22, says that as food they supply an antidote to the evils
they cause. Burckhardt, Notes on Bedouins and Wahabys, vol. ii. 92, says
they are eaten by the Bedouins (not, however, by the Bedouins of the peninsula
of Sinai) ; in Egypt and Nubia only by the poorest beggars. Dr. Thomson,
Land and Book, says they are tolerated only by the poorest of the people.
Robinson, Bib. Res. ii. 625, gives a similar judgment, and declares that his own
Arabs would not touch them. Lange quotes similar facts from Niebuhr,
Reise, i. 402. There is no record, that I know, of the Essenes partaking of
the food. The piXt ay piov was honey made by wild bees, in which Palestine
abounded, Exod. iii. 8 ; 1 Sam. xiv. 25. Josephus, B.J. iv. 8. 3, speaking of
the plain of Jericho, says that the palm-trees when pressed exude honey ; but
he adds, "the country produces honey from bees. " Zorn, Kuinoel, Fritsche,
and others, suppose the ' ' wild honey "to have been of purely vegetable origin.
There were clearly both kinds in the wilderness of Judaea.
1 Matt. xi. 7, 8, ff. 2 2 Kings i. 8.

154 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the clefts of the rocks and the wilds of the desert, or
on the top of the mountains, where he wielded with
terrible freedom the forces of nature for the confusion
of his enemies and the vindication of the honour of
Jehovah. The home of John was in the wilderness,
his manners were abrupt, even when confronted with
all the majesty of the Sanhedrim or with the despotic
power of the tetrarch of Galilee. His food and dress
suggested the very opposite of cultivation or comfort,
and corresponded with those of the traditional ascetic.
Deprived from his birth of all vinous stimulus, with
the vows of the Lord upon him, charged with the ex
citement of spiritual thoughts, and "filled with the
Holy Ghost," he differed from every other character in
the New Testament. He kept his body in subjection
by rough and harsh means. He mortified the flesh by
crushing some of his natural instincts. He waxed
" strong in spirit " by the severe physical discipline
which allows little or no place for the wants of the
body. There are two institutions of Judaism which may
throw some light upon this feature of his career,
though, notwithstanding very confident assertion to the
contrary, there is no positive proof that he was formally
associated with either. I refer to the vow of the Naza
rite, and the sect of the Essenes. The tendencies at
work in each of these institutions are older than Ju
daism, and have outlived it. They are each of them
expressions of a deep-seated conviction that the deli
verance of the whole man from evil is almost identical
with the deliverance of the spirit from the power or
contaminations of the flesh. They rest upon the thesis
which has ever exerted signal influence over the Ori-

in.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 155
ental mind, that the seat of evil is not the soul nor
the will so much as the flesh of man ; that the flesh
derives its corruption from the main physical and
material conditions of its continuance ; that the mate
rial universe is the evil principle ; that it is divorced
from good ; that creation consequently, so far from
being the work of the supreme God, is rather the ques
tionable and immoral activity of the koo-(ao<; ; that the
demiurge is the enemy of God rather than the energy
of Supreme Intelligence. This speculation may be seen
carried to its extreme form in Persian Dualism and
some forms of Hindu asceticism. The philosophical
schools of India, almost without exception, are based
upon the supposed antagonism between the virtues and
the flesh.1 Gnosticism, in almost all its forms, involved
some philosophical exposition of this antithesis, which
was believed to be a well demonstrated fact, although
the Gnostic sects were all strongly affected by the
novel conception of redemption supplied to them by
Christianity, and aimed in various ways to explain the
method by which "a fallen creation may be restored
to its original source." 2 Many Christian speculations
and some Christian institutions are still penetrated
through and through with the hypothesis that evil is
inherent in matter, and has its seat in the body and in
the physical constitution of humanity. It is not diffi
cult to trace the presence of the same tendency in the
1 The Sdnkhya philosophy of Kopila, and the fundamental position of
Sakya-Muni, is that all evil arises from " the union between soul and nature."
The Nyaya system of Gautum aims similarly at the emancipation of the soul
from the body, to destroy "the fault of desire and dislike." The Vedanta
philosophy of Vyasa, as seen in his Sutras and in the poem ' ' Bhagavad Gita,
dwells with similar unction on the same kind of deliverance, terminating in ab
sorption into Brahm. Colebrooke, Essays on Hindu Philosophy ; Mullens,
Religious Aspects of Hindu Philosophy.
2 See Neander's Gen. Church History. Clark's Trans, vol. ii. p. 42, ff.

156 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
ascetic institutions of Judaism. It should be distinctly
noted that the deep spiritual essence of Hebrew faith
and worship was contradictory of the ascetic principle.
As if to anticipate the Gnostic speculation, the book of
Genesis commences with the assertion that the Jeho
vah of the Old Testament — the one God, the Holy and
Righteous One — is the creator of the world, the creator
of the matter and force of the universe ; that the great
powers of nature, the heavens and all their host, the
earth with all its life, were willed into being by the
word of Jehovah, and that He saw all the works of His
hand ; and, behold, they were very good. Man is cre
ated in the image ' and likeness of Elohim. Every
relationship of life, e.g., the marriage bond and bed,
the relationship of father and son, the gifts of food and
raiment, of the sunshine and the showers, of the olive
and the vine, of the seed time and the harvest, the feast
and the song, — were all capable of the highest conse
cration, might all become the means of grace, and were
indeed signs of heavenly favour. Circumstances might
alter the moral value of particular actions. The cor
ruptions of the flesh were not the mere acceptance of
the natural conditions of humanity, but the satisfac
tion of physical instincts in sole regard to personal and
selfish interests. Hence " the joyful noise"1 was the
synonym for temple worship, in spite of all its sacri
fices ; and "when the burnt offering began, the song of
the Lord began."2 " The feasts of the Lord " was the
designation given to the high ceremonies of Judaism.
The temporal, material prosperity of the kingdom was
regarded as the main sanction of national obedience.
Whatever the Old Testament may have suggested of
1 Psa. Ixvi. 1 ; c. 1. =2 Chron. xxix. 27.

in.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 157
the consecration of earth and of man, was eclipsed by
the fundamental doctrine of the New Covenant. The
Incarnation was the emphatic assertion that the whole
of our nature — body, soul, and spirit — could be taken
up and lifted into the Divinity ; that the whole of hu
man life was "holiness unto the Lord; " and thus the
life of our Lord was an intentional contrast to John's
life in respect of the fundamental principle of its holi
ness. " John came neither eating nor drinking."
"The Son of man came both eating and drinking."
He passed from His assumption and acceptance of
the loftiest titles, to a marriage feast.1 Natural affec
tions and human friendships ripened in His sacred
heart to the highest point of expression. At various
banquets He gave utterance to His grandest teaching.
He instituted a memorial of His own agony and
shame, of His body that was broken, and His blood
that was poured out for the remission of sins ; and it
is significant that this was not a funeral march, not a
repetition of the sacrifice, nor a fresh libation of the
blood of beasts or men ; but it was a simple feast ; it
was the " cup of blessing; " it was constituted out of
the earthly tokens and symbols of joy, fellowship, and
aspiration. More than this, He rose from the dead in
the body of His flesh, and left as His sublimest legacy
to His Church the promise and pledge of the anastasis
of man. It was very reasonable that " the disciples of
John should fast." Ascetic self - repression was the
natural development of John's doctrine and example ;
but as a rule and means of grace it fell short of the
new spirit of Christ : by itself it did not touch the deep
springs of life. Times were coming when the children
1 Comp. John i. and ii.

158 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
of the bridechamber might and would be made to fast,
to put on John's sackcloth of hair, and forget to eat
their bread; not because the hairy garment was
a means of grace, nor the fasting a way of being rid
of sin, but because the bridegroom would be taken
from them.
We inquire, In what respects did John resemble
either the Nazarite or the Essene ? and how far does
the testimony of Jesus to John turn upon that resem
blance ? The law of the Nazarite and the nature of
his vow are described at length in Numb, vi., where
it appears that the vow, whether of man or woman,
included two things in the main : the entire abstinence
from the fruit of the vine in any of its forms, and the
free growth of the hair.1 All vinous stimulus was
stringently excluded, as well as everything "made of
the vine tree, from the kernels even to the husk."
"Wine, vinegar of wine, and strong drink," the fruit,
fresh and dried, were alike forbidden. Hence this tree,
which was the Hebrew symbol of the prosperity, life,
and gladness of the holy people, was placed by this vow
under the ban, as though even in the imagery of all
earthly prosperity and glory there was secretly blended
the symbol of the Cross. Vinous stimulus, in extreme
forms of license, had been positively consecrated by
other nations as a religious service, a means of securing
supernatural illumination. The Greek worship of
Dionysos or Bacchus combined an old Hellenic sym
bolic worship of Nature with a Pelasgic or Oriental
element, which was at first resisted by the Greeks of
1 Vitringa, Obss. Sacrce, ii. p. 533. Per Nxzirceos olim Deus adumbrare instituit
pcrfectam et omnibus numeris absolutam sanctitatem, quce infert summam liber-
tatem ab omni concupiscentid et servitute qualiscunque vitiiet peccati, animum-
que Deo in omni habitu, acta et statu devotum et consecratum.

in.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 159
Thrace and Sparta. Wild excitement stimulated by
wine was supposed to confer the highest revelations,
and licentious orgies accompanied the worship of the
gods.1 The solemn glorification of the intoxicating juice
of the soma plant2 in Hindu ceremonial, was based
on the principle that the religious life can be actually
stimulated by sensuous and morbid excitement. On
the other hand, the condemnation of drunkenness,
the consecration of sobriety, and even the ceremonial
virtue of abstinence, pervade the Hebrew legislation.
Moses refers to the vow of the Nazarite as though
it were well understood, and as if he were merely
giving precise directions with respect to a pre-Mosaic
institution. This portion of it was, as I have already
said, enjoined on the priest when on the point of dis
charging his sacerdotal functions. The violation of
the principle of the vow is bitterly denounced and
condemned by the prophets.3 The law of the Re-
chabites, which amounted to a firm and hereditary main
tenance of a portion of the Nazaritic rule, receives the
loftiest commendation from the prophet. The influence
of the word of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, upon his
sons, is contrasted by Jeremiah with the utter neglect
by the people of God of the word of the Lord ; and
Jehovah's language is, " Jonadab, the son of Rechab,
shall not want, a man to stand before me for ever." 4
' Cf. Horn. //. vi. 132 ; Hes. Theog. 941 ; Eurip. Bacchos, v. 142, 221, 298-
301 ; and Eurip. Frag. Ttprjrtg, 476. See also Mure, Crit. Hist. i. 151 ;
Donaldson's Theatre of the Greeks, c. ii. ; Dollinger, Gentile and J(w, vol. i.
p. 94, ff., 155, ff ; Herzog, Real. Enc, xiii. 543, xxi. 283.
2 Mr. Muir has thus translated the praise of the soma from the Rig- Veda : —
"We've quaffed the soma bright, and are immortal grown ;
We've entered into light, and all the gods have known ; "
quoted by Mrs. Manning, Ancient and Mediceval India, i. p. 69. Cf. Baring-
Gould, Development of Religious Belief, vol. i. 409.
3 Isa. xxviii. 7 ; lvi. 12 ; Amos ii. 11, 12. 4 Jer. xxxv. 19.

160 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
The meaning of this phrase has been greatly discussed.
The words employed are technical and liturgical in
their meaning; they probably denote the special dignity
conferred upon the sons of Levi in their ceremonial
approach to the altar of burnt offering in the holy place;
and involve the distinct promise that this tribe of men
— strictly speaking not even of Jewish descent — in vir
tue of their constancy, faithfulness, arid abstinence, and
because of their separation from the ordinary practices
and manners of the people with whom they had cast
in their lot, were elevated by Divine command to the
rank of priests. It seems, even, that the daughters of
the Rechabites married Levites, and some of the chief
men of the tribe were chosen to sit in the great council
of the nation. All Rechabites were Nazarites for life,
but all Nazarites were not Rechabites. The Rechabites
were a consecrated family, mainly distinguished by the
Nazaritic vow, and the peculiarity of their residence.
They were pledged to a maintenance of the wilderness
life. They abode in booths ; they preserved a continual
reminiscence of their early life and discipline. The
vow of the Nazarite was compatible with more cus
tomary manners and duties. It might be temporary
in its incidence, and revoked at pleasure by special
ceremonial. The law of the Nazarites, as contained in
Numb, vi., refers only to the temporary vow of absti
nence which man or woman might take, and nothing
is said of the vow for life, of which we have some
striking instances in the Old Testament history, but
it adds other features in which the Rechabites did
not participate. I refer to the vow of allowing the
hair of the head to grow freely during the period of
the vow, and the solemn rites with which the sepa-

hi.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 161
ration from the rest of their brethren might be brought
to a close. The hair was shaven, and burned with
fire on the altar of burnt-offering, at which the various
offerings of the Nazarite, when released from his vow,
were presented. Every kind of sacrifice was presented
on these occasions, and the demands made upon the
Nazarites were so heavy, that not infrequently the be
nevolence of others was appealed to, to enable them
to meet the requirements. It was in this way that St.
Paul, at the instigation of James and his Jewish breth
ren, consented to be " at charges " with the four Naza
rites,1 in order to prove to the excitable Jewish party
in the Church that he had not, as a Hebrew of Hebrews,
discarded all the ordinances of the law, even though he
had maintained boldly the insignificance of these cus
toms, and their non-incidence on those who among the
Gentiles had turned unto God. There are many other
illustrations of the same kind of sympathetic gene
rosity towards those who had put themselves for dif
ferent periods under the Nazaritic vow, but who were
incapable of meeting the charges involved in their
release. Thus Alexander Jannaeus is said to have
furnished means of release from their vows for many
of the Nazarites.2
The mode in which the consecration of the Nazarite
took place strongly resembled that of the high priest
himself; and it is curious that the very same word is
used in the Hebrew text to denote the uncut tuft of
hair on the crown of the head of the Nazarite, and the
diadem of the high priest.3
There seems at first sight no moral or religious
1 Acts xxi. 23, 24.
2Jos. Antiq. xix. 6. 1, and Gemara, quoted by Smith, Diet. ii. 472.
'..¦?., in Numb. vi. 19, and Lev. xxi. 12. '
12

162 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
significance in the ceremonial of the consecration, but
the idea which pervades it is that of complete sur
render to the Lord, of entire devotion to His worship
and service, and submission to His will. The men or
women who made the self-dedication received a priestly
consecration for the time of the vow, and were them
selves the victims offered upon the altar of the Lord.
It was impossible for them to be released without
sacrificial offerings, intended to express by vicarious
oblation the complete dedication of the offerer to the
service of Jehovah.
The mother of Samuel dedicated her son before his
birth to the career of a Nazarite for life. This may
account in part for the semi-sacerdotal character of
Samuel, although he was not a descendant of Aaron,
but only a member of the family of Kohath.1 It formed
in his case the basis of a prophetic mission, but for a
while he ministered before the Lord, under the direc
tion of the high priest, and departed not from the
tabernacle. The asceticism, and other peculiarities of
Samuel's position and congenital consecration, led him
from the first to be the uncompromising foe of corrup
tion, disobedience, and profligacy. Before he dropped
the name of " the child Samuel," he received heavenly
warnings, and was commissioned to denounce the
licentiousness, and to prophesy the doom of the house
of Eli. He rose to the loftiest position as a seer of the
mysteries of Providence, and as a civil and military
leader ; he reluctantly yielded to the wish of the
people for a more settled form of government, but
occupying a position higher than that of priest or
judge or king, he was feared, consulted, and obeyed.
1 i Sam. i. i ; i Chron. vi. 27, 34-38.

in.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 163
The perception that he had of the mission of Israel
led him to give injunctions, and to perform with his
own hand deeds of vengeance on the surrounding
heathen population. As Elijah called fire from heaven
upon the messengers of Ahaziah, so Samuel hewed
Agag in pieces before the. Lord in Gilgal. This forcible
and terrible act anticipated the zeal of Jehonadab, the
son of Rechab, who aided Jehu in his cold-blooded
slaughter of the worshippers of Baal, and in another
line corresponded with the ruthless revenge taken by
the Nazarite Samson on the Philistines. The moral
life of Samson was of the meanest kind. His brute
strength, his grim humour, his broad buffoonery, his
superhuman physical force, rather than moral courage,
were consecrated to the extermination of the Philis
tine and the defence of Israel, and terminated in a
gigantic act of revenge and suicide. It revealed some
thing of the spirit which actuated the whole class of
those who, by the Nazaritic vow, were pledged to lay
"the axe at the root of the trees;" to maintain the
purity of worship, and extinguish the hateful idolatry
that threatened to corrupt the heart of Israel. This
spirit is expressly denounced by our Lord, who, when
the sons of Zebedee were ready, like Elijah, to call
down fire from heaven to consume the Samaritans,
exclaimed, " Ye know not what spirit ye are of : the
Son of man is come not to destroy men's lives, but to
save them." It is not difficult to see — so long as
John the Baptist occupied the same position, and pre
served the tokens and the spirit of the Nazaritic vow,
separating himself from his brethren, and threatening
the powers and authorities of Judaism with condign
destruction — why the Lord should have said, " Among
12 *

164 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
them that are born of women, there hath not arisen a
greater than John the Baptist : nevertheless, he that
is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he."
There is another feature of the Nazaritic vow, of which
no express mention is made in the case of John, but
which acquired prominence in those of Samson and of
St. Paul, viz., the religious preservation of the hair.
It was in the instance of Samson peculiarly emphatic,
as he is represented as being aware of the fact that the
hair which had never been touched by razor was the
symbol and seat of his superhuman strength. When
deprived of it by his own folly, he fell a victim to his
enemies, and was made " to grind in the prison-house
of their sinister ends and practices upon hirri." It was
not till the vow which was laid on him from his birth
had been once more redeemed, that he was able to
" shake thunder with ruin sternly upon the heads of
his evil counsellors, but not without great affliction to
himself." St. Paul is twice represented as having shorn
his head at the conclusion of a vow corresponding
with that of the Nazarite.1 Baumgarten* endeavours
to explain these events by reference to the teaching of
St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians, where the
subjection of woman to man is declared to be evinced
by her long hair, and the true primacy of man, by
the repressed and shortened condition of this covering
of his head. His argument is that the vow of the
Nazarite was a vow of dependence, the assumption of
a. position of entire and absolute dependence upon Je
hovah; that Samson was a type ofthe condition of the
Christian apostle who could say, " When I am weak,
1 Acts xviii. 18 ; xxi. 24-26.
2 Acts ofthe Apostles, or History ofthe Church in the Apostolic Age. By W.
Raumgarten, Ph.D., translated by Morrison. Vol. ii. 228 ff

in.] Dispensation : the Nazarite. 165
then am I strong ;" that the strength Samson received
to fight his battles with wild beasts and Philistines was-
not his own strength, but God's, and the sign, not of
his independence, but of his dependence ; and so that
when Paul in spirit became a woman, in his submission
to the will of others, in the change of his field of ope
rations, and in the weakness of his flesh, he became
strong in the Lord, and mighty to pull down strong
holds. This is more ingenious than valid. The abun
dance of hair worn, contrary to the custom of the times,
was a type of physical health, strength, beauty, and
glory, and the perpetual memorial of the vow of conse
cration. Thus it helped to keep the life-long conse
cration of the wearer before the minds of the spectators,
as well as fresh in his own. Moreover, the history of
the custom in other nations will scarcely sustain the
curious speculation of Baumgarten.1 Cultivation of the
hair of the head was not mentioned among the pecu
liarities of the Rechabites, nor is" it referred to among
the notable features of John the Baptist ; though, in
his presumed likeness to Elijah the Tishbite, his dwell
ing in the wilderness, and the solemn annunciation
made to Zacharias by the angel with reference to his
attention to one portion of the Nazarite vow, it is
probable that he preserved the rule in all its parts, and
that, in virtue of his ceremonial consecration, he felt
and knew himself to be " great in the sight of the
Lord." At all events, John the Nazarite, in that
portion of his duties and abstinences which is expressly
mentioned in the Gospel narrative, represents one
aspect of Judaism which prescribed and even hallowed
the principle of a life-long vow of mortification of all
1 Oehler, art. "Naziraat," Herzog, Real Ency.

1 66 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
carnal passions, the crucifixion of the natural affections.
There was one peculiarity of the Nazarite which may
have had much to do in driving John into the wilder
ness. The vow, during the entire period of its inci
dence, rendered it imperative that the subject of it
should not defile himself with the dead.1 He was not
to permit himself to become defiled by any approach to
a dead body. If his aged parents breathed their last
before him, he could not, without violating the oath,
have closed their eyes, or touched their bier, or stood
at their grave. This crushing of natural affections was
another sign of the presence in the entire institution of
the spirit of an exclusive individualism, and a mode of
securing holiness and the favour of God, which, though
it may be compatible with real sanctity, and may, on
this plea, in analogous forms have crept into the Church
of Christ, yet it is no part of the Divine ideal, and no
essential element in the kingdom of God. It is a
matter of surpassing interest that Christ should have
come from receiving the testimonies of John to Cana of
Galilee ; from the baptism by a Nazarite, who would
feel it to be a sin against the law of his being and office
to touch anything in the form of the fruit of the vine,
to perform His first miracle, and to show forth His
creative might in providing wine in abundance for a
wedding feast.2 It is instructive that John, who by his
antenatal vow would have lost all his official sanctity if
he had touched a leper, or a dead man's bier, or the
grave-clothes of a friend, should have prepared the
way for One whose realization of human sorrow, whose
1 Numb. vi. 6-n.
2 Schottgen, De Messia, lib. vii. c. 1, § 2, quotes from Erubin, 43. 1. 2.
' ' Veni et audi : Mo tempore quo tlius David venit, etiam Nasirosis licititm
est vinum bibere."

in.] Dispensation : the Essene. 167
consciousness of human love, and fellowship in human
bliss, made him the willing guest at the marriage and
the sympathetic mourner at the funeral and the grave.
It is not wonderful that when John felt His nature and
His mission, and the fulness of His love, he should
have cried, "He must increase, but I must decrease;"
or that the Lord declared, " Among them that are born
of women there hath not risen a greater than John the
Baptist ; nevertheless, he that is least in the kingdom
of God is greater than he."
2. The Essenes.
A question of much deeper interest here emerges.
Did John the Baptist belong to the extraordinary com
munity which, under the name of Essenes, was scat
tered throughout Palestine, but had its special home in
the oasis of the desert of Engedi, and which sustained
subtle relations with the Egyptian solitaries and socie
ties that, under the name of Therapeut^e, excited the
interest of Philo-Judaeus,1 and led to the composition of
his interesting treatises on the " contemplative life" ?
Was John an Essene ? If we give to- this question
even a modified affirmative, it becomes all the more
important to gauge the influences that produced this
singular development, and to measure the extent to
which Greek or Oriental tendencies of thought found
expression in the career of the Baptist. Wise men
came from the East to the cradle of the infant Sa
viour. Greeks were present at the last Passover, who
were anxious to see Jesus. It was compatible with
'Quod omnis probus liber, and De Vita Contemplativa. Phil., Op. Ed.
Mangey, vol. ii. 445-487. "The latter treatise has," says Ginsburg, " nothing
to do with the real Palestinian Essenes ;" and Gratz, Lc. 464, urges that it is
not the work of Philo-Judaeus.

1 68 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
these facts that the forerunner of the Christ should have
given embodiment in his own person to the great yearn
ing of both East and West after a higher type of life.
Some critics have gone much further than to give a
hesitating assent to the idea that John the Baptist
belonged to the Essenic Society. They have boldly
said that Jesus belonged to the community, adopted
its phraseology, recommended its maxims, and was
befriended by its leaders.1 The latter hypothesis
played an important part in some of the rationalistic
interpretations of the four Gospels which were de
molished by Strauss.2 The admiration expressed by
Philo for the Therapeutae was. copied and dwelt on by
Eusebius, who started the thoroughly ecclesiastical
supposition that these recluses were founders of Chris
tian monachism, who received the approbation of the
Lord Jesus to their mode of life,3 and adopted the
practices handed down from the apostles. Now it is
extremely probable that they prepared the way for the
introduction of monachism into the Christian Church,
but it can be shown historically that such a genesis of
Essenism is a chronological absurdity. Philo wrote
within ten years, or at the most twenty years, after the
'Even Dr. Ginsburg, The Essenes: their History and Doctrines, 1864, pp.
24, 25, strongly advocates this view. De Quincey, Works, vol. vii., hazards, in
his paper on "Secret Societies," the speculation that the whole representation
of Josephus was a fable. Christians, according to him, fled from the storm
of persecution into the wilderness, and formed the secret association which the
historian so utterly misconceived. The gist of his argument turns on the close
resemblances between Essenism and Christianity. Later scholarship has ex
ploded this crude hypothesis.
2 Strauss' Life of Jesus, E. T. iii. p. 326, on " The Angels of the Resurrec
tion;" Kuinoel's suggestion, Matt, xvii., as expanded by Venturini and
refuted by Strauss, voi. iii. p. 9.
' H. E., lib. ii. u. 17, quotes long passages from Philo, and adds "that
Philo, when he wrote these statements, had in view the first heralds of the
gospel, and the original practices handed down from the apostles must be
obvious to all."

in.] Dispensation : the Essene. 169
death of Christ, and speaks of their order as scattered
throughout Egypt, and as existing among Greeks and
Barbarians. Moreover, the origin of Christian monas-
ticism can be traced to a later date.1 The prima facie
resemblances between the Essenism and the Chris
tianity of the 'first century and the "religious life"
of later ages, in both East and West, confer special
interest on the supposed relation of the Baptist to this
remarkable sect, and have provoked numerous disquisi
tions on its origin, history, and character. 2
Dr. Keim, in words which condense his admirable
chapter on the Separatists in the Holy Land into a
few sentences, observes : —
" The Judaism of the pre-Christian era had its highest, although
not irreproachable, development in the order of the Essenes. In
this form also is it the most perplexing. They were allied to the
Pharisees, yet with very distinctive differences. They were zealous
for the law, and yet transgressed it. They were righteous in the
spirit of the prophets, and yet more painfully intent than the Phari
sees on outward purifications. They were Jews, and yet shut them-

' J. Scaliger. Elenchus Trihceresii N. Serrarii. ' ' Delirium fanaticum et im-
pudentissimum mendacium quo Essenos monachos Christianos fuisse contendit
validissimis argumentis elusum." Jerome, Vita Pauli ; Prideaux, Connection of
Old and New Testaments, part ij. c. 5 ; De Montalembert's Moines d' Occident,
torn. 1.
2 The original authorities, Josephus, Antiq. xv. 10. 4, 5, xviii. 1. 2-6 ; Vita,
c. 2; B. J. ii. c. 8 ; Pliny. Nat. Hist. v. 17 ; Philo. l.c. See also Triglandius,
Syntagma Scriptorum de tribus Judceorum Sectis; N. Serrarii, Drusii, Scali-
geri, Opuscula ; Hausrath. Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, p. 133, ff. ; Gratz,
Das Essderthum, 1. c. p. 83, ff. ; Lud. Noack, Ursprung des Christenthums ,
Bd. i. 297 ; Langen, Das Judenthum in Palastina, pp. 186-195 ! Neander's
General Church History, vol. i. ; Clark's E. T. pp. 59-67 ; Reuss, Histoire de
la Theologie ChrHienne, liv. i. c. 9 ; L'Ebionisme et L'Essenisme, Dr. Gins-
burg; art. in Kitto's Ency. "Essenes," and the work mentioned above ; Westcott,
in Smith's Diet. Bible ; Jost and Ewald ; Frankel's Zeitschrift fiir die religiosen
Interessen des Judenthums, 1846, p. 441. The testimonies of Josephus are
referred to at length by Porphyry, De Abstinentia, and summarised by Gins-
burg ; l.c. p. 54. Dr. Ginsburg gives the substance of De Rossi's (1513-1577)
identification of the Essenes and Baithusians, which he utterly demolishes.
Dr. G. then refers in chronological order to the opinions that have been enter
tained by a long succession of writers, terminating with Frankel, whose view he
endorses.

I7° John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
selves out from the nation ; servants of Jehovah, and yet praying
like heathens to the sun. They were a phenomenon of religious
despair, they are objects of admiration to Jews, heathens, and Chris
tians, although their admirers are uncertain to this day whether
they were Jews, or a school of Jewish heathens, or Christians." J
N. Serrarius,2 the Jesuit, endeavoured to establish
their identity with the Rechabites, and* to refer their
origin to the Exodus. He supposes that they were
secret companions of our Lord, and constituted the
bulk of the early Church. It is true that they are not
referred to openly in the New Testament, nor does the
Talmud expressly mention them by name. It must be
chiefly by a comparison of what Josephus says on the
subject with what we know of other communities, that
we must determine our view on this controverted matter.
Josephus had opportunities of acquainting himself with
the tenets, practices, and spirit of these " pious men,"
which confers special value upon his references to
them ; 3 though it is certain that, writing for Gentiles,
he gave a colouring to his view of "the three sects"
which gravely disturbs historic propriety. He allied
Essenes to the Pythagoreans, and represented the
Pharisees and Sadducees as resembling the sects of
Greek philosophy. They were not sects either in
the Greek, Patristic, or modern sense of the word.

1 Theod. Keim, 1. c. Bde. i. 282, Eng. trans, vol. i. 358. See also his Ges
chichte Jesu nach den Ergebnissen heutiger Wissenschaft, -pp. 78-84.
2 The treatise of Serrarius is in Triglandii Syntagma, which also contains
the vehement and witty reply of Drusius to the speculation.
3 Vita, <j. 2. " I made trial of the various sects that were among us. The
first, that of the Pharisees, the second, that of the Sadducees, and the third,
that of the Essenes. Nor did I content myself with these trials only, but when
I was informed that one whose name was Banus lived in the desert, and used
no other clothing than grew upon trees, and had no other food than what grew
of its own accord, and bathed himself in cold water frequently, both by night
and day, in order to preserve his chastity ; I imitated him in those things, and
continued with him three years." — Whiston's trans.

in.] Dispensation : tlie Essene. 171
They were tendencies of thought, and so far as Phari
see and Essene were concerned, they were not mutually
exclusive. Josephus refers them to the second century
before Christ, and indicates by a few touches their
existence at subsequent intervals. Thus he gives the
curious interview between Menahem, one of these
Essenes, and Herod the Great.1 He recites the pro
phecy uttered to Herod when a youth (say B.C. 60), that
he should become a king, and the honour always paid
to the sect by this prince, and thus illustrates one of
the pretensions of the Essenes.
The principal modern writers on the history and the
philosophy of the period are satisfied of the thoroughly
Jewish position and origin2 of the Essenes, though
Langen and De Pressense3 recognize the presence of
Gentile speculation. Renan inclines to the belief that
between these recluses of the eastern shores of the
Dead Sea, and "the sects floating between Judaism,
Christianity, Baptism, and Sabeism," there were remote
relations "with the Gourous and Mounies of India; " and
"that many of the external practices of John, of the
Essenes, and of the Jewish spiritual teachers of this
time, were derived from influences then but recently
received from the far East."4 The resemblances of the
Essenes to the Pythagoreans on the one hand and to
the Buddhists on the other have been often referred to.
Zeller5 has been most emphatic in his maintenance of
the former, and Keim thinks that the points of resem
blance are too striking to be altogether accidental. Dr.
' Antiq. xv. io. 5. 2 Keim, Gratz, Jost, Ewald, Reuss, Frankel, Ginsburg.
3 Langen, 1. c, strongly contends for the presence of heathen speculation,
and of an anti-Levitical spirit. De Pressens^, Jesus Christ, His Life and
Times. E. T. p. 96. * Vie de Je'sus, c. 6.
s Zeller's Geschichte der Philosophic, iii. p. 583, quoted by Ginsburg.

172 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
Ginsburg has, I think, shown " the vital distinctions
between the brotherhoods," in their ideas of God, their
reverence for the authority of their sacred books,
their estimate of marriage, of science, and of fate, and
in their practical charity and beneficence. In recent
times great authorities on Buddhism have called atten
tion to the identity of many of the ideas and practices
of the Essenes with those of the followers of Sakya-Muni
Buddha.1 (a) Thus the Essenes and Buddhists alike ab
stained from animal sacrifices,2 yet the Essenes merely
avoided them from the fear of defilement, and were
in the habit of sending them to the temple, while
the Buddhist abstention was based on the doctrine
of metempsychosis, (b) Personal poverty was enjoined
upon both, but the few necessaries allowed to each
differed. The Buddhist monk had his alms-bowl and
his razor, and the Essene laboured for his bread ; yet if,
as Jost supposed, he was an expansion of the "Nazarite
for life," he could not have required the razor. There is
nothing in Buddhism corresponding with the singular
Essenic use of the axe or spade.3 (c) There is much
resemblance in their common yearning after virtue,
in the method by which they taught that passion might
be overcome by mortification, as well as in their com
mon denunciation of the charms of woman and of
sexual pleasure, (d) A very remarkable similarity oc
curs in their common repudiation of unguents,4 par
ticularly as the Hebrew priesthood was consecrated
with holy oil, and the Hindus generally regard unction
1 Spence Hardy, Eastern Monachism, pp. 48, 57, 101, 124, &c.
2 Jos. Antiq. xviii. 1. 5 ; Childer's Khuddaka P&tha ; Burnouf. Introd.
d Ihistoirc du Buddhisme Indien, p. 339. 3 B. J. ii. 8. 7.
1 Compare Jos. B. J. ii. 8. 3 ; Childer's Khuddaka Patha, p. 3 ; Koppen,
Die Religion des Buddha, p. 332, ff.

hi.] Dispensation : the Essene. 173
and perfume as almost a necessary of life, (e) The
most impressive comparison may be instituted be
tween the several stages towards saintship or perfec
tion which prevailed in the two communities. Thus
the preliminary stage in both was a perception that the
world was evil, though the nature of evil is differently
conceived in the two systems. The Essene demanded
first bodily purity, then continence, then inward purity
and the absence of all anger and malice. This corre
sponds closely with " the second path " of Buddhistic
excellence. The same may be said of "the third
path," — freedom from evil desires, ignorance, doubt,
and heresy — which agrees with the Essenic " increase
of faith and holiness." The " fourth path " of the
Buddhist to miraculous powers, omniscience, prophecy,
and freedom from all desire, has a singular though
partial resemblance to the Essenic attainment of the
power of prophecy and the functions of Elijahship.1
It is, however, undoubted that all the prominent
features of Essenism were Jewish in their origin, even
though oriental ideas had been engrafted on their primi
tive faith. Their name is full of mystery.2 Still, moral
and ceremonial purity was the aim of these self-deny
ing solitaries. I can believe with Jost3 that out of a
1 Burnouf, I. c. § 3. Cf. St. Hilaire, De Bouddha et sa Religion, c. 3 ; Kop-
pen, Die Religion des Buddha, pp. 382-441.
2 See Ginsburg's elaborate dissertation. He gives nineteen etymological
explanations. He prefers that from "Ppn> "the pious," one that identifies
them with the Chasidim or Assidaeans, from whom both they and the Pharisees
historically sprung. Serrarius, 1. c, has given several further etymologies.
Jost, 1. c. 207, refers SK?!"!. "to be silent," as the likeliest origin. Keim
thinks a word meaning "to heal," and translated into the Greek word
Qtpairtvrrjg, is the most probable explanation, and with him Baur, Renan,
Herzfeld, agree. Philo, q. o. p. 1. § 12, derives the etymology of the word
'E(T(jaioi from Birioi, which would harmonise at least with the first I have
mentioned. 3 Geschichte des Judenthums, p. 209.

174 John ^he Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
strenuous yearning after the ethic grandeur of the Mosaic
law, and the perfect ideal of its purity, arose the
Chasidim, " the saints of God " mentioned in the later
psalms, and that from these, Pharisees and Essenes
alike sprung. The Sadducees were the antithesis
of the Pharisees in their estimate of "the Divine
informant," while the Essenes felt that the spiritual
ideal of the Pharisees could not be realized in ordinary
contact with the world. From cities to towns, from
towns to villages, from villages into the dens and caves
of the earth, they fled. They sought in the pursuits
of agriculture, in abstemious habits, in continence,
ablutions, and prayers, to realize, after their own
fashion, the Levitical purity. Still some further ele
ment was intermingled with it. Corresponding phases
of monastic life have characterized Hinduism and Par-
seeism. Essenism was a reaction from the mechanical
forms into which Pharisaism was stiffening. The
researches of Frankel have demonstrated the harmony
in many points between the statements of Josephus
concerning the ceremonies of the Essenes and the
statements of the Talmud and Midrashim concerning
those of the Pharisees. Dr. Ginsburg enumerates four
teen different items in. which their religious charac
teristics may be said to be identical.1 Nevertheless,
in the time of Josephus the two "sects" greatly dif
fered in their civil, social, and ecclesiastical relations.
The cardinal point with them was faith in the
inspired law of God. By meditation, prayer, self-
1 Ginsburg, art. in Bib. Cycl. on "The Essenes ; " his treatise on the
Essenes. 1. c. Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, Band iii. pp. 79-89: "Sie waren
eine Steigerung des Pharisaerthums mit dem sie urspriinglich eins waren."
He goes on to show that they were " Nazarites for life." The intensity of their
aim made them at length avoid communion with all who were not on the same
level of purity, and hence necessitated the formation of an order of their own.

in.] Dispensation : the Essene. 175
mortification, frequent ablutions, and strict attention
to the laws of ceremonial purity, they hoped to reach
the highest stage of communion with God. These
stages, as we have seen, commenced with bodily
purity, advanced to celibacy, to spiritual purity, to the
cultivation of all gentle affections, and the repudiation
of all angry passions. In the next stage they acquired
true holiness, then the gift of prophecy, then the power
of working miracles, and finally they spoke of attaining
the position," the authority, and the glory of Elijah, as
forerunner of the Messiah.
It does not appear that they differed materially in
doctrine from the Pharisees, although they abstained on
ritual grounds from presenting their sacrifices in the
temple, " offering sacrifices apart by themselves," and
they feared to contract defilement from contact with
those who had not given themselves up as they had
done to the contemplative or monastic life. Amongst
themselves the various stages of perfection that were
recognized encouraged the most exclusive spirit.
"Every one of a senior class (according to Josephus)
thinks all the inferior classes so much beneath him,
that if he happen to touch any of them, he washeth
after it in the same manner as if he had touched one
of another nation." They agreed with the Pharisees
in their extraordinary regard for the Sabbath, even
pressing their rigour to an hyperbole.1 Their daily
meal was of the simplest kind. It was partaken in
their house of religious assembly. After bathing, with
prayer and exhortation, they went, with veiled faces,
1 B. J. ii. 8. 9. They did not allow themselves even to ease nature during
the twenty-four hours of the Sabbath, because they thought the rule laid down
in Deut. xxiii. 12, 13, to be universally obligatory, and incompatible with the
Sabbath rest.

176 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
in a pure manner to their dining-room, as into a
holy temple.1 They practised frequent and abundant
ablutions before food, after every kind of real or fancied
defilement, and most especially before reception — after
the preliminary probation — by " tremendous oaths,"
into their society. They abstained from all other
oaths, counting them worse than perjury.2 They
despised riches. They disdained the use of coins, on
account of the " images " impressed upon them. They
manifested the greatest abhorrence of war and slavery,
and braved torture and death with heroic fortitude.
With them "pleasure was depravity," and animal food
was discountenanced, not, so far as we can see, on the
ground of metempsychosis, but because it promoted
sensual desire. Wine was the "drink of fools." Oil
was not used even for unction, and clothes were worn
to tatters before they were discarded. They did not
absolutely disallow marriage ; one section of them even
accepted it, for the simple purpose of perpetuating
the human race, thus exhibiting a reaction towards
the healthy Hebrew conception of matrimony even
within this austere community. Still Pliny speaks
with enthusiasm of the gens sine ulla femina. Hausrath
supposes the Baptist to have been quoting one of their
dogmas when he cried, " God is able of these stones
to raise up children."3 This kind of striving after
purity and preparation for holiness of life, was also
supposed to give them prophetic insight into the future-
Traces of the same idea may be found in Daniel x. 3-7,
and in the apocryphal literature of the fourth book of
1 B. J. ii. 8. 5.
2 Ibid. 6. Compare the teaching of our Lord, Matt. v. 34 ; xxiii. 16 ; Jas.
v. 12.
3 Hausrath, Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, p. 139. Die Essaer.

in.] Dispensation : the Essene. 177
Esdras and Henoch. . . " It is but seldom," said Jose
phus, " they miss in their predictions," J and some re
markable instances of their soothsaying were recorded
by him. " No cry is heard from them for the kingdom
of God nor for the Messiah," says Keim, who here dis
putes the contrary statements of Gratz and Langen,
and declares what we believe is true, that : " We
scarcely find any Essenic utterances concerning the
kingdom and the Messiah. They did not in their sec
tarian complacency anticipate a national deliverance."
The Pharisees believed in angel and spirit, and in
the resurrection of bodies from death, 2 though not
in the resurrection of the bodies of all the wicked.
Some only will be clothed again with new bodies.
Hence it has been assumed by some that the Pharisees
held in a modified form the Oriental doctrine of the
transmigration of souls from body to body. We see
this partially illustrated by the supposition that John
the Baptist and Jesus were the resurrection or reap
pearance of Elijah, or of Jeremiah, or some other of
the old prophets. 3 The Essenes did not hold the
doctrine of the resurrection of bodies, but they did
hold that of the immortality of souls. The essential
evil of matter was too deeply engrained into their
theory of life for them to have emancipated themselves
from the idea of the perpetual and eternal mortality
of the body. Josephus expressly compares their doc
trine on this subject with the Greek notion of immor
tality, and Philo represents their religious ideas as
essentially one with his own.4 Their communism,
their repudiation in a prophetic spirit of animal sacri-
1 Antiq. xiii. ii. 12 ; xv. 10. 5. 2 Acts xxiv. 21 ; Jos. B. J. xi. 8.
3 Alger, Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 165, ff.
4 B. J. ii. 8. n ; Philo. q.o.p.l. 13

178 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
fices, their vows of silence, their ceaseless struggle
after a higher life, led to the most extraordinary vene
ration for their community, and drew strangers into
closer or more remote relations with them. Their
worship of the sun, referred to by Philo and Josephus,
may, according to Keim, be accounted for on the
Philonic principle that the sun and stars are visible
gods ; but it impresses me differently. There is much
in it that implies the influence of Oriental custom and
thought, and this reverence for the sun seems to me to
be a sign of Eastern philosophy eclectically combining
itself with the strictly Jewish framework of Essenic
laws and ideas.
The question arises whether, in the career of John,
the son of Zacharias, there is any peculiarity which
should identify him with the Essenic ritual and com
munity, and thus explain his relation with, and sepa-
rateness from, our Lord's mission.
Some of the outward signs of such connection are
utterly lacking. The dress of the Baptist may have
been mentioned to show that he could not have been
a member of the community. The camel's hair rai
ment and the leathern girdle which are definitely re
ferred to were inconsistent with the white robe of the
Essenes.1 It is true that the linen garment must
have become soiled from its long use, but it appears to
be different in significance from the coarse prophetic
garb of the Baptist. His food is described as " locusts
and wild honey." This corresponds with Essenic
austerity only in spirit and not in the letter. The
Essenes seasoned their bread with hyssop, not with
honey, and adopted the principle of agriculture and
1 Drusius, lib. cit. 225 ; Jos. B. J. ii. 1.

in.] Dispensation : the Essene. 179
manual labour, by which the wants of the community
were supplied from among themselves. They abso
lutely abstained from all mercantile transactions, all
buying and selling, and in this John may have partially
resembled them. Their repudiation of marriage, of
oaths, of slavery and war, their common worship, their
profound veneration for their teachers and for the
Mosaic law, their eagerness in maintaining ceremonial
purity, and the rigorous exclusiveness of their society,
point to an opposite conclusion. At the same time
there are certain considerations which make it pro
bable that John stood in such sympathy with them as
the " theoretic " Egyptian Essenes may have done,
and that he thus brought the entire ascetic institute
face to face with Christ and His mission.
(a) The passionate love and assiduous practice of
virtue by which they were distinguished, corresponds
with all that we know of this preacher of repentance
and virtue, who came to the people " in the way of
righteousness." (6) Their abstemious life carried out into elaborate
detail the general principles of the Nazarite, the
Rechabite, or the Chasidim : and we are told that
"John came neither eating nor drinking."
(c) They were characterized by practising a system
of ablutions, before and after taking food, and at all
the great crises in their uneventful lives. John in
sisted on baptism with water as necessary to initia
tion into the true kingdom of God, and as the
accompaniment and expression of desire for moral or
ceremonial purity.
{d) Their highest stage of spiritual excellence was
supposed to be a participation in the character and
13 *

180 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
functions of Elijah the prophet, not only as a great
reformer, but as a precursor of the Messiah.
It would seem then that it was precisely in this
ascetic sense that John's whole ministry confronted
our Lord, when He made use of the memorable words,
" Among them that are born of women, there hath not
risen a greater than John the Baptist; nevertheless,
he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than
he." There is, however, a side of Christianity, as it was
taught by our Lord and His apostles, in which some
resemblance may be traced to Essenic practices. The
depreciation of earthly treasure and the honour done
to personal poverty were a part of Christ's teaching
adapted to the period of the first missionary energies
of the Church.1 The healing powers exercised by the
Lord and His apostles were also regarded as a specific
function of the Essenes. The abstention from oaths,
the sanctity of speech, the great yearning after pro
phetic gifts, received a full development in the work
of the Spirit. But the separation from the world of
things and of men, the virtual selfishness of the aim
of pure asceticism, and the exacting ceremonialism of
the Essenic rule, were condemned by our Lord. The
discourse in Matt. xv. 1-26, was as much aimed at
the artificial sanctity of the Essenes, as at the tradition
of the elders. Christ called for the sacrifice of self,
but never for its own sake.
I dare not denounce the career of the ascetic, nor
ignore the marvellous influence it has exerted upon
human affairs; nevertheless, though much of its ideal
became inwrought with popular notions of the divine
1 Matt. vi. 19-21 ; xix. 21 ; Acts ii. 44, 43 ; iv. 32-34.

in.] Dispensation : the Essene. 181
life, it was not Christian ; and although we find the
monastic conception of virtue very soon assimilated by
the Christian Church from extraneous sources, and
though it is represented as far transcending the biblical
and natural ideas of right, and though there may have
been states of society when escape from the world and
physical separation from its cruelty and defilement
were the only feasible conditions of cultivating the
Christian virtues, yet the entire theory of such a life
differs from the Christian theory. " He who is least
in the kingdom of God " is greater than the ascetic
John, and that partly in consequence of his failure to
perceive that the life of God in the soul is not an
askesis, but a spirit ; not a rule, but a life ; not a sub
mission to precept, but a law-making force ; not an
outward ritual nor a moral code, but a principle ; above
all, that the chief end of life is not the sanctification of
self, but the happiness of man and the glory of God.
Asceticism has played a prodigious part in the
world's history. The Roman apologists and modern
eulogists of monkery, who try to establish the im
possible proposition that Essenes were Christian
monks, with the seal of Christ's approval on their
regimen, and that the Christian and religious life of
the Catholic Church has always welled up from these
fountains, should ponder the true historic genealogy
of even Western monkery, and observe its melancholy
assimilation of the prime error of Oriental dualism and
gnosticism, against which the" Roman Church has
in words so loudly declaimed. From age to age, in
various other forms of faith as well as of Christianity,
the same fertile lie has been found fermenting ; ag
gravating the moral disturbance and cruel corruption

1 8 2 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
of the human heart, and sanctifying the revolt against
the character and government of God. We see it in
the Hindu philosophy, a thousand years before Christ ;
in the Buddhist monastic system, which still offers to
the world a vaster and more complete specimen of the
spirit of the revolt than can be found throughout
Christendom;1 in the self-inflicted tortures of the
Indian Fakir; in the mystic dreams of the Persian
Sufis; in the strange eclecticism of a hardly-defunct
Manicheism; in the wild vagaries and monstrous per
versions of humanity which disgraced the Nitrian and
S3 rian deserts ; in the abominations and outbreaks
of artificially-repressed passion brought to light in the
writings of Christian fathers,, as the direct offshoots
of the system which they extolled so highly; and in the
corruptions and follies which nearly extinguished the
light of the great Benedictine, Dominican, and Fran
ciscan orders. It is indeed obvious that opportunities
were afforded by monachism for religious meditation,
self-sacrifice, and toil. It would be impossible to over
estimate the debt which human thought and literature
owe to the great recluses of the Benedictine rule, or
that which civilization owes to the "orders" which
devoted themselves to the cultivation of the soil ;
while Christendom gratefully acknowledges the mis
sionary energy of the Irish and British: monasteries,
and the sublime consecration, to the salvation of
outlying barbarians and slaves evinced by the Jesuit
propagandists. At the same time the true revival of
literature occurred when the work was taken up by
men with larger views of humanity, and when the
1 Renan's Histoire des langues Semitiques, iii. 4. 1 ; Koppen. Burnouf.
Schlagenweit. Hue. &c, &c.

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 183
cloister no longer monopolized learning. Civilization
never made real headway against barbarism, nor solved
the secrets of nature's laws, until a truer conception of
nature took possession of men's minds. The grandest
and most permanent victories of Christendom have been
those which have been won by proclaiming, not the
sanctity of the hermit, but the life of the Christ; not
by preaching the glory of the celibate — that treason
against the order ofthe universe — but by proclaiming the
many-sided completeness of the Son of man. We feel
that here we may take up the language of St. Paul, and
say of all abnormal excresences, forcing processes, and
artificial developments of the Divine life — " Yea, what
things were gain to me those I counted loss for Christ ;
yea, doubtless, I count all things but loss for the excel
lency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord."
" We have not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear, but the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry Abba
Father." § 3- John a Prophet of the Lord.
There is a third office which John was called upon
to discharge, with which his entire mission is more
closely and significantly associated, and which cannot
be said to be specifically the mark of the Old Cove
nant. " What went ye out into the wilderness to see ?
A prophet ? Yea, I say unto you, and more than a
prophet."1 These are the words of the Lord Him
self, confirmed by a variety of other references in the
Gospel narrative. We are told elsewhere, " All the
people hold John as a prophet." 2 His own refusal of
honours, based upon the supposition that he was the
1 Matt. xi. 9. 2 Ibid. xiv. 5 ; Luke xx; 6 ; Matt, xxi.26.

184 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
transmigrated soul of one of the old prophets, is ex
plained by an assumption that puts him on the same
elevated platform with the prophets whose words still
shook the hearts of the people, as the trees of the wood
are shaken by the wind. Without presuming here to
travel far into the vast subject of the prophetical
office, or the history of its evolution, or the place it has
taken in the true kingdom of God, I deem the discussion
of some points of surpassing interest indispensable
to a right understanding of the testimony and work of
the Baptist. I shall endeavour very briefly (1) to
illustrate the intellectual method and the mental
condition or faculty by which the human race has
believed itself to acquire the highest instruction, and
to come nearest to the truth, i. e., to the thought of
God concerning moral and spiritual things ; (2) to
trace the part taken by this faculty of the human
mind in the foundation of religious systems, and pre
eminently in the establishment of the Hebrew theo
cracy ; (3) to point out the analogy between the
work and mission of the Hebrew prophets and that of
John the son of Zacharias ; and (4) to show that the
prophetic function of John is a link in the development
of the prophetical office in the Christian Church.
I. Our methods of passing from the known to the
unknown are conditioned by the quality and subject-
matter of our inquiry. If we are only concerned to
know what is contained in our axioms, in our broadest
generalizations or our ultimate laws of thought, coupled
with fundamental definitions of magnitude and number,
we make confident use of the deductive and syllogistic
processes ; and if our application of the method be
honest and continuous, we may fairly assume that our

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 1S5
demonstrations have the validity of the premises from
which we start. Various attempts have been made to
give to a priori argumentation, to deductions from first
principles of thought in the realm of transcendental
theology, the form of mathematical proof. They have
all been failures. Experiences, imaginations, huge as
sumptions have been allowed to slip into the process
of the argument, and to vitiate the proof. The inductive
logic, on the other hand, is always leading us from
specific observations to broad generalizations of facts,
to what are called laws of nature, to the properties of
matter, to the forces at work in the universe, and to
some of the general phenomena even of human life and
of the human mind. In providing the material for
these speculations, we are constantly coming into con
tact with the special experiences of individuals, and
the records of these experiences, and we can make
small way with our induction even of physical pheno
mena without the exercise of the spirit of trust in our
fellow-man : and thus evidence of supposed fact, and
faith in testimony — even though these have to be tested
very severely — take their place among the mental pro
cesses by which we arrive at the elements of scientific
truth. This is still more conspicuous when we step
into the region of historic event, and regard the past
education of men, institutions, and peoples, as provid
ing the sum total of existing knowledge. But in the
processes of induction and experimental inquiry there
is a faculty in addition to that of ratiocination in any
of its forms, which cannot be dispensed with. The
inquirer, the philosopher, will make little progress in
his struggle with the perplexing facts which confront
him in his process of legitimate hypothesis, if he has

186 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
no constructive, imaginative faculty.1 If the early
physicists had not been able to imagine so abstract a
conception, so high a dream as the orbit of a planet, as
the infinitesimal vibration of an invisible aether, as the
figure of the earth, or the law of universal attraction,
scientific method would have been to the present
moment utterly abortive. The grandest advances
made in science itself have been accomplished by the
imaginations of great thinkers, the glorious guesses
and daring intuitions of acute and penetrative minds, to
whom it was given to piece together from the scattered
and significant fragments of accurately observed fact
certain working hypotheses, which might afterwards
be verified by experiment. Verification is an imposing
word. The verifying faculty is talked about very
freely. All that is often meant by it is that no fresh
discoveries disprove the accuracy of the hypothesis.
There is, however, a region of truth and of fact that
cannot be reached by deduction or induction. There
is a world of existence which does not come under
these categories of experiment, the facts of which
belong to the life of the spirit, to the hopes and fears
of men, to the moral nature, and to conceptions which
have been produced age after age by the sense of God,
by the sense of sin, the yearning after the eternal, the
craving after perfection. The reality of this spiritual
world, the laws which govern it, the Being who fills
it, the overpowering importance of the events enacted
within it to millions upon millions of the human race,
transcend incalculably the forces, the laws, the destiny
of that visible universe with which physical science is
conversant. In one respect each man stands alone in
1 Tyndall on Scientific Uses of the Imagination.

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 187
this world of spiritual reality. His mode of conceiving
and representing it cannot be so readily compared
with that of his brother, as can their common
experiences of the physical universe. It is more dif
ficult to bring about unanimity, or even resemblance
of conception in this, region, than in that which is
ever forcing itself upon the senses, and' on the sense-
conditioned powers of reason. The standards of com
parison are fewer, the means of verification for strong
impression or intuition are less obvious. Deductive pro
cesses are helpless machinery in this region of intense
life. Inductive method can never be thoroughly
applied to it, because no thinker is perfectly sure
that his brother's facts correspond with his own.
The science of "comparative religion" skims round
the outside of this region, but cannot meet the craving
of a single soul. It is very learned but very profitless.
The history of the development of moral ideas in
ancient nations, the theory of the development of re
ligious changes and the commingling of their various
elements, may show how human nature has been striving
to comfort itself with new sympathies, and to make
these do the work of exhausted proofs. But each man
has, after all, judging from the scientific platform, to
piece together within his own intuitional consciousness,
according to his own light, and with such help as may
be at hand, the elements of the spiritual universe. It
is in this weird and lonely work that he craves, burns,
groans for sympathy. It is here that he discards the
help of the lower though important mental pro
cesses of science, and takes refuge in higher elements
and methods. The intuitions of God, of truth, of duty,
of sin, of doom, of redemption, which have flashed

188 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
across the darkness of one soul, when expressed in
words, symbols, sacraments, and worship, kindle beacon
lights on the dark waters of human life. What the
great poet-artist sees, and can embody in the creations
of his art, are not his inner life nor his deepest thought,
emotion, or craving ; but they have the subtle power of
evoking corresponding emotions in other minds. These
works of art help to bridge the chasm between the life
of his spirit and that of other spirits. They are the
subtle hieroglyph of otherwise unutterable aspirations.
They create a community of feelings that are sup
posed to be similar. They are the tokens and keys of
common sympathies, which if drawn out into proposi
tions would utterly fail to produce the same effect.
Occasionally, as if by magic, the tatters of some sym
bolic flag, the words of some simple song, the tones of
some widely-known melody, have the power to quicken
a common emotion, in a manner that eloquent speech
or elaborate disquisition would utterly fail to effect.
Whatever has the power to evoke community of senti
ment in regions where neither scientific method, nor
historic verification, nor deductive process, nor human
testimony can reach, takes the place of proof. We
hear of old associations probing the heart of an un
believer; cf the words of simple men touching the
consciences of their fellows ; of the contagion of re
ligious earnestness ; of the overwhelming effect of
certain ceremonial rites ; of the semi - miraculous
results which follow the preaching of the old gospel.
What does all this show but that there are regions
of the human soul where the vivid intuition of spiri
tual realities takes a higher place than all the other
faculties, in securing what at least has the effect of

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 189
<
truth upon the understanding : it has the power of
filling the mind, of securing "real assent," and sup
plying ample direction and stimulus to the will.
II. But what is the part which this faculty of the
human mind has taken in the foundation of religious
systems ? Many of these systems present a com
plexity of influences and traditions, involve the mis
apprehension of ph)'sical facts, and reveal the morbid
activity of the religious sentiment. Every so - called
religion is like a river into which numberless tribu
taries are falling, which is swollen by rains and the
upbursting of deep springs of water from below. But
while a superficial estimate of the full and final effect
of such a river upon the country through which it
flows apparently ignores the thousandfold origin of its
many waters, yet every drop of the Nile or the Ganges
has been in the first instance lifted by the sunbeam
to the height, the fall from which gives the momentum
of its onward passage to the sea. So all the essential
characteristics of every religious system have taken
their rise in the troubled guesses, the vivid intuitions,
and restless questionings of men touching the spiritual
universe in which they find themselves. It is not in
tellectual proof, nor historical fact, nor deduction from
first principles, but the gazing on unseen and eternal
realities, and the intense convictions consequent there
upon, which make up the mystery of the Orphic frag
ments, the songs of the Rig- Veda, the motive force of
Buddha's laws, the pith of the words of Mahomet, and
which, piece by piece, produced the complicated re
ligious ceremonial of India, Egypt, and Greece. It is
the poet rather than the logician, the artist rather than
the philosopher, the prophet rather than the legislator,

190 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
to whom the world has been indebted for its religious
faith. There is, moreover, in the deepest experiences
of the Divine life, in the daily growth of the moral and
spiritual sense of beauty, truth, and righteousness, that
which provides the nearest analogues to the extraordi
nary condition of mind out of which the religious ideas
of great nations and communities have sprung.' We are
accustomed to pray to God to " cleanse the thoughts of
our hearts by the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, that
we may perfectly love Him." Thus, though there is a
vast and legitimate influence exerted on devout minds by
the normal action of truth, though the realities of the
Divine kingdom impress the heart and arouse the tor
pid will, yet in so making known the quality of the
Divine Name as to induce a perfect moral surrender to
the will of God, we look for the inspirations of the Holy
Spirit. There is " wisdom and revelation " granted to
the believing man. The knowledge of God is quickened,
expanded, intensified, by the communication of Divine
grace. Just as the whole Church of Christ is called
upon to offer up spiritual sacrifices, and every member
of it acts the part of a priest, thus showing in daily
life what was the significance of the sacerdotal system
of the Old Covenant, so also the mighty working of the
Holy Spirit in the Church reveals its highest signifi
cance in the prophetic office of the old theocracy;
and inversely that office is most adequately explained
by glancing on to the time when the sublime wish of
the great prophetic lawgiver, that all the Lord's people
should be prophets, and that the Lord would put His
Spirit upon them, was fulfilled — when Joel's grand
vision was realized, and Jehovah poured out His Spirit
upon all flesh.

m.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 191
III. The prophetic order and office among the ancient
Hebrews did for them a notable service, which in the
estimation of those who are far from being admiring
disciples of Hebraism, or believers in Biblical theology,
made the Jews the most progressive people of anti
quity, and constituted their literature the most fertile,
suggestive, and practically useful in the entire realm
of thought. The prophets criticised existing institu
tions. They rose above the prescriptions of centuries,
they brought the daily conduct of religious institutions
and national life to the touchstone of something higher
and deeper than existing laws, or the hitherto recog
nized revelation of the Divine will. It was the law of
their existence, that without creating a revolution,
without originating schismatic action, they should yet
continually add to the religion of their forefathers new
and more spiritual elements. There was a continuous
succession of men in Israel, who were regarded as an
essential feature and element of their national life, but
who, without any indispensable training, without cere
monial guarantee, without chrism, ordination, or heredi
tary rank, came to their brethren with that which they
truly called " the word of Jehovah," and were listened
to by prince and priest, by noble and peasant. They
came from all classes in society. Men of royal blood
and lofty mental endowments, men of humble birth
and obscure occupation, little children, distinguished
priests and common herdsmen, poets of broad culture,
narrow men haunted with one irresistible thought
touching the sin or doom of guilty prince, priest, or
city, came forth from their retirement in dens or caves
of the earth, or from the courts of the temple, or from
their ivory throne in some palace of Lebanon, and

192 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
revealed " the arm of the Lord." The one common
principle in every case was that they had received
a Divine call, and to use the expressive phrase of one
of them, "the Lord had uncovered their ear" and
spoken to them, as with still small voice, the warning
or consolation or command which they were thence
forward bound to utter. It was thus they conferred
upon the Jewish people their spiritually progressive
character. When the prophets ceased to speak, when in
its polity, institutions, theology, and ceremonial, Israel
turned back upon itself and on its own written and tra
ditional law, the forces of the nation collapsed, and its
living mission to the world was at an end. The king
dom of God was given to another nation, which would
bring forth the fruit thereof.
The question arises, Was this faculty of spiritual
intuition touching the Divine will and human duty a
mere hallucination ? On the contrary, the inspira
tion of these prophets was, it seems to us, one among
the most veritable facts in the history of the world.
They were not philosophers coming to logical conclu
sions from admitted premises, nor were they students
in the dawn of human thought drawing inductive con
clusions and determining general laws of the spiritual
world. They spake that which they saw, heard, and
felt in the transcendental region of the human soul,
where it stands face to face with the living God. They
could neither define nor prove the process by which they
knew that the Lord spake by them, and that He who is
the eternal truth of things had put His word upon their
tongues. Brought into inexplicable relation with the
purposes of Providence, they read the coming disasters
of Egypt, Philistia, Babylon, as well as the impending

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 193
doom hovering over Korah, Saul, Ahab, and Belshazzar.
Standing in the presence of God, they cried unto the
Lord day and night for the people, and were often
" heard in that they feared." Moses, Samuel, David,
Elijah, thus became the voices of mercy and of doom
unto the people, and their entire mission furnishes, as
a matter of fact, the highest class of proof which the
human intellect now possesses that the deepest reality
of existence presents itself in the region that underlies
sense and logical formulae, and embraces the activity,
thought, and nature of the Eternal One.1
It was to this famous order of men that, by consent
of both friend and foe, John and Jesus alike belonged.
The Nazaritic vow and the ascetic order, to which John
was pledged, had been steps in advance of the merely
ceremonial caste in which he was by birth included,
and we have undoubted proof that in the estimation of
his contemporaries he ranked with the order of Hebrew
prophets. Various words are used by the sacred
writers to denote this order, but the famous term Nabi2
1 "So ist die Weissagung eine durch der Gottlichen Geist gewirkte unmit-
telbare Gewissheit iiber den Gottlichen Willen und Rathschluss, wie dieselben
in den ewig-gultigen Gesetzen Gottlichen Wesens ruhen." — H. Schultz. Alt-
testamentliche Theologie, p. 173.
2 ^33, Nabi, from N23, " to spring, or stream forth," "to speak in a
•T TT
flow of words," together with the allied root H33, which also means primarily
" to bubble up," and hence "to speak ; " in its earliest reference probably de
noted one who spoke in spontaneous, musical recitative. The Syriac "bana,"
Greek Qa-vat, Latin " fa-ri," may be allied with it. It has a very wide sense
as a "speaker " in Gen. xx. 7 ; in Exod, iv. 13, 16, a more restricted sense.
The LXX. translate the word by rrpofrtrng, "one who speaks for another."
In niphal form it signifies the legitimate functions ; in hithpahel form, one who
simulates such functions (Ezek. xxviii. 4, 9, 10 ; Amos iii. 8 ; Jer. xx. 1 ; xxix.
26). The other words (Roeh and Chozeh) determine the ground of the Nobis
functions. The Roeh is he who (ilS"l) sees the visions of Jehovah, and thus
obtains the material on which he speaks or sings. The Chozeh (HTn) is
one who (n*n) cuts with his eye through hypocrisy and excuses, and re
proves or rebukes accordingly. See 1 Chron. xxix. 29, for all three words.
14

194 •¦ John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
finds its interpretation in the passage ' where Aaron
is said to stand in this relation to Moses, Moses being
to him instead of God. The implication was that the
true Nabi does not speak his own thoughts, though they
may be expressed in his own words, but that he is the
mouthpiece, the interpreter of God to man. This is
unquestionably the true significance of the word "pro
phet." 2 The words used by a prophet, even when he
has to interpret to men the thoughts of the Most High,
to make known the truth of Jehovah, must, by the
nature of the case, be functions of the hearer's as well
as of the speaker's mind. The words must be those
which in the usage familiar to the hearer would most
nearly convey the thought that seeks expression. Moses
did not give to the eloquent Aaron the words, but the
ideas, which he was to interpret in the form in which
Pharaoh and the children of Israel would best under
stand them. The revelations and intuitions at the burn
ing bush were the means by which Moses realized the
universal presence of Jehovah. He became the supreme
ruler of the people to whom God sent him, and his
Gad, Iddo, Jeduthun, Asaph, are all called Roeh. Samuel is thus spoken of,
and the word is expressly said to be more ancient than Nafi, i Sam. ix. 9, 19,
The traces of Nabi in the Pentateuch have hence been held to be of later date.
Dr. Payne Smith has made the suggestion that D17H was read by the
LXX. for OViJ. that the rendering reflects the true reading of 1 Sam. ix. 9,
and shows the statement to be that the people formerly called Nabi a Roeh,
implying that it was a popular, not an authorized designation; but the passage
is manifestly a late gloss. The term ' ' seer " did not disappear with the pro
minence given from the time of Samuel to the idea of prophet. See, on the
other hand, Hengstenberg, Authenticity of the Pentateuch, vol. ii. 274. The
classical passage for the biblical meaning is Exod. iv. 1-17. Ewald's History
of Israel, E.T. by Martineau, ii. 47-53. See also Kuenen's History of tht
Religion of Israel, E.T. vol. i. pp. 213-217, who mentions the unsatisfactory
conjecture of Land, that the word is derived from a niphal form of MIS, "to
go, "and means the person into whom some one enters. * Exod. iv. 10-17.
2 Apollo is described as the ¦Kpo$r\ri\g of Zeus. .lEschylus, Eum. V). irpo-
(Mjrae were attached to the temples to interpret the /icivTig.

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 195
office as legislator and priest was founded on his Divine
legation. The assurance of his commission was con
firmed to him by supernatural signs, while the fluc
tuating confidence of the people in his right to guide
and control their actions, was established by their ob
serving how the most fearful judgments on Egypt
appeared to follow the exertion of his human will. He
became " more than a prophet," more than was com
monly understood even by that potent word.1 He was
"Jehovah's slave." " My servant Moses" is the term
by which Jehovah designated him, and he was endowed
with the special privileges which, in Oriental countries
and in the Hebrew polity,2 the servant and steward of
the house enjoyed. With Moses, "Jehovah spake face
to face, as a man speaketh with his friend." It was "a
prophet like unto Moses " whom the Lord would cause
to arise among them, to whom they should hearken.
Thus the people were from the first put in a state of
expectancy and hope, for higher, more direct, and per
sonal communications with the living God.
" The Prophet was ' the messenger or interpreter of the Divine
will.' Such is the force of all the synonyms employed for the office.
The prophet is expressly called 'the interpreter' (Isa. xliii. 27) ;
'messenger of Jehovah' (Hag. i. 13) ; 'the man of spirit '(Hos. ix. 7).
' The spirit of Jehovah,' enters into him. These expressions cor
respond exactly to our words 'inspired ' and ' inspiration.' " 3
The contrast between the position of the prophets
and that of the priests is remarkable. The prophets
were not organically opposed to the priesthood, but they
1 Numb. xii. 6 ; Deut. xviii. 15.
2 This throws light on the argument in Heb. iii., and in the lofty designation
of the servant of Jehovah given to Messiah in Isa. xl.-lxvi. See Payne Smith,
Prophecy, p. 79, ff.
3 Dean Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church. First Series, p. 419.
14 *

196 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
were continually penetrating the hidden secrets of
men's hearts, and revealing the lack of harmony
between the sacramental acts of priests and people
and their actual life. The denunciations of the pro
phets proclaim, not the inherent valuelessness of the
sacrificial rites, but the utter corruption of those who
were making the ceremonial a substitute for moral
life. Their duties were not like those of the priests,
confined to special places, times, and seasons, but
any day or place might see a prophet of the Lord
confronting the unbeliever, the idolater, or the world
ling. A king of Israel could not undertake unlawful or
idolatrous rites without some man of God prophesying
against his altar and his golden calves.1 Ahab in the
vineyard of Jezreel,2 Ahaz 3 by the upper conduit of the
fuller's field, Hezekiah 4 when revealing his treasures to
the Assyrian ambassadors, Jehoiakim5 in his palace,
saw the dreaded features of these enemies of all un
righteousness. Sacrificial rites, sacred lustrations, pom
pous ceremonial, were the great agencies of the priests.
Holy life and mighty words, appealing directly to the
conscience, were the instruments wielded by the pro
phets. No mere power of mind, heart, or conscience,
would justify a son of Reuben or of Ephraim in under
taking the duties of a priest. The priest belonged to a
caste or hereditary guild, into which none but a son of
Aaron, with certain specified exceptions, could be ad
mitted. On the other hand, no caste, no birthright, no
training, could constitute a man a prophet of the Lord
if he had not received "the word of the Lord," and
the inward call to see and to speak. The two offices
1 Kings xii. 28. " Ibid. xxi. 17-24. Isa. vii. 3.
2 Kings xix. 20 ; Isa. xxxvii. s Jer. xxii., &c.

hi.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 197
were alike recapitulated in the person of Him who is
at once our Prophet and our Priest. It was full of deep
significance, that before He appeared the last of the
old prophets should come ; that the critical, searching,
and prophetic ministry of John should gather up the
lessons of the past, and show the full extent to which
the spirituality and moral purity of the Old Covenant
could reach.
There were some special characteristics of the He
brew prophets embodied in the ministry and mission
of John. Thus (1), they were characterized by great
personal independence. Invested with no prescribed
dignity, no hereditary, educational, or social claims to
respect, they yet delivered their message or burden
as the voice of the living God.1 Jonah, Nathan, Mi-
chaiah, Elijahj were only individual specimens of a
goodly fellowship of prophets, who, in virtue of an
irresistible persuasion that they knew the mind of the
Lord, appeared on the historic scene, and spake in the
ears of priests, kings, and people, the word of righteous
ness. This independence of other authority is the
more remarkable from the pari - passu development
among the Hebrews of an hereditary dynasty and a
sacerdotal order.2 Doubtless when a prophet was also
a judge like Samuel, or a king like David, or a priest
like Jeremiah or Ezekiel, his words came with greater
force upon the ears of the people, and the prophetic
mission acquired a still higher claim to respect. Yet
r H. Schultz on Wirksamkeit und Stellung der Propheten. l.c. p. 167.
2 This feature cannot be pressed with those who, like Kuenen, Kalisch,
Colenso, and others, endeavour to establish the late origin of the Levitical
legislation. The far - spread effect of John's prophetic voice at a time when
the Levitical service and hierarcky were believed to be venerable and Mosaic,
is noteworthy even on this hypothesis.

198 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
Nathan denounced the sins of David to his face ;
Michaiah and Elijah threatened the apostate Ahab;
Isaiah swayed all hearts by his mighty words ; and so
terrible was the impression produced by the appear
ance of Jonah on the king of Assyria, that he pro
claimed a fast, and he and all his people cried mightily
to the Lord for mercy. In exact correspondence with
this high personal independence, " the word of the
Lord came to John the son of Zacharias in the wilder
ness," and, like his elder brethren, he began to utter
words which compelled the inhabitants of Judsea to
hearken, and which made Herod the tetrarch tremble
on his throne. John was seized by the irresistible im
pulse. He knew that God had sent him; and when he
came forth from his desert hiding-place, as Elijah had
done before him, his words swept like a mountain blast
over the institutions and social practices of his country
men. Whenever in these days we wish to express the
force with which clear-sighted conscience speaks to the
torpid heart, the crooked policy, or social degradation
of a people ; when the might of one strong-souled man
moves a nation, and we want some analogy to pourtray
the peculiar quality of personal earnestness and fear
less independence, we instinctively compare such a
man to a Hebrew prophet, and the last and greatest of
them all rises up to view.
(2) The Hebrew prophets were, moreover, an order
of men, though the links which related them to one
another were in the hidden region of the spirit. Their
intuitions, their Divine inspirations, brought them into
individual but common relation with the same great
realities of truth and righteousness. They were aware
of one another's words, they meditated the uttered

in.] Dispensation: a Prophet of the Lord. 199
thoughts of the Lord. By every word that proceeded
out of the mouth of God they lived. Thus David's
psalms reveal the ground-tone and key-notes of Na
than's prophecies.1 Thus the words of Moses, " the
man of God," formed the basis of many a denunciation
of Jeremiah.2 Isaiah and Micah were in close affinity
with each other.3 The visions of Ezekiel were sus
tained by the threats of Jeremiah.4 Hints given by one
prophet were developed by others, the nebulous visions
of one age became clusters of stars in the next, and the
progress of the prophetic knowledge of God and His
ways was "from more to more."5 Every vision was
added to the sum of things known, until the whole
people became prophetic, and the spiritual world inter
penetrated the material world with an unearthly glow.
This peculiarity, which we trace in the mission of all
the great prophets, was not absent from the earliest
words of the Baptist. He was familiar with the predic
tion of "the voice in the wilderness," he knew that
1 Compare 2 Sam. vii. 3-16 with the Psalms which celebrate the perpetuity
of David's house and all the triumphs of God's ' ' Holy One.
2 Cf. Deut. xv. -xvi. 22 with Jer: xxxiv ; Deut. iv. 40 with Jer. vii. 7; Deut.
vii. 12 with Jer. xi.5. This resemblance is so striking in some respects that
modern German criticism has credited Jeremiah with the authorship of Deu
teronomy. This view is illustrated in great detail by Dr. Colenso, The Penta
teuch and Book of Joshua Critically Examined. Part iii. chaps, iv.- xviii.
Ewald, History of Israel, E.T., vol. i. 127, says : "The book was much imitated
as early as the age of Jeremiah ; " although, with Riehm, Kuenen, and Bleek,
he attributes the book to the reign of Manasseh.
3 Cf. Isa. ii. with Micah iv. ; Isa. liv. 1-6, Ixvi. 6-9 with Micah iv. 10.
*Cf. Ezek. xiii. with Jer. xxiii. See Fairbairn 's Ezekiel, an Exposition,
P- 93. ff.
5 This idea is illustrated in interesting detail by Dean Payne Smith, Prophecy
a Preparation for Christ, Lectures vi., vii. "The later prophets do not so
much develope as fill up the outlines of the gospel which the early prophets
sketched in full, large, and grand proportions. The prophets formed a large
and organised community, thoroughly conversant with one another's writings,
trained up in the study of them, anxiously searching out the meaning of them.
.... Many a later prophecy was the result of patient study of what had been
already revealed." pp. 275, 278.

200 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
the messenger of the Lord of hosts would go before
him to prepare His ways. The prophecy of Malachi,
the judgments and burden uttered by the last prophet,
are reproduced in his burning words. His own inspi
ration links his career with that of the coming Christ,
and his explanation of himself is, "I am the voice of
one crying in the wilderness." The Lord Himself
abundantly sustained the same character. Each Evan
gelist, when pourtraying with prophetic insight some
feature of the perfect life of the God - Man, felt the
hitherto inaudible tones of the earlier Scriptures giving
forth their resonant notes in sublime unison so soon as
the great Prophet spoke. All mighty men of " vision
and faculty divine," from the prisoner at Rome to
the exile of Patmos, confirm their mutual inspirations
touching things unseen by this fellowship of their deep
intuitions concerning the will, the nature, and the pur
pose of God. The authority of inspirations will not
lead into schism and discord those whose spiritual na
ture throbs in harmony with their dominant tone.
Nothing in the history of thought is more wonderful
than the oneness and continuity of Holy Scripture,
than that unison in the intuitions of men severed from
each other by thousands of years, by varied fortunes,
by diversity of cultivation, and even by external dis
pensations of grace. At the present moment, wherever
the Divine life spreads, and society as well as the indi
vidual becomes transfigured by it, it reveals more and
more its one origin. Science and literature, Scripture
and the Church, the history of men and nations, are
combining to produce out of nobler material than
antique ritual, than decrees of councils, or than the
dicta of theologians, the unity of the Catholic faith.

m.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 201
(3) One of the special characteristics of the Hebrew
prophets consisted of the psychological methods by
which they were furnished with these revelations.
Vision, dream, trance, ecstasis, were common inci
dents in their history. They fell into a trance, hav
ing their eyes open.1 They looked and saw the hosts
of Israel scattered like sheep upon the mountains.2
They saw the Lord sitting upon His throne, high
and lifted up, and His train filling the temple. 3
They dreamed of a ladder set up on the earth, the
top of which reached to heaven and God.4 They saw
descending from heaven a great sheet, knit at the four
corners, containing all the beasts of the earth.5 The
visions of Moses and Elijah, and those of Ezekiel,
Daniel, and Zechariah, need not be enumerated. One
common feature seems to have characterized them —
the prophet's ordinary sense-consciousness was sus
pended, and the customary flow of his thoughts was
often arrested, by an abnormal state of mind which corre
sponded with a dream, but was distinct from it. Still,
his vision was no delirium of excitement, no frantic
phantasm which overmastered his intelligence and pa
ralyzed his will. Even when the afflatus was widely
diffused, and the state of ecstasis characterized whole
groups of men and women, Paul reminded them that
"the spirits of the prophets were subject to the pro
phets." The seer was master of his own ego, of his
spiritual consciousness ; he was still himself, though
" whether in the body or out of the body he could not
tell ;" and he was able to give to his brother men the
result, so far as words could give it. He stood out of
1 Numb. xxiv. 4. 2 1 Kings xxii. 17-19. 3 Isa. vi. 1.
* Gen. xxviii. 12. S Acts x. and xi.

202 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
self in respect of the ordinary testimony of the senses,
but was more conscious of what self is, than at any
other time. It is sometimes said that our Lord was
never thrown into this ecstatic state. This is only
partially true. The transfiguration (if not the baptism
and the temptation) corresponds with some of the
visions of the older prophets, and with the ecstasies of
Peter, John, and Paul. Be this as it may, He who said
of Himself, "No man hath ascended into heaven saving
he who came down from heaven, even the Son of man
who is in heaven," must in one sense have been, all
His life long, enjoying a continual vision of the realities
of the Divine nature and the world of spirit. It was
His normal state, and because of the harmony of His
being in all its parts, and His control of self, it left no
trace of excitement upon His words. But was John
deprived of this strong supernatural stimulus of his
spiritual nature ? I think not. Surely the special reve
lation given to him of the opening heavens and of the
descending dove, and his intuitive perception of the
character of Him who would baptize with the Holy
Ghost, place his experience in the same class of myste
rious consciousnesses. He saw a reality, but one which
the crowd of his disciples saw not. He too "beheld
the visions of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but
having his eyes open." He was alive to what was
around him, but still more alive to stupendous mys
teries ordinarily veiled even from such eyes as his.
Doubtless one who knew what it was to enjoy an
intensely intellectual life, apart from the wealth of
knowledge furnished by the senses, and who thus lived
in the reminiscence of this spiritual world and in
communion with the Eternal, — even when no unusual

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 203
exaltation of spirit was being afforded to him, — en
joyed a "glorious liberty," and could take a view of
human life and its complicated affairs, the crystalline
clearness of which made his words of exceeding value.
John saw the approaching kingdom of God, and knew
by the force of his special revelations what baptism
with the Holy Ghost might be. He spoke with such
fearlessness and force that all men counted him to be a
prophet indeed. It was this which led Pharisees and
Sadducees, publicans and harlots, soldiers and kings,
fishermen and slaves, to come and ask him, " What
shall we do ?" The old prophets were sought after by
the Jewish people both in their trivial duties and in
great crises — when a borrowed axe fell into the river,
as well as when an only child lay dead. If a king
wished to build a temple or to fight a battle, he " in
quired of the Lord." Prophets advised upon all
matters, from the smallest domestic loss to the issues
of foreign invasion. Their writings show that they were
the true statesmen and the true patriots, whose judg
ments rose above the interests of party, and that they
were not swayed by the traditions of their order. They
were the poets, the critics, the annalists, and the his
torians of their nation. They were the recognized ex
pounders of Holy Scripture, and, strange to say, their
words acquired a reputation which was almost, if not
quite, equal to that of their own earlier sacred books.
Not a few of the Hebrew prophets felt their hold upon
the people augmented by the miraculous powers which
they wielded, the signs and wonders which they
wrought ; but this was not a universal endowment. If
this was withheld, there was that in the general like
ness of their tone, their manner of address, their fierce

204 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
hatred of insincerity, uncleanness, and disloyalty to
Jehovah, that, though they did no miracle, it was
nevertheless admitted that all things which they spake
were true. John must be classed with these. His
claims to attention did not rest upon his acts of super
natural healing or vengeance. He did not call fire from
heaven, nor divide the waters, nor raise the dead. His
right to speak turned upon the intense reality of his
message, the power he possessed to diffuse his own
convictions, to kindle in other hearts something of the
fire of his own enthusiasm.
(4) There is one grand peculiarity of the prophetic
order, a full discussion of which is here impossible, but
which bears strongly on the position of John. I refer
to the definite prediction of future events. Doubtless
this meaning has long been attributed to the word
prophet, and is supposed by many to be its chief sig
nificance. We cannot admit that it has acquired this
meaning in recent times by the aid of an etymologi
cal mistake. At no period before or since the seven
teenth century x had the functions of the Hebrew or
Christian prophet been reduced to the mere ability to
predict the future. The " higher " biblical criticism, it
is true, refuses this exposition of facts, and determines
the chronological place of a document or of a single
phrase in a prophetical work by the known date of the
event to which predictive reference is made. This
canon of criticism proceeds on the supposition that a
prediction is so improbable as to be incredible, or is meta-
1 Dean Stanley, in his interesting chapter on "The Prophetical Order," in
his Lectures on the Jewish Church, First Series, p. 417, says : " In the seven
teenth century the limitation of the word to prediction had gradually begun
to appear. .... Biblical criticism has now resuscitated the biblical use of the
word. "

in,] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 205
physically unthinkable. One of the earliest descriptions
of the prophet's gifts and calling turns expressly on his
admitted acquaintance with the secrets of the will of
God. "And if thou shalt say in thine heart, How
shall we know the word which the Lord hath not
spoken ?" The answer is: "When a prophet speaketh
in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor
come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath
not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presump
tuously."1 The concurrence of a prophet's speech or
prediction with the event, is not however an infallible
sign that he is a prophet of the Lord. If the moral
tone and religious loyalty of the man are at fault, the
prediction will go for nothing.2 The great prophecies
of the dying Israel and of the dying Moses, to say
nothing of the marvellous outlook of the seer Balaam,
are distinct foreshadowings of the future career of the
sacred people. The illustrations are too numerous
to be mentioned in which the Hebrew prophets as
sumed to foresee the future destiny of peoples and of
individuals. There was, it is true, a conditional pro
phesying, the principle of which throws much light on
the character of the whole group of oracular utter
ances. " At what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation, and concerning a kingdom, to pluck up and to
pull down, and to destroy it ; if that nation, against
whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will
repent of the evil that I thought to do unto them.
And at what instant I shall speak concerning a nation
and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it ; if
it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then
I will repent of the good wherewith I said I would
Deut. xviii. zi, 22. 2 Ibid. xiii. 1-5.

206 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
benefit them."1 On this principle is to be explained
the definite predictive prophecy of Jonah to the people
of Nineveh : " Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be
overthrown." This appears to have been conditional,
and the whole record of it, with its consequences,
occurs in Holy Writ for the very purpose of exhibit
ing the gracious intention of such predictions. It
would be hard, however, to reduce all the predictive
prophecies of the Hebrew prophets to this class. They
are too definite and detailed in their form, too specific
and too decretive in their essence, to suffer this inter
pretation. They are outlines of the future development
of a people, which, if delivered before such development,
indicate an abnormal elevation of vision, and such su
pernatural and Divine teaching as is entirely beyond
the scope of science, the shrewd guess of the statesman,
or the ambiguous vaticination of the heathen oracles.
Neither the scientific prevision of future phenomena,
nor the mathematic theory of probability, throws a ray
of light upon the admission of these men into the deep
mystery of the Divine purpose. The supernatural
element in every miracle2 consists in man's acquain
tance with the purpose of God. Moses did not bring
the plagues on Egypt, nor did Elijah create the fire
which consumed the sacrifice ; but they knew by sure
vision what was about to take place. There have
doubtless been heathen oracles, and even inexplic
able previsions of the future history of Rome and other
nations, which have also been fulfilled in their sea
sons. If the world is working out a Divine plan, if
moral order corresponds to the purpose of a living
God, then that which is most contingent, and, so far
'Jer. xviii. 7-10. 2 Dean Mansel, art. on " Miracles," Kitto's Cycl.

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 207
as consciousness goes, most entirely dependent on
human will, is nevertheless a part of that ultimate
plan. Glimpses of the design of God are seen along
many planes of vision. Those who have long pondered
God's ways and man's ways, have been strengthened
to see and know the character of men, the destiny of
nations, the future of the world.
There is one class of such anticipations which has,
more or less, been diffused throughout mankind, and
which has received very special exposition in Hebrew
prophecy. I refer especially to what is often described
as the prediction of the person, the coming, and the
work of the Messiah.
The effect of these predictions was to create a
feverish hope for a great Deliverer, for a Priest after
the order of Melchizedek, a Prophet like unto Moses,
a King like David, who should reign for ever. The
whole nation became in this sense saturated with
visionary expectations of a golden age in the distant
future. At times the people thought that all their
hope was on the point of fruition, and the prophets
spoke with such clearness of the immediate appearance
of the prospective kingdom and glory, that the people
ran the risk of grievous disappointment. One of the
leading functions of the prophets was to guide, correct,
and augment this hope, which from the dawn of their
history had exercised so much influence on their re
ligious life. Avoiding all dubious oracles, leaving many
questions open to settlement by enlightened criticism,
we cannot doubt that "the seed of Abraham" was
destined by prophecy to bless all the kindreds of thq
eairth. The line of the blessing was to run especially
in the family of Isaac and the children of Israel. The

208 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
tribe of Judah was to have the royal pre-eminence,
though Levi would be entrusted with the priesthood,
and though the family of Joseph would bear the "crown
of him who was separated from his brethren." A pro
phet of transcendent force would at length arise, whose
words should be law for them. Though long delayed,
the throne of David was set up, and that royal poet
taught the people to sing of the eternal reign of his dy
nasty. He proclaimed the triumph of God's holy One
over disaster, cruelty, and death itself, and he often
imaged the ideal sufferer whom he represented as gain
ing the victory, and ruling for ever and ever. The
minstrelsy of David and of later poets created a joyous
trust in God's righteousness, in His power to deliver
from sin and its curse, and in the ultimate triumph of
peace, purity, and right. In gorgeous visions all the
nations were represented as forming the nuptial train of
the great King of Righteousness, who received in holy
song the name and glory of God Himself. The later
prophecies of Isaiah unfolded, with abundance of detail,
the functions of this King of men. He is described
as " the servant of Jehovah," who would secure the
promises made to the holy people, and even out of
deep disaster and vicarious suffering become their true
Lord. He would make " his grave with the wicked,"
and yet Jehovah would prolong His days and give Him
long and full reward for the travail of His soul. The
sword would awake against the man that was " the
fellow of the Lord of hosts." The " latter days " were
to be conspicuous for the triumph of the purest wor
ship, the realization of the fatherly love of God, the
judgment upon all unrighteousness. They would see
the fall of idolatry, and victory over death and the

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 209
grave. Bright visions floated before the people of uni
versal monarchy, administered from the heavens by
angelic messengers ; of a temple of transcendent glory;
of a union of the anciently-divided house under a new
David, who should be as an angel of God before them ;
of a morning without clouds, of a sun of righteous
ness, of a Divine manifestation in humanity, of an in
carnate wisdom, of the kingdom of God which should
be everlasting, of a dominion which should outlive all
other thrones and powers, and endure for ever and ever.
We have now simply to ask : Did John belong to
the "goodly fellowship ofthe prophets"? Was he
more than an ascetic Rabbi, who urged repentance,
and proclaimed the reality and value of the older
revelation ? Is the brief record of his utterances
charged with Messianic hopes? I think these ques
tions must be answered in the affirmative. He came
into the secret of God. He knew that the hour had
struck, and The Man had come. He proclaimed
the Jewish Messiah with all the features which the
older prophets had pourtrayed as His. He felt throb
bing within him the pulses of a tremendous future.
He saw it with his eyes. The approach of the king
dom and the King was the burden of his teach
ing. He saw with trembling and awe " the wrath to
come." He who had baptized with water conceived
the near possibility of being bathed in fire and filled
with the Holy Ghost. He added thus the force of
prediction to all the other features of his Hebrew mis
sion, and produced an impression which after his death
gave rise to the saying of the people, " John did no
miracle, but all things that he spake of this man were
true." The penetration of his vision, the force of his
15

210 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
conscience, the vehemence of his appeal, his complete
independence of constituted authority, coupled with pro
found reverence for the prophetic word and the accuracy
of his foresight, convinced his contemporaries that here
was a man who ranged with one of the old prophets.
In a deep and true sense he was the last of them.
It is true that Paul, Peter, and John received Divine
illumination, " abundance of revelations," visions of the
Lamb, of the truth of God, and of the unseen world.
Stephen in his dying trance beheld the triumphant
Christ, and was filled with the Holy Ghost. Saul of
Tarsus was a "prophet" before he became an apostle.
Flashes of prophetic fire quickened into vigorous life
the Churches of Asia Minor ; and ever since there have
been outbreaks of prophetic fervour, which, although
they have. sometimes been associated with excitement,
superstition, and folly, have also brought times of re
freshing and revival to the Church. When St. Bene
dict of Nursia, or St. Francis of Assisi, when the
" Friends ofthe Light," the reformers ofthe sixteenth
century, the English Puritans, Quakers, and Metho
dists, commenced their successive revivals of religious
earnestness, there was a return of this abnormal in
tensity of feeling, a renewal of dying faith, a burst
of moral energy, a display of self-sacrificing zeal, a
realization of unseen things, a prophecy of the' coming
wrath and judgment, that may be compared with the
prophetic flame which burned in the heart of the
Baptist. But these manifestations belong rather to
the "dispensation" of the Baptist than to the power
of the Christ.
The whole " law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus "
is the direct and blessed communion of the soul of

in.] Dispensation: a Prophet of the Lord. 211
every believer with the living God. The Christian
life in its deepest significance, and throughout the
whole Church, is, or ought to be, a truly prophetic
life, for the following reasons.
(1) The Divine life is characterized by the vision
of unseen and eternal things, which are not offered to
the mere senses, which are not revealed by the mental
faculties and intellectual methods that depend on the
senses for their materials. The pure in heart see God.
Those born from above discern what is concealed from
the eye of the unregenerate. They who are born of
the Spirit see the kingdom of God. They know that
which passes knowledge, the length, the breadth, the
depth, and the height of the love of God in Christ.
When taken to that high point of observation — the
Cross of Christ — there widens before their gaze
a new and previously unperceived horizon, within
which the quality of human life, the tendencies of
human sin, and the perfections of the blessed God,
are seen in a light unknown before. Henceforth the
whole world is suffused by this light, and receives
from it a new meaning. The Divine providence over
men, communities, and nations, now finds its true
significance. Though eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man
to conceive the things which God hath prepared for
them that love him, God has revealed these mysteries
unto believers by His Spirit. They have the mind of
Christ. The eye of their understanding is enlightened,
that they may know the hope of the Divine calling,
and the riches of the glory of the inheritance. The
full assurance of faith, the unction of the Holy One,
by which the saints of God know all things, and
15 *

212 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
judge all things, and are led into all truth ; the faith
which is the substance of things hoped for, and the
evidence of things unseen ; the Christ formed within
men, the transcendent experiences of the child of God,
the communion with the living God, and the joy and
inward intercessions of the Holy Ghost, place the
possessor of these mysteries of the kingdom of heaven
on the same plane with those who stood out of self in
holy inspirations, and who then most entirely learned
what self was.
(2) As the prophets formed a holy order of men,
which was created by the Spirit of God, and continu
ously stimulated by the words which they had spoken,
so the words of the holy prophets, which have been
since the world began, constitute the universal bonds
of Christian fellowship. By the word of truth God
begets His children. The life thus quickened is the
life of kindred intuition and common emotion. The
word of the Lord that came by Isaiah, or John, or
Paul, above all, the word of Christ Himself, excites in
others the same vision, the same confidence, the same
hope. It "dwells in us richly in all wisdom and spiritual
understanding." " By every word that proceedeth out
of the mouth of God doth man live." It is in the fer
vour and depth of these common experiences that we
all are " to come to the unity of the faith and know
ledge of the Son of God." That which apostles saw
and heard, they declared, that we might have fellowship
with those whose fellowship was with the Father and
His Son Jesus Christ.1 The " promise of the Father"
was fulfilled at length in the formation of a community
gathered out of every kingdom and country and tribe.
1 1 John i. 1-4.

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 213
who were " all filled with the Holy Ghost," who were
all called into the "fellowship of the Son of God," who
were " all taught of God, hearing and learning of the
Father. " He that believeth on me (said Christ), out
of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. This
spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him
should receive, for the Holy Ghost was not yet given,
because that Jesus was not yet glorified." " When
he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into
all truth, and he will show you things to come." The
history of the Church has been the history of the gift of
the Holy Ghost, a gift guarded by the most awful sanc
tions, and quickening the ear and eye and soul of the
disciples to revere and adore the mighty spiritual Pre
sence in the midst of them. Thus the life of God is
the life of vision and of faith, of obedience and love.
The common participation in this prophetic grace is
ever building up the Church, swelling its multitudes,
directing its organization, controlling all the forms of
common life by the new and heavenly spirit. It is not
the organization, nor the logical formulae, nor the
method of working, nor the sacramental seal, but the
life of the Holy Spirit in regenerated man, that is
catholic and Divine. To put the idea as strongly as I
can, perhaps at the risk of some misconception, the re
lation between Isaiah, Malachi, and John the Baptist,
their common penetration into the mysteries of the king
dom, is the type of the relation existing between all
who are filled with the Spirit, and are the temples of
the Holy Ghost. The parallel between the order of
the prophets and the kingdom of God is not violated
but vindicated when we remember that the faith of the
Christian Church in the future rests, not on a process

214 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
of reasoning, not on a demonstrable fact, not on a great
inductive law, not on such a proof as we demand for
the truths of science, but on the prophetic intuitions
of the saints of God. It would not be enough for us
to receive such tremendous realities for our own souls,
for the world, or for the Church, on the mere authority
of those who entertained these hopes, and who have
passed away. It is the continual repetition of the
glorious prospect given to the soul of the regenerated
and spiritual man that has kept the hope of the world
from expiring. There is such a thing now as tasting
the powers of the world to come, and every one who
has truly tasted them is a prophet. How comprehen
sive is the glance which the new-born soul takes of
human life and the world's life, of the destiny of na
tions and of humanity ! How wonderful and assuring
the intuition which the spiritual man enjoys of that
state of being when mortality shall be swallowed up of
life ! "No Celestial City ! " said Christian to Hopeful..
" Did we not see it from the Delectable Mountains ? "
The words " prophet " and " prophecy " have a more
limited meaning in New Testament usage. While the
officers of the Church, as such, are never in a single
instance designated by any terms borrowed from the
rank or functions of the " priest," nor is the slightest
hint given that any order or caste of men would be
required to act as mediators between God and men,
offering up their sacrifice, or vicariously presenting
their prayers, or enacting for them the mysteries of
their faith ; while the duty of the sacrificing priest,
so far as it was not finally and for ever fulfilled in
the Lord Jesus, is expressly transferred to the whole
Church, who are constituted a royal priesthood to offer

in.] Dispensation : a Prophet of the Lord. 215
up spiritual sacrifices, — there is abundant use of the
term prophet (with its correlatives) to denote the sacred
and special functions of individuals in the Church.
This is exactly what might have been expected from
the nature of the case. The whole Church may be
filled with the Spirit, strengthened to see God, to live
the life of faith, to wait for the Son of God from
heaven ; yet the power of giving utterance to these
deep intuitions, of setting them forth so as to awaken
corresponding faith in others, the power of so speaking
that a multitude should believe, is something over and
above the intuition itself. This Divine gift and call is
the prime warrant for the ministry of the Word. The
sure and only safe guarantee of the possession of it is
the recognition of the gift by the Church itself — by those
whose eyes are already open to the kingdom of God.
No training, no human guarantee of fitness, no rank,
no appointment by bishop or presbytery, no certificate
of education from university or hierarchy, can consti
tute a true ministry of Christ. The prophetic call ac
cepted by those who are themselves alive unto God
through Jesus Christ has in every age and Church over
stepped the bounds which human institutions and con
ventions have erected with a view of limiting and
modifying its influence. All that is most venerable and
life-giving among the things that have been nourished!
into life under sacramental orders, and all that com
mands the homage of mankind ; the grandest self-sacri
fice, heroism, and enterprise, have been the offspring of
the free prophetic spirit which having chafed at the
pernicious bonds within which sacerdotalism would have
confined it, has been finally accepted by the prophetic
sympathies of the Church. If this dispensation of the

216 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect
Holy Ghost be not a dream, then we return again to
our Lord's words, " He that is least in the kingdom of
God is greater than he." John occupied the Old Testa
ment platform, even in his prophetic gifts. The pro
phetic insight, presage, and mission of John were only
anticipatory of a wider diffusion of the Holy Spirit.
He saw the possibility of it, he knew that the hour
was drawing on, and that the Son of God Himself
was at .hand, who would baptize all who received Him
with the Holy Ghost and with fire.
§ 4. More than a Prophet.
The various dignities and singular eminence of John
are sufficient to justify and explain the extraordinary dis
tinction conferred upon him by our Lord. It must be
remembered that Moses was " more than a prophet."
Aaron the priest and Miriam the " prophetess " spake
against Moses,1 and we learn that a special Divine com
munication was made to the three. A voice issued from
the cloud of glory, saying, "If there is a prophet of Jeho
vah to you {i.e., if you have a prophet), I make myself
known to him in a vision ; I speak to him (or, in him)
in a dream. Not so my servant Moses : he is ap
proved in my whole house ; mouth to mouth (answer
ing to the face-to-face of Exod. xxxiii. n, i.e., without
any mediation or reserve) I speak to him, and as an
appearance, and not in riddles (visibly > not in a dark
and enigmatic way),, and he sees the form (similitude)
of Jehovah."2 This implies a higher degree of com
munion with the living God than could be secured by
* Numb. xii. 4-10.
• Eng. translation of Keil and Delitzsch, Commentary on Pentateuch, iii.
81 ; Payne Smith, l.c. p. 76.

hi.] Dispensation : more than a Prophet. 217
any prophetic vision, dream, or intuition. Even those
who conversed with the angel of Jehovah, under the
form of man,1 did not see so much of God, or come
into such relations with Jehovah, as did Moses, the
servant of God, to whom was made a direct manifes
tation of the invisible God, without the mediation of
ecstasy, enigma, phantasmic vision, or trance. The ex
traordinary relations between Elijah and Jehovah more
nearly approached this sublime description of the me
diation of Moses than those of any other prophet. It
becomes therefore full of meaning, that when the Lord
was Himself transfigured, there appeared in the cloud
of glory, Moses and Elias talking with Him. The two
lofty spirits, with whom Jehovah spake face to face,
came on this great occasion into personal communion
with Him whose humanity was indeed the 'similitude
of Jehovah.
This language of God to Moses throws light on the
visions of Isaiah and Malachi. They alike predict the
appearance of one who would stand in very intimate
relations with the manifested God. Their prophetic
visions are blended in the words of the angej who
foretold the birth of John, and our Lord makes the
fact of this prediction and its fulfilment the ground of
His declaration that John was " more than a prophet."
As this same prediction forms the burden of the open
ing ministry of John, and is the summary of all his
teaching as given by Mark ; and as, later on in his testi
monies, it constituted the substance of his reply to the
deputation of the Sanhedrim, as reported in the fourth
Gospel ; and as, moreover, it is encumbered with some
difficulties, it is desirable to review the evidence on
' Ezek. i. 26 ; Dan. vii. 9, 13 ; Delitzsch, Art. on " Daniel," in Herzog's Ency.

218 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
which it rests. Isaiah ' represents the approach of the
greatest deliverance that Jehovah had ever wrought for
His people, the resuscitation of their national life, and
gives the assurance from God that Israel had already
received from the Lord's hand double for all her sins.
" Hark," says he, " a Crier !" The herald has gone forth
to break the silence of the deserts that spread between
the land of captivity and the land of promise. " In the
wilderness (he cries) prepare ye the way of the Lord :
make his paths straight." He does not say that the
Lord was coming at the head of His hosts, clearing the
hindrances out of His own way ; but He was coming
through the desert to Israel, and therefore Israel was
to see that nothing impeded the approach or detracted
from the honour due to the coming One.2 The sum
mons uttered by the mysterious " voice " is imperative,
and comes with the authority of one who is intimately
acquainted with the purpose of the Most High. " Let
every valley be exalted, and every mountain and hill
be made low."3 "Let the crooked or rugged places
be made a plain, and the ledges of rocks into a valley ;"
or, as translated by Luke, " the crooked [shall become]
straight, and the narrow ledges into level ways." The
prophet continues : " And the glory of Jehovah will be
1 Isa. xl. 1-5. It matters nothing to my argument whether the last twenty-
six chapters of Isaiah are written by the son of Amoz, or by some "great
unknown " prophet of the Captivity. The arguments of Prof. Birks (Com
mentary on Isaiah) and Prof. S. Leathes ( Witness of the Old Testament to
Christ) constitute an amount of positive evidence in favour of the tradition of
the integrity of Isaiah which ought not to be disregarded.
2 Delitzsch in loco (with whom Rosenmiiller agrees) shows that though the
LXX. version, which is followed by Matt. iii. 3, connects kv rr\ iprjpcp with
fioibvTog, the true reading of Hebrew text connects ~12"1S2 with ^32.
3 The quotation from this oracle by John (as given in Luke iii. 4-6) is almost
a verbatim extract from the LXX. (Alex.) version of the prophet, and trans
forms the passives into futures, ctt rpaxeiat kg liSovg Xktag is substituted for
di rpaxeiat elg niSta: the phrase Kat dtpGritcircii t) doZa kvp'ih is omitted.

ni.] Dispensation : more than a Prophet. 219
revealed, and all flesh see it together, for the mouth of
Jehovah hath spoken it." If the quotation had even
been more exact than it is, instead of being taken
so loosely from the LXX., the appositeness of the
words would have been still more explicit. The old
prophet placed himself in (or, as some would have it,
occupied) the standpoint of the Captivity; but he an
ticipated through the entire oracle a state of things
which found feeble realization in the return of the holy
people from their exile. His eye was filled with a
grander vision : and when the children of Israel once
more took possession of their fathers' sepulchres and
the squalid ruins of their former grandeur, it would
have been impossible for them to have seen in the for
tunes, the character, or functions of either Zerubbabel,
Joshua the son of Josedech, Ezra, or Nehemiah, any
thing answering to the sublime vision of their prophet.
They must still have been eagerly anticipating the sal
vation and the glory of Jehovah, the honours of their
shepherd king, the triumph of the suffering servant of
Jehovah. If these words had reference to the approach
of the world's Saviour, there is prophetic anticipation
not only of His advent, but of human help in the way
of preparing for it. The form and voice of a herald is
heard. The wilderness of Judaea,1 both literally and
mystically, both in fact and symbol, might be the scene
where the herald would do his work. He would come
at a time when the hearts of the people would be once
more wandering through the wilderness, and repeating
their strange departures from the living God. Savage
mountains, rugged ridges, rough places, deep stony
gorges, were all obstructing the approach of the true
1 See Witsius, l.c. 52, 53 ; Delitzsch on Isaiah, in loco.

220 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
Lord; and the herald would call for instant preparation,
for deep repentance, for moral amendment, for ready
faith, for broken hearts, for fruits of penitence. All the
glory of man might perish as the flower of grass, but
the word of the Lord would stand for ever. We admit,
that if this were all, it would seem a very feeble ground
on which to build the claims of the great forerunner.
It is, however, the manner of the prophets to dwell on
one another's oracles, and the same spirit which first
gave in dimmest outline the idea of a concrete human
embodiment of the age-long preparation for the Christ,
poured forth light over the dark place, and closed the
words of the old covenant with new and clearer inti
mations of the signs of the coming of the great and
terrible day of the Lord. The last of the Old Testa
ment prophets heard the mysterious tone of Isaiah's
oracle, and his soul burst into audible consonance
with it. The promise of Jehovah, " Behold I send my
messenger, that he may prepare the way before me,"
contains a verbal quotation from Isaiah xl. 3.1 " The
voice " that Isaiah heard " crying, to make ready
the way of Jehovah in the desert, that the glory
of the Lord might be revealed to all flesh," is here
described as " the messenger whom Jehovah will send
before him." He is discriminated from " the Lord
whom ye seek," who is declared to be " the messenger
ofthe covenant," "the angel-Jehovah in whom the
people have delighted."2 This manifestation of the
glory of the Lord is to be a sudden display of His
judgment upon all within His holy temple who were
violating the terms of their covenant relation ; the
1 TT~n naw, Mai. m. 1.
2 Delitzsch, Comm. Minor Prophets, vol. ii. p. 45.

in.] Dispensation : more than a Prophet. 221
commencement of a judgment between those who will
serve God and those who serve Him not ; a fierce and
testing process, which will "purify the sons of Levi,
and purge them as gold and silver." The whole of the
oracle of Malachi throws light upon the burden and
teaching of John. There was, indeed, urgent need for
a thorough revolution in the popular notion of Messiah.
In the view of many He was to be the triumphant
judge of the heathen, the punisher and destroyer of
the enemies of Israel. Malachi uttered the unwelcome
lesson that their Messiah, or, as he puts it, " the mes
senger of the covenant," would be a severe judge of
the hypocrisies, heartburnings, impurities, neglects of
the nominal Israel. " The sun of righteousness " was
about to dawn, "with healing in his wings," upon
those that fear the mighty name) but a day was
coming that would "burn as an oven," a day of judg
ment and perdition of ungodly men, a day in which the
proud and all that do wickedly would be consumed.
The land might be smitten by the ban which once fell
upon the Canaanites, the most utter darkness and
gloom might once more fall upon the holy land and
people. It is thus, with words that confirm the voices
of the elder prophets, that Malachi completes his
oracle, and that the sacred canon closes. In order to
ward off the foreseen calamity, to prepare the way
of the Lord, strange and startling distinctness is
given to Isaiah's vague prediction of " the voice in the
wilderness," "the messenger of the Lord of hosts."
"Behold (said Jehovah), I will send you Elijah the
prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful
day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the
fathers to the children, and the heart of the children

222 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
to their fathers, lest I come and smite the land with
the ban."
These were the last oracles to which the people attri
buted prophetic authority, and for nearly four hundred
years they must have blended with their Messianic
thoughts and expectations. These utterances were cap
able of being grossly misconceived, and helped to create
a feverish outlook for their fulfilment. The literature
and traditional feelings of the people showed how deep
an impression had been made by these sacred words.
"Elijah", "Jeremiah", or " one of the old prophets",
rather than a new outburst of prophetic energy, was
eagerly desired by them. We cannot suppose that John
the son of Zacharias was the only great teacher who
had been .questioned as he was, "Art thou Elijah?"
Whether the Tishbite himself was expected to return in
his chariot of flame, from the unknown paradise into
which he had been caught, or whether his spirit, by a me
tempsychosis, was to be re-embodied in the breast of some
sage Pharisee or brave warrior, or whether the highest
stage of Essenic culture was itself the possession of the
Elijahship, did not seem to have been settled.1 One of
these modes of return to them was probably in the
minds of the deputation from the Sanhedrim, which is
mentioned in John i. 21. The Priests and Levites
who came to' him clearly discriminated the coming
and person of Elijah from that of the Christ. Their
1 For a brilliant sketch of the character and deeds of Elijah, see Dean Stan
ley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, Second Series, Lect. 30, 31. Cf. Mr. Grove's
art. "Elijah," in Smith's Dictionary. The vision of Elijah is still expected and
dreaded. " Abdallah, the fierce lord of Acre, almost died of terror from a
vision in which 'he believed himself to have seen Elijah sitting on the top of
Carmel." See Phoenicia and Israel, by Aug. Wilkins, for an admirable view
of the difficulties which Elijah had to encounter. Mr. Bayne, in The Days of
Jezebel, gives in poetical form a fine historical study of the same period.

in.] Dispensation : more than a Prophet. 223
inquiry suggests the intensity of the hope that the
prophecy of Malachi was on the point of fulfilment.1
John's answer in the negative is explicable on the
ground that the current expectation as to the method
of its fulfilment was false. The translation by LXX.
of Mai. iv. 5, viz., H\lav rbv 0eo-/3iTi]v, may have
strengthened, as well as expressed, the common mis
take. But even with this Greek gloss the people need
not have attributed any stricter literalism to the words
than to those prophecies in which a no less definite and
distinct promise occurred that God would once more
send "David" to be their king,2 which we are not
aware were ever interpreted in the same gross fashion.
While John was being tempted by the Jews to proclaim
himself to be a reappearance of the Tishbite, Jesus was
being tempted by the devil to use His supernatural
powers for selfish and worldly ends. Each of these
temptations was resisted. There are many inter
preters who suppose, from John's reply to this inquiry
of the Pharisees, that the prophecy of Malachi still
awaits literal fulfilment before the second coming of
' Schottgen, De Messia, Hor. Heb. vol. ii. 226, quotes a variety of most
emphatic representations of this hope from Pirke R. Eliezer, c. 40 ; Debarim
Rabba, §3, where Elias is promised as a consoler ; and from Adajoth, fol. 14, as
coming to discriminate between things clean and unclean. Sanhedrin, fol. 98. 1,
quoted in vol. ii. p. 490, offers a long and curious conversation between Elias and
R. Josua son of Levi, about the advent of Messiah, which confirms the popu
larity of the tradition ; p. 533, Schott. gives the extraordinary passage from
Pirke R. Eliezer, c. 29 : " The Lord God said to Elias, 'Since thou hast great
zeal for me, it shall be that no Israelites shall celebrate the covenant of circum
cision unless thou seest it ; ' on which account the wise men have appointed
this custom that a seat of honour should always be placed for him at the per
formance of the rite. " Other passages, pp. 534-537, show that Elijah was
expected ' ' three days before Messiah ; " " that he would come in the mountains
of Israel, weeping over the people, saying, ' O land of Israel, how long will you
remain arid and desolate ; ' " and that ' ' his voice shall be heard from one end of
the world to another. "—Jalkut Sim, ii. fol. 33. 3 ; Pesikta Rabbathi, fol. 62, r.
2 Ezek. xxxvii. 24 ; Jer. xxx. 9 ; Hos. iii. 5.

224 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
Messiah and the final judgment upon all the unright
eous.1 Doubtless there is an apparent contradiction
between the point-blank negative of John and the
solemn assertion of our Lord in Matthew xvii. 12 :
" The disciples asked Jesus, Why then say the scribes
that Elijah must first come ? And Jesus answered and
said, Elijah truly shall first come and restore all things.
But I say unto you that Elijah is come already, and
they knew him not, but have done unto him whatso
ever they listed. Likewise also shall the Son of man
suffer of them. Then the disciples understood that he
spake to them of John the Baptist." Elsewhere the
Lord said of John : " This is he of whom it is written,
Behold I send my messenger before thy face, which
shall prepare thy way before thee."2 Without doubt
this is a reference to the words of Malachi (iii. 1), which
flow on in close connection with his final prophecy of
the coming of Elijah. The words of Gabriel 3 throw
light upon the entire reference. " He shall go before
him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts
of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient unto
the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a
prepared people." Here there is a blending of the
1 Maldonatus, on Matt. xvii. 12, quotes Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustin, to
this effect. Alford, on Matt. xi. 12 and xvii. 12, considers that our Lord does
not assert that John was the full realisation of Malachi's prophecy. Meyer,
on the other hand, Comm. Matt. xvii. 11. Die ankunft des wirklichen Elias
welcher vor der Parusie erscheinen werde ist weder hier noch sonstwo von Jesu
gelehrt. 2 It is very remarkable that in the three quotations of this vers? by Evan
gelists (Matt. xi. 10 ; Mark i. 2 ; Luke vii. 27), there is the same deviation
from the original text and from LXX. The latter reads, 'ISov iyui tfairoa-
rkXXio rbv dyyeXov pov, Kat kirtpXk\j/trat bdbv wpb ¦Kpoaincov pov. This
is given in all three Evangelists, as though it must have been quoted by
Jesus, as follows : lyiii diroarkXXiii rbv ayyiXov pov irpb Trpoatirov aov
of KaraciKtvdnu rr/v bdbv aov tpirpoaBkv aov, transferring the address of
Jehovah to the people into a special assurance made to Messiah.
3 Luke i. 15, 16.

in.] Dispensation : more than a Prophet. 225
early and later portions of Malachi's oracle, with a re
ference to Isaiah xl. 3, and we find some explanation
of the Lord's own words, as well as of those of John
himself. He was not Elijah the Tishbite in the carnal
sense in which the LXX. and Jewish tradition had
expected that prophet to reappear. He had come,
however, " in the spirit and power of Elijah." The
proof of this lies in the work done by Elijah, and the
spirit with which he accomplished it.
Though the prophet Elijah was not an Aaronic
priest, his habits, his appearance, his home among the
Gileadites of the wilderness, his superhuman bodily
vigour, his wild profusion of hair, all indicate the
energy with which he was devoting himself, by some
fierce ascetic vow, to certain functions resembling those
of the Nazarite. Each of these prophets aimed to pro
duce, by stern words and bold deeds, a moral and re
ligious revival. Elijah before Ahab, rebuking sin and ,
appealing to eternal law, was the prototype of the Bap
tist before Herod Antipas. The romance of the earlier
prophet's career was not reproduced in that of John ;
but while Elijah called fire from heaven, and wielded
the dread forces of nature for the overthrow of Baal's
worshippers, John threatened a baptism of fire, and
told of the wrath to come upon a generation of vipers.
Elijah trembled before the curse of Jezebel, and began
even to doubt his own mission, until he heard the
"still small voice," which assured him of the perpetuity
of Jehovah's kingdom and worship, and of the exist
ence of thousands who had not bowed the knee to
Baal. John learned gentler lessons from the glance
and the voice of Jesus, and though he was bewildered
with doubts, he sought the solution of them from One
16

226 John the Exponent of the Old Testament [lect.
of whom he had said, " He must increase." " He that
cometh from above is above all." Both prophets
effected a moral revolution by sharp discipline, cor
rected mistaken ideas, demanded loyalty to the God
of Israel, repudiated latitudinarian compromise, stirred
the religious apathy of some, and roused the enthu
siasm of others almost to frenzy. Each commenced
a work which it was not in his power to complete,
created wants he could not supply, and excited fears
which he could not allay.
John had no sympathy with the popular superstition
that the spirit of the Tishbite was hovering on the
hills of Judaea, waiting for a new embodiment. He
was not one of the strictest and most exalted of the
Essenes, to whom the fathers of the sect would have
attributed the Elijahship, and he even disclaimed being
" that prophet who should come into the world." He
did not refuse either the name or the functions of a
prophet ; but he knew, from the current Pharisaic in
terpretation of Deut. xviii., that the Jews meant by
their question to connect him with a prophecy which
was on the point of full realization in the Lord Him
self.1 It was then because our Lord blended these
three prophecies together, and found them applicable
to the mission of John, that He gave him the designa
tion of " more than a prophet." He claimed John as
His predestined herald and forerunner. By so doing,
He assumed for Himself momentous dignity. He
identified His own advent with that of Jehovah. He
virtually called Himself " the Lord " whom the nation
1 Reuss, Theologie Chrdtienne, i. 138, says : " 11 n'osait se donner le nom de
prophete, bien qu'il le fut dans toute la force du terme ; " and on the ground of
his modest unwillingness to claim a dignity to which no Israelite had aspired
for centuries.

in.] Dispensation : more than a Prophet. 227
was seeking, the Angel of Jehovah's Covenant, the
"Face," or manifestation of the Eternal God. He
declared that the whole of John's mysterious mission
was prophetic and preparatory to His own. In the
words of the Latin hymn —
" Singulari prophetia
Prophetarum monarchist
Sublimatur omnium.
Hi futurum, hie praesentem
Hi venturum, venientem
Monstrat iste Filium.''

16*

LECTURE IV.
THE PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS.

LECTURE IV.
THE PREACHING IN THE WILDERNESS.
I HAVE already reviewed the many-sided expression
given in the career of John to the religious life and
institutions of Judaism. He was officially and provi
dentially a recapitulation of everything which priestly
rank, ascetic sanctity, and prophetic anticipations could
effect as a preparation for the coming of the world's
Saviour. The simple fact, viewed on its purely human
side, is that a young man of the family of Aaron received
a special consecration to a life of self-abnegation and
ceremonial purity. The repression of the flesh stimu
lated all the forces of his spirit. Even the priesthood
did not satisfy his yearning after a full consecration to
the service of God. The vows of the Nazarite clashed
with his love of man, and failed fully to express his
sense of sin and need of redemption. The Pharisee,
with his deficiency of moral principle, his inversion of
the relative importance of Divine laws and traditional
custom, his confusion of ethical spirit with punctilious
detail, excited the fear of John lest religion itself should
prove the ruin of his country. The indifferentism of
the Sadducee, while occupying the high places of power
and sacerdotal rank, was no adequate safeguard against
the ritualism of the dominant religious class. The

232 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
societies of Essenes, near the rocks of Engedi or the
palm trees of Jericho, provided no hope for the nation
as such, and offered no solace to the downtrodden and
persecuted race. The cruelty of Herod had been ex
ceeded by the tyranny of Pilate. It seemed as though
the irremediable ruin of the national life was creeping
on, and the knell of its destiny was sounding.
In some of the caverns which still cleave the lime
stone rocks of the desolate wilderness that stretches
from Hebron to the western shores of the Dead Sea,
this youth pondered the signs of his time, and medi
tated on the secrets of his early days. Within sight
of the palaces and the temple of Jerusalem on the one
side, and the waters of the Asphaltic Lake, backed
by the blue mountains of Moab, on the other, he
received his Divine commission. " The word of the
Lord came unto John in the wilderness,"1 and he
began with prophetic earnestness to deliver his mes
sage. He may have crossed the track of some great
caravans as they climbed the mountain gorges which
connected Jerusalem with Jericho. At all events, his
appearance, his voice, his manner, his message, left
little doubt among the people that a great prophet
had risen up amongst them. He spoke with the
authority of the old Hebrew seer. By common con
sent, even those who studied the sacred rolls, and
believed every iota of them to be supernaturally
dictated, did not hesitate to admit that John was'
a prophet indeed. He gave expression to the un
uttered groanings of a persecuted race, he fanned
the smouldering embers of national hope, he gathered
into a focus the enthusiasm of different classes, he
* Luke iii. 2.

iv.] The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand. 233
created a religious excitement of unusual intensity.
By turns he warned, threatened, or encouraged the
people. He excited a fever of expectation and a pro
phetic enthusiasm which had scarcely been paral
leled since Elijah gathered all the people to Mount
Carmel, -to decide between the claims of Baal and
Jehovah.1 We need not doubt the substantially bib
lical character of his instructions, nor is it necessary
to suppose him cut off from those influences which
introduced Oriental and Alexandrine culture into the
Palestinian schools. Some of the tendencies of thought
which produced the books of " Wisdom," " Eccle-
siasticus," and " Henoch," the " Testament of the
Patriarchs," the " Psalms of Solomon," and even
the " Sohar," the Targums, and the earliest por
tions of the Mishna, were at work around him, and
were shaping the current opinion of his audience.
But John was a prophet, and the word of the Lord
came to him. He may have sympathized with Hillel
or Philo, he may have been abreast of Gamaliel and
Jonathan ; but all that we certainly know is, that
he adopted a specific line of instruction, of which the
outline is given in the synoptic narrative. I there
fore propose to discuss the ideas on which we are
sure that he insisted. They were trumpet peals rather
than propositions, flames of fire rather than dogmatic
formulae. § 1. The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand.
" Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."
With these thrilling words John and Jesus alike com-
1 1 Kings xviii. 19.

234 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
menced their ministry,1 Mark and Luke represent our
Lord as using the more familiar phrase, " the kingdom
of God," even in places where Matthew uses the words,
"the kingdom of heaven."2 If they too had also
reported the earliest message of the Baptist, they
might have indicated a similar change of expression
in his case. " The kingdom," in Matthew's Gospel,
included the earthly and heavenly manifestation of the
power and dominion of God, the idealization of the old
and the establishment of the new kingdom, and it is
just to regard the two phrases as practically identical
with each other.3 If John used either phrase, and
declared that " the kingdom of heaven {or of God) was
at hand," he was referring to a religious and political
hope widely diffused and passionately cherished. The
origin of the expression may be traced to the book, of
Daniel,4 where, after the dissohition of the four great
1 Mark i. 14, 15 ; Lukeiv. 43'; Matt. iii. 2 ; iv. 17. That which Matthew often
denominates "kingdom of heaven" is tailed by other Evangelists "kingdom of
God. " This expression does occur in Matthew (vi. 33 ; xii. 28 ; xiii. 43 ; xxi.
31, 43; xxvi. 29), also that of "the kingdom " (viii. 12; xiii. 38; xvi. 28;
xxiv. 14) ; but "kingdom of heaven" occurs twenty-five times. The Rabbinical
writers frequently employ it, just as they often make "heaven" a synonym for
God. They are not peculiar in this. Oriental literature and modern English
make "heaven " the symbol of infinite purity and power.
" Matt. iii. 2. Compare Matt. iv. 17 with Mark i. 15 ; Matt. xiii. 11, 24
with Mark iv. 11, 30 ; Matt. xix. 14 with Luke xviii. 16 ; Matt. xix. 33 with
Mark x. 24.
3 An extensive literature exists purporting to throw light on the Hebrew
and Christian conception of the kingdom of God. See for the former, Schott
gen, Dissertatio de Regno Cojli and De Hieros. Coziest i, Horce Heb. vol. i.,
and on Matt. xi. 29; Wettstein and Lightfoot (.Sot-. Heb.) on Matt. iii. 2.
Koppe, Nov. Tesf. perpetua annotatione iUustratum, vol. vi. 417, contains
-¦. very valuable Excursus De Regno Christi formulis PaatXcia Ofou, /3. rav
ovpavuiv, p. Xpiarov expresso. Keilius, Historia dogmatis de regno Messia,
1781, expounds the later Rabbinical view of the same subject. Tholuck, in his
Commentary on Sermon on the Mount, E.T., pp. 71-79 ; Pressel, in Herzog's
Ency., art. "Reich Gottes ;" Reuss , Histoire de la Theologie Chr&iennc, i.
172, ff. ; Oosterzee, Biblical Theology of N. T. p. 68 ; Neander, Life of Christ;
Ecce Homo, c. iii. In its relation to eschatology, see last chapter of Langen, 1. c.
* Dan. vii. 13, 14, 27.

iv.] The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand. 235
monarchies, " the Son of man is brought near to the
Ancient of days, and he receives ' dominion, glory, and
a kingdom,' ... a kingdom which shall not be de
stroyed," and where this kingdom is promised to " the
people of the saints of the Most High." Some of the
psalms, however, indicate a strong faith in the virtual
reign of Jehovah over the nations,1 and predict its
continuance throughout all generations.2 Jehovah
was the King of Israel, His will was the supreme law
of His people, the source of their every right, and
the centre of all authority. In some respects this
was more evident as a constitutional fact before the
founding of the monarchy than it was afterwards.
Moses, Joshua, and the Judges derived their autho
rity, not from the national will, not from the army,
not by hereditary rights, but by the direct and super
natural call of God, who ruled them by His prophetic
Spirit and His miraculous providence. The people were
at length eager for a visible and organized authority,
a dynasty that should rule over them, and be inde
pendent of the fitful manifestations of prophetic
force and the spasmodic outburst of special powers.
The moral effect of the demand is thus described :
" Hearken unto the voice of the people (said the Lord
to Samuel), for they have not rejected thee, but they
have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them."3
The implication is obvious that a great constitutional
change took place at that moment. Nevertheless, the
people never lost the sublime idea that Jehovah was
their Lawgiver, their Judge, their King; that behind the
throne of the king could be seen the Jehovah of hosts
seated on His throne.4 In the strict sense, the period
' Psa. xcvii. 1 ; xcix. 1. * Ibid. cxlv. i, 13. 3 1 Sam. viii. 7. 4See Isa. vi. j.

236 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
of the Judges was the golden age of the theocracy,
and this age was brought to an end when a monarchy
was established, which obviated the necessity for recur
ring to the prophetic voice and to supernatural signs,
to Urim and Thummim, to the strange and unaccount
able mental powers which enabled obscure men to take
the reins of government. Jehovah's reign, His kingdom,
His laws, His statutes, His testimonies, His represen
tatives, the mode in which He enforced obedience, the
certainty of His judgments, the abundance of His
mercies, were themes of prophetic oracle and sacred
song; while religious life and worship and duty con
stituted the politics of this remarkable people. Still,
the vision of the perfect establishment of the reign of
Heaven upon earth continually faded from the eye of
the true Israelite. The perfect King, the Prophet
like Moses, the Priest upon his throne, never made
his appearance. The hope of the people was often
aroused, but never fulfilled. The coming age or "the
latter days " would be the realization of their dream.
Even the apparent destruction of their nationality in
the Babylonian exile did not extinguish their confi
dence ; and while the prophets threatened and cursed
the apostacy of the holy people, they reasserted the
fact of the Divine kingdom, and foretold anew the
re-establishment of the throne of David, the recovery
of prosperity, the restoration of spiritual primacy.1
Larger views of humanity itself began to dawn upon
them. Whether we are to attribute their deeper recog
nition of a future life and retribution to the influence
upon them of their Babylonian sorrows, or to special
glances of their own seers into the dim future of the
1 Jer. xxiii. 3 ; xxxi. passim ; xxxii. 36, ff. ; Ezek. xvi. 60 ; xxxvii.

iv.] The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand. 237
human soul, the fact cannot be questioned that the
kingdom of God came to mean for Israel something
more than an earthly monarchy of fickle fortunes and
temporary sway, from the laws, sanctions, and terrors
of which .exile or suicide might set them free. They
now knew that if they " made their bed in hell,"
Jehovah was there ,-1 that they could not escape His
control ; that as individuals they were and always
would be amenable to His laws ; that even the dead
needed their prayers and sacrifices ; 2 that the dream
of Oriental sages covered a tremendous reality, which
went far to account for the exceeding significance and
importance of purity and submission to the will of
God, both in their ritual and their theology. Death
would not sever them, as some of their fathers had
thought, from all relations with the living God, and
thus provide an impassable barrier, beyond which
His powerful hand could not reach them. Death
would only bring them into closer relations with Him
than before. The kingdom of God thus stretched
out into the unseen world; and the ideas of the immor
tality of the soul and of the resurrection of the body,
which at the time of our Lord, and independently of
His direct teaching, many had grasped, must have con
ferred new meaning on those widely-diffused hopes of
the kingdom which the God of heaven would set up.
The dark presage of Solomon and Hezekiah must be set
over against the hopes of Daniel and the implicit faith
of some of the earliest psalms. This belief in immor
tality was by no means universal, and the gloomy writer
of Ecclesiasticus 3 shows that his horizon was bounded
1 Psa. cxxxix. 8. ' 2 2 Mace. xii. 29.
3Ecclus. xl. 5 ; xii. 1, 2 ; xxii. 10, 11 ; xvii. 26-28. Michel Nicholas, Des
Doctrines religieuses des Juifs, i860, p. 313, urges that Mark ix. 10 is conclusive

238 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
still by earth and time. But it was not so with the
author of "Wisdom," who held the immortal blessed
ness of the righteous.1 The book of Daniel had prepared
the way 2 for the abundant references of the second
book of Maccabees,3 and for the ideas of the book of
Henoch.4 The existence of the soul after death, the re
surrection of the just and the unjust, and the absolute
dominion of God over both, are taught by Henoch, by
the fourth book of Esdras, and by the Sibylline books.5
The writings of Philo are charged with faith in the im
mortality of souls, and the sect of the Pharisees held,
as a distinctive tenet, the resurrection of the righteous.
However, among all who cherished this faith, the
kingdom of God would have two vast provinces, the
earthly and the heavenly, the visible and the invisible.
This would blend their hostile rivalries into an eternal
fellowship. The kingdom would exert its sway over
men of all nations. It would embrace the shadowy
region of the unclothed spirits of men. In Henoch,6
"the Son of man," brought near to "the Ancient of
days," is about to raze kings from their thrones,
and to drive them, from the assembly of His Church
and of the faithful.7 He will execute judgment in
the world, He will effect a resurrection of the
righteous and of sinners, He will give a great sword
to the long-oppressed people of God. " He will sit
upon the throne of his majesty," and " all evil shall
proof that the apostles, knew nothing of the idea of a general resurrection.
This is incorrect. The inquiry of the twelve had reference to the resurrection
of the Son of man. It is reasonable to contrast with it, moreover, John xi. 24.
1 Wisd. ii. 25,. * Dan. xii. 2. 3 2 Mace. vii. 14 ; xii. 44, 45 ; Judith xvi. 17.
4 Row, Jesus of the Evangelists, p. 166-190, has most admirably discussed
the date and motive of the book of Henoch. See Schultz, Alt. Test. Thiol:
Bd. ii. p. 317, ff.
5 Das Buch Henoch ubersetzt, von A. Dillman, sects, xxv., Ixi. 5, lxx. 4,
Ixxxiv., and other places. 6 Henoch § xlvi. i Ibid. § xlix.

iv.] The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand. 239
pass away from before his face." His chosen people
shall be arrayed in the robe of life, .... and the
Lord of spirits shall rule over them,"1 as well as over
the tangible, visible, and political relations of earth.
Thus the kingdom of God included the sleeping dust
and the dry bones as well as the populations of great
cities, the dead men as well as the despots and slaves of
the earth. This extraordinary development of thought
must have coloured all the current notions of the King
who should arise to sway the destinies of both worlds.
Long brooding on the deep spiritual hints contained
in their own Scriptures had enlarged the horizon of
thoughtful Jews, and made them anticipate, in the
coming kingdom of God, a judgment not only on their
enemies, but on themselves. They had a dim hope
that Messiah would come as a Son of man in the clouds
of heaven, and would occupy the border land between
the two worlds ; that the veil was on the point of being
lifted by the King in His beauty, and that the great
and notable day of the Lord was about to dawn in
terror on all that do wickedly; that events of trans
cendent interest and of consummate personal as well
as national moment were about to transpire. There is
no perspective in prophetic picture. The entire future,
including events more or less distant, appears equally
near, nor are events seen along the same line and in the
same plane of vision chronologically distributed. The
1 Henoch § lxii. 16. If the book of Henoch was written in the century before
Christ, it is very remarkable that no reference should be made to it in the
Synoptic Gospels ; if in Christian times, it is strange that it should have suffered
no modification from the ideal life of the historic Jesus, and contained no re
ference to His suffering or His death. Notwithstanding the difficulty, it is
easier to believe the former than the latter hypothesis. Row, lib. cit. ; West
cott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, pp. 92-101, gives an admirable
translation of the most important passages.

240 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
atmosphere of earth does not penetrate this region, and
there are no units of measurement by which we may
guage its distances. Hence the coming of " the king
dom " involved the restoration of the kingdom to Israel,1
the restitution of the fallen tabernacle,2 the sufferings of
Messiah,3 and the glory that should follow. Messiah
would come they knew not "whence." He would, ac
cording to their notions of ruling, reign from Jerusalem
over a subject world. There would be the predicted
and coming wrath.4 There would be the judgment of
the living and the dead. Cosmical changes, political
revolutions, the reappearance of departed saints, would
accompany the entrance upon His kingdom of Messiah
the Prince. The prophetic peculiarity of John's mission
was that he knew that "the time was at hand" for
the commencement of this programme of the future.
He felt that " new heavens and a new earth would
immediately appear."
In the wilderness — associated in Hebrew minds with
the stupendous events that accompanied the birth of
the sacred nation — not far from the spot where they
had been baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the
sea, and purified by Joshua from the uncleanness of
the "wandering;" in a region hallowed by the heroism
of David and the rapture of Elijah, the last of the
prophets cried, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand."
An electric shock thrilled through the nation. " The
kingdom of God is at hand !" Now every throb of
pain will be soothed, every wrong redressed, every fear
hushed. The heavens will open to receive the faithful,
and "the Ancient of days" will be seen in His glory.
1 Acts i. 6. = Ibid. xv. 15, 16. 3 John xii. 23.
4 Cf. especially the dark and sorrowful presage of the fourth book of Esdras.

iv.] The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand. 241
The previous attempts to realize the ideal kingdom,
the earthly types of this heavenly glory, had hitherto
been imperfect and transitory ; often corrupt, repeat
edly disorganized by treachery, and more than once
trampled into dust. The prophecy and promise of John
must have awakened a passionate yearning.
£The corrective of our Lord's subsequent teaching
reveals the extent of the impression produced by His
forerunner. Jesus admitted that " the kingdom of God
had come nigh " unto the Jewish people* when He, the
Lord and Head of it, began before their eyes " to de
stroy the works of the devil."2 But He showed them
that though the kingdom was real and resistless, it must
be within them, and would not come with observation.3
Although it was being then set up in their hearts,
although for the first time in human history it em
bodied itself in the perfect life of the God-Man, yet
since it was a leaven hidden for awhile in the meal,
a seed covered by the soil and sometimes choked by
thorns or trampled on by the feet of strangers, it
would be long before a triumphant proof of its pre
sence could be given. Therefore the subjects of this
kingdom were continually to pray : " Thy kingdom
come; thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven."4
In one sense the preaching of John struck a chord
that vibrated more promptly to his impetuous touch
than when its pulsations were corrected and tuned by
the hand of Jesus. Under John's preaching, even
"publicans and harlots pressed into the kingdom of
heaven." The religious enthusiasm thus awakened
was intense and prolonged, so that from the days of
1 Luke xi. 20. 2 1 John iii. 8. 3 Luke xvii. 20. 4 Matt. vi. 10.
17

242 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
John the Baptist onwards " the kingdom of heaven
suffered violence, and the violent took it by force." z
They who were striving to enter into it, and who were
thinking that it must "immediately appear," were also
for taking it by storm, and were straining their eyes to
see, and longing to realize the dazzling vision. Some
were dissatisfied with Jesus because He did not at once
throw wide the crystal doors, gather all nations before
Him, burn up His enemies, and robe Himself in His
imperial glory. Even His disciples were unable to un
derstand the spiritual correctives that He supplied to
the popular ideas. They besought Him to call down
fire from heaven as Elijah had done, revealing thus
their apocalyptic notions of Messiah and His kingdom.
The brethren of Jesus, sharing the same spirit, said,
"Show thyself to the world;"2 while even on the night
of His Passion, His disciples asked, "How is it that
thou wilt manifest thyself to us and not unto the
world ? "3 Possibly light may be thrown on the conduct
of Peter and Judas, on the prophecy of Caiaphas, and
on the cry of the dying thief, by supposing, on their part,
similar misapprehension of the words of the Master.
During the interval that elapsed between the utter
ance of these trumpet-peals by John and by Jesus, our
Lord told Nicodemus that unless a man were born
again he could neither see nor enter the kingdom of
God.4 These words have received abundant comment
from the history of the Church. Even now, it is not in
pomp and ceremonial, not in any special form of words
or method of working ; it is not in the literature or
the architecture, the organization or the hierarchy, the
sacraments or confessions, of any human society, that
1 Cf. Matt. xi. 12 ; Luke xiii. 24. 2 John vii. 4. 3 Ibid. xiv. 22. 4 Ibid. iii. 3.

iv.] The Kingdom of Heaven at Hand. 243
the regenerated man sees the kingdom. If these were
the true embodiments of the kingdom of God, they
would reverse the judgment of Christ. The same thing
might be said with reference to the upheavals of the
solid structure of society by physical changes of the uni
verse and of its laws, with some one or other of which
some are even now disposed especially to associate
the kingdom of the Father. It is as true now as in
the days of Jesus, the kingdom of God cometh not with
observation. It is within men. Except a man be born
again, he cannot see it. But can the kingdom of God
ever be remote from men ? Is not the dominion of the
Lord eternal and universal ? Can we conceive an atom
or a being in God's universe over which He does not
rule ? Can anything augment His majesty, or reduce
His domain? Surely not, — in the sense in which He
is the Supreme Lord and Will ; but He has in His
wisdom chosen to create a being who in the exercise
of his most godlike powers has resisted the Almighty
fiat, whose will has been the one force in all the uni
verse that has ventured to defy and to abuse the ma
jesty and the power of God. Man's nature is the very
temple-palace, the citadel and throne of God, and yet it
has been in wild revolt against Him, filled with His
enemies and resisting His Will ! The coming of God
into our nature was the coming of the Great King.
He who knew that the Incarnation of the Son of God
had indeed taken place, knew that the Kingdom must
be at hand. He who knew that He was Himself in
carnate God, the Anointed One, the Second Man who
was the Lord from heaven, raised up the standard which
had fallen, rebuilt the ruined temple, and manifested
17 *

244 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
the powers of the Great King. Because the King
Himself had come, " the Kingdom was at hand."
§ 2. The Call to Repentance.
John and Jesus alike commenced their public min
istry by the cry, "Repent ye," and they grounded the
call to repentance on the fact that the Kingdom of
Heaven was at hand.1 Repentance, as urged by our
Lord and His apostles, is the human experience pro
duced by the bestowment of a new and supernatural
life. It involves new hopes as well as new fears, re
conciliation with God as well as contrition for sin.
When "a sinful nation laden with iniquity " was called
upon to undergo a complete "change of mind,"2 sore
pain and strange searchings of heart followed. John
knew that he could not effect the change which he
saw to be imperative, and in this respect he discrimi
nated his commission from that of the Christ. There
is no proof that he' understood the call to repentance
as involving anything essentially different from that
which had from time immemorial been demanded by
the psalmists and prophets of Israel.
The Psalms and the book of Job imply that grief
accompanies the discovery of sinful disposition and con.-
duct.3 We hear frequently the wail of a broken heart
over some great transgression. Solomon, in his prayer
of dedication, cried : " If they sin against thee (for
1 Cf. Matt. iii. 2 ; Luke iii. 8 ; and Mark i. 4, with Matt. iv. 17. Matthew
and Luke represent John as demanding the moral fruits of repentance. Mark
indicates the Divine result conditioned by the baptism of repentance, viz.,
itg aipzatv apaprtciiv. Cf. Acts xix. 4.
2 See Schleusner, Lex. N T. sub voce, ptravota ; and Trench's Synonyms of
the New Test., seventh edition, p. 241.
3 Job xiii. 4-6 ; itpaiXtaa kpavrbv ; Psa. xxxi. 9, 10 ; li. ; reveal various con
fession of sin and agony, but not ptravo'ta.

iv.] The Call to Repentance. 245
there is no man that sinneth not), and thou be angry
with them, and deliver them to the enemy ; yet if they
bethink themselves, and repent, and make supplication
unto thee, saying, We have sinned, .... then hear
thou their prayer and their supplication."1 On this
principle the repentance of Rehoboam was accepted.2
Even Ahab and Manasseh, when they humbled them
selves before the Lord, were restored to prosperity,3
and gracious promises of a like kind were made to
Josiah.4 But it is in the words of the later prophets
that we find the most evangelical promises and appeals
on this subject. Thus, Ezekiel boldly declares that
God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but
that he should return from his way and live. " Turn
ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die? "5
" Oh, Israel, return unto the Lord thy God, for thou
hast fallen by thine iniquity." 6 " Repent and turn
yourselves from your idols, and turn away your faces
from all your abominations, .... that ye may be
my people." 7 " Let us search and try our ways, and
turn again to the Lord." 8 " Let us return to Jeho
vah, for he hath torn, and he will heal us."9
Joel anticipated the great and terrible day of the
Lord, and he cried in the name of the Lord: " Turn ye
even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and
with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart
and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your
God : for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger,
and repenteth him of the evil." I0
' 1 Kings viii. 23-50. d-Koarpktyiiv used frequently. = 2 Chron. xii. 1, 5-7.
3 1 Kings xxi. 25 ; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6, 9-13. * Ibid, xxxiv. 19-28.
s Ezek. xxxiii. 10, 11.
6 Hos. xiv. 1, *. See also Isa. xxxi. 6 ; 2 Chron. xxx. 6, 7, 9.
i Ezek. xiv. 6, 7. 8 Lam. iii. 40, 41. » Hos. vi. 1. '° Joel i. 13-15 ; ". 12, 13-

246 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
Keen anguish over sin as a wrong done to God is
foreshadowed by Zechariah,1 while Ezra and Nehemiah
entered deeply into its significance.2 It was not un
natural that the development of this moral and spiritual
revolution should have become associated with the
kingdom of Messiah and the latter-day glory of the
theocracy. Many of these passages are quoted in this
sense by the Rabbinical commentators.
Thus : "All tokens of the Messiah are over and gone,
His arrival now depends simply on repentance and
good works." R. Eliezer teaches : " If the Israelites
repent they shall be redeemed, if they do not repent
they shall never be redeemed." 3 Again : " The holy
God spake to the Israelites, saying, My children, look
to the way in which }'e go : repent, so will I restore you
to your own habitation ; as it is written, Turn again, 0
virgin of Israel, turn again to thy cities." 4 Once more:
" If Israel should repent even for one day, then would
the Redeemer come." Another writer, quoting Psa. li.
19, says : " Hence we learn that he who truly repents is
as well-pleasing to God as if he had returned to Jerusa
lem, had rebuilt the temple and altar, and brought all
the sacrifices demanded by the law." 5 The importance
of personal repentance and confession of sin is earnestly
insisted upon. " As long as a man lives there is hope
that God may have mercy upon him; i.e., if the sinner
forsake his evil way, but if he die without repentance
all hope is lost."6 Moreover, we can see in the fourth
1 Zech. xii. 4, 10-12. = Ezra viii. 21-23 ; x. 1 ; Neh. i. 4.
3 Chelek Sanhedrin. 4 Book Sifri, on Deut. xi. 15 ; quoting Jer. xxxi. 21.
5 Taanith, Jer. 64. a. ; Besikra Rabba, 13.
6 Berachoth Jerus. 35. 2. I am indebted for these quotations to Gfrorer,
Das Jahrhundert des Heils, ii. p. 152, ff. Compare Alexandre Weill, Moise
et le Talmud, p. 2r4, ff. This writer makes a vehement attempt to show,
by quotations from the Talmud, that the Christian doctrine of penitence

iv.] The Call to Repentance. 247
book of Esdras the proof that repentance must take
place before death. God will neither give nor accept
it afterwards.1
A remarkable fragment of Philo-Judaeus is preserved
by Antonius. " Pardon is apt to engender repent
ance."2 In the dissertation on the three virtues, the part
devoted to " repentance " exhibits the strict meaning of
the word fieravoia. "For absolutely never to do anything
wrong at all is a peculiar attribute of God, and perhaps
one may also say it of a godlike man. But when one
has erred, then so to change as to adopt a blameless
course of life for the future, is the part of a wise man."
Repentance is mainly (in this treatise) the renunciation
of error touching the Divine nature and civil polity,
but broadly, it is "crossing over from ignorance to a
knowledge of those things to be ignorant ,of which is
shameful ; from folly to wisdom, from intemperance
to temperance, from injustice to righteousness, from
cowardice to a confident courage." Philo also refers
to Moses as delivering beautiful exhortations "to re
pentance, by which he teaches us to alter our way of
life, changing from irregular and disorderly courses into
a better line of conduct."3
and pardon, and the changeableness of God, is identical with that of the
Pharisaic doctors of the time of Christ, and inimical to the genuine law of
Moses. The citations made by this writer, in no friendly feeling either to the
Talmud or Christianity,, do much to prove the diametrical difference between
them. The intense and even playful anthropomorphism on which he com
ments, is fundamentally unlike the doctrine of the Divine humanity of Jesus.
The drivelling weakness of the doctrine of pardon, which he cites with trium
phant tones from Sebachim, lib. ix., is a refutation of the entire theory. "As
the sacrifices effect pardon, so also do the garments of the high priest. The
tunic causes the remission of the sin of murder, the breeches the sins of the
flesh, the headpiece the sins of evil thought."
1 4'Esdras ix. 10-12.
2 Philonis Op. Ed. Mangey. Vol. ii. p. 672. Svyyvuiprj pcrdvotav irsfvKt
ywva'v. 3 Ibid. vol. ii. 405, 406.

248 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
It is not necessary to go beyond Holy Scripture to
see that repentance, or change of mind, posture, feeling
towards God and self, accompanied with voluntary self-
humiliation and grief, was supposed by heathen nations
to constitute the real ground of approach to the majesty
and holiness of God.1 The affliction of the soul, the
arbitrary fast, the bowing down of the head, the wear
ing of sackcloth, were even by Israel thought to be,
per se, acceptable to the Lord, until sternly rebuked
by Isaiah.2 But the principle pervades much of the
Oriental ritual and mythologies, and has obviously
been exaggerated and corrupted by gross supersti
tions. From the self-macerations of the Hindu devo
tee, from the bloody rites of Druidical worship, from
Grecian philosophy and Mexican oblations, the same
confession has come, that sin cannot be wiped out
without penitence and sacrifice, nor the favour of God
secured without self-imposed burdens and sufferings.
Neither in Eastern metaphysics, nor in Jewish litera
ture, nor in the words of John, do we find the Chris
tian doctrine of repentance, which makes it on God's
side a new creation, a spiritual regeneration, a hea
venly gift, a sign and token of grace, and on the human
side together with faith, an indispensable condition of
forgiveness. § 3. The Wrath to Come.
Although John based his call to repentance on the
approach of the Kingdom, he knew that that Kingdom
would apply severe tests to all who were morally unfit
to receive the King. He broke down the superstition
that the Kingdom of Heaven was to bring honour,
¦ See Micah vi. 6, 7. 2 Isa. lviii. 3-5.

iv.] The Wrath to Come. 249
happiness, and exclusive privilege to the Jews. It
was accompanied in his mind with judgment and
wrath, not necessarily to be executed on all the civil
or political enemies of Israel, but on all that were
doing wickedly. The kingdom of heaven involved to
the prophetic eye of John " the wrath to come," and
in this respect established and demonstrated his living
sympathy with his elder brethren the prophets, who
from Hosea to Malachi had continually predicted doom
as well as triumph, and foretold a wrath strangely in
wrought with mercy.1
The establishment of the kingdom would be with
burning and fuel of fire. The most enlightened zealot
and the proudest priest, the learned Rabbi as well as
the Gentile proconsul, the Pharisee as well as the pub
lican, were alike exposed to this crucial test. "Repent,"
said he. "Break up your fallow ground." " Look at
life, not in the light of privilege, but in the light of
law." "The fire will try every man's work of what sort"
it is." This expectation of the " coming wrath " was
not peculiar to John, for the fourth book of Esdras is
specially charged with gloomy foreboding of judgment.
Take, for instance, the vision of the man rising from
the sea, 2 " who sent out of his mouth a blast of fire,
and out of his tongue sparks and tempests," which
"fell with violence upon the multitude prepared to
fight against him, arid burnt them up every one, so
1 Hos. xii. 14 ; xiii. i ; Isa. viii. 22 ; ix. 1 ; xxii. 16-25 ; xxviii. 16, 17. , Com
pare the flashes tff light which irradiate the destiny of the people in Isa. xl. -lxiv.
with the darkness and threatenings of Isa. lxv. and Ixvi. 1-4. Again, let Micah 's
hope and promise be brought into one view with the Lord's controversy with
His people, chap. vi. See Joel ii. 30-32 ; Zech. xii. ; and above all the pro
phetic curse with which Malachi closed his prophecy. See Dean Payne
Smith, Prophecy a Preparation for Christ, p. 267.
2 4 Esdras xiii. 1-50.

250 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
that upon a sudden, of an innumerable multitude,
nothing was to be perceived but only dust and smell
of smoke." This is subsequently interpreted of the
torments inflicted by " the law of his mouth, which is
like unto fire." * Later on,2 frightful judgments and
plagues are described as about to fall on all who sin
against the Lord, the lurid representations of which
are only paralleled by the vengeance upon Babylon
and the beast in the visions of the Apocalypse. There
is more of hope and of promise in the words of Henoch,
but there is the same general outline of judgment upon
the powers of evil and the kingdoms of this world.3
In the later Targums on the Pentateuch an expectation
prevails of tremendous power in the hands of Messiah,
and of a battle between the Sons of the East and
Israel, which is to terminate in the utter fall of all
her enemies."4
It is difficult not to believe that when John spoke
of the wrath that was coming, he so far gave expres
sion to a widely-spread, but vague and harrowing fear
of a judgment that was on the point of falling upon
a guilty world, and upon every soul that was doing
wickedly. It was a moral and spiritual change alone
which would shield his hearers from the terrors of
Divine wrath. The quickened conscience of Israel
responded to the summons, and an extraordinary as
semblage gathered around him, trembling with terror
and often shrieking for help. He took his stand not
far from the rose -clad oasis of Jericho. The moun
tain gorge leading to Jerusalem met the caravan route
from southern Persea near the fords of the Jordan, and
1 4 Esdras xiii. 36-38. = Ibid. xv. xvi. 3 Henoch § xlvi.
4 See Westcott, 1. c, p. 114. Much curious information is brought together
on this subject from all sources, in Langen, 1. t. Thl. iii. cap. 8.

iv.] Abolition of Privilege. 251
men of every class and tribe and profession were
among his eager listeners, and interrupted him with
loud cries for help. The population of the metropolis,
fresh from temple services and accustomed to the
splendours of the proconsular court, the fishermen
from smiling Gennesaret, dusky Bedouins from the
desert of Gilead, and hated publicans who had grown
rich upon the sorrows and burdens of the people, were
there. Men and women too, who had found no place
for repentance, and who had been rejected by Pharisee
and Essene as hopelessly incurable and unclean, heard
the " call to repentance," and gathered around the pro
phet of the Lord, hanging as if for life or death upon
his words. It was not with honied promises that he
greeted them. Luke tells us x that he met the whole
multitude with the fierce and terrible cry, " O gene
ration of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from
the wrath to come ?" Matthew confines this par
ticular address to the Pharisees and Sadducees, whom
he saw coming to his baptism. According to both
Evangelists he coupled this trenchant cry with the
assertion of:
§ 4. The Abolition of Hereditary and Abrahamic
Privilege.
Pharisees and Sadducees were more likely than any
other classes to need a warning which gives peculiar
distinctness to the prophetic teaching of John.2 These
1 Luke iii. 7.
2 These "sects," or tendencies of Jewish opinion, have formed a fruitful
source of controversy. Though Josephus was influenced in his well-known
representations, Antiq. xviii. 1. 3, B. J. ii. 8. 14, iii. 8. 5, by a desire to make
them correspond with Greek schools of philosophical opinion, and though
there is some confusion in his estimate of their religious ideas, these state
ments are of considerable importance. Compare the great work of Trig-
land., De Sectis Tribus Judceorum, in which that writer edited the treatises

252 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
two forms of Jewish thought have been often set forth
as types of the traditional and sceptical tendencies in
the Jewish commonwealth. The researches of later
writers have proved this antagonism to have been less
explicit than was formerly supposed. The difference
between them consisted in their political sympathies
and social position rather than in their theological
opinions. The Pharisees were the religious, orthodox
Jews of their time. They denounced all foreign ad
mixtures with their primitive faith. They were the
national party. They consolidated the religious system
of their fathers, elaborated into detail the principles of
the Mosaic code, and bound the religious life of their
disciples with ever stiffening formulae which left no
room for the free play of the conscience or the heart.
The Sadducees, though credited with a denial of the
resurrection and of the immortality of the soul, were
ready to occupy high judicial and sacerdotal offices.
They were subservient to Roman power, had faith in
the stability of the constituted authorities, and never
doubted their own assured place in the kingdom of
Messiah. Pharisees and Sadducees alike made the
proud boast, " We have Abraham for our father; " and
the later Hebrew literature frequently expresses the
conviction that the children of Abraham occupied a
position of exclusive and exceptional privilege.1 In the
fourth Gospel2 they are represented as making their
high lineage the ground of a lying boast. The lan
guage of our Lord 3 shows that common opinion had
of Scaliger and Drusius. See Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums, i. 200-226 ;
Reuss, Theol. Chrit. i. c. 4 ; Neander, General History ofthe Church, i. 84, ff. ;
Dr. Davidson, art. " Pharisees " in Kitto's Ency. ; Keim. 1. c. i. 251-272.
1 Lightfoot, Hone Hebraiccs, Matt. iii. ; Eisenmenger, Endecktes Juden-
thum, ii. 293 ; Bisping, Comm. Rom. ii. 4 ; Milman's History of Christianity,
i. 139. * John viii. 33-39. 3 Luke xvi. 23, 24.

iv.] Abolition of Privilege. 253
almost deified Abraham. " Children of the stock of
Abraham " was the grandest title by which they could
be addressed. Mythical lustre illumined all the historic
facts of Abraham's life. The deliverances of Daniel and
of the three Jews, multiplied many times, are insignifi
cant by the side of the Jewish and Arabic fables which
decorate the Oriental conception ofthe "friend of God."1
The descendants of Abraham resisted the extension
of their privileges to the heathen world. The most
bitter antagonism which our Lord encountered in both
His early and later ministry, the most savage and
relentless persecution from which St. Paul suffered,
were alike incited by the infringement of the sup
posed monopoly of privilege entrusted to the seed of
Abraham. The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, against
which our Lord warned the disciples, was in part the
narrowness which sought to restrict the kingdom of
Messiah to the theocratic people.2 The leaven fer
mented long even in the institutions of Christendom.
The animus it engendered embittered the lives of the
apostles, and led to the stoning of Stephen and the
martyrdom of Paul. Some of the noblest arguments
of the Apostle of the Gentiles seem to be but the echo
of the cry which John, in sublime independence of the
passions, prejudices, and traditions of his hearers,
uttered in the wilderness of Judsea, when he cried,
"Think not," "begin not 3 to say within yourselves,
we have Abraham for our father : for God is able of
these stones to raise up children unto Abraham."
1 Baring-Gould, Old Testament Legends, vol.- i. p. 171, ff. ; Stanley, Jewish
Church, First Series, Lect. 1.
2 Cf. Mark vii. 1-30 with viii. 1-13 ; and Hind's Catcch. Manual, in loco.
3 Cf. Matt. iii. 9 with Luke iii. 8.

254 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
The horizon of John was not so extensive as that of
Paul, yet when he summoned the Pharisee as well as
the harlot, the courtly Sadducee as well as the time
serving publican, the Sanhedrist as well as the " mer
cenary " of Herod, and bade all alike, by repentance, to
shield themselves from the storm of coming wrath, he
took the highest ground as a great religious reformer.
The lofty scorn with which he seemed to treat the
proudest boast of Israel reveals the stern, uncompromis
ing spirit of the prophet in almost fierce contention with
hereditary privilege. " God is able of these stones to
raise up children to Abraham," was a hard, unsympa
thetic way of uttering a new truth which has become
a common-place of Christianity. In the very form in
which the prophet delivered his destructive "burden,"
he made it quite clear that he was standing on the
platform of the old theocracy, but the word was strong
enough to shatter the whole fabric to the ground. No
institution was so sacred that it could claim exemption
from the testing process that was at hand ; no office
so high, no personage so dignified, as to escape the fiery
trial. With military abruptness, with rigid, inflexible
sternness, he declared the "axe already laid at the root
of the trees." The fruitless lives, the barren ortho
doxies, the useless sacraments and dead formularies,
the insincerities and inward profligacies of men, are at
once to undergo the most searching scrutiny. The day
is at hand that shall " burn as an oven," and consume
the chaff with quenchless fire. The effect of warnings
like these from one whom the multitude hailed as a
prophet must have been electric. Along the mountain
terraces and rugged foot - tracks, the eager surging
crowd were asking the question, " What shall we do? "

iv.] The Fruits Worthy of Repentance. 255
Not often has a movement so tempestuous and wide
spread suddenly broken up the heart of a people. The
special answers given by John to the terrified and con
trite who came to him for guidance reveal the Hebraic
element of his prophecy, and show how much the de
mand for righteousness enters into the essential nature
of religious revival. Unless there be a hunger and
thirst after righteousness, the kingdom of God will
bring no blessedness.1
" Bring forth fruits meet for repentance," said John ;
in other words, " Trust no longer to the mere fact of
your birthright." Thus each man was brought face to
face with the demand of God's law, every man's life was
weighed separately in the balance of the sanctuary.
It is necessary to watch this great Confessor dealing
with terrified souls, that we may judge him fairly and
estimate his relations with the kingdom of God.
§ 5. The Fruits Worthy of Repentance.
The most explicit reply given by John to the cla
morous cry, "What shall we do?" was that which
had been already uttered by Isaiah,2 and which was
familiar to every school of Judaism that was aiming
after the higher life. " He that hath two garments
let him give to him that hath not, he that hath
food let him do likewise." Our Lord resembled John
in the earnestness with which He enjoined works
of mercy, and His life was one perpetual exposition
of His ideal. But it cannot be said that He fol
lowed the lead of John, for the Divine word to which
He was accustomed continually to appeal is charged
1 Cf. 1 Cor. vi. 9. * Isa. lviii. 6, 7.

256 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
with the same fine conception of life. Indeed, the con
science of man, from Buddha to Seneca, as with a
thousand voices, has urged on the seeker after God
works of beneficence and self-sacrifice. The Old
Testament is full of the blending and identification
of almsgiving and righteousness.1 Jehovah takes
the poor under His special care. Not in Ebionitic
ideals, but in the words of psalms and prophecies,
we see the full strength of this representation.2 Job
referred to self-sacrificing love as his noblest crown 3
" when the candle of the Lord shone upon his head,
and the secret of the Lord was on his tabernacle."
The Rabbinical writers, reflecting a spiritual light
brighter than their own philosophy, not infrequently
transcended the apparent spirit of the Old Testament.
The Jerusalem Targum on Lev. xxii. 28, says : " Ye
children of Israel, as your Father is merciful in heaven,
so be ye also merciful on earth ; " and our Lord's
judgment with reference to the second great command
ment of the law finds its parallel in several of the
Rabbinical books.4 The language of Hillel, to which
reference has been made,5 is confirmed by another well
known Talmudical book. " On these three things the
world rests, on the law, ritual, and works of mercy."6
John did not go beyond the current interpretation of
the Old Testament, but with prophetic intensity he
exhibited the practical power and legitimate fruit of
repentance. He did not recommend a communistic
1 Comp. Deut. xxiv. 13 ; Dan. iv. 27, with the various readings of Matt. vi. 1.
2 Prov. xix. 17 ; Eccles. xi. 1, 2 ; Psa. xii. 5 ; xii. 1 ; Isa. lviii. 6, 7.
3 Job xxix. 9-16.
* Gfrorer, Das Jahrhundert des Heils, quotes ii. 170, ff ; Pesachin. Bab. p. js ;
Kethuboth, 37, a. ; Sota, 10, a. b.
5 See ante, p. 7. 6 Pirke A both, ii. 9 ; Sabbath, xxxi. a. and v. 18.

iv.] The Fruits Worthy of Repentance. 257
sacrifice of personal property. He did not command
the man who had only one coat to clothe the naked.
He reined in the recklessness of self-abnegating love
by prudential considerations. He gave his command
dogmatically with no other justification than the assur
ance .of " the coming wrath." As in the case of the
Hebrew prophets, the reaction upon the almsgiver of
his own self-denying gift was held fairly in sight. We
see no reason to suppose that this prophetic man rose
to the sublimity of our Lord's teaching. It was left for
Jesus to declare that " it is more blessed to give than
to receive."1 Christ urged the grander lesson of unre
warded charity, on the ground that His disciples were
children of a Father who made His sun to shine on the
evil and on the good. He counselled them to hide their
charity not only from the world, but from themselves.
They were to love each other as He had loved them.
Love to Himself was to be the motive of expansive
love to man. The recompense would be given at "the
resurrection of the just." The end of such self-sacrifice
was itself noble and worthy of God. It had brought
the Son from the bosom of the Father, and He would
Himself bestow the spirit of His own love as His richest
benediction on the world.
The reception given to Pharisees and Sadducees, em
boldened some and compelled other classes to approach
John. If the dignity of Abrahamic descent and the
splendour of great profession will not avail without
deeds of charity to shield from the coming wrath, where
shall the publican appear ? how shall the outcast, the
reprobate, the denationalized tool of Roman ascendency
be spared ? The publicans did, however, repent at the
1 Acts xx. 35.
18

258 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
preaching of John,1 and submitted to his baptism, while
the Pharisees and lawyers rejected him.2 We are
expressly told by Luke that they came with the eager
cry, " What shall we do ?" A reply was given, differ
ing greatly from that to which they had been hitherto
accustomed. They were " sinners above all that dwelt
in Jerusalem " or elsewhere. If any class needed pun
gent, purgatorial test, the publicans required it. The
reply of John was not a summons to temple service or
sacrifice, nor was it ascetic or revolutionary in its tone.
He did not take the opportunity of settling by pro
phetic word the question between Palestine and Rome,
nor did he reveal the great heart of God yearning over
the penitent publican, but he proposed a practical test
of sincerity which would cut the hypocrite to the quick.
"Exact," said he, " no more than that which is ap
pointed you." Extortion was the fierce temptation of
the class. It would have been easier for the publicans
to keep all the ritual, than radically to change the whole
spirit of their lives. Justice, righteousness between
man and man, was the great lesson of the law,3 and
formed the refrain of many of the noblest psalms.4
The righteous Lord loveth righteousness. This same
thought was crystallized into many a Hebrew proverb.5
"Better is a little with righteousness, than great
revenues without right." Righteousness was the con
tinually-recurring demand of the older prophets,6 until
the latest of them cried, "I will be a swift witness
against false-swearers, against those that oppress the
1 Matt. xxi. 32. a Luke vii. 29, 30.
3 Exod. xx. ; Lev. xix. 1, 2, n, 13 ; Deut. xvi. 19, 20 ; xxv. 13-16.
4 Psa. xxxvii. 18, 37 ; 1. 16-21. s Prov. iv. 18 ; xi. 1 ; xvi. 8 ; xvii. 15.
6 Isa. i. 17 ; xxxii. 6 ; Ezek. xxxiii. 31 ; Jer. ix. n, 4-6 ; Amos v. 15, 24;
viii. 4-7 ; Mie. vi. 8 ; Zech. vii. 9, 10 ; Mai. iii. 5.

iv.] The Fruits Worthy of Repentance. 259
hireling in his wages, the widow and the fatherless,
and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and
that fear not me, saith the Lord of hosts." It was a
hard lesson to learn, but one that must have cut deeply
into the ingrained habits of the publicans. John thus
revealed the moral basis of the new kingdom. By this
attitude he cleared away a cloud of misconceptions.
He tested sincerity in a manner at once definite and
practical. His answer involved no doctrine of human
brotherhood or divine fatherhood ; it was rather a dog
matic appeal to the conscience of men who had laid
their ethical sense to sleep. The same voice is still
needed in our wilderness. We are required in these days
"to prepare the way of the Lord" by a similar sum
mons; and wherever selfishness is taking advantage
of circumstances, and sentiment or custom is oblite
rating the sense of justice, wherever the rich grind
the poor, or the poor cheat the rich, there, whether
in the Church or in the world, the voice of him who
was "more than a prophet" is still urgently needed.
The redemption, the salvation, the kingdom of the
Christ will be truly heralded by proclaiming righteous
ness between man and man. God's revelation from
end to end condemns a " revival of religion " which
does not bring forth this fruit.
Following the request of the publicans, Luke tells us
that another class came forward with a similar inquiry.
The SOLDIERS, or, more definitely {ol crrpaTevopievoi) ,
those who at the moment were on active military
duty, approached him.1 It matters little what was
' Michaelis and others suppose they were portions of Herod's army, con
sisting of the foreign mercenaries who were employed by him in his campaign
against Aretas. Ewald and Meyer suggest that they were merely a portion of
the police service, watching for outbreaks between the people and the publicans.
18*

260 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
their specific service. They were moved to repent
ance, and they came with the cry, " What shall we
do, even we ? " There is room to suppose that the
answer previously given to the publicans might be
, regarded by the soldiers as some kind of justification
for their own high-handed acts of reprisal. John tore
off the cloak which their professional position was
drawing over their selfishness, and he bade them
" terrorize no one, and bring no vamped-up worthless
accusation." z The professional soldier of modern times
might be offended by such plain speaking. Armed
authority is always open to the temptation of working
on the emotion of physical fear. The petty tyrannies
of the forced march and the impressed service, the
immoral compulsions, the daring and shabby artifices
of little souls who make up with sword and drum what
they lack in moral fibre, were rebuked. It was no
violent change of position that John commanded. He
did not bid them lay down their arms, or even put the
sword into the sheath. He did not contend against the
old order of external things, but he struck a chord
which must have vibrated right through their moral
nature. If you seek to prove the reality of your repent
ance, said he, your entire spirit must be changed. There
1 The word has a curious origin. A avKotpdvnjg, a " fig-informer," was one
who watched and informed against persons who exported figs from Athens
contrary to law. See Suidas, s. voce, who says it ultimately came to be applied
to an ill-natured, malicious, groundless accusation, and he defines it as rpevdHc
rtvog Karriyopitv. In the time of Demosthenes avKofavrrig had little in com
mon with our sycophant, but was (see Smith's Diet. Antiq.) a compound of
pettifogger, rogue, and liar. Common informations, statutory declarations,
were often made in Athenian courts from purely malicious and selfish purposes,
and various laws and methods were devised to arrest the evil. Aristophanes
tells us "there is no charm against the bite of a avKOfyavrrig,'' Plutus, 885.
The verb is used in very much the same sense. Jos. Antiq. x. 7. 3 ; Xen. Mem.
ii. 9. 5 ; and in LXX. it is a translation of ~tOV. Psa. cxix. 122, " oppress,"
A.V. Prov. xxii. 16, &c.

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 261
were duties incumbent on even the sordid publicans,
and there were responsibilities resting on the swagger
ing mercenaries, which he vigorously enforced ; but he
bore down with the moral principles of the old law
upon that which was the very key of their position.
He called for personal, moral reformation. He did
not, in this case, base his appeal on broad principles
of ethics, nor did he offer any motive beyond that
which he had already clearly intimated. " The axe
is laid at the root of the trees, every tree which beareth
not good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire."
" The kingdom of heaven is at hand." " Bring forth
fruits meet for repentance."
§ 5. The Near Approach of Messiah.
John was perfectly aware of the impression produced
by his words. He knew that they were breaking stony
hearts and crushing strong men. Soldiers were crying
for mercy, and feeling the sharp edge of the sword of
his mouth. Harlots were weeping, and penitent.
Lawyers and scribes might reject his prophetic sum
mons, and consider that his baptism was " of men,"
but they were afraid to say so. The extortioners and
the unjust were putting their house in order. The
vague anticipations and unrest of the multitude were
assuming a definite conviction that John must be him
self more than he professed. "They all were reasoning
in their hearts whether he were himself the Christ."1
It is not an easy task to throw ourselves back into
the position of this eager throng, or to put into words
what the people meant when they thus " reasoned."
1 irpoaioKmvTOQ Sk rov Xaov, Kat StcAoytcrpivaiv wdvroiv iv rolg KapSiatg
avrwv tripi rov 'ltadvvov ptr]7core avrog ti'iy 6 Xptarbg. Luke iii. 15.

262 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
The Messianic expectations of the sacred people are
variously estimated. Modern criticism has submitted
the "proof-texts " of current interpretation to stringent
examination, and not a few have disappeared in the
process.1 The New Testament undoubtedly provides
the most valuable testimony to the opinions entertained
by thoughtful Hebrews as to the character of Messianic
expectations in the first century. But this testimony
creates a variety of difficulties, for the Evangelists and
Apostles quote many passages of the older Scriptures,
which, apart from their authority, we should not have
supposed to refer either to the pre-existing Son of God
or to the future Christ. Thus the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews treats the Old Testament as radiant
with the features and fragrant with the spirit of the
Christ.2 The Evangelist Matthew makes similar use of the
oracles of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Zechariah, and
Malachi. St. Paul, in his Epistles to the Romans,
Galatians, and Corinthians, and St. Peter, in his
Epistles, and both Apostles in their recorded speeches,
summon also from the Old Testament numberless
testimonies to the spirit, the character, and the work
of Messiah. Their example was followed by the earliest
Christian Fathers and Apologists, who continually ap
pealed to the Old Testament, as though it had been
the voice of the living and eternal Son of God, and
had furnished contemporary testimony to the character,
1 Compare Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Testament [4 vols, in Clark's
trans.] ; Dr. J. Pye Smith, Scripture Testimony to the Person of Messiah, with
the recent articles in the Theological Review by Dr. Davidson.
2 Thus, e.g., the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews quotes from Psa. ii.,
viii., xiv., xcvii., cii., ex. ; also from Isa. viii., Jer. xxxi., and Psa. xl. and xcv.,
as distinctly and without controversy containing the foreshadowing and revela
tion of the Christ.

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 263
mission, and offices of the Christ. The Targums and
Talmudical literature are still further charged with the
same spirit, and discover the " King Messiah " in a
multitude of passages, where legitimate criticism can
see simply an historic fact or a moral principle.
Now whether the views of the Jews at the time of
John and Jesus were justifiable or not, whether they
were the offspring of a heated fancy and perverse
exegesis, or the legitimate outcome of the literature
which they were guarding so jealously and studying so
closely, it is an undoubted fact that they did entertain
definite ideas with reference to the programme of their
national future, and the character and functions of their
great King. Injustice is done to them when they are
charged with the sin of not discovering all that we
reverently believe is to be found in the Old Testament.
They, like us, were "slow of heart to believe all that
the prophets had spoken." But their literature proves
that as a matter of fact they found more and believed
more touching the Christ than meets our modern gaze
or satisfies our critical taste.
The New Testament makes it evident that the
priests and scribes entertained a dogmatic opinion that
the Christ would be born in Bethlehem, ' of the seed of
David ; though on another occasion they exclaimed,
"When the Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence
he is."2 This probably referred to the opinion enter
tained by the Targumist on Micah, that the Christ
lived in a secret place in Paradise before His mundane
manifestation.3 Opinions were divided, and clashed.
Nathaniel attributed to the Christ the twofold func-
1 Cf. Matt. ii. 4-5 with John vii. 41, 42. 2 John vii. 27, 31.
3 See Lange, Tholuck, in loco, and Gfrorer, 1. c. ii. 223.

264 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
tion of the "Son of God and King of Israel."1 The
challenge of the high priest,2 "Art thou the Christ,
the Son of the Blessed — the Son of the living God ? "
shows that the two ideas were blended in the Jewish
mind. The cry of the demoniacs proves — even if we
take the lowest ground — that the most neglected as well
as the more enlightened Jews believed that the Christ
would prove to be a strong " Son of God," able to
punish and torment the evil spirit.3
We learn from Matthew that some at least believed
that the Christ would take their infirmities and bear
their sicknesses, and thus fulfil the great oracle of
Isaiah;4 and it is clear from the fourth Gospel that
they expected Him to show signs and wonders to excite
their faith. 5
The perpetual demand for a sign from heaven points
back to the great prophecy of Daniel,5 on which the
author of Henoch had probably already enlarged, and
derives further illustration from the Lord's own declara
tion that many false Christs would appear, would show
signs and wonders, and would deceive many.7 These
celestial manifestations were associated in their minds
with the triumphant restoration of the throne of David
and the kingdom of the saints of the Most High. The
latter hope appears in the language of the angel to
Mary, in the song of Zacharias, in the querulous de
mand of the brethren of Jesus, in the cries of the des
pairing and diseased, in the hosannas of the multitude,
and is justified by the solemn admissions of our Lord.8
' John i. 49. => cf Mark xiv. 6i ; Matt. xxvi. 63.
3 Mark i. 24 ; v. 7. * Matt. viii. 17 ; Isa. liii. 4. - John vii. 31.
6 Dan. vii. 13 ; Henoch [Dillmann's Ed.] §§ lx.-lxiv. 7 Matt. xxiv. 30.
8 Luke i. 49-54, 69 ; John vii. 4 ; cf. Acts i. 6; Matt. xx. 30 ; xxi. 9, 15 ;
xxii. 42.

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 265
It is an interesting question how far these widely-
spread impressions, hopes, and fears, were due to the
teaching of John, or had been quickened into intense
activity by his prophetic voice. It is not unreasonable
to associate in some degree the division of popular
sentiment, the obvious clashing of current expecta
tions with the twofold, and even dissimilar testi
monies borne by John to the idea of the Christ.
Before discussing this question, it is necessary to revert
to other sources of information. It ' is certain that
Josephus had lost all faith in the coming of a Christ,
and with the exception of one doubtful passage, he can
hardly be credited with having alluded to the Messianic
hope of his nation; nor can Philo — unless he were
concealing it under his doctrine of the Logos — be said
to have given to it any utterance or exposition. There
is some reason to believe that Philo did follow the
Alexandrine interpretation of certain famous prophetic
oracles,1 and Keim refers to a few isolated, fragmentary
hints which might possibly take a Messianic colouring,2
but they are lost in the midst of voluminous specula
tions, which do not reveal a gleam of this national expec
tation. Such as they are, the philosopher hopes merely
for some celestial manifestation in the clouds of a god
like image, visible only however to the redeemed.
Keim also thinks that Josephus had not relinquished
his faith in Hebrew prophecy. " In his heart, the
book of Daniel is applied to Israel, if not precisely to
the Messiah." This however is meagre proof of the
extent of the Hebrew expectation at the time of Jesus.
If we did not possess the abundant illustration of the
1 Keim, 1. c. 316, and Langen, 1. c. 400, call attention to Philo, De Conf.
Ling., where Psa. ex. 3 and Zech. vi. 12 are interpreted of the Logos.
2 Philo. Op. [Ed. Mangey, vol. ii. 423] De Prasmiis et paenis.

266 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
vitality of this hope which is contained in the pages of
the New Testament and in the subsequent literature of
the Jews, Josephus and Philo would throw little light
upon the subject. The "Sibylline Oracles," in the form
in which they have been preserved and edited,1 cover
many centuries, and contain vaticinations, inextricably
mingled, from Jewish, heathen, and Christian sources,
yet they are not without their bearing on the tempes
tuous condition of the Jewish mind during the entire
period ; while they set forth the wild, confused, and
gorgeous visions which danced before the popular gaze,
and gave a character to the people themselves and to
the estimate in which they were held by foreign nations
and by Roman poets. The same may be said of the
book of Henoch and the Ascension of Isaiah, and
also of the fourth book of Esdras and the Psalms
of Solomon. It is not certain how far these frag
ments preceded the advent of the Christ; but it is
certain that if they did so, they utterly failed to pro
vide the material out of which the " Jesus of the
Gospels " was created. There is more than enough
to show that the people generally were expecting a
sublime yet lurid blending of heaven and earth ; a ven
geance upon the enemies of Israel, a new heir and
occupant of the throne of David, a political Leader, a
great Prophet, a resistless King, who should use his
supernatural powers to promote their interests, to judge
the nations, and to place them in a position of civil,
intellectual, and political supremacy. Others of softer,
gentler mould, " waited for consolation and redemp
tion in Israel," yearned after personal forgiveness, and
1 Bleek, in Schleiermacher's Theol. Zeitschrift, ii. 192, has submitted them to
careful criticism. See abundant use made of Bleek's work by Moses Stuar
Comm. Apoc. § 6, and Langen, 1. c. 401, ff.

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 267
believed that when Messiah came He would search all
hearts and know all things, and would prove Himself
to be the Saviour of the world.1 Ideas of this kind,
varying with the temper and disposition of each indivi
dual, were circulating freely among the eager multitude
who had come to John with the cry, " What shall we
do ? " He did not misconceive the sign of the times.
He knew that he was the herald of Jehovah, and that
it was his commission to turn many of the children of
Israel to the Lord their God. John did not limit the pro
mises he uttered to the establishment of a kingdom, he
boldly proclaimed The Coming One [6 dp-yofxevoc;]. The
people did not misunderstand his reference. He be
lieved in a human manifestation as well as a Divine
Providence. More clearly than any current literature]
or any of the popular teachers had done, John identified'
the coming of The Lord with the approach of Messiah.
"The coming one" is said by John to be "mightier
than I [layvporepoc; fwv], whose sandals I am not
worthy to carry."2 As a Man walking the earth,
rather than as an angel coming in the clouds, John
expected Him to make His appearance and to do His
strange work. The dominant idea in his mind was
strength rather than mercy ; " the Mighty God "
rather than "the Good Shepherd" or "the Prince of
Peace." John was himself " strong in spirit," but he
trembled at the advent of One whose spirit would be
stronger than his own. He believed in a Man who
would be as the angel of the Lord before them. The
multitudes might revere his own austerity, or hurry to
his baptism, or discuss the question in his presence
1 Luke i. 69, 74 ; ii. 25, 38 ; John iv. 25, 42.
2 Matt. iii. n. Luke reports it, "The strap of whose sandals I am not worthy
to loose." Mark adds, " to stoop down and unloose."

268 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
whether he was The Christ; but so profound were
his feelings about the unseen King, then standing on
the threshold of His temple, that in the very spirit of
the " swan - like song " which some critics believe to
have been far too spiritual to have proceeded from him,
he cried, " His shoe-latchet I am not worthy to stoop
down and unloose." Before he saw Him, he felt that
he was not worthy to be His menial slave; when he
had beheld the glory of His love and sympathy and
sacrifice, he called himself " the friend of the bride
groom, rejoicing greatly at his voice."
What did John mean by the declaration that the
coming one would be "mightier" than himself ? The
word (t'a"%w?) is used elsewhere of physical and moral
energy. The "power that belongeth to God," and is
imparted to His servants, is in numberless passages of
Scripture conspicuously manifest in the giving of life
and the destruction of evil.1 Now John is explicit.
"I indeed baptize you with {or in) water unto repentance;
but he shall baptize^ you in {or with) the Holy Spirit and
in fire." This memorable saying is recorded by three
Synoptists,2 and is confirmed by the subsequent testi
mony recorded by the fourth Evangelist,3 by Christ
Himself,4 by Peter,5 and by Paul,6 on occasions memor
able in the history of the Church. When John used
the language, he had not seen the Spirit descend upon
the Son of God. He had accustomed the people to
a ceremonial consecration, and felt its utter incapacity
to answer the questioning or soothe the agitation that
his ministry had awakened. By prophetic glance, he
saw the Messiah wielding the powers of the Divine and
1 Psa. lxii. n ; cxlviii. 3 ; ex. 2, 3 ; Deut. xxxii. 39.
2 Matt. iii. 11, 12 ; Mark i. 8 ; Luke iii. 16. 3 John i. 33.
« Acts i. 5. s Ibid. xi. 16. 6 Ibid. xix. 4.

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 269
Holy Spirit, and declared that the coming Christ would
deal with the Holy Spirit as he was then dealing with
water. He says, in other words, " He will submit
you to a spiritual lustration, of which the water-bap
tism is a mere type and symbol. You pledge yourselves
to repentance by accepting the water -cleansing. If
you submit to His baptism, it will be the reception of
a spiritual force, which I have no power to convey by
water or by word. John administered water as the
medium of effecting a change in the external relations
of the people with the kingdom of God. The approach
ing Christ would administer a spiritual energy of such
potency that it would transcend the noblest and richest
gifts of God. Jehovah had been frequently repre
sented as "giving," "pouring out," producing life by
his Holy Spirit.1 This had been the method by which
God had come into personal relations with men, but
the objects of this supreme favour were few in number.
" The Spirit of God " spake by the lips of " the sweet
singer of Israel," and gave all its intensity to the
life of the greatest of the prophets. But there was
treasured by John a sublime hope which lifted him to
the rank of the most gifted seers. The latter-day
glory was about to dawn upon the world, and would
consist in the outpouring of the Spirit upon all flesh.
At the hands of the coming Christ, old men and
maidens, the weak and the erring, as well as the
Pharisee and the scribe, would receive the heavenly
unction. The ministration of the Spirit by Messiah
would have a glory transcending all the ministration of
death. John knew that his own burning words had
1 Isa. xxxii. 15-17 ; Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27 ;.Zech. xii. 10. On the Old Testa
ment doctrine of the Holy Spirit, see Langen, Gfrorer, Schultz, Steudel.

270 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
neither consumed the sins, nor purged away the dross
of the people. He left their repentance, their refor
mation, as far as his work was concerned, in their own
hands. He bade them flee from the coming wrath, but
he could not sanctify them. He reuttered the sternest
enactments of the law, but he knew that this could
not realize the ideal that he had conceived, nor effect
the change he prophesied. He knew there was a vast
reserve of spiritual force, which would work mightily
in the hearts of men, would move them from within,
would make divine prophets of them, would stir them
up into living active fellowship with the will of God,
would be in fact a new and clean heart in them, and a
right spirit. The vision that swept across his eyes —
and that still gleams in the horizon of all faithful men
— was that the Spirit of the Lord should be so given
to the men of his generation, that they should be all
righteous, that " the wilderness might become a fruit
ful field, and the fruitful field be accounted a forest."
He knew that the Son of David, the strong Son of God,
in doing this would prove that He was mightier than
himself. This is one element of the might of the Christ as
conceived by John, but it is not the only one. How
could the Elijah of the New Testament hide from view
the searching, testing, refining fire of which Malachi
had spoken ? "Who may abide the day of his coming?
who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a
refiner's fire, and like fullers' soap: and he shall sit as
a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the
sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that
they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteous
ness  Behold, the day cometh, that shall burn

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 271
as an oven ; and all the proud, and all that do wickedly,
shall be stubble : and the day that cometh shall burn
them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave
them neither root nor branch." J
It was not strange that John should have added —
" He shall baptize you with fire " — " And now also the
axe is laid to the root of the trees : therefore every tree
which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and
cast into the fire. His fan is in his hand, and he
will throughly purge his floor, and gather the wheat
into the garner ; but he will burn up the chaff with
unquenchable fire."
There are three elements in this process. (1) There
is a judgment (a discrimination) which will separate
the righteous from the wicked, which will single out
those who are guilty of moral insensibility to Messiah's
work, and will mark them off for destruction. This is
the condemnation, that light is come, and they love
darkness. The kingdom of God will come nigh unto
them, and some will not see it nor enter into it. Some
who say they see will be made blind, and their
blindness will become manifest. It will be more toler
able for Sodom in the day of judgment than for them.
The Son of man will separate the peoples one from
another, "as a shepherd divideth the sheep from the
goats." (2) There is the solemn search after the fruits
of high profession, and the looking for of judgment and
fiery indignation on the untruthful and unfruitful. The
king will come in to see his guests, and will dismiss
into outer darkness the man who has no wedding
garment on, even though he was brought into .the feast
from the highways and the hedges. The withered fig
1 Mai. iii. 3 ; iv. 1.

272 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect.
tree expounds the parable of the unfruitful vineyard.
The fire of the judgment will leave neither root nor
branch. The axe is laid at the roots, and the fire is
already kindled. (3) There is the purifying of those
whose corruption is not complete, of those institutions
which are capable of reformation and renewal. The
dross will be burned out of the gold and silver ore. God
will search and try, will scorch and smelt the true metal
in the furnace, and He will sit as a refiner, and will
purify the priestly race, that they may offer a true and
pleasant sacrifice. The Mighty One is to thresh the
precious corn, to winnow the chaff, to scatter and burn
the worthless stubble. The fire must try every man's
work, of what sort it is.
The forerunner's conception of the Mighty Man's
work is sustained by the teaching of the Master, by
many parables and burning words in the course of His
ministry; by the effects of His personal humility on
human pride, even by the wild passions which His
goodness roused into fierce activity ; by the sifting of
His own disciples ; by the agony in the garden and on
the cross ; and also by the tribulation, the cruel mock-
ings and scourgings, the bonds and imprisonment, which
test true love and consume weak faith; by all the
history of the Church of Christ in the world, and by
the solemn foreshadowing of future judgment.
It must not be forgotten that the testimony which the
people bore to Jesus in the place where John at first
baptized was this: "John did no miracle, but all things
which John spake of this man were true." The ministry
of the Spirit, in the hands of Jesus, was mightier in its
power of suasion, more penetrating and life-giving, than
that of John. There was a might in His love which

iv.] The Near Approach of Messiah. 273
drew the little children to His arms, a might in His
purity which made the devils tremble, and hypocrites
pass silently and self- condemned out of His sight.
There was might in the attraction of His cross, in the
tears that He shed and the love that He lavished ; but
His word was " quick and powerful, sharper than a
two-edged sword." He came to "bring fire on the
earth." It was " already kindled" when He spake, and
it has been burning ever since.
Did John conceive of the ultimate judgment to be in
flicted upon the wicked, the fruitless, and the faithless,
as stretching out into the future life, and involving the
endless torment of those subjected to the baptism of
fire? The phrases used unquestionably speak of two
classes of things, (1) unfruitful persons or institutions,
which are like barren trees to be cut down and destroyed ;
and (2) worthless ingredients mingled with the life and
work of individuals, which, like chaff and dross, are to
be separated from that to which they cling, and are
themselves to be burned up. In this latter case the
" fire " performs its purifying process by absolutely
annihilating the evil passion, by reducing to dust and
ashes all useless and pretentious work. That the fire is
" quenchless " is a glorious assurance, for in this lies the
hope of deliverance. In the former case there is no hint
of anything but the destruction of the worthless trunk,
the fruitless branch, the useless root. When these are
cast into the fire, they are no longer wood ; they are, in
view of the older physics, destroyed for ever. It cannot
be said that John looked farther than the judgment on
the present forms of life, than the severance of good and
evil persons by the work of Messiah, than the removal
of the evil from the good, and the destruction by the
19

274 The Preaching in the Wilderness. [lect. iv.
hands of Him who is "a consuming fire" of all that
do wickedly, and of all sinful deeds.
It is instructive to observe that St. Luke speaks in
remarkable terms of this early ministry of John. He
sums it up thus : " With many other things exhorting,
he preached glad tidings to the people." ' These
solemn searching words, touching the kingdom of God,
touching righteousness, temperance, and judgment to
come, concerning the destruction of hereditary privi
lege, the urgent need of repentance, the certain ap
proach of a day that should burn as an oven, and of
the purging, leaping, quenchless, consuming fire, are,
in the mind of the great Evangelist, A gospel.
1 Luke in. 18.

LECTURE V.
THE TRANSITIONAL WORK OF JOHN.

19 *

T

LECTURE V.
THE TRANSITIONAL WORK OF JOHN.
§ i. Baptism.
HE preacher in the wilderness did not confine his
ministry to warnings, counsels, and prophecies.
He adopted a special method of evoking, symbolizing,
and invigorating the faith of his hearers. It is not
necessary, nor is it possible, to claim for John complete
originality in his choice of this symbolic ritual. It is
not " necessary," because every element of Hebrew
faith and ceremony had its parallel in surrounding
nations. Circumcision was not confined to the chil
dren of {srael or of_Abjaham.S The temple service,
the altar, the priesthood, the prophetic order, and the
ascetic institute, had all received abundant illustration
both within and beyond the limits of the theocracy :
why should the baptismal rite be regarded as a per-\
fectly original or special inspiration of John ? It is
not " possible " to make the supposition, in view of
the varied lustrations and baptisms which prevailed
throughout the civilized world. Among the Greeks,
initiation into special mysteries,1 and the lustration of
1 Diet. Antiq. art. " Cotyttia." The priests of the Thracian goddess were
called fiairrat.

278 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
cities, of armies, and of individuals, were effected by
the sprinkling of water upon the persons or objects
seeking to secure the favour or to avert the anger of
the gods.1 The Romans had the custom of washing
away sin by dipping the head in the waters of the
Tiber. 2 The Hindu worship has always consisted
largely in lustral rites, which were celebrated on the
birth of a child, on its reception into its own caste, on
the consecration of an idol, and in anticipation of
death,3 as well as in the daily round of Brahmanic
ceremonial. The directions of the Avesta with reference to a vast
variety of purifying ceremonies, show how widely the
custom had spread throughout the East. Justin Martyr
was so struck with the resemblance between the cere
monies of heathenism and Christian baptism, that,
according to his wont, he explained the circumstance
by the malice and ingenuity of the demons.4 There
does not appear to have been associated with any of
these purifying rites an ethical idea. The purity aimed
at was for the most part physical, not moral ; the
method taken to secure it aimed at no higher cleans
ing, and therefore often reflected the dualistic theory of
the corruption that was supposed to be inherent in
matter, and which was thought to appertain to the body
and all its functions. The ceremonial defect that was
removed by ablution was not infrequently a necessity
1 As Athens, after the murder of Cylon. Diog. Laert. i. no. The KaSappot
and TtXtrai of Musasus contain abundant directions on this subject. See Baring-
Gould, Origin and Development of Religious Belief, vol. i. 397 ; Dollinger,
Gentile and Jew, vol. i. 220, ff.
2 Juvenal, Satir. vi. 522, ff. ; Cicero, De Legibus, ii. 8. Cf. Dollinger, 1. c. ii.
83, 89.
3 Wiittke, Geschichte. des Heidenthums, ii. Th. p. 380. See Appendix.
? Apol. i. c. 62.

v.] Baptism. 279
of nature, a physical accident, or some arbitrary re
striction debarring from the enjoyment of religious dis
tinction and privilege. The same class of remark must
often be made when dealing with the ablutions of the
Hebrew ritual. Thus the first step taken in the conse
cration of the tribe of Levi to the service of the taber
nacle was to "sprinkle water of purifying upon them,
. . . and let them wash their clothes, and so make
themselves clean."1 The cleansing and the unclean
ness were institutional and arbitrary. The same must
be said of the uncleanness effected by touching the
dead body of a man.2 Armed men, when they went
to battle, received the ceremonial ablution, and their
weapons, ornaments, and dress were religiously cleansed
before they entered the camp.3 The Pharisees were
most profuse in their ablutions, and in this respect
they were imitated by the Essenes.4
There was in the days of our Lord much ceremonial
ablution, not only of the person, but of " cups, pots,
brazen vessels, and tables." 5 Christ denounced the
custom as a vain, if ancient tradition. Still, notwith
standing these references, there is nothing either in
the Old Testament, in Josephus, or in Philo, fully to
explain the ceremonial of initiation and confession
adopted by John. It has, however, often been observed
that the manner in which both Josephus and the four
Evangelists refer to John's baptism, and particularly
the discussion of John's claim to baptize his followers,
present a prima facie proof that, independently of John's
1 Numb. viii. 7. 2 Ibid. xix. 13-20.
3 Ibid. xxxi. 21-24. See also Exod. xl. 12.
4 Josephus, B. J. ii. 8. 5 ; Chagiga, 18 b ; Berachoth, 24 b, quoted by
Ginsburg, l.c. p. 48.
5 Mark vii. 8. See Danzius, Baptismus Proselytortcm Judaicus, edited by
Meuschen. Novum Test, ex Talmude IUustratum, §§5-10.

280 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
baptismal summons, the Jews were familiar with the
ordinance. Great difference of opinion has prevailed as to the
date of the origin of proselyte-baptism, and this differ
ence has been aggravated by the supposed connection
of the question with both the mode and the subjects of
Christian baptism.1
The frequent references to the baptism of proselytes
in the Rabbinical and Talmudical literature are not
disputed ; but the strained biblical exegesis of the
Gemaras is supposed by many to be countervailed by
the silence of more ancient authorities. The Rabbis
cite numerous instances of baptismal initiation into the
theocratic community, but neither the Septuagint nor
Josephus sustain their view of these events. Thus the
LXX.2 translate " became Jews " by irepiere/iovro Kai
lovhatfjov, and nothing is said of "baptism" on an oc
casion where, if it had been ,a customary practice, it
would have occurred. Josephus, when detailing the
forcible proselytizing of Idumasans and Iturasans, had
several opportunities to have also mentioned their bap
tism, but he simply refers to their being circumcised.3
This silence is not conclusive as to the absence of bap
tismal ceremonial, for in the same way it might be
shown from Holy Scripture that circumcision had been
2 Among the defenders of the originality and antiquity of proselyte-baptism,
and the dependence thereupon of John's baptism and of Christian baptism,
may be reckoned Lightfoot, Hora Hebraicce, Luke iii. ; Danzius, lib. cit. and
Antiquitas Baptismi Initiationis Israelitarum Vindicata ; Wall, History of
Infant Baptism, 1720 ; the pietists, Arnold and Spener ; Deylingius, Michaelis,
Kuinoel, Neander, E. C. Bengel, Dr. Halley, and others. On the other hand,
the Lutheran theologians have maintained the originality of John's baptism,
and also of that of our Lord and of the apostles, and have repudiated the anti
quity of Jewish baptisms ; so, also, Witt, 1708, J. Owen, Schneckenburger,
Matthies, Baptismatis Expositio, 1831, De Wette, Leyrer, art. "Proselyten,"
in Herzog, Encyc. , Doddridge, and Moses Stuart.
2 Esther viii. 17. ' Antiq. xiii. 9. 1, and 11. 3 ; xx. 2. 4.

v.] Baptism. 281
neglected by Israel, as, with the exception of occasional
symbolical reference to the custom by Jeremiah and
Ezekiel,1 there is (as Dr. Halley remarks) "no mention
of the positive observance of the rite, from Joshua to
John the Baptist."
The Rabbis found the earliest instance of baptismal
initiation in the books of Moses, and said that the
daughter of Pharaoh underwent the rite in the Nile,2
that it was common in the days of David and Solomon,3
that it took the place of circumcision in the admission
of women to the covenant ; whilst it would seem that
after the destruction of Jerusalem it became the chief
rite of initiation into the kingdom of God as conceived
by them.
There is a fragment in the Mishna which must be
regarded as the earliest reference to a baptism of pro
selytes into the Jewish faith. It occurs in Pesachin
viii. 8, and is to the following effect : —
" As to a proselyte who becomes such on the evening of the
Passover, the followers of Schammai say, ' Let him be baptized,
and let him eat the Passover in the evening ;' but the disciples of
Hillel say, ' He who separates himself from the prepuce, separates
himself from the sepulchre.' " 4
The Babylonian Gemara further assures us that —
" If a proselyte has been circumcised, but not baptized (R. Eliezer
says), he is a proselyte ; for so we find among our first fathers,
who were circumcised, but not baptized. But should one be bap
tized, and not circumcised (R. Joshua says), he too is a proselyte ;
for we find this to have been the case with our first mothers, who
were baptized, but not circumcised. But the wise regard both as
necessary conditions." 5
The baptism of the children of proselytes is referred
"Jer. iv. 4 ; vi. io ; ix. 26 ; Ezek. xliv. 9. 2 Sotah, 12. 6 ; Megill, 13. a.
3 Jebamoth, 46. 6. 4 Moses Stuart, trans, in Bib. Rep. April, 1833.
3 Jebamoth, 46, quoted by Lightfoot, H. H. Matt. iii. ; by Matthies, 1. c. p. 35,
and Danzius.

282 The Transitional Work of John. lect.
to in the Babylonian Gemara.1 It is also stated that
the rite was not administered until the wound of cir
cumcision was healed,2 and that it was not allowed
to take place in the night time.
Maimonides in the twelfth century, — an indifferent
authority certainly for what had been Jewish custom in
the first century, — makes frequent mention of the rite
of baptism, of its peculiar relation to women, of its
being a substitute for circumcision, and of its admin
istration to the children of Gentile proselytes, and he
lays stress on the complete immersion of the naked
body in the water.3
The authority of these quotations is not conclusive,
but it is thus rendered probable that long before the
completion of the Gemaras the Jews were in the habit
of admitting Gentile proselytes into their fellowship by
a baptismal ceremony. They are not likely to have
borrowed the custom from the Christian Church, and
the inference is that it had prevailed in the first cen
tury, and also at the time when John came preaching
in the wilderness of Judaea. The form and spirit of
the ceremony were well understood. Lustrations were
common in the temple service, and in the customs of
both Pharisees and Essenes. The originality of John's
procedure was that he called the sacred people them
selves to repentance and to baptism. The privilege to
which he summoned the multitudes was something
additional to Jewish faith, to Abrahamic descent, to
paschal festivals. By this act he made disciples. They
received from his lips a reutterance of the Law, a fresh
1 Erubin, n. 1, quoted by Lightfoot, H. H. Matt. iii. 5, 6.
2 Jebamoth, 45.
3 Issure Biah, c. 43, quoted by Lightfoot ; also the treatises Avadim and
Mikvaoth.

v.] Baptism. 283
affirmation of the hope of Israel. It was as a new
birth to them. They were told the humbling lesson that
they as well as the heathen needed purification. The
Sanhedrist as well as the publican, the Pharisee and
Essene as well as the'harlot and the foreign mercenary,
were alike bidden to prepare the way of the Lord by
repentance and by. baptism. The master in Israel was
taught that he needed the ablution of the " heathen
dog." Nicodemus might have learned from the older
prophets his need of spiritual regeneration, but he fell
over a lower stumbling-block.
The custom of the Essenes, previously referred to,1
of terminating a year of probation before admission
into their confraternity by " the holy water of purifica
tion," may throw some light upon the demand which
John made upon the eager multitudes who thronged
around him.2
The Sabeans, as their name implies, 3 were Baptists,
and were so called by reason of their frequent ablu
tions, and M. Renan supposes that the Elchesaites, of
whom we have received such curious details in the
Philosophoumena, are little else than the old Sabeans,
whose views had been modified by contact with the
teachings of the Avesta.
We undoubtedly find that the followers of the sup
posed Elchesai and the believers in his revelation
imagined themselves cleansed, by faith and baptism,
1 Josephus, B. J. ii. 8. 7.
2 The author of the Philosophoumena confirms the statement of Josephus
in lib. ix. u. 18, where, speaking of the novice among the Essenes, he says, ' ' He
approaches more nearly to the sect's method of living, and he is washed more
purely than before." Works of Hippolytus, Ante-Nic. Lib. vol. i. 355 ; Dr.
Ginsburg, Essenes, p. 45, quotes Jer. Demai, ii. 3 ; Bab. Becharoth, xxx. 6, for
similar lustral rites on admission to the Pharisaic order.
3 Chwolson, Die Sabier, i. 107-144 ; Renan, Histoire des Langues Simi-
tiques, iii. *.

284 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
from the foulest sins of the flesh and of the mind. The
repetition of baptism is enjoined on the most fearful
offenders, and the promise given, " If you are desirous
of being converted, that your sins may be forgiven you,
as soon as ever you hearken to this book, and be bap
tized a second time along with your garments, peace
shall be yours, and your portion be with the just."1
From the frequent enumeration of these formulae, it
would appear that the baptismal rite was repeatedly
administered with the same intent. The author of this
record refers to the Pythagorean origin of the various
strange opinions entertained by the Elchesaites, and it
is not a little remarkable that, together with a confused
doctrine of metempsychosis and other resemblances to
the Pythagorean system, there should have been also
blended the practice of water ablutions as an opus ope-
ratum, by which, in great crises of existence, all the
consequences of sin could be washed away.
Now our Lord very forcibly implied that the "bap
tism of John" — evidently meaning by that term the
entire prophetic teaching and mission of John — was
"from heaven," rather than "of men;" that John was
divinely guided in his choice of this method of express
ing his thought and urging his appeal on the con
science. This is, however, perfectly compatible with
John's having selected a special institution, with
which, in various ways, the popular mind had become
familiar. If John's baptism, either in mode or subject, was
dependent upon proselyte baptism, grew out of it, or
took any of its character or features from an orthodox
Jewish rite or from a heathen ceremonial, it becomes
1 Hippolytus, A.-N. L. vol. i. 347-349.

v.] Baptism. 285
a question of profound interest, how closely Christian
baptism is, in its turn, dependent upon John's bap
tism, or even related to it ? It is difficult to steer
clear of theologie and ecclesiastical bias in handling
this historic question ; yet it is perfectly obvious that
John's baptism need not be regarded as destitute of
Divine appointment, because it was the prophetic and
inspired adoption of a symbol already familiar. Mo
sheim and others have supposed that John recognized the
justice of a generally diffused expectation that the fore
runner, as well as Messiah Himself, would administer
a baptismal rite ; and he thus explains the language of
the Pharisees, " Why baptizest thou then, if thou be
not the Christ, neither Elias, neither the prophet ? "
There is, however, nothing beyond this solitary passage
upon which such an interpretation of John's conduct
can be based.
The lustral rites of the Jews and of surrounding
nations alike proclaimed a deep sense of corruption and
impurity, and were all alike impressive anticipations of
a cleansing process which should pass over not only the
body, but the spirit of man. It is quite in harmony
with the Old Testament position assumed by John,
that he should have chosen this expressive symbol to
deepen the sense of personal sin, and to excite the
hope of redemption.
If he followed implicitly the form of proselyte-bap
tism, he must have performed the rite in secret, and
have effected it by total immersion of the naked body ;
and he must have admitted children to the rite, and
purified them, together with their parents, from the
ceremonial defilement of their birth, and from all the
disqualifications consequent upon national sin.

285 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
If, on the other hand, John took the Essenic ritual of
admission into a sect, or society, as his model, it is
improbable that any children were baptized by him.
But we do not know, and cannot determine, the model
that, under God's inspiration, guided his course ; and we
are inclined to believe that, alike as to matter and form,
mode and subject, he struck out a path for himself.
The moral effect of his preaching, the cry for help
which answered his cry for repentance, the multitudes
who thronged around him, and the eagerness with
which they complied with his requirements, forced
upon him certain modifications of the rite, and suddenly
created an institution or ordinance for which no exact
parallel had existed in previous times.1
The demand he made for repentance was eminently
distasteful to Pharisees, who boasted of their righteous
ness, and to Essenes, who were glorying in their purity
of soul and body. He did not in this demand go be
yond the lines of the Old Testament law and prophecy.
The ceremonies of the day of atonement, the bitter
penitential psalms, the piercing confessions of national
and personal sin made by Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel,
and the rabbinical association of a general repentance
with the coming of Messiah, all lent emphasis to this
condition of baptism ; but they did not serve to con
nect it organically either with the baptism of prose
lytes, the Pharisaic, or the ethnic ceremonial. Among
them that were born of women, there had not risen a
greater than John. Great as a priest, great as a Naza
rite, great as a prophet, great as the Elijah — he was
1 Keim, Bd. i. pp. 504-506, says the truth lies between the extreme views
of Schneckenburger and E. C. Bengel, and points out the distinctions between
the Jewish and Johannine baptisms in their method and spirit.

v.] Baptism. 287
greater still as the creator of a new spiritual brother
hood, that was based upon moral conditions, and con
secrated by an ordinance which represented to every
subject of it the need of personal relationship with God.
Josephus, when speaking of
"John that is called the Baptist," adds, ,fhe was a good man,
and he exhorted the Jews, by practising virtue, and by cultivating
righteousness towards one another and piety towards God, to
assemble for baptism, for thus the baptism would be acceptable
(to God), when they made use of it, not for the remission (itapairqau)
of certain sins, but for the purification (dyvticf 7-0O a&parag) of the
body, inasmuch as the soul had been previously purified by right
eousness." *
Josephus most imperfectly represents the doctrine
of John, but he cannot be thrust aside as a witness to
the impression produced by John's teaching on the
educated and critical circles of Palestine. He must be
held to represent the meaning which many of his class
attributed to the water - baptism. According to his
representation, John did not recommend the rite as a
method of deliverance from the consequences of sin.
He repudiated the idea that it would secure the remis
sion of personal transgression. He assumed that the
soul must be " previously purified by righteousness,"
by " righteousness between man and man, and by piety
towards God." According to this statement, the bap
tism was acceptable to God when it was regarded as
not possessing or conveying any spiritual energy, when
it was sought for as a means of securing merely " sanc
tity of body," i.e., a physical and ceremonial purity.
On this showing, all that was of gravest importance
in the mission of John was secured before the baptism,
and not in it, or by it. The remission of sins, the
1 Antiq. xviii. 7. 2. See the whole passage, ante, p. 53.

288 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
priestly absolution for venial offences, was not bestowed
by John in the ordinance. The soul was to be previously
purged by righteousness before the baptism was urged
upon the disciple. It was no opus operatum by which a
moral change could be effected, but one by which cere
monial defilement might be removed. It was a simple
substitute for a wearisome round of lustrations and
sacrifices, but it was a pledge that he who had sought
this [dyvela] purity of body was already bringing forth
fruits meet for repentance. It thus amounted to a con
fession of sin, to an act of repentance, a mode of recog
nizing the great spiritual demands of the law of God;
but in itself it was simply a ceremonial service, a
divinely - appointed substitute for a burdensome load
of religious rites which were beginning to crush and
extinguish the moral life. If this were an accurate
representation of the matter, John had not gone beyond
the Old Testament platform, and moreover he had
recognized the necessity of physical and ceremonial
cleansing, which savours strongly of the Oriental con
ception of the evil inherent in the flesh of man. The
baptismal rite, which only contemplates this "sanctity
of body," is an end rather than a means of spiritual
purification. The language of the Evangelists appa
rently contradicts the statement of Josephus. "John,"
say they, " did baptize in the wilderness, and preach
the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins."1
Great controversy has prevailed as to the conferring of
grace and the remission of sins in the sacramental act
of submitting to John's baptism. Ancient and modern
expositors, Tertullian and Augustine, Lange and Meyer,
1 Mark i. 4 ; Luke iii. 3. Cf. Lange and Meyer, in loco, and the admirable
treatise of Matthies, De Baptistnate, pp. 48-60.

v.] Baptism. 289
sustained by a great consensus of opinion, see in this
statement a reference to the remission of sin, granted
not in the act of submitting to the baptism of John,
but in the ultimate fulness of life bestowed in the
baptism of Christ.1 The explanation of the difficulty
surely lies in the construction of the clause, peravola
et? acpeaiv d/jiapnoov. " Repentance unto the remission
of sin." The relation between " repentance " and
"forgiveness" is an idea pervading both the Old Testa
ment and the New. It is the burden of the prophets,
and the gist of Peter's forcible summons pn the day of
Pentecost. Repentance (including faith) is on man's
part the indispensable condition of the Divine forgive
ness. John proclaimed, with the voice of thunder, the
need of repentance as a condition of the remission of
sins, his baptism was the external symbol of the frame
of mind with which the penitent approached the great
forerunner. According to Josephus, he warned the
people that baptism was not the means of securing the
forgiveness of God. It secured other results, but not
that. According to Mark and Luke, he encouraged
confession of sin, but did not give either repentance
or remission. His was a baptism of repentance and
confession, ultimately leading to remission of sins.
It was not a baptism of remission. John could not
wash away sins. That cleansing from all unright
eousness for which he yearned, was to be effected by
another baptism administered by other hands, not a
baptism with water at all, but a baptism with fire and
1 Tertull. De Baptismo, c. x. -. "Nam quod przedicabat baptismum pceni-
tentias in remissionem delictorum in futuram remissionem enuntiatum est.
Siquidem pcenitentia antecedit, remissio subsequitur et hoc est viam prsepa-
rare ; qui autem prseparat non idem ipse perficit, sed alii perficiendum pro-
curat."
20

290 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
with the Holy Ghost. John knew that the call to re
pentance and to righteousness was not the same thing
as the power to turn from sin; that the " generation of
vipers " could not, by any baptismal rite, nor by any
thing short of Divine power, become the brood of doves.
He might move the passions and stir the fears of the
multitude, so that, as Josephus says, " they were
eagerly ready to take his counsel " and accept his
solemn warning. But John was not exalted to give
them repentance or remission of sin. He could not
put them right with God, nor cleanse the thoughts of
their hearts. He did not wield the supernatural force.
He did no miracle, phenomenal or sacramental ; he
could not create men anew. He was not the source
of a new life in our humanity. Among all the pro
phets, none ever saw with such intense vividness as he
the need of the Spirit-baptism. In commanding men
to repent he found his impotence, and yearned for the
great and notable day when the Spirit should be poured
out from on high. His baptism was a lively picture
and emblem of a nobler work than his. By urging
repentance and righteousness, and teaching men to
hope for remission of sins, he helped to create the
need which none but the Son of God could supply.
A question here arises of considerable interest. Did
the wafer-baptism of Christ and His apostles answer to
this great need of humanity ? Did this mighty travail
of the old covenant end in the mere establishment of a
lustration with, or in water, which was magical in its
force, and to which the transcendent energies of the
Spirit of God definitively attached themselves ? Did
John's preaching and baptism prepare the way for a
spiritual dispensation, or mainly for the continuity of a

v.] Baptism. 291
phenomenal and physical observance which should be
charged arbitrarily with spiritual associations ? Few
more momentous questions have ever troubled the
peace of Christendom.
The Fathers of the Church are almost unanimous in
maintaining the essential difference between the water-
baptism of John and of Christ. Unless this position
be maintained, it is impossible to hold rationally any
dogma of sacramental regeneration. The water-bap
tism of John was expressly and avowedly destitute of
spiritual grace ; it was simply a symbol of the gift of
the Holy Ghost. Unless there be a very vital distinc
tion between the water - baptism of John and that
of Christ, the same thing must be said of water-
baptism whenever and by whomsoever administered.
Such a distinction is asserted by the Fathers and school
men, and is formulated in the decrees of the council of
Trent, but it was left for the Tridentine Fathers to
make an article of faith of the inefficacy of John's
baptism.1 The exegesis of the earliest writers does not
exalt the sacrament of baptism to the lofty place in the
theurgy ofthe Church which it subsequently acquired.
Without entering here on the ecclesiastical doctrine
of baptism, and the difficulty which the defenders of
the so-called Catholic Church felt in dealing with the
re -baptism practised by Donatists, in consequence of
the re-baptism of John's disciples by St. Paul, it is
important to observe that the baptism of John is con
trasted with the baptism of Christ, not in the accom
paniments of the ordinance of purification, but in its
fundamental essence. John baptized with water unto
'Canon i, De Baptismo. "Si quis dixerit' Baptismum Johannis habuisse
eamdem vim cum baptismo Christi, anathema sit." Cf. Chemnitzius, Examen
Concilii Tridentini, Gen. 1641. pp. 230-233.
20 *

292 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
repentance, and preached the baptism of repentance
unto the remission of sins ; but the Lord was mightier
than he, in that He baptized with the Holy Ghost
and with fire. It is true that there is an allusion l
to the distress of John's disciples at the fact that He
to whom the forerunner had borne witness was bap
tizing, and that the whole nation was now transfer
ring its religious enthusiasm to Him. The Lord, it
seems, did not Himself baptize with water at all, He
relegated this duty to His disciples, and we are told
that they baptized more disciples than John, that the
Pharisees were impressed by the fact, and that when
the Lord knew that the Pharisees were taking notice of
it, He left Judaea for Galilee.2 What is very remark
able is that the fourth Evangelist never again mentions
the subject of baptism, either in the Gospel, in his
epistles, or in the Apocalypse. While, however, he is
silent on the water-baptism, he is very explicit and
abundant in his teaching concerning the gift of the
Comforter, and the powers of the Spirit as exerted on
the believer, on the apostles, and on the world.3 The
other Evangelists do not give a single instance of their
Master baptizing any person with water. There is no
proof that any one of the twelve apostles was ever
baptized by Him, or by a fellow - apostle. The Lord
spoke of a baptism4 with which He had to be baptized,
and told the two sons of Zebedee that they too should
pass through the same consecration to their highest
work,5 but He made no reference to a water-baptism.
Still, the final commission of the risen Jesus6 shows
that our Lord commanded His apostles, in virtue of
' John iii. 26. 2 Ibid. iv. 1. s Ibid. vii. 39 ; xiv. 26 ; xvi. 7-13.
4 Luke xii. 50. 5 Mark x. 38. 6 Matt, xxviii. 18, 19.

v.] Baptism. 293
His own authority in " heaven and earth," to " go and
make disciples of all nations (by the twofold process),
baptizing them into the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to observe all
things whatsoever I have commanded you ; and lo, I
am with you alway, even to the end of the world."
In the doubtful appendix to Mark's Gospel, the commis
sion stands thus : " Go ye into all the world, and preach
the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved, he that believeth not shall be
condemned." J
If these passages stood alone, they would be of little
avail to prove the perpetuity of an ordinance which
would seem to have originated with the forerunner,
merely for a temporary purpose.
Luke, in his account of these closing scenes, speaks
of the injunction to tarry at Jerusalem until the apostles
were endued with power from on high ; and the same
discourse is either referred to once more, or was itself
repeated and expanded in the opening verses of the
Acts: "John truly baptized with water, but ye shall
be baptized with the Holy Ghost, not many days
hence."2 This baptism Luke identifies with the mira
culous gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
How many shared this glorious baptism we cannot say,
but the probability is that all the disciples received
from the risen Lord the mighty and supernatural in
fluence which effected for their spirit that which water-
baptism only professed to accomplish for the body.
The baptism of John was apparently the same in
character with that which the apostles administered
during our Lord's earthly ministry. Both baptisms
1 Mark xvi. 15, 16. 2 Cf. Luke xxiv. 49 with Acts i. 5.

294 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
symbolized the cleansing of soul, the Divine refresh
ment, which the gift of the Holy Ghost would effect ;
not the origination of a new society merely, but the
creation of a new humanity: but "the Holy Ghost was
not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified."
At length the Lord was "lifted up," to "draw all men
unto him." He was " exalted to show mercy, to give
repentance and remission of sins." At length He shed
forth the Holy Spirit in such abundant measure on
those who were communing with His Spirit, and de
lighting in His ascension, and continuing in prayer
and supplication, that Peter declared, " This is that
which was spoken of by Joel the prophet."1 . . . Repent
and be baptized every one of you [iiri tc3 ovo/jian, not
ev tco ovofian, in the name, i. e., in the power of Jesus
Christ, but] unto the name, unto the full knowledge of
the name or character and person of Jesus Christ, with
a view to the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the
gift ofthe Holy Ghost. The three thousand who gladly
received the Word, i.e., the proclamation of the power
and kingdom of the Lord Jesus, were baptized, were
enrolled in the new society, and received the Divine con
secration. Their repentance, the change of feeling and
thought which was being wrought within them by the
Holy Ghost — called regeneration or birth from above
when viewed on the side of its Divine original — was
not therefore communicated by the baptism with water,
but by the very terms of the proposal was distinguished
from it.
The special and extraordinary gift of the Holy Ghost,
in the few instances in which it is expressly and point
edly described, was dissevered from the ordinance of
' Joel ii. 28.

v.] Baptism. 295
baptism with water. Thus though the apostles them
selves may have been baptized by the Lord, there is no
proof of it. It would appear that John's baptism with
water was regarded as quite sufficient in the case of
several. The baptism of the apostles and others with
fire and with the Holy Ghost on the day of Pentecost
was entirely disconnected from any water-baptism what
ever. Suddenly the Spirit came. They were assembled
together "in one place," or "with one intent 5"1 no hint
is given of their baptizing one another. John had done
that long since. The astounding spiritual elevation was
not an accompaniment even of the initiatory rite. Again,
when Philip went to Samaria, many believed and were
-baptized; but the joy, the enthusiasm, the supernatural
energies of the Holy Spirit, were reserved for a subse
quent occasion, when the apostles laid their hands on
them and invoked the Divine gift.2 In like manner
Peter's visit to Cornelius revealed once more the non-
dependence upon any baptismal rite of the supernatural
gifts of the Divine Spirit. The Gentiles were subse
quently admitted into the Christian society by the
ordinance of baptism, not in this instance even as a
type, but rather as a sign and seal of their having
already become possessed of the supernatural life and
power.3 This narrative corresponds very closely with
the terms of John's baptism as described by Josephus.
The baptism was not for the remission of sins, but for
the purity and sanctification of the body, the removal
of the birth stain, the ceremonial initiation into a
higher stage of society, the identification of the Gen
tiles and Israelites as one body in Christ Jesus.
The only grave difficulty in identifying the essential
1 Acts ii. 1. 2 Ibid. viii. 5-17. 3 Ibid. *. 44-48.

296 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
principle of John's water - baptism with the water-
baptism of the Christian Church, is the remarkable cir
cumstance mentioned in Acts xix. 3, of the re-baptism
at Ephesus of certain (about twelve) disciples who had
been previously baptized (ei? to Icouvvov ^dirrio-fia) unto
the baptism of John.
We feel that some of the methods used to override or
solve this obvious difficulty are unsatisfactory. Surely
there must have been some fundamental and appreci
able distinction either in the significance, the man
ner, the formula, or the accompaniments of the two
baptisms, for the Apostle Paul to have taken this course.
It is perfectly conceivable that the baptism of John in
this particular case represents not the preparatory and
typical rite by which John was inaugurating a nobler
era, and exciting the hope of a spiritual deliverance and
renewal, but the prolongation of the supposed mission
of John, after the withdrawment of the prophet himself
and the accomplishment of his mission. That the be
lievers in John's baptism should have been ignorant
of the baptism by the Holy Spirit, as an accomplished
fact, and of the moral change wrought in the tendencies
of the soul and of society by His outpouring, proves
that they must have lived in the isolated circle of
thought dominated by John, and that they had never
moved out of it. The continuance of baptism by John's
disciples, AS such, after the Holy Ghost had been given,
the performance of a rite which ignored the fact of the
Incarnation and of the Passion of Christ, which repre
sented no consciousness of the Holy Spirit's work, was
opposed to the baptism which Jesus had commanded
as significant of His own work. The water-baptism of
the prophet, up to the moment when the Holy Spirit

v.] Baptism. 297
was poured out from on high, was equivalent to the
water-baptism of Christ and of His disciples; but to
have practised it afterwards, without its accompani
ment of instruction, in ignorance of the form which
Christ gave to it, was the quintessence of the Jewish
spirit, which still clung to passover and pentecost, to
circumcision and temple, to priesthood and sacrifice,
after the ministration of condemnation had been done
away. — I shall return to this question in a subsequent
lecture. Our Lord accepted and adopted the Johannine
method of revealing the spiritual demands of the
kingdom of God and the personal need of renovation,
but He did not make it the means of communicating
that new life ; and though He adopted the water-bap
tism of John, yet it must not be forgotten that it was
in John's function as a Baptist that our Lord placed
him below the least of those who had entered the king
dom of God. It is neither to the priest nor to the
ascetic, to tife prophet nor to one more than a prophet,
nay, nor is it to the Baptist, as such, that entrance is
granted into the kingdom of God. The priestly func
tions, the ascetic habits, the prophetic order, the cere
monial and baptismal rites of Judaism, have all crept
into the Church of the firstborn, have been confounded
with the " notes of the true Church," and heralded as
marks of the elect community ; but they are not of its
essence ; they are neither indispensable to its progress
nor essential to its vitality. " I thank God," said Paul,
" I baptized none of you, save Crispus and Gaius, for
Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gos
pel-" The mission of John might be supposed to have
been rendered permanent in the immense importance

298 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
attributed to baptism, and the awful emphasis laid by
the sacerdotalist on the efficacy of that ordinance. It is
in its administration that the door into the kingdom of
heaven has been placed under the surveillance of the
hierarchy, that a way has been made by the perversity
of man for despiritualizing Christianity ; yet the close
observation of its origin shows how unimportant, how
unessential, how Jewish, and even ethnic, is the funda
mental conception of the rite as such. So far as it is
a typical, symbolic, prophetic ceremony, suggesting or
anticipating a higher kind of cleansing, and an associ
ation into an invisible and spiritual society, we rejoice
in it still ; but let us beware of cherishing any lower
ideal than baptism with the Spirit, any less august
administrator than the invisible but ever-present Lord.
It is not certain that John attached any special con
ditions to the administration of the rite. Still, we
must regard the leading doctrines of his earlier teach
ing, on which we have already commented, as the
positions tacitly accepted by the baptized. One point
stands forth with singular clearness. The people came
to the waters of baptism " confessing their sins ;" and
John's baptism was "the baptism of repentance unto
the remission of sins." But his baptism was not the
method by which " repentance " was generated, or by
which "remission of sins" was guaranteed. If he
could have accomplished these results, he would have
dispensed with the higher baptism of the Spirit.
Doubtless in his day, as in later times, the symbol was
often confounded with the reality, the sign with the
thing signified. But such a possible misconception of
his drift did not induce him to pause ; he encouraged
confession of sin in the waters of baptism. The ac-

v.] Baptism. 299
ceptance of the rite at his hands was a tacit recog
nition of the inefficacy of the entire dispensation to
meet all the requirements of the awakened nation, or to
soothe the perturbations and fears of despairing men.
" He spake to the people that they should believe on
him who was coming after him." r The great theme
of his preaching was "the mighty one," "the coming
one," the great King ; the dispensation of spiritual
force, change, life, and fire. He quickened the hope
of the nation. The prophetic fervour of the Hebrew
people, the eager anticipation which had so often blazed
up into patriotic and religious enthusiasm, was not to
be a perpetual illusion. John was not the Christ, but
was sent to bear witness to His near approach. The
baptism with water was an admission of the paramount
claims, the severe judgment, the great deliverance, the
final victories of One who was mightier than John.
To what extent the remission of sins was associated
with the work of "the coming one "did not appear in
the earlier ministry of John, nor indeed until he came
into contact with the Christ. Remission of sin was con-
ditionated by repentance and works meet for repentance.
Whatever produced repentance unto righteousness was,
ipso facto, the subjective occasion of remission. There
were, however, other questions to answer, over and
above the subjective relations between repentance and
remission. They were such as these : How can repent
ance itself be originated? What is the Divine and
objective ground of repentance ? What is involved
in the purposes and government of God by the taking
away of sin ? Repentance and remission of sins are
indissolubly connected in Hebrew and in Christian
¦ Acts xix. 4.

300 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
faith. In some way they represent the common-place
of all religious experience, but each term of this syn
thesis represents a plane of Divine operation as well
as a fact of human experience. " Repentance," though
an act of the human will, involves the spiritual Force
which recreates the depraved disposition, and renews
the image of God. " Remission of sins," though a
blessed human experience, rests on the redemptive
principles of Divine government, on the deep pur
poses of God, and on the whole principle by which,
from the foundation of the world, He has blended judg
ment with mercy.
The two great factors of this simple human experi
ence, " repent, and you shall be forgiven," are severally
dependent on nothing less than those two great opera
tions of the Godhead which we speak of as the work
of the Son and of the Spirit. John, before his closer
intimacy with Jesus, recognized each plane. of Divine
operation, i. e., he proclaimed the baptism with the
Holy Ghost and the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost,
whose judgments on sin would be terrible, discriminat
ing, and fiery. How the remission could be effected,
he did not yet dare, to utter ; on what terms, in what way
it would be accomplished, was as yet partially hidden
from him. He knew much more of judgment than of
mercy, of the avenger of sin than of the great pro
pitiation, of the spirit of burning than of the spirit of
grace. We owe a debt of obligation to him for the
light that subsequently dawned on him, and through
him upon the world.
Meanwhile the Baptism of John is necessary for
minds in a certain stage of development. It is impera
tive to proclaim law and commandment to those who

v.] Baptism. 301
have no self-control, who are victims of self-love,
inventing every species of excuse for personal indul
gence, and who, absorbed in self-complacent worldli
ness, sceptical and supercilious, frivolous and undevout,
adopt every practicable palliative for conscience. Such
must be brought into contact with the terrible aspects
of the moral law. Such souls must be convinced that
God is in earnest when He condemns and threatens
with His wrath all selfishness, unspirituality, and dis
trust of Himself. They need the terrors of a judg
ment always coming nearer to them, of a quenchless
fire for all chaff, a consuming flame for all the base
alloy of religious profession. They must be " called to
repent," as though the whole responsibility rested on
themselves ; and whether they see difficulties in the
way of repentance, or obstacles in the way of remis
sion of sin, or not; with or without further explanation,
" God does command all men everywhere to repent."
More than this, they may be confidently assured of
pardon on the ground of a repentance which proves
itself to be genuine by " works meet for repentance."
Nay, even more than this, they may, by sacramental,
external service, be comforted and strengthened. They
may thus feel the power of a public pledge. The Es-
sene's white robe was the mark of his initiation, the
soldier's sword is a token of his loyalty, the marriage
ring is the witness of conjugal faithfulness ; so the
baptismal water, as the symbol of discovered and
acknowledged sin, may still be the confession of
need, and may give expression to the hope of re
mission, and of the bestowment of some yet higher
grace. But it is only in a very secondary sense that
this is Christianity. It is Christian only in the sense

302 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
in which the belief in one God is Christian. It is not
specific to Christianity. It does not constitute its es
sence. It is the element of Judaism, perhaps still too
conspicuous in the Christian Church. It is the dis
pensation of John, not that of the true Light of the
World. It is the Johannine element of Christianity,
not one of the essential features of the teaching, life,
grace of the Son of God. Among them that are born
of women — prophets, poets, teachers — there hath not
risen a greater than John the Baptist ; nevertheless,
he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than
he. The whole sacramental theory places itself under
this category, together with the sacerdotal and ascetic
systems, which, as we have tried to show, received
such illustration and exposition in the mission and the
work of John.
What then is there in the sacramental system cur
rent in Christianity which, being rooted in truth and
in human nature, legitimately belongs to it ? One of
the first efforts of a regenerated man is to seek the
fellowship of those who have been " born from above."
The common sympathy of sensitiveness to the invisible
things of the kingdom of God creates the first nucleus
of a religious society. Faith is deepened by the sense
of brotherhood. Community of interest to a large ex
tent takes the place of logical proof. Whatsoever pro
motes the assurance of inward agreement in that
transcendental region of religious experience, where
scientific method cannot travel, acquires value from
the sway thus exercised over the whole man. Thus the
new spirit given to the individual and to the commu
nity will soon, by various aids and appliances, create the
body and fashion an appropriate organization for itself.

v.] Baptism. 303
It is, on the one hand, true that spirit can outlive body,
and being immortal, may take on itself new forms, and
look complacently on the ashes of its former self. It
is, on the other hand, lamentable that the tendency of
"body" to triumph over "spirit," and to claim a trea
sonable supremacy, leads many to say to their fellow-
men, " Unless you become part of this body to which
we belong, you cannot share the gift of the Creative
Spirit." Nevertheless, grievous as this perversion is,
it is none the less true that the healthy and legitimate
sustenance of the body, and the recognition of its place
in the economy of grace, are parts of Christianity.
There are those on the one hand who have pushed
the &oa!y-development of Christianity to an extreme,
who have perfected the system of its appeal to man by
every avenue open to his inner life. Thus the physical
and material element of his nature is by sacramental
means constituted the starting -place for spiritual
change. The continual manipulation of the physical
man by the hands of the " priest " is made essential to
his growth in grace. His physical functions are called
into play even to digest the substance of the body
and blood of the Lord Jesus. The hand and breath of
one ecclesiastic is made to convey to another the power
to perform invisible and undemonstrable prodigies.
The union of man and woman cannot rightly engender
the seed of the Church unless the priest sacramentally
blend the two by a transcendental method. Holy oil
consecrated by priestly hands is essential to convey and
certify to a dying man the grace that he needs in
his hour of extremity.
The system of the supremacy of the body is far more
comprehensive than this. It deals with the entire

304 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
form that human faith should take in the alembic of
the understanding. It will not allow a man to think
out for himself his dogmatic belief, but it even thinks
for him, reduces to propositional form the deepest mys
teries of grace, and demands unconditional and im
plicit assent. If the moral nature protest against the
process, it is gravely reduced to submission by a pon
derous system of casuistry, which determines all the
lines of good and evil to all eternity, and allows the
conscience and the intellect to be active only within
certain rigidly-defined grooves of change. The spon
taneity of emotion and the fulness of the heart are re
gulated by authority. Days, times, seasons, hours, are
enjoined for special emotions, which in a very wonder
ful way succeed in creating the semblance and often
the reality of deep religious experiences.
There is however another extreme which is scarcely
less energetic, and which moreover has upon its side
much of the protest of outraged individualism, and much
of the spirit of modern science. This not only refuses
to accept the idea of any Christian sacrament as neces
sary or desirable for the reception of Divine grace, but
withdraws into a proud and sometimes angry isolation ;
cares not and seeks not for sympathy. Hence it re
pudiates all dogma whatsoever, casts off every form in
which the ideas that rest on the supernatural can be
intelligibly stated or logically urged. The inspiration
of one man, according to this principle, can neither
evoke the inspiration of another, nor satisfy his intel
lectual cravings. The true mystic must be alone. He
cannot find a brother. The sacred day, or hour, is an
abomination to him. Every day is more than Sabbath
while he rests in God ; every place where for a while ¦

v.] Baptism. 305
his spirit dwells, is holier than the most hallowed
shrine. No priest can help him to pray, no saint can
comfort his lonely spirit when it is passing into the
silent land. He will tear up all creed and disdain all
auxiliaries to sympathetic emotion. His divine life is
a sporadic, self-engrossing, unbrotherly growth, how
ever fully it may satisfy his own spiritual nature.
The sacramentarian and the mystic are alike en
trenched within lines where argument is valueless,
and those who attempt to effect a compromise are
visited with condemnation from both sides. Such is the
fate of all who can see virtue in the conflicting forces of
society, or eclectically combine the excellences visible
in two opposing ranks. Christianity is eclectic, or
rather syncretic, in this, that it makes its appeal to
the whole of our nature, and not to one portion of it
to the neglect of the rest. If the senses were the only
inlet for truth, and if the physical element in man were
the seat of his religious activity, then ritual either gor
geous or revolting would become the most fundamental
element of the religious life. Into this the ctiltus of
many forms of faith has irremediably sunk, and strong
sacramentarianism scarcely rises above it.
When the sentimental and emotional element is ex
clusively recognized, apart from the voice of conscience,
the imperative sway of the moral nature, and the regu
lative force of the intellect, there is no possibility for
true brotherhood, and the pure mystic finds himself
always in personal solitude.
If the rational and logical faculty be made the one
touchstone of truth, then no deep, irrepressible emo
tion, no lofty intuition of things, per se, no sacred inter
nal verification of truth by the approval of conscience
21

306 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
can stand, and the result is conspicuous in the hair
splitting of logical casuistry and the dreary dogmatism
of many forms of speculative theology.
If the conscience, on the other hand, be treated as
the sole Divine informant,, then each man has to stand
alone in this strange world to fight his battle with the
spectres of fear and temptation, the princes of the
power of the air.
If, once more, the higher spiritual intuition of faith
be regarded as the. only test of reality and truth, then
the grace of God is limited to an ill -defined clique.
This tendency has become conspicuous in many a
Gnostic sect, in many a modern school of " sweetness
and light," in the assumptions of the Ultramontanist
and the delusive repose of the hyper-Calvinist.
Christianity makes its appeal to every one of these
elements of our nature,, and to all of them together.
It does not sacrifice conscience to honour the intellect,
nor does it crush the moral nature in the name of
dogma. It does not trample upon the understanding
in the power of authoritative revelation, nor undervalue
science in the glories of its manifested love. It enlists
the passions on the side of virtue, and enchains the
heart with its reasons for obedience.
Further, while the religion of Christ never sacrifices
either the intellectual, the moral, or the spiritual ele
ments of humanity to the physical, never immolates the
Church at the shrine of the priesthood, never crushes the
individual conscience under the feet of the multitude,
it is futile to deny that it does make an appeal through
the senses to the intellect and the heart of man.
The body of man is the instrument by which his
spirit receives its education. It is the shrine of the

v.] Baptism. 307
spirit. Words, even the words of God, are but sensuous
methods, physical means of conveying thoughts from
mind to mind. Christianity moreover offers to redeem
and consecrate the body, so that it may become the
handmaid of the soul, the sanctified medium through
which Divine ideas and holy images may pass into the
spirit : it promises the resurrection of the body from the
grave, and thus gives to the universe a pledge of its
value. The incarnation of God, the signs of the descent
of the Spirit, and the purification of the flesh by Divine
grace, show how in God's sight the body itself is a
sacred thing. A philosophy which has in the intensity
of its spiritualism underrated the importance of the
body, has generally run into dangerous and licentious
excess. Now what words are to thoughts, that also symbolic
actions often are to feelings, and to certain forms of
truth. Gestures, symbolism, and emblematic deeds
often convey more truth, recall more history, awaken
more emotion, and even more rapidly diffuse great
ideas and purposes, than any mere form of words
however admirably chosen. The wedding ring, the
crown of a monarch, the flag of an army or a nation,
the key of a city, the fiery cross, the clasp of the
fingers, the lengthened kiss, the thousand courtesies
and transactions of the market, the law court, and the
home, convey ideas, communicate emotions, ratify
covenants in a way for which mere words are practi
cally impotent. Hence we conclude that Christianity
will not dispense with or repudiate this element of
our nature. There is therefore room in our faith for
some sacramental and symbolic element.
We need not be surprised at the presence — even in
21 *

308 The Transitional Work of John., [lect.
the spiritual religion of Christ — of a certain symbolic
apparatus for suggesting spiritual thought, quickening
religious experience, uttering inexpressible emotion,
pledging wavering faith, and prophesying spiritual
things. To this extent the Johannine revelation has
been perpetuated. John seized hold of one ofthe simplest
of all symbols, one sanctified in older faiths, and he
taught Israel thus to confess their sin, their need, their
faith, their fear and hope. Jesus, who sent forth the
apostles, not to baptize but to preach the gospel,
nevertheless bade them to make disciples of all nations
—baptizing into the Eternal Name of Father, Son, and
Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things what
soever He commanded.
The baptismal ministry of John had a far more
definite purpose than the awakening of the conscience
of his hearers, the confirmation of a common fear of
judgment, the creation of a vague hope of deliverance.
He was a prophet and more than a prophet, and his
own explicit declaration was, that he had come bap
tizing with water, with the express intention of dis
covering and introducing Messiah to the people. The
grand peculiarity of his "baptism" was, that he
assigned a personal centre to the development of the
great crisis in the history of Israel.
It was not a vague something that was going to
happen, as if by the simple unfolding of the ordinary
laws of human affairs. It was not the fall of Rabbinism
by the rush of some blinding storm of new belief, it was
not the destruction of the visible theocracy by some
more terrible display of Roman supremacy which might
take away both place and nation. It was not the poli
tical outlook or crisis on which John commented, but

v.] Baptism. 309
he prophesied of One mightier than himself, who would
baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and
fire. It was not a great captain of armies that he
heralded, but a Giver of supernatural power and grace,
who would have the faculty of discerning and dividing
the people into chaff and grain, into dross and gold.
Prophets they might have heard of; priests and kings,
sages and saints, zealots and reformers they were
acquainted with ; but now there was One coming,
One whose foot was already on their threshold, who
would be and do infinitely more than all these. John's
words without any twisting meant as much as this.
" He may be a man to look at and speak to, but in
preparing His way among you, I am sure that I am
preparing the way of the Lord ! "
To what extent he did prepare the people for the
Messiah whom he pourtrayed in terms like these, may
be learned from the fact * that some of the most dis
tinguished among our Lord's disciples had previously
been in the school of John, and disclose in their subse
quent career the influence of the whole class of thought
to which he subjected them.2
But the effect was conspicuous at once, in the pro
bable transference of the nucleus of his following to the
influence and teaching of Jesus. The extent of his
preparatory work may be partially judged from the
extraordinary effect at once produced in Jerusalem by
the presence of the Lord, by His sudden appearance in
the twofold aspect, as One who smiled on the innocent
joys of life, who manifested His glory at the wedding
1 See Lutterbeck, Die Neutestamentlichen Lehrbegriffe. Erster Band. Die
Essenische Begriff, DU Spuren, in N. T.
2 To what extent John, James, and Apollos reflect the special preparation of
J ohn the Baptist, will come more appropriately into view in a subsequent lecture.

310 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
feast, and also at the same time vindicated the sanctity
of the temple worship which He was about to consum
mate and to close. It is difficult to say to how great
an extent the way of the Lord was prepared. Yet it
is probable that an abrupt termination of our Lord's
career was averted by the excitement which the
Baptist's words produced among the people, and by
the popular expectation of the coming and near ap
proach of their Messiah.
This preparation of the people for their King was
sufficiently diffused to leave a lasting impression upon
them ; but it was not effected in the manner described
by the synoptic Evangelists without exciting the jea
lousy and wrath of the hierarchy, and the grave and
anxious suspicions of the secular powers. Our Lord
spoke openly of the antipathy of the government to
John and his baptism.1 " They knew him not, but
have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise
also shall the Son of man suffer of them." These
solemn words were confirmed by the implication that
the chief priests and elders regarded "the baptism of
John " as " of men," and not of Divine appointment,
and by the fact that the " lawyers " rejected John and
did not submit to his baptism or his message. These
words of the Lord, coupled with the wide-spread belief
in John's prophetic character cherished by Galileans,
Jews, and Samaritans, show that, apart from the sub
sequent animosity of Herod and of his unlawful wife,
John had to encounter serious persecutions. No public
character of lofty aims and stern enthusiasm could
stand between these conflicting waves of excited feel
ing without being buffeted by their angry shock.
1 Matt. xvii. 12, 13.

v.] Baptism. 311
This antagonism and malice on the part of the autho
rities provide the explanation of the puzzling difference
of statement as to the scene of John's baptismal work.
The writer of the fourth Gospel has been accused of
inaccuracy, of inventing after the lapse of years state
ments in harmony with preconceived notions of the
relation of John to Jesus ; of subverting and inverting
the order of events, of ignorance as to the meaning of
the terms " this side " and " the other side of Jordan,"1
and of other offences against common sense and historic
truth. In my opinion, the differences between the
Synoptists and the fourth Gospel on this matter are full
of instruction of another kind. The former represent
John as in " the wilderness of Judaea," and on the
banks of Jordan, there baptizing the multitudes who
flocked to him from " Jerusalem and all Judaea, and all
the neighbourhood of Jordan," and our Lord addresses
the Galileans as having gone out into the wilderness to
see the prophet ; but the Synoptists close their account
of the baptism with the administration of the rite to
Jesus Himself. Luke however connects the baptism
of John with Herod Antipas, and consequently implies
that John had passed out of Judaea into some portion
of Herod's dominions. Now it is after the baptism of
Jesus that the author of the fourth Gospel commences
his references to John, and his reminiscences of his
testimony. It was not as the Elijah, not as the
prophet of the wilderness, but as the herald and fore
runner of Jesus, that the son of Zebedee remembered
him, and he makes it evident that John was at the
beginning of these testimonies " beyond Jordan," in
1 Keim, Geschichte Jesus von Nazara, i. pp. 494, 523, ff.

312 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
Bethany of Peraea,1 a place subsequently made remark
able by its being the retreat of Jesus before His last
approach to Jerusalem,2 and it is implied that it was
from two to four days' march from the Bethany at the
foot of the Mount of Olives.3 It was this Bethany
beyond Jordan to which, after the baptism of Jesus, the
Pharisees came with their series of interrogatories.
Consequently John must have left the fords of Jordan
and secluded himself (as our Lord subsequently did) in
this remote region from the angry and excited tumult
of his followers and foes. The latter pursued him over
the Jordan, and received there the memorable declara
tion which quickened their animosity and deepened their
resolve to arrest his work. Even this was not the last
movement of John. The Sanhedrim could trouble him
in Peraea, he would be safer as he thought from their
further interference in Samaria, and so we find4 him six
months later in the territories of Herod, still baptizing,
and "not yet cast into prison." The reticences of Scrip
ture are among its marvels. The reasons for these
apparent discrepancies are often hidden from us, but in
this instance they unroll a page of John's history
which is full of significance. Like Elijah and all the
goodly fellowship of the prophets, he bowed his head to
the yoke, he did not fight the Sanhedrim or the secular
power ; he moved calmly on, still uttering his cry, "The
kingdom of heaven is at hand." " Repent ye, and
believe the gospel." A great change passed over John
when it became his solemn and awful function to dis
cover and proclaim not only the approach of the king
dom, but the visible advent' of its King.
1 For the discussion of this name, see Lecture vi. 2 Cf. John i. 28 ; x. 40.
3 John xi. 11, 17. 4 Ibid. iii. 23, 24. See discussion of the site, Lecture vi.

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 313
§ 2. The Baptism of Jesus.
The representations of Keim and Renan, that Jesus
was attracted by the prophet of the wilderness, im
pressed by his originality, and overawed by his sum
mons, and that He thus obtained His first lessons in
the art of prophesying, took up John's message as his
disciple, and pursued his method, seems to me strangely
out of harmony with the whole representation of the
four Gospels.
The statements of the Evangelists are not free from
difficulties. In the fourth Gospel, John is represented
as laying repeated emphasis on the fact, that until he
received the sign of Jesus being the Baptizer with the
Holy Ghost, he knew Him not; whereas according to
Matthew's Gospel it is indubitable that he possessed
sufficient knowledge of Jesus to say, " I have need to be
baptized of thee." z The gravest perplexity has been al
lowed to gather round this apparent discrepancy.2 Meyer
1 Comp. Matt. iii. 14 with John i. 31, 33.
2 Ammonius Presbyter in the Catena J'atrum implies that though John was
avyyevrjg to Jesus, yet his long residence in the desert had prevented his knowing
Him. Chrysostom (Horn. xvi. in Joannem, and with him Euthymius and Theo
phylact agree) urged that though John, when he leaped in his mother's womb,
knew Jesus to be the Christ, yet that he had not been familiar with His face
and person. The instant that He made His appearance he learned, by Divine
afflatus, that it was He whom he knew to have been born, and of whom he had
prophesied ; but the further testimony of the special sign was bestowed that the
people might see that his testimony was confirmed from heaven, and was not
due to personal relationship or familiarity. See Maldonatus on Matt. iii. 14.
Epiphanius adv. Hareses xxx. Ebionai Hosr. ed. cit. torn. i. 198, quotes a
long passage from the Gospel of the Ebionites, which has been by some critics
supposed to be an addition to the Gospel of Matthew. Justin Martyr possibly
refers to it, Dial. c. Tryp. c. 88 ; Liicke, Usteri, Keim, and Bleek are disposed
to accept it in some part as a genuine tradition. It represents the conversation
which is given in Matthew as following, not preceding, the baptism. The
passage is given in Epiphanius as a proof of the inaccuracies and perversions
with which the document is filled, and it is quoted to prove this point by Jones,
The Canon of N. T. i. 273. I translate the whole passage, which commences
with a broad misstatement. " It came to pass in the days of Herod, the king

314 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
silently rejects Neander's suggestion, but it seems to me
to meet the case as against various objectors. " In con
tradistinction to that which John now saw in the Divine
light, all his previous knowledge appeared a non-know
ledge." It does not require any great penetration to see
that in the one case there is a simple narrative of a scene
which Matthew or Andrew might have witnessed. The
two great prophets meet ; the one has come from His
quiet home at Nazareth, and the other is in the full
tide of his popularity. He knows of Jesus. This is the
groundwork of the entire representation. There is
One mightier than John, whose shoe-latchet he is not
worthy to loose, and who is ready to commence His
ministry. Whether the prophets knew each other per
sonally or not, cannot affect the statement that John
by Divine revelation, or by rapid intuition, should
have gathered enough of the true character of Jesus to
have made him hesitate to baptize the Saviour. He
may have known and seen enough to induce him to
cry, " I have need to be baptized of thee." Still, all
of Judasa, that John came baptizing with the baptism of repentance in the river
Jordan : he was reported to be of the race of Aaron the priest, a son of Zacha
rias and Elizabeth, and all men went out to him. And it came to pass, after
he had said many things, that when the people had been baptized Jesus came
and was baptized by John, and as He came up from the water, the heavens
opened, and He saw the Holy Spirit of God in the form of a dove descending
and entering into Him. And a voice came from heaven saying, 'Thou art
my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased, ' and again, ' This day have I be
gotten Thee ; ' and immediately a great light' illumined the place, which when he
saw, John said to Him, ' Who art thou, Lord ? ' and again the voice from
heaven said to him (John), ' This is my beloved Son, in whom I have been well
pleased.' Then John, falling at His feet, said, ' I pray thee, Lord, do thou
baptize me, ' but He forbade him, saying, ' Suffer it, because thus it is fitting
that all things should have been fulfilled. ' " This representation, whether legen
dary or true, involves no contradiction of the utterance of John, as recorded
in the fourth Gospel, ' ' I knew him not. " Strauss and De Wette insist on the
contradiction between the two narratives, and declare that John's language
given in Matthew is an unequivocal admission of the Messianic claims of Jesus.
The sneer of the Wolfenbuttel fragmentist is too gross to be worthy of record.

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 315
this was as nothing to the blaze of light which burst
upon his mind when he received the full assurance
that Jesus was the Son of God. The " I knew him not "
was a subsequent reflection of the Baptist, when the
sublime humility, the dovelike sweetness, and the spi
ritual might of Jesus were revealed to him. A blind
man who had received his sight during the hours of dark
ness might imagine, when the morning star first glinted
through the lattice in the eye of dawn, that he knew
the glorious meaning of light ; but when the sun arose,
bringing the day, he might with justice say, " I knew
it not." There are degrees of vision, of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of Christ, sufficient to ex
plain the first hesitation of John, and the burst of
wonder when the heavens opened over him. The
Apostle Paul, at the close of his career, wrote : " I
count all things but loss . . . that I may know Him ;"
and when the disciple who beheld His transfiguration
and witnessed His agony, and had cried on the misty
shores of Gennesareth, " It is the Lord," saw Him as
He is, he " fell at his feet as dead." This is the dis
ciple who reports the utterance of John the Baptist.1
1 While this work is passing through the press, I have seen Dr. Farrar's most
interesting and instructive work on the Life of Christ, and venture to extract
the following confirmation of the view expressed in the text. ' ' When Jesus
first came to the banks of the Jordan, the great forerunner, according to his
own emphatic and twice-repeated testimony, ' knew him not.' And yet, though
Jesus was not yet revealed as the Messiah to His great herald-prophet, there
was something in His look, something in the sinless beauty of His ways, some
thing in the solemn majesty of His aspect, which at once overawed and cap
tivated the soul of John. To others he was the uncompromising prophet ;
kings he could confront with rebuke ; Pharisees he could unmask with indig
nation ; but before this Presence all his lofty bearing falls. As when some
unknown dread checks the flight of the eagle, and makes him settle with
hushed scream and drooping plumage on the ground, so before ' the royalty
of inward happiness, ' before the purity of sinless life, the wild prophet of the
desert becomes like a submissive and timid child. The battle brunt which
legionaries could not daunt, the lofty manhood before which hierarchies trem-

316 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
The motive of our Lord in seeking baptism from
John, has from the earliest times been variously con
ceived by Christian writers. Thus Jerome1 tells us
that "in the Gospel which the Nazarenes use, there is
the following narrative : — ' The mother of the Lord and
his brethren said to him, John the Baptist baptizes
unto the remission of sins : let us go and be baptized
by him. But he said to them, In what have I sinned,
that I should go and be baptized by him ? unless, by
chance, this very thing which I have said is igno
rance.' " Thus from early times a difficulty was felt
in finding that the sinless One, the spotless Son of
God, the miraculously conceived and sacred Type of
humanity, should submit to a baptism which was prac
tically a confession of sin.
Jerome, for himself, considered the baptism of Christ
to have been the final cause of the baptism by John,
as providing the ready means by which the forerunner
would introduce the Christ to the multitude; that
thus, moreover, authority would be given to the min
istry of John, and that (as Augustine said) men would
not henceforth hesitate to go to baptism of the Lord
Himself, since He had not hesitated to submit to the
baptism of His servant.2
The Roman Catholic commentators have generally
recognized in the baptism of Christ by John a part of
bled and princes grew pale, resigns itself, submits, adores before a moral force,
which is weak in every external attribute, and armed only in invisible mail.
John bowed to the simple, stainless manhood, before he had been inspired to
recognize the Divine commission. He earnestly tried to forbid the purpose of
Jesus. He who had received the confessions of all others now reverently and
humbly makes his own." — Vol. i. p. 117.
' Adv. Pelagian. Lib. iii.
2 Maldonatus, in loco. See Appendix, for the manner in which Hippolytus
refers to the event.

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 317
His work of supererogation, which prepared the way
for the might, majesty, and supernatural powers of the
rite of Christian baptism. Even Calvin I said : " The
general cause why Christ was baptized was that He
might perform obedience unto His Father; and the
special cause was, that He might, in His own body,
consecrate baptism, that it might be common to us
with Him." Zwingli took the same view.2 Strauss 3
says truly that the difficulty of our Lord submitting
to the baptism of repentance was felt in the , early
Church; and he not only quotes the apocryphal pas
sage from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, so vari
ously described by Jerome, but he makes use also of
a fragment preserved in an anonymous writer of a
Tractatus de non iterando baptismo, generally found in
Cyprian's works, to the effect that it was stated in
an apocryphal book called the "Preaching of Paul"
that Christ made a confession of His own sins at His
baptism.4 However, the writer of the tract introduces
the passage in utter disgust at the document, not be
cause he was feeling the pressure of difficulty on this
score, but because some heretics had argued from the
1 Harmony of Gospels, in loco.
2 Referring to the great word of John, he says : " Nescius mysterii quod Chris
tus hie indicat hoc dicit nempe nostrum baptisma ex baptismate Christi sancti-
ficari. Baptismus ergo (he adds) Christi quern per apostolos dedit et baptismus
Joannis idem sunt." The righteousness that he was anxious to fulfil in Zwingli s
view was the ordinance of God, by which ' ' qui Tne recipiunt et in me baptizantu r,
agnoscant me fratrem et consortem quum idem symbolum cum illis gestem.
Zwinglii, Opera, vol. vi. p. 243. Cf. Grotius, Comm. ad Matt. iii. 15. Neque
efficacius ostendi potuit quantus honor institutis a Deo ritibus deberetur, quam
si Christus Ipse usum eorum nobis exemplo suo commendaret. Osiander to the
same effect ; Witsius, 1. c. §§Ixiii.-Ixv.
3 Life of Jesus. E. T. i. 353.
4 " In quo.libro contra omnes scripturas et de peccato proprio confitentem
invenies Christum, qui solus omnino nihil deliquit et ad accipiendum Joannis
baptisma paene invitum & matre sua Maria esse compulsum." — See Ante-Nic.
Lib. Cyprian's Works, vol. ii. 426.

318 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
reference, in the same passage, to fire which appeared
in Jordan at our Lord's baptism, that a perfect baptism
was one which demanded fire as well as water for its
consummation. Strauss discovers in the scene, as recorded by
Matthew, either a hint of the non - compliance of
Jesus with the conditions of baptism as laid down by
John, or an admission that our Lord had not thought
of His own Messiahship before His baptism, and had
not, by any consciousness of personal sinlessness, con
ceived of His case as free from the necessities of
repentance. He says that the only light which mo
dern theologians have thrown upon the problem con
sists "in the distinction drawn between what a man is
as an individual, and what he is as a member of the
community. He needed, say they, no repentance on
His own behalf, but aware of its necessity for all other
men, the children of Abraham not excepted, He wished
to demonstrate His approval of an institute which con
firmed this truth, and hence He submitted to it."1
Strauss gives no authority for this view of modern
theologians ; but we are not surprised that he should
endeavour, on this showing, to convince of dissimu
lation the Christ of Matthew. Strauss bids us take
" a nearer view of the facts," and his method of doing
so is to find irrationality or inconsistency in the con
versation between John and Jesus, and to reject the
historical validity of the narrative. We are disposed
to urge, on the other hand, that the very method in
which John addressed our Lord implies that he saw the
chasm between Him and all other candidates for bap
tism, in the matter of repentance ; and it may have
¦ L. <.. E. T. vol. i. 354.

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 319
been further conditionated by his knowledge of the
sanctity and mystery of His birth. We urge more
over, that in our Lord's reply there is a deeper reason
expressed for His own baptism than John had, up to
this moment, conceived, and it is one which vindicates
for him a thoroughly unique consciousness. Ullmann *
deduces, from the reticence of Jesus on this occasion,
and the reason He gives to quiet the scruple of John, a
testimony to His sinlessness from His own lips. It is
sufficient to show that this language of our Lord is
perfectly consistent with the idea of His nature which
is the presupposition of the four Gospels, and that the
interview between these two, as well as the transaction
that followed, gave its highest meaning to the baptism
of John, and virtually consummated it. (a) One con
dition implied in the baptism of John was faith in
the coming of Messiah. The consciousness (or sup
posed self-consciousness) of Messiahship by our Lord
was regarded by Strauss as incompatible with the
reception of an ordinance which implied faith in the
ipyofievo';. To my mind, it is precisely the reverse.
The multitudes were baptized by John, affirming there
by their belief "in one who should come after him."
Such faith, in every instance, was faith on the testi
mony of John, in his prophetic word, in the conclusion
that he drew from the burden of Old Testament pro
phecy. In every instance it must have been imperfect
in form, confused in outline, and encumbered by mis
conception. The only individual who came to the
baptism clearly informed, with a faith of years, with an
entire and unwavering conviction, was the Lord Jesus
Himself. What could express the " righteousness," both
1 Sinlessness of Jesus. Eng. Trans, p. 70.

320 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
towards God and man, of such a confession, more for
cibly than the willingness of the Messiah to submit to
the rite ? He was the Christ, and because He was
Christ and He knew it, — because He held with the
most triumphant confidence the hope of His country
and of the world — He said : " Baptize me too ; let me,
as son of Abraham — in the way in which the righteous
ness of God has ordained it — thus proclaim my invin
cible faith in the reality of that which you are calling
upon all Israel to believe." The highest faith is a
perfect knowledge. As He said shortly afterwards to
Nicodemus, " We speak that we know, and testify that
which we have seen."
{b) Another condition of John's baptism was "faith
in the presence, or the nearness of the kingdom of
God." It required a lively exercise of faith to believe
in the kingdom of God at that moment of political
depression and disappointed hope. The imagination
of the people was quickened by the dark background
of judgment on which John painted the form and work
of the great King. The first appearance of Him
who might, to John's rapt vision, bear the royal sig
nature of heaven upon Him, would awaken the scruple,
"I have need to be baptized of thee. I believe thou
art the King. Baptize me into this faith, Oh, pos
sible Messiah." But without waiving a claim, or de
nying the imputation, Jesus said : " Suffer it to be so
now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness."
"Thus will the great conviction that God has sent
you be most entirely justified. It is fitting that I, who
am the King, should thus say to Israel that I have
come." The whole kingdom of God was in a true
sense contained in Him. He was the kingdom. All

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 321
its splendours, terrors, judgments and mercies were
concentrated in Him. Ail the vengeance on those who
are worthless and treacherous subjects ; all the laws
and all the grace of the kingdom, were waiting for
Israel in Him. It is true He needed no pie-rdvoia,
no thorough change of thought and mind on the na
ture of the kingdom. It occasioned no moral shock
for Him to believe in the gospel of the kingdom. It
was the richest conviction of His understanding, grow
ing with His growth, expanding and deepening in the
maturity of His manhood. If so, there was exceeding
propriety (einrpeireui) in His thus filling full the outline
of the righteousness involved in this faith. A great
multitude had crossed, in the waters of baptism, a
Rubicon which divided the region of dim expectation
from that of a vivid faith. They now believed that
their King was coming to claim His throne and sway
His sceptre. In the baptism of Jesus by John, the
King Himself removed all doubt from the minds of the
open-eyed, and brought in the everlasting righteousness
by giving expression, in the appointed way, to the
deepest conviction of His human consciousness.1
(c) The chief difficulty lies in the confession of sin,
which it is presumed was involved in submitting to
the baptism of John. It would be presumptuous to say
that the remarks already made remove the difficulty ;
but it may be asked whether it was necessary for all the
1 Dr. Farrar says : " He received the rite as ratifying the mission of the great
forerunner, and He also received it as the beautiful symbol of moral purifica
tion, and the humble inauguration of a ministry which came not to destroy
the law but to fulfil. His own words obviate all possibility of misconception.
He does not say, 'I must,' but 'Thus it becometh us.' He does not say,
' / have need to be baptized, ' nor does He say, ' Thou hast no need to be bap
tized of me ; ' but He says, ' Suffer it to be so now. ' This is indeed but the
baptism of repentance, yet it may serve to prefigure the ' laver of regenera
tion.'"— L. c. vol. i. pp. 116, 117.
22

322 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
conditions of baptism to be demanded in every instance,
whether the righteousness was not fulfilled in His most
perfect embodiment of the faith which it had been John's
aim to excite in Israel ? But let the following points
be taken into consideration : — (i) The purification, the
circumcision, the Passover feasts, the synagogue wor
ship, were all of them confessions of impurity, of need,
or of sin, for the people at large. Our Lord is repre
sented as a " Son of the law," as being attentive
to the demands of the law, as paying temple tribute,
though conscious of His freedom from the impost.
The baptism of John was one of the Divine appoint
ments for the devout Jews ; it was part of the pre
paratory plan — was an element of the righteousness
of the law, to which He was superior by nature,
but to which He had submitted for man's sake, with
out consciousness of personal defilement or need. He
who maintained that He was a temple, nay, the true
temple of God, and that service done to Him was
equivalent to a temple service, yet on two distinct
occasions dignified, honoured, and cleansed the na
tional temple, and vindicated the minute rules which
were believed to express and preserve its sanctity.1
This baptismal door by which the "first citizen" ofthe
kingdom was admitted into the full confession of its
glories, involved for Him no more consciousness of
personal defilement than did the temple worship or the
Passover meal. Thus it was {irpcirov) fitting that He
1 " Uti Christus circumcisus fuit, quamvis labis omnis quae prseputium cordis
vocatur, expers, ut cerimonia defungeretur quae Deum auctorem habuit, quse-
que omnes eos institutionis suae majestate obstrinxit qui ceconomia legali
censebantur ; sic et baptizari ipsum a Johanne oportuit, quamvis nullius
ablutionis indigus, ne quidquam eorum omitteret quns in dispensatione quae
Evangelium proxime antecessit, Deum auctorem habuere." — Witsius, 1. t.
§lxv.

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 323
should fulfil all righteousness.1 Still, those who have
so strenuously opposed either the sinlessness of Jesus,
or the authenticity of our narrative, urge the special
significance of the confession of sin involved in this
personal act, and say that " either the one or the other
of these positions must be relinquished." Let us then
consider the difficulty more closely, and observe: —
(2) It was the faith of St. Matthew that when Jesus
healed all that were sick, He was fulfilling the antici
pation of Esaias the prophet, who said, " Himself took
our infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." 2 Matthew
also records3 the sublime words that " the Son of man
came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to
give his life a ransom for many." Paul tells us that
"he who knew no sin was made sin for us;"4 and
Peter, that " he bare our sins in his own body." 5
Therefore, though the New Testament writers are
never weary of expounding Christ's perfection, His
innocence, His Divine excellences, yet they admit,
nay, they urge, that He stood in close and intimate
relations with our humanity, that He was " made
of a woman, made under the law," 6 that He " was
made a curse for us." 7 The hypothesis of the Incar
nation of God involves the supposition that a Divine-
humanity came into living, agonizing, personal, real
conflict with sin — that His person was " tempted in
all points like as we are." If this were the case, His
submission to this ordinance of " confession " was a
part of that unutterable humiliation by which He
brought in and fulfilled the eternal righteousness. He
1 De Pressense' says : " In the Mosaic institution defilement was not confined
to the defiled person, contact with such a one rendered purification necessary.
Here we have not only contact with a fallen race, but most absolute union with
it."— Life of Christ, E. T. p. 252. 2 Matt. viii. 17. 3 Ibid xx. 28.
4 2 Cor. v. 21. 5 1 Pet. ii. 24. 6 Gal. iv. 4. t Ibid iii. 13.
22*

324 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
who bore our sins on Calvary, confessed their guilt and
shame in the Jordan. Just as the gleaming forth of
supernal majesty through the cloud of calumny and
curse, forced from the Roman centurion the cry,
"Truly this was the Son of God,"1 so the depth of
condescension involved in this identification of the
King with His subjects, led the Baptist to "see and
bear record that this was the Son of God," and " the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world."2
Confession of sin could not, need not mean in His
case the remembrance and disclosure of a corrupt na
ture, or the acknowledgment of base motives and un
worthy deeds. He who was on the point of submitting
to a fierce temptation to sin, who was, by His assump
tion of humanity, made to feel in His human nature
the apparent advantage to the cause He had at heart,
of resistance to the will of God, presented the practical
solution of a problem which it is impossible, with all
our striving, to reduce to logical form. "He was
in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."
" He suffered, being tempted."3
" Ch, holy God, yet frail weak man,
'Tis not for us to know
How spotless soul and body felt
Temptation, pain, and woe."
Yet the problem is always provoking our effort, and
exciting our curiosity. There is involved in its very
terms the old puzzle which springs from the ratio
between the absolute and the relative, the infinite and
the finite. The hope of our logical understanding is
that we may express the ratio in finite and in known
quantities, and it is one which is perpetually doomed
1 Mark xv. 39. 2 John i. 29. 3 Heb. iii. 18 ; iv. 13.

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 325
to disappointment. If we let go the perfect humanity
of Jesus; or if we relinquish the Deity of the Son of
God ; if we imagine two beings commingled, instead of
one Being possessed of this double consciousness ; if we
try any metaphysical exposition of the mystery such
as was invented by Arian, or Nestorian, or Monophysite,
we shall lose one or other of the great factors involved
in effecting our redemption. We prefer to fall back upon
the earliest faith about Christ our Lord, one which
has to the present hour triumphed over the variously
attempted metaphysical solutions of an insoluble pro
blem; and we hold to His true humanity, His perfect
Deity, and His one personality, believing that while
the reconciliation of the inevitable contradiction of
such a synthesis is logically impossible, it is appre
hended continually in the depths of spiritual experi
ence. Modern critics — such as "the clergyman of the
Church of England " who submitted Canon Liddon's
" Lectures on the Divinity of our Lord " to such keen
dissection — endeavour to convict the Catholic doctrine
of inconsequence, and appear to exult over the difficulty
to which its advocates may be reduced by compelling
them to find the whole of their theory in every action or
word of the Master. Such critics seem to forget that
the so-called dogma of the Person of Christ is only a
compendious method of stating all the facts. These
facts are of two different kinds, and the hypothesis of
Catholic verity does not attempt to solve the problem or
explain the mystery : it broadly states it. The spiritual
nature of man has found ineffable satisfaction in the
statement of the elements of its faith. It may be pro
nounced transcendental, or extra-scientific, or beyond
the limits of verification, or inconstruable to exact

326 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
thought ; but it would be well to remember that
the fundamental logical difficulties of the synthesis
are not a shade greater than they were, and were seen
to be in the homes of Euclid and Aristotle eighteen
hundred years ago, and that the history of all re
ligious thought is one long yearning after a realiza
tion of a perfect union between God and man, such
as we find presented to our faith in the Person of the
Lord Jesus Christ;
To return to the specific point which now presents
itself— the " confession of sin " on the part of the sin
less, impeccable Son of man. Could this be a real
transaction ? Must it not, by the very nature of the
case, be a contradiction in terms ? Is it construable
to thought ? I reply — that it is as thinkable as the
temptation, or the acknowledgment of ignorance and
of limited power, or the subordination of thought and
will to the Father; that it is more comprehensible than
the agony in the garden or the cry of despair from the
cross. Different considerations may be brought forward
in each case to reduce or modify the difficulty, but they
do not remove it. The Lord took our humanity upon
Him. The Son of God felt through human flesh and
creature-limitation and temptations to sin, all the curse,
the darkness, the perplexities, the humiliation of our
fallen race. He was not and could not be conscious
of personal corruption or defilement, but He must have
felt in a degree in which no other person ever did
or could have done, the burden, the curse, the peril,
and the shame of sin ; not of His own sins, but of the
sins of the world, the sins of the theocratic kingdom,
the sins of those whom the Father had given Him,
and of the nature which in infinite condescension He

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 327
had assumed. The Lord had laid upon Him, even
upon His beloved Son, the iniquities of us all. If the
heir to a great empire, out of the love he bore to his
future subjects, were to sell himself into slavery, that
he might understand the horrors of the mine, the star
vation of the poor, the degradation and hideous re-
pulsiveness of the dregs of society; if he should herd
with the vilest, partake of their clothing, their ignoble
pastime, their coarse food ; if he should become the wit
ness of their grovelling desires, their rebellious uprisings,
their bitter rage and hatred for the government which
he was soon to wield, he might be " a type" of Him
who was in all points tempted like as we are, though
without sin. If discovery ofthe extent of their own degra
dation and peril were the beginning of a nobler life for
them, and if this magnanimous and spotless king in
tended to reward such discovery by a grand emancipa
tion of his besotted serfs, how should the work be more
nobly inaugurated than by his own confession — from the
depths of his new experience — of the sins and degra
dation which he had taken upon himself, that he might
bear them away. Faint type, I admit, but not with
out its bearing on the case before us. None could
know like the incarnate God what sin was ; none but
He has fathomed the need of human nature. He alone
estimated fully the regeneration which He declared
essential to the formation of His kingdom. If so, who
can rival the Lord Christ in confessing the sins of the
world ?
I am far from agreeing with the speculation of Mac-
leod Campbell, that the agonizing sympathy of the Son
of God with the sorrows and sins of humanity either
constituted the adequate repentance for human sin, or

328 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
was the essence of His atoning work, or the ground
of forgiveness on the part of the great Lawgiver. This
hypothesis, framed to avoid the idea of the penal nature
of our Lord's sufferings, involves the essence of a penal
infliction. If sin and suffering caused Him so much
sympathetic agony, it must have done so in virtue of
the law of the supreme Governor of the universe, a law
which has linked sin to suffering by bonds which,
though often strained, are never broken. The empire
of law certainly embraces the phenomena of sympathy,
and the working of the law is but the continual expres
sion of the will of God; so that if He merely took upon
Himself the sufferings of an intense grief over human
sin, He was in fact taking upon Himself the penalty
which is the very essence of death, a punishment in
flicted by the moral and physical constitution of man.
The hypothesis does not accomplish the purpose for
which in the main it has been framed. It will be said
that there is great difference between the grief and
vicarious penitence of a holy child over the evil con
dition of his brethren, and the infliction of unmerited
stripes upon the innocent sufferer, instead of allowing
them to fall upon the guilty. There is a great differ
ence, but it is not at all more easy to apprehend when
the Holy One, as in this instance, is the Son of God.
If the repentance be supposed of such a kind as to
expound the agony of Gethsemane and of the cross,
as well as the language of the apostles with reference
to the Passion of Christ, it presents a greater difficulty
to thought. It involves the consciousness of personal
defilement, the sense of the actual sins of the human
race, as transferred rather than imputed to the holy
Sufferer, and the vicariousness of the sacrifice makes a

v.] The Baptism of Jesus. 329
more severe demand upon our conscience and intelli
gence than the scriptural statement that He gave
Himself as a "ransom," "was made a curse," was
"set forth as a propitiation," and "bore our sins in
his own body on the tree."
Now it does not appear to me that the confession of
sin by the Lord Jesus is adequate, per se, to explain the
entire Gospel history, or the teaching of the New Testa
ment, or the craving of the soul and conscience. But
though we may refuse to admit that it constitutes the
entire pith and essence of the atoning work, it must yet
be reverently pondered. It would be altogether wrong
to pass by such tremendous anticipations of Gethsemane
as may be found in the baptism by John or in the temp
tation of the devil. There was such a coming up of
the sin of the world into His pure consciousness, that
the Lord was often "sore amazed and very heavy;"
that He groaned in spirit and wept; that He could look
with anger on the hard hearts that surrounded Him,
and that He knew, as no other could have known, how
much human nature required renewal into His own
image, how urgently it needed forgiveness and re
demption. There were moments when we can see from the
narrative that He suffered, being tempted, when the
whole mystery of iniquity came near to His holy soul,
and compelled expression. Short of this personal
acquaintance with our humanity, the Incarnation can
not be thought of as complete. Independently of it,
the penalty which He voluntarily underwent is incon
ceivable, and without its due antecedents in His con
sciousness. The conversation therefore between our
Lord and the Baptist, as detailed by Matthew, was not

330 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
in the least inconsistent with the great theological
induction as to the Person of our Lord, nor does it
possess any unhistorical element.
§ 3. The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus.
Keim discusses with the utmost freedom the probable
truth of the description of the baptism of Jesus, given
in Matthew's Gospel, and hazards the statement that the
fourth Gospel knows nothing of the baptism of Jesus.
He gathers from the knowledge subsequently displayed
by our Lord with respect to John and his disciples, and
from the accurate references made by Jesus to the cha
racter of John's influence over the people, that long
before Christ's open appearance on the banks of the
Jordan He had been studying the position of the Bap
tist and communing with him, and that this would
account for John's hesitation in administering the or
dinance. But Keim argues that Jesus submitted to
baptism, not in order to remove His own conscious
impurities, nor to confess the sins of humanity or of
the people, nor as an inauguration to his Messiahship
— a purpose which was thoroughly alien to the spirit
of the baptism — but in fulfilment of a personal vow of
consecration to the establishment and proclamation of
the kingdom of God.1
Keim draws out the different forms of the narrative
of the baptism, as given by the first three Gospels, and
the expansion of the details in the later tradition as
preserved in the Ebionite Gospel, in Justin Martyr, in
Celsus, and the u Preaching of Paul." The differences
turn chiefly on the moment of the opening of the
1 Keim, 1. c. i. pp. 523-533, where he agrees with Schleiermacher, Hase,
Schenkel, and Weizsacker.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 331
heaven, the direction taken by the descending dove,
whether it was "into," "down upon," or "continuously
abiding" on Jesus. He dilates on the slight discre
pancies in the reports of the words spoken from heaven,
and on the improbability that God should speak in
audible words, which simply blend the language of
Isaiah and the Psalms. He shows that it is difficult to
obtain a consistent account from the four narratives, as
to whether the voice was heard or the vision seen by
the people, by Jesus, or by John only. He concludes
that it is far more probable that later Jewish scribes
should have pourtrayed in this pictorial fashion some of
the relations instituted between John and Jesus at His
baptism, than that objective facts like these should have
occurred.1 He is less destructive in his criticism than
Baur or Strauss, and sets himself to extract from the
narrative, as a whole, what was the impression about
Jesus which passed into the mind of John.
It seems to me, that if we take the whole of the
narrative into account, the verisimilitude of the trans
action is less difficult to grasp. One Evangelist ex
plains, and does not invalidate or contradict another.2
John declares himself to have been specially prepared
by Divine illumination for the accompaniment of the
baptism of Jesus. He expected to discover the " mighty
one," stronger than himself, by some sign that should
convince him that the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost
had at length made His appearance in the theocratic
1 Keim, 1. c. 533-550.
2 The learned and diffuse treatise of Danzius, Inauguratio Christi ad docen-
dum haud obscurior Mosaica, edited by Meuschen ; Nov. Test, e Talmude
iUustratum, pp. 306-486, is an argument of extraordinary elaboration to show
to the Jews that the portents of Sinai and all the investiture of Moses were
exceeded when our Lord received the voice from heaven. He strives with ear
nestness to demonstrate the publicity and objectivity of the entire scene.

332 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
kingdom. Every other characteristic of Messiah was of
less importance to John than the power of communi
cating the Holy Spirit. If the sign should be given that
would convince him of the reality of this advent, if an
objective proof of this sublime distinction being the
official appanage of one of the sons of men should in
deed occur, he distinctly affirmed (as related in John's
Gospel) that he should feel his own work practically
completed. To assist in the manifestation of such a
messenger of the Lord of hosts, was the final cause of
his mission. " In order that he might be manifested to
Israel, for this cause (said he) came I baptizing with (in
the) water." The non-appearance of this sign as yet
was sufficient reason for him to hold his peace. He
knew, but yet knew him not, until the fulfilment of the
prediction. " He that sent me to baptize (in) with water,
he indeed said to me, ' Upon whomsoever thou mayest
see the Spirit descending and abiding, this is he who
baptizeth with (in) the Holy Spirit.' " J Here of course
we are ushered into the region of the supernatural.
Here we encounter the stiffest antagonisn of the ration
alist, the materialist, and the mythicist. But let it be
observed that we are thus admitted by one of John's
disciples to the confidence of John. There was an
experience of the Baptist which had preceded for days,
weeks, or months, the actual occurrence to which it
pointed. Special preparation was made within him for
that which was about to happen under his eyes. He
knew the fact about which he had to be satisfied before
the imposing evidence of it was granted to him. It is
easy to ask what possible proof could be given to one
man of an event so transcendent as the descent from
'Johni. 31, 33.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 333
heaven, and the continuous abiding upon another, of
the Holy Spirit of God ? How could so sublime a
consciousness have arisen ? How could so recondite an
expectation have been awakened ? Is it an historical
fact that John said this thing ? If he said it, what
was the true explanation of the strange intuition ?
Are we to believe that these words represent a real
transaction, at least in the consciousness of John, and
that therefore they approximate a definite truth, which
adds to our conception of what a divine revelation is ? or
are we to suppose that John was wise after the event, and
without conscious fraud thus interpreted the strange
events of the baptism of Jesus? Or shall we say, with
Strauss and Keim, that the whole narrative is the
mythical colouring which the reverence of a later age un
consciously ascribed to the Baptist and the Christ, repre
senting the ideas of the second century, but nothing
more? We have many hypotheses to choose from.
So far as the last is concerned, we conceive that the
entire argument by which the authenticity of the fourth
Gospel is confirmed is too strong to be undermined.
In this instance the fourth Evangelist does not invent
a new objective fact, but, contrary to the ordinary opera
tion of the myth-evolving faculty, rather diminishes than
augments the miraculous element. The tradition had
been widely diffused in the synoptic narrative, and in
an exaggerated form had taken fast hold of the popular
mind. The new element is one which has a tendency
to explain the mystery, to make it more clear than the
synoptic Gospels had left it, that the mind of the
Baptist was the chief region of the miracle. The
presence of the supernatural element in both cycles of
tradition makes it clear that the author of the fourth

334 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
Gospel did not create this glorification of the incarnate
God with the view of establishing the main position of
his narrative, that " the Word was made flesh, and we
beheld his glory, the glory of the only-begotten of the
Father." The testimony borne by the Baptist to the
Son of God was already well known, and must have
formed a prominent part of the Palestinian preaching
ofthe apostles. It was selected by the author in pre
ference to the "transfiguration," although Pe.ter, John,
and James were declared in the synoptic narrative to
have been witnesses of that august event. It is diffi
cult therefore to believe that the author of the Gospel
was doing other than choosing, from the abundant
material at his disposal, that on which he would place
the greatest dependence. He may have preferred to
mention that, which though of a similar kind to his
own experience, came with the authority of his revered
Master. When Peter, James, and John were on the Mount
of Transfiguration, they were favoured with a common,
consentaneous revelation of the transcendent dignity of
Christ, for which they were unprepared and which they
only partially understood. Here was a revelation of the
nature of the Christ for which the Baptist declared
that he was prepared, and which at once confirmed his
eager and prophetic hope. He expected some sign,
some event, some vision, that should convince, him
that He who would baptize with the Holy Ghost was
ready to commence His ministry of force and fire.
The key to the synoptic narrative is to be found
in the statement of the fourth Evangelist. The
Baptist there describes what he had expected, and he
speaks of a Divine voice which had been addressed
to him, preparing him for the vision ; and, moreover,

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 335
he does not discriminate between the method of the
first communication and that of the second. The
entire criticism of this passage which occurs in
both "Lives of Jesus" by Strauss, proceeds upon the
impossibility of supposing that the Evangelists meant
to describe anything else or less than a series of
objective miraculous acts. Now it is true that the
language of Luke is peculiarly explicit. We are
told by Luke "that it came to pass when all the
people were baptized, and Jesus himself was being
baptized, and praying, that the heaven was opened,
and that the Holy Spirit in a bodily form as a dove
descended upon him (eV avrbv), and there was a voice
from heaven, Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I have
been well pleased." z Strauss maintains that the less
explicit language of Matthew and Mark must be inter
preted by the more explicit language of Luke, rather
than the reverse, and consequently presses the position
that the synoptic narrative involves great portents
taking place in the sight of all the people, therefore the
objective bodily appearance of the dove, and the literal
opening of the heaven, whatever that may be supposed
to mean.
Now, from the earliest times, from the commen
taries of Origen to those of the present day, a great
catena of judgment may be found in favour of such an
exegesis of Matthew's account as materially alters this
impression. We are told by Matthew (if it be reason
able2 to believe that 0 Icodwi)? is the subject of elBev),
that John saw the opening of the heavens over Jesus,
and that John saw the Holy Spirit descending like a
dove, coming upon Him, and that a voice from heaven,
'Luke iii. 21, 22. 2 With De Wette, Bleek, Krabbe, Baur, Keim.

336 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
not addressed to the multitudes, but mainly intended
for John himself, was heard by him, saying, " This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."1 If
this were the only record, the conclusion might fairly
be drawn that the entire occurrence consisted of a
vision granted to a man whose eyes had been opened,
to one who was the last and greatest of the prophets.
Thus Origen2 distinctly denied that the physical de
scent of the Holy Spirit was an historical narrative, but
regarded it as merely a spiritual vision.3 On the other
hand, Mark and Luke undoubtedly speak of the occur
rence as definite and objective. In Mark the elBev and
et? airov are not unsusceptible of the same interpreta
tion as that of Matthew's account, but in Luke the form
of the sentence refers, without doubt, to a physical fact,
and the additional clause erco/mari/ccp eiBei seems to compel
a visible, tangible, material symbol of the Holy Spirit.
If however examined more closely, the baptism of
Jesus took place, not at a particular moment specially
described, but, so far as Luke's narrative is concerned,
at some unspecified time during the whole period of
John's baptismal ministry, " when all the people were
baptized." 'Airavra rbv \abv must refer to various classes
and large populations, and consequently to many more
than could possibly have been baptized on a single day.
T If Jesus is the subject of ttfiev, the Itt' avrov should have been i.tji' avrbv.
Winer, Bleek, but Meyer takes the opposite view.
2 On John i. 32, and in c. Celsum i. 43-48 : Tavra Bk iravra, rb KanXBciv
Xkyto t£ ovpavov rb irvevpa eiri rbv 'Iriaovv Kai ptivat lie' airbv, oimvopiag
rporrtp ykypaicrat ov% laroptKrjv Strjyrjatv typvra dXXct Btuipiav vorjriKt]V.
3 So Theodore, in Catena, John i. 31, speaks of its being bicraoia ov fiatg.
Jerome speaks to the same effect. Grotius, Neander (Life of Christ), De Wette,
Bleek, in Studien u. Kritiken, 1833, § 2, 432, and his Synoptische Erklarung
der drei ersten Evangelien, Bd. i. p. 173. De Pressens^, Olshausen, and others
maintain the same view.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 337
The whole clause must mean that the baptism of Jesus
took place during the period of the baptism of the en
tire community, rather than in the presence of a crowd.
The clause introducing the baptism of Jesus is brought
in parenthetically, and is not the main point of the
statement. Luke's description of what occurred, if we
had no other authority, would suggest an objective cir
cumstance; but since Matthew represents the whole
occurrence in historical form from the standpoint of
John's experience, and gives moreover the interesting
details already referred to, it seems to me imperative
to take Matthew and John as the true sources of in
formation. The transaction is mentioned by Luke
without implying such reference to the Baptist; i.e.,
Luke has simply brought out into strong relief the ex
perience of the Baptist, but without saying so. Strauss
is keenly critical of Olshausen's "pneumatology, where
in are sensible realities transcending the senses, and
he hastens out of this misty atmosphere into the
clearer one of those who simply tell us that the appear
ance was an external incident, but one purely natural."
Strauss in this case prefers the rationalistic interpre
tation of Paulus and Kuinoel to the spiritual repre
sentation of Olshausen, but without, of course, any
acceptation of the lightning and thunder and dove,
which were supposed by them to be the basis of the
narrative. No greater difficulty presents itself in this narrative
than occurs in the numerous references to physical,
audible, sensible manifestations, which are recorded in
the prophecies of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and the Apoca
lypse of St. John. There was creofianicov et'So? enough
in the cherubim, the horses, armies, vials, and cities of
23

338 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
the Apocalypse. There were " voices " heard by Abra
ham, Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and others, which
correspond exactly with these marvellous events, and
which might be and were sometimes described in the
language of ordinary physical facts, but which no inter
preter supposes to suggest in every case the physical
vibration of air in the lone island, the wilderness, or
the city, which expressed in some vernacular idiom of
Hebrew or Greek the thoughts of the Almighty. There
is no need to multiply physical miracles when we have
to do with a mind like that of John's, to which the
grand realities of the spirit-world had shaped them
selves in abundant symbol and impressive hieroglyph.
The consciousness of the Hebrew prophet or seer, the
ear and eye of the man who enjoyed such commerce as
he pursued with the spiritual and unseen world, must
have been opened in a way that ordinary pyschological
phenomena cannot explain. He does not stand alone
with these visions and voices from the eternity to which
he and all his brethren belong. The prophetic eye and
ear are not quite closed yet. There are intensely vivid
intuitions still which transcend all demonstrative proofs,
all inductions of science. If we believe that John saw
and heard these things so far as his consciousness was
concerned, and said so, it will be enough to account
for all the peculiarities of the Gospel narratives. But
if we make the hypothesis that such a vision was im
possible, if our modern science has closed our eyes so
completely that we cannot believe even in the unsealed
faculties of the prophets of God, of course there are
difficulties enough in. the narrative and in the docu
ments. On this supposition some mythical invention or
manufacture, out of the second Psalm, after the fashion

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 339
of Strauss, may afford a little relief to our benumbed or
blindfolded faculties. But why should not the great
event of the descent of the Spirit upon the Christ have
been perceived in the symbolic manner in which John
said he saw it? What could be more expressive than
the vision of the " opening of heaven,"1 the " rending"
or "dividing of the heavens," — corresponding to the
promise of our Lord to Nathaniel that he should see
"heaven opened," and akin to the dying glance of
Stephen, to the " door opened in heaven " for the
Apocalyptist, to the visions of Job, and Ezekiel, and
Peter?2 We are to remember that the "heavens" of
Oriental thought and of traditional ideas are simply the
symbol ofthe Eternal and His presence, they. constitute
the side on which we look out on the Infinite. When
manifestations of God's presence were made, the pro
phets saw the Lord bowing and rending the heavens.
Excessive light dazzled their eyes. That which they
called His Shekinah or " tabernacle" overpowered their
vision, they fell prostrate in awful reverence, and waited
for the heavenly voice. Under these dread visitations
from the living God, the apparent localization of Je
hovah made them apprehend and feel His universal
presence and august majesty. It would seem that
this manifestation was the special sign of the near
ness of God. It was His means of making Israel
feel that He was their God. The appearance of the
glory of the Lord 3 consecrated the tabernacle and the
altar of burnt-offering, hallowed the temple, constituted
1 'Ave<px9r]aav airtp oi ovpavoi, Matthew; tlSev aytZppivQvg rovg otipa-
vovg, according to Mark ; txviiayQfjvat rbv ovpavov, in Luke.
2 Rev. iv. 1 ; Acts vii. 56 ; x. 11 ; Job xxxviii. 1 ; Isa. vi. ; Ezek. i. 4-28 ; x. &c.
3 Exod. xix. 9-25 ; xxiv. 9-18 ; xxxiv. 29 ; xl. 34 ; Lev. ix. 23, 24 ; Numb.
vii. 89 ; Deut. xii. ; 1 Kings viii. 10. 23 *

340 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
the sanctity of the holy place, justified the sacrificial
rites, was the recognized symbol of the especial ap
proach of Jehovah to their consciousness and heart.
The Shekinah had long deserted Israel, the glory had
departed, and now the Elijah of the New Covenant,
who had declared the near approach of the " Lord of
the temple," whose soul was filled with prophetic
vision, who expected a baptism of fire, who may have
even counted on the descent of fire from heaven to con
sume the foes of the kingdom and burn a pathway for
the King of kings, saw the heavens cleft, and the light in
which God Himself was clothed, descend from heaven.
Justin Martyr1 declares that " fire was kindled in the
Jordan ; " and the Gospel according to the Hebrews *
adds, " Straightway a great light shone round about
the place." These glosses on the original text of Mat
thew record the tradition of an impression produced
upon the Hebrew prophet who discovered the Messiah,
that the Divine majesty which once appeared in the
wilderness, and sanctified the temple, had now at
length officially consecrated a sacred human personality.
In the depth of this strange humiliation of the possible
Messiah, amid the dark mystery of His sympathy, as
He rose from the water, having confessed the sin of the
world and the faith of the new Israel, the prophet saw
the long-lost Shekinah, " the glory of the Lord." The
theological significance of this can hardly be overrated.
It is not the only time that prophetic eyes were opened
to the revelation that the Son of man was greater than
the temple, was Lord of the Sabbath, was verily and
indeed the beloved Son of the Father.
1 Dial. c. Tryp.% 88. irvp avq^Sin iv rip 'lopSdvy.
2 In the passage already cited, Epiphanius Hcer. xxx. i. 138. Kai liiSvg
ireptEXapipe rbv rbirov 0«c peya.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 341
It is not said that all that was involved in this reve
lation, all the confirmations of it which the " trans
figuration," which the vision of St. Paul, which the
supreme majesty of the Christophanies of the Apoca
lypse supplied, had dawned upon the mind of John.
He uttered his word, he gave his testimony, he has
done much by it to create the belief in the Divinity of
the Messiah, but it does not follow that he comprehended
all its significance to us.
This Shekinah glory involved in the opening of the
heavens is not the whole of John's vision. There was a
specialty in its form and method of approach which we
can gather best from Matthew's account, coupled with
John's expectation as preserved by the fourth Evange
list. The Spirit of God revealed Himself, made Him
self manifest in the opening heavens, but descended in
" bodily form like a dove " upon the head of Jesus, and
" abode upon him." What John declared that he saw
with those prophetic eyes of his was the dovelike form
and motion assumed by the supernal light. Its out
spread pinions were like the wings of the morning. A
dazzling brightness above the splendour of the sun
was drawing nearer with gentle librations of its wings.
The Spirit which dovelike brooded over the darkness
of chaos till it teemed with life, seemed to hover over
Jesus. Nearer came the vision of life and peace and
joy, and it rested on the Lord. That which John had
been taught to expect, he now beheld, a mingling of
awful majesty and sweet meekness, of Divine glory and
human gentleness ; a sanctity as of the temple, and a
freedom as of the birds of heaven ; a resistless force
like the fiery steeds of the rising sun, and an infinite
tenderness and inward peace like the calmness of a

342 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
brooding dove.1 Nor was this all : the revelation he
obtained of the nature of Messiah, as of the blending
of wondrous opposites, was supplemented by the abid
ing upon Him of this combination of sweetness and
severity. What must his prophetic vision have been ?
It was not like Peter's, one which was drawn back to
heaven, but, according to his representation, it " abode
upon him." The idea he suggests to us is not the
bestowment of a spiritual energy which should blaze
up into excitement and enthusiasm, and then subside
into commonplace, or dissolve like Elijah's into craven
fear, but the passing of the dovelike glory into Jesus.
It vanished from John's sight into Him, and he heard
a voice — akin to the voices which Isaiah, Ezekiel,
Daniel, Peter, John, heard on other occasions — saying,
"This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased."
What may have been the pyschological antecedent of
this vision and voice, what the philosophical explana
tion of the astonishing mental phenomena, we know
not. We may easily throw a haze of uncertainty over
some of the most noticeable facts of history, by reduc
ing to the level of common experience all the strong
thoughts of prophetic men which cannot be put into
1 Keim, l.c. i. 539, finds the conception of the dove in the later speculations
of Hebrew mind. ' ' Wiederum nur den Juden und etwa den Samaritern war
die Taube, dieser Lieblingsvogel Gottes und der Menschen, dieser Opfer-Vogel,
der Noachische Heilsbote mit dem fruchtbaren CElblatt, der Vogel des wiirde-
vollen Flugs, der glanzenden Fliigel des sinnigen hellen Auges, des girrenden
Geheimthuns und allermeist der reichen Naturkraft und Briitekraft, das Sinn-
bild des heiligen Geistes odergar des Messias, indem die Lagerung des Geistes
iiber den Wassern der Schopfung, auch die Weisheit Salomo's von den Rab-
binen in Tauben-gestalt abgebildet wurde." This is very brilliant, but why
should it not apply to the pyschological preparation of John's own mind to
receive the vision. On the subsequent and late use of the dove to represent
the Holy Spirit, see Didron, Iconographie Chrtiienne ; Ciampini, Vetera
Monumenta, pars. i. p. 235 ; Mrs. Jameson's Life of our Lord, i. 12, 78, 297 ;
J. Radford Thomson, Symbols of Christendom, p. 55, ff.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 343
the ordinary language of mental conviction, by com
paring them with the hallucinations of madmen and
the abnormal vagaries of diseased brain. There is a
region of dread reality made known to us by researches
into the mere phenomena of disease, but when we have
fairly eliminated these, there is a vast mass of fact
belonging to every literature and time, which shows
that some select minds are far more open to the great
underlying, all-surrounding world, than the bulk even of
acute thinkers and careful observers. The whole phe
nomenon of Divine revelation comes within this cate
gory, and must be compared with those other facts of the
moral consciousness, in order to see the roots and germs
of the deepest convictions which have dominated man
kind. In tracing a Divine revelation back to its source,
we always, in every case, come to a human consciousness,
a conviction of surprising force and intensity, which
can take no other form than the cry, " Thus saith the
Lord." It is difficult to say what were the objective facts
which occurred — objective, i. e., in the sense of being
present not only to the consciousness of the prophet,
but to the sense -impressions of others at the same
time. It is enough if John saw what the shepherds of
Bethlehem, what the favoured three on the Mount of
Transfiguration, what St. Paul on the way to Damascus
saw, viz., the Shekinah glory overshadowing the sacred
form of the Son of man. If so, others if present may
have been partial witnesses of #he occurrence — just as
they were on the occasion of St. Paul's conversion — ¦
without comprehending its full significance, its relation
to the past history of Israel, or its testimony to the
nature of the Lord. So in this case the significance, the
articulate force of the manifestations reached expression

344 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
only through the consciousness of John. It is through
the soul of the great artist-poet that the meaning of
nature becomes obvious, to whomsoever by sympathy,
by word and symbol, he is able to communicate his
thought or the movements of his inner life. The
glory of the Lord, the sonship of Emmanuel, the fire
and gentleness, the resistless energy and the quiet
peace of the Holy Spirit, were manifested at this
moment. The baptism was the epoch of the accession
of sublime spiritual power to the humanity of Jesus.
The Spirit descended upon Him, He received into His
human consciousness a new spiritual force and energy,
and by some symbolic act, some intense communication
between those two, John became alive to it, and it
shaped itself to his consciousness — Hebrew prophet
that he was — as an opened heaven, a descending dove,
a revealing voice.
Several theological difficulties here present them
selves, (i) To some minds it seems impossible to
conceive, on the part of John, a conviction of the
Divine Sonship of the Lord Jesus, and of His official
dedication to the Messianic and mediatorial office, so
clear as this occurrence appears to involve. Many pre
fer to suppose that the entire narrative was fashioned
out of the language of the second Psalm, by the rever
ence of a later age, or that it sprang from the desire
of the second century to realize the Hebrew ideal of
a Messiah as receiving Divine authorization, and
demanding a universal homage from the kings of the
earth as the Son of the Blessed.
My reply is, that the synoptic narrative is more ex
pressive and explicit as to this faith in the sonship
of Jesus, and the descent of the Spirit upon Him,

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 345
than the fourth Gospel is ; that the earliest accounts
are equally forcible in every part as to the fulness
and completeness of the Divine claim. There is not
a trace in Matthew, Mark, or Luke, of an inchoate
or undeveloped plan on the part of Christ. The
Synoptists reveal the idea of the Divine Sonship of
Jesus as one of the earliest convictions of the sacred
society of the hill country of Judsea, as one impressed
upon the youthful mind of Jesus, as interwoven in the
whole account of the baptism and temptation, of the
visit to Nazareth, of the Sermon on the Mount, and of
the first confession of Peter. Surely, taking the lowest
possible ground, so original, creative, and penetrative a
mind as that of Jesus could not, on any hypothesis,
have had to wait until He was thirty years of age —
pondering the Old Testament, and acquainting Himself
with the mind of His countrymen, as He must have
done — in order to become profoundly impressed with
the grand fact of His Sonship, of His relation to the
Father, of the spiritual requirements of His humanity
for the great work which He set Himself to accom
plish. Since some communications undoubtedly passed
between John and Jesus, why should the conviction of
John that Jesus was the beloved Son of the Father-
God be brought into question ? It would be better to
frame our psychologic laws so as to embrace recorded
facts which have exercised so potent a sway on the
evolution of humanity, than to tear our most sacred
records to pieces, in deference to the supposed dis
covery of those laws elsewhere.
(2) In estimating the relation of the mission of John
to the kingdom of God, we must not ignore a serious
theological difficulty which encumbers the foregoing

346 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
narrative. Both Matthew and Luke record the aston
ishing circumstance that our Lord was not the son
of Joseph and Mary by natural generation. Matthew
tells us l that the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph
in a dream, saying, " Joseph, thou son of David, fear
not to take to thee Mary thy wife, for that which is
conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost ; " and that " she
was found with child of the Holy Ghost." Luke is
more definite in his language, and describes the angel
as saying to Mary herself: "The Holy Ghost shall
come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee ; therefore, that holy thing which
shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God."2
Strauss is rash enough to conclude from this circum
stance that the idea of the descent of the Holy Spirit
at the baptism of Jesus is so entirely inconsistent with
the account of the miraculous conception by the Holy
Spirit, that when the tradition of the baptism received
its present shape, the legend of the Incarnation could
not have been current ; that the Divine origination of
the humanity of Jesus renders any subsequent special
communication of the Spirit unnecessary; and that
since the two narratives are mutually incongruous, ac
cording to his usual destructive criticism, both must
be rejected.
So far as Luke's Gospel is concerned, we have al
ready3 shown that there is no reason for doubting the
integrity of the document, that the argument based on
Marcion's Gospel proves too much, and merely de
monstrates the mutilation effected by the early Gnostic.
The suspicion touching the antiquity of the first two
chapters of Matthew is without weight. The Gospel
1 Matt. i. 20. 2 Luke i. 35. 3 See Lecture 2.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 347
must stand or fall in its integrity. There is no doubt
that these chapters were always integral portions of
the Greek Gospel ; and the earliest fathers — Irenaeus,
Clemens Alexandrinus, Justin Martyr, Hegesippus, as
well as the early heretics — all attest their existence.1
If the " Gospel according to the Hebrews," of which
fragments have been preserved, and which some would
make the basis and origin of the Greek Gospel of
Matthew, be an apostolic production, which we seri
ously question, then it is just possible that these
chapters were not in that Gospel in its most original
form ; but the testimonies to the Greek Gospel of Mat
thew are numerous and cogent, even when we have
eliminated all references to the Hebrew form of Mat
thew's " preaching " and narrative.2 The Evangelists
explain the sinless perfection of the Divine humanity of
Jesus by the circumstance that He was saved from the
entail of corruption by the very manner of His intro
duction into our world, and both Evangelists speak
of this event as effectuated by the Holy Spirit, as the
great agent of the creative energy of God. It is not
necessary to suppose that as yet the Hebrew mind ade
quately conceived the personality of the Holy Spirit ;
but Mary understood that the Spirit which brooded
over the waters, which " renewed the face of the
earth," which " dwelt " in holy prophets and made
them differ from ordinary men and women, which
created a new and " clean spirit " in the bosom of the
defiled and guilty, would be the sole cause of her
1 Dr. Davidson's recent Introduction to the N. T. vol. i. p. 492.
2 Dr. Alex. Roberts, Discussions on the Gospels, part 2. The mutilation of the
Gospel of Matthew, in the recension of the Gospel of the Hebrews, is fully
attested by Epiphanius and Jerome, and the fact of these mutilations shows that
it was not likely a myth could have arisen on this subject in the face of such
antipathy as that of both Ebionite and Marcionite.

348 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
maternity. That which throughout the New Testa
ment is described as the causative and personal energy
of the new life in man; as the Divine power which
regenerates the soul, and brings the human being to
think, feel, and act in harmony with the will of God ;
which is the Divine cause of all that is beautiful,
fruitful, eternal, in the life of man and of society, is
called " the Holy Spirit." . The beginning of a new
humanity in the womb of the Virgin is attributed di
rectly to the same exalted and creative grace. " The
holy thing to be born " of her was by the Holy Ghost.
The whole Godhead concurs in the taking of humanity
by the eternal Word, in the conference upon human
nature of so Divine a function and dignity. The Son
of God is born of the Virgin by the power of that Spirit
which is the source of the new nature in every child of
God. The question arises, does this exclude the necessity
of the special communication of the Spirit at the com
mencement of the Christ's official work as Messiah,
Teacher, Sin-Bearer, and anointed King of the true
theocracy ? In other words, does the one statement
render the other incredible ? Does the latter narrative
prove that when it was circulated the record of the
Divine Incarnation could not have been current? In
answer to this, we have to ask whether the production of
the Divine Humanity, and the constitution of the person
of Christ the Son of God, involved the full and complete
equipment for His human duties? We think that it pro
vided the condition of such a heavenly baptism, pro
vided the sphere and region for the spiritual energies
and the Divine glory to be manifested, but nothing
more. The operation of the Holy Spirit seems, in the

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 349
first case, to be restricted to the production of the
Divine humanity before the dawn of human conscious
ness. The Spirit of the Father and the Son did not here
do more than fashion that Holy Thing; but a moment
arrives in His history as a man when He is to confess
the sin of human nature, when He is to declare the
hope of the true theocracy, when He is to take upon
Him the crown of all the earth. It is the solemn in
auguration to His official work, the hour of His deep
humiliation and kingly glory, when He needed consola
tion, when He required that there should come into His
human consciousness the reality of His Messianic mis
sion, and into His hands the sceptre and keys of the
kingdom of God. What He Himself said to Nathaniel
shortly afterwards may be the true explanation: "Thou
shalt see heaven opened, and angels of God ascending
and descending on the Son of man." This statement
throws strong light upon the vision and conviction of
John. Communications were ever going on between the
Son of man and both the heaven of the Father and the
home of the Spirit. There were other communications
of spiritual energy to Him, which were made known to
the disciples. Angels ministered to His humanity after
the temptation and in the garden of Gethsemane. The
Lord Himself spent whole nights in prayer, and as
Liike tells us here, He was at this very moment
"praying "for the spiritual illumination, energy, and
control, when the answer came to Him, and the fact
of the answer was revealed to the consciousness of
John. A parallel or two will show the baselessness of the
objection of Strauss. It seems the very nature of the
Spirit's operation to make varied approach to the souls

350 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
of men, and even thus to manifest Himself where
there can be no question of the previous belief in His
presence, operation, and indwelling. It was after the
Lord had said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," that the
day of Pentecost, with all its wonderful fulfilment of
Christ's own promise, drew on. The views of the
most extreme critic will hardly assign to the Acts of
the Apostles, on that ground, a later date than to the
fourth Gospel. St. Paul says that God, from his mo
ther's womb, " separated him" (unto the apostleship) ;
but it was long afterwards that God was pleased to
reveal His Son in him. The entire history of the
miraculous powers of the Holy Ghost, following upon
the regeneration of the early believers, shows how pos
sible it was for them to conceive that the incarnate Son
of God should yet be set apart to His human official
functions by a special display and communication of
the power of the Holy Ghost. As those who are re
newed and sanctified by the Spirit may yet again and
again be "filled with the Spirit," so John the Baptist,
because he knew the wondrous story of the birth of
Jesus, was more ready to believe in the descent of the
Spirit upon Him at His baptism. The argument of
Strauss proves too much. The same principle would
lead to the mutilation of a document in which, within a
few pages, the story of the baptism is followed by that
of the transfiguration. With equal justice it might be
said that the scene at the baptism renders that of the
transfiguration needless, and therefore that its circula
tion at a particular time was incredible !
It is possible for us even now to see the meaning
and significance of this great consecration. It is true
He "was born King of the Jews," but He was not

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 351
the crown prince of Israel in the estimation of men.
He was the depositary of the word of the Lord, but
Israel did not know it. Though He was the God-Man,
He had certain national and dispensational offices to
fill, for which He needed specific and functional in
troduction. The dignity of His person, and His
essential glory, did not render either unnecessary or
unmeaning the full preparation of His manhood for
specific work. It is thus, moreover, that we learn
some momentous lessons on the extent to which His
incarnation, and the method of it,' affected His con
sciousness as a man. It is perfectly certain that His
human nature passed through its several stages, and
that His mind submitted to the Successiveness of thought.
Every day added to the stores of His consciousness.
The incarnation of God in Him could not have been
a human consciousness from the first. His Divine-
humanity may have all along needed the assurances of
the Divine Fatherhood and the Eternal Love. He who
had to go through the agonies of the temptation and the
ignominy of the cross, may have needed the instruction,
consolation, and stimulus of this great revelation.
(3) Theological difficulties are however aggravated
by the speculation of certain modern critics that the
author of the Fourth Gospel did not closely distin
guish between the Word (X670?) and the Spirit
{irvevfia) in their relation to the personality of Jesus.
Baur,1 Schmidt, and Eichhorn2 have urged that in the
prologue to the Fourth Gospel the author used the
former term to denote the Divine element in the com
plex personality of the incarnate God; that when he
1 Biblische Theologie des N. T. ii. 268.
2 Quoted by Liicke, Comm. in Joan. c. 1.

352 The Transitional Work of John. [lect.
began to speak more historically of the facts which
came under the observation of others, and which pre
sented themselves to the consciousness of the Baptist,
he used the term irvevfjia ; and that after the reference
to the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus at His
baptism, the X070? drops into the background, and is
never again referred to. We admit that Justin Martyr'
and Tatian 2 blend and confound the two words Xoyos
and irvevpa, though they are not guilty of this as ex
positors of John's Gospel. Nor can it be doubted that
Philo, whose use of these terms differs in many respects
so profoundly from St. John's,3 represents them as co
existing powers of God, which mutually presuppose
one another, and may be spoken of as identical. Philo,
however, verges on allowing the X0709 to be the centre
of the personality of God, and regards the rvvev^a as
the impersonal element of life in God and man. St.
John has recorded our Lord's own description of the
essence of the rrvevfia as being allied in nature to invis
ible mind and cleansing water, and as directly opposed
to the flesh. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh,
that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." The Logos is
the eternal source of all life, and it has been the Light
which lighteth every man. He says further that this
Logos has come into the world, having been made
flesh. That statement is St. John's way of describing
the Incarnation. If it were not so, the doctrine of the
fourth Gospel would be that Jesus underwent, at the
moment of His baptism, a second birth ; but the
author would not, with the prevailing thought and idea
1 Apol. i. 33. = Oratio c. Groscos. 7.
3 Dorner, History of the Doctrine of Person of Christ, E. T. vol. i. pp. 19-3° i
De Pressense, Life of Christ ; Ccesar Morgan On the Trinity of Plato and
Philo-Judosus ; M. Nicolas, Des Doctrines Religieuses des Juifs, p. . 178, ff.

v.] The Accompaniments of the Baptism of Jesus. 353
of the irvev/Mi, have said of the -n-vevfia what he does
say of the \6709 in John i. 14. The synoptic doctrine
of the operations of the Spirit in the formation of the
human life of Jesus was independent of any doctrine
of the Logos, or of the new birth of man by the Spirit.
St. John clearly regards the incarnation of the Logos
as the condition of the abundant gift of the Holy
Spirit to Jesus at His baptism, and of the continually
abiding in measureless fulness upon Him of that same
Spirit. It is because He is "from above, and above
all," that "the Spirit is given to him without mea
sure." It is because the Word was made flesh in Him
that He was capable of receiving the Divine fulness of
the Spirit. All the evidence furnished by the Evan
gelist of the Personality of the Son before and during
His visible incarnation, are so many silent proofs that
he did discriminate between the gift and descent of
the Spirit at the baptism, and the fundamental con
stitution of the Divine person of the Christ by the
incarnation of the Logos. Doubtless John in his
prologue described, philosophically and dogmatically,
what the Synoptists had described historically as the
operation or conception by the Holy Spirit, the great
agent in humanity of all Divine results.1
(4) The theosophic Gnostics, who maintained the
unreality of the body of Christ,2 also adopted a view to
which Irenseus often refers, that " the Mox Soter, or
Christ, descended from the Pleroma into the Messiah
of the Demiurgus, or into the seeming man Jesus, at
"Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 35. See Pearson, The Creed, art. vii.— " He was
conceived hy the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary " — a discussion on which we
need not enter ; Liicke, Excursus iiber das Verhaltniss zwischen John i. 14
undj2. 2 See Tertullian, De Came Christi, c. 6, and adv. Marc. iii. 11.
24

354 The Transitional Work of John. [lect. v.
His baptism, and through Him announced the unknown
God." * Thus Irenaeus,2 in describing the opinions of
the followers of Valentine, says : " There are some
who maintain that the Demiurge also produced Christ
as his own proper Son, but of an animal nature. This
' Christ ' passed through Mary just as water flows
through a tube, and upon Him there descended, in the
form of a dove, at the time of His baptism, that " Sa
viour" who belonged to the Pleroma, and was formed by
the combined efforts of all its inhabitants." Irenseus
refutes the theory,3 for (after quoting Matt. iii. 16) he
adds : " Christ did not at that time descend upon
Jesus, neither was Christ one and Jesus another; but
the Word of God, . . . who did take upon Him flesh,
and was anointed by the Spirit from the Father, was
made Jesus Christ." This passage shows that, whe
ther Justin confounded the Spirit and the Logos, or
not, Irenaeus discriminated between them. The Ebio-
nite Gnostics who combined with the later followers of
John the Baptist entertained many strange and be
wildering speculations of their own, based more or less
upon the grand persuasion to which the Baptist gave
expression, viz., that the Holy Spirit descended on
Jesus at His baptism.4
This utterance of John's was the turning-point in
his career, and constituted a momentous epoch in the
history of religious thought. The Baptist saw the
mystery of eternal love and power in Jesus, and the
Christian Church owes to him some of her clearest
intuitions of the Person, work, and glory of '<her Lord.
1 Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels, ii. 270.
2 Contra Hares, lib. i. c. 7. 3 Ibid. lib. iii. c. 9.
¦•See further remarks on "The Disciples of John," in Lecture vii., and
Neander's Life of Christ, E. T. § 42.

LECTURE VI.
THE LATER
MINISTRY AND SPECIAL REVELATIONS
OF THE BAPTIST.

24*

LECTURE VI.
THE LATER MINISTRY AND SPECIAL REVELATIONS OF
THE BAPTIST.
IF the fourth Gospel be authentic and trustworthy,
there cannot be the shadow of doubt that John re
cognized Jesus as the Messiah. Josephus is silent on the
subject of John's relations with Jesus. The Synoptists
describe the Messianic anticipations of the Baptist, and
the marvellous effect produced on his mind by the in
terview that took place between him and this great
Candidate for his baptism. But they further detail the
doubt that clouded the eye of his faith, and indicate the
separate interests of the disciples of John and of Jesus.
In consequence of these suggestions, modern criticism
has thrown special suspicion upon the veracity of the
famous testimonies we have now to consider. To say
nothing of Strauss or Baur, or even of Keim or Renan,
Neander, in his admirable remarks on these utter
ances, allows that they may have been coloured by the
affectionate and religious memories of the disciple who
was loved by both John and Jesus.1 These testimonies
1 Life of Christ, E. T. § 112. " He revered the memory of the Baptist, his
spiritual guide ; these words of the Baptist had greatly tended to develop his
inner life, and had led him to Christ ; it was therefore all the easier for him
to attribute to them a higher Christian sense than the Baptist had when he

358 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
seem to me to provide the key to the synoptic nar
rative. If they are carefully pondered in the light of
that narrative, they are seen to be in perfect harmony
with it, and to prove their own verisimilitude by many
undesigned touches of extraordinary significance. The
first in importance is to the effect that Jesus is, —
§ i. The Son of God.
According to Matthew and Luke, John after long
pondering over the need of Israel and the hope of
mankind, declared that the kingdom of God was at
hand, that One mightier than himself was about to
occupy its throne. He predicted judgment, scrutiny,
and condemnation. His own function was only that
of a herald's voice, crying, " Prepare the way of
Jehovah in the wilderness." The true Prophet, the
great Priest -King, will baptize with the Holy Ghost
and with fire. This strong, almost feverish expecta
tion of his, meant something more definite, more posi
tive, than the maxim that " No virtue is safe that is
not enthusiastic."1 He looked for supernatural changes
in the structure of society. He anticipated the day
of the curse upon all that do wickedly, and he hurled
his thunderbolt into the very homes of the people and
their priests. But now a great change has come over
him. He has welcomed his kinsman ; he has found '
himself awed into sudden and overwhelming reverence
before Him. In obedience to His command, he has
baptized the Man who would Himself baptize with the
Holy Spirit. The Synoptists explain that which the
uttered them. The interpretation which he gave to them may also have re
acted upon the form in which they were impressed upon his memory. This
view (he adds) does not in the least impugn the veracity of the narrative."
1 Ecce Homo, p. 8.

vi.] The Son of God. 359
fourth Gospel introduces with abrupt sententiousness.
They tell us that a voice was heard from heaven pro
claiming the Divine Sonship of Jesus. According to the
fourth Gospel, John cried, "I saw, and bare record that
this is the Son of God." There is more than enough in
the synoptic Gospels to show that the Jews had blended
with the notion of Messiah his personal conscious
ness and revelation of this extraordinary relation to
the living God. Peter reveals this conjunction of
ideas in his own mind.1 The power of Christ over
nature wrings a similar exclamation from the wit
nesses of His miraculous energy.2 The tempter and
the demoniacs are represented as familiar with the
idea. 3 The high priest at the trial, the mocking crowd
about the cross, and the Roman centurion, make use
of the same expression.4 Nathaniel at the commence
ment, and Martha at the close of His ministry, are
stated, in the fourth Gospel, to have given emphatic
utterance to this deeply -seated association of digni
ties.5 Our Lord is not represented as claiming this
lofty designation with the frequency with which He
adopted the more familiar title, " Son of man." Still,
He does speak of Himself as in a special and peculiar
sense "the Son," and "Son of God," and as having
power to confer, in fellowship and union with Himself,
a similar blessed relationship upon His disciples. This
mode of speech, in our Lord's own lips, is discover
able chiefly, if not exclusively, in the fourth Gospel,6
although it is tolerably clear that the prime intention of
each Evangelist is, by a process more or less his own,
1 Matt. xvi. 16, 17.
2 Ibid. xiv. 33. 3 Ibid. iv. ; Mark iii. ii ; v. 7 ; Luke iv.
4 Matt. xxvi. 63 ; xxvii. 40 ; Mark xiv. 61.
s John i. 50 ; xi. 27. 6 Ibid. iii. ; v. 19-23 ; vi. 40 ; x. 36.

360 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
to establish the same sublime position.1 The term in
John the Baptist's lips, from his thoroughly Old Testa
ment standpoint, must have based itself upon the theo
cratic conception of Israel being God's Son,2 and on the
fervour with which the Davidic king might hope thus
to enter into the fellowship of heaven.3 We cannot
attribute to the Sanhedrim or to the early disciples the
full significance that the word subsequently acquired in
the mind of the apostles or Evangelists. It became
very soon the recognized formula of the faith, " I be
lieve that Jesus is the Son of God." In that confession
the metaphysical and the theological, as well as the
national signification of the phrase, must have been
triumphant over the world which resisted His claims.
Those who believed that Jesus was the Son of God
overcame the world.
Now, is the more restricted and historical use of
the phrase all that we can positively attribute to
John ? We think not. He heard the voice, he knew
the sign which lifted this kinsman of his not only
to Messianic dignity, but into the circle of that apoca
lyptic thought of which we see the symptoms and the
expression in the books of Daniel and Henoch. It
does not appear that he was ever brought under the
power of the later teachings of our Lord, or that he
became an avowed disciple of Jesus ; but he was daz
zled with the mystery of this new life. He saw at a
glance, that which all his previous study of sacred
Scripture, of society around him, and of the depths of
his own heart, had failed to teach him. He saw and
1 See Reuss, Theologie Chrttienne, ii. chap. 8 ; Westcott's Introduction
to the Study of the Gospels ; Schmidt's Bib. Theol. New Test. E. T. part i.
div. ii. § 22.
2 Hos. xi. i. 32 Sam. vii. 12-16 ; Psa. lxxxix. 20-28.

vi.] The Son of God. 361
bare record, he left it as a great testimony, that this
was the Son of God. To John the Baptist must
therefore be attributed the high distinction of so far
penetrating the dark mystery of things as to have been
the first to discover this wondrous background and
sublime secret underlying the outward life of Jesus.
The subsequent confessions of Peter and Nathaniel, and
of the awestruck witnesses of His mighty works, were
anticipated, if not suggested, by the Baptist. The idea
of the fatherly relation of God to some men, to distin
guished kings, heroes, legislators, and patriots, was
widely diffused among heathen nations. The supposi
tion that unusual mental or physical endowment was
the outcome of special organic relation with the gods
needs no illustration. In Israel, the unity and su
preme majesty of Jehovah, His awful purity and eter
nal glory, led to an intense desire after close personal
relations with Him. All goodness, all power, all the
eventualities of life and history, and national develop
ment, were attributed to Him ; but the Sonship was
reserved for a further revelation. Loyal service, sub
jection and devotion to Jehovah, constituted the ideal
life of Israel; but a consciousness of filial affection
and relation was held out as a prophetic picture of the
future, rather than as an immediate experience. Many
an Oriental mystic had imagined himself a part of the
universal God, a wavelet on the boundless ocean of the
All ; had dreamed that the impersonal and eternal One
had come into consciousness in his own transient
individuality, and so described himself as a " son of
God." But the Baptist did not speak of himself as
" the Son of God " in this or indeed in any sense. It
was given to him to discern, by the teaching of God's

362 The Later Ministry cf the Baptist. [lect.
own Spirit, that Jesus was " the Son of God." In no
loose or indefinite sense did he persist in this convic
tion. This becomes evident if we follow the chrono
logical order of his teachings, and the effect which they
produced. John was baptizing at a place called Be
thany, beyond Jordan.1 This change of position is
significant. It is not the place where the great crowds
had gathered round him, where his words had made the
multitudes tremble, and the advent of the King and of
the judgment had been proclaimed with trumpet-voice.
1 There can be little doubt that i v j3n0avio; is the true reading of John i. 28.
It is the reading ofS*ABC*EFGHLMSVXrA, and a large number of
versions of both the Syriac, of the old Latin, Memph. , Armenian, and others.
The reading [3t]Qaf3apa is avowedly a suggestion of Origen's (iv. 140). in a
passage the whole of which is given by Tischendorf and other critics. Origen's
reason for making the suggestion shows explicitly that the MS. he was accus
tomed to consult contained the reading " Bethany," but that it was too difficult
for acceptance by him, because Bethany was fifteen stadia from Jerusalem, and
was not on the other side of Jordan, and he could hear of no place of such name
on the banks of the Jordan. Chrysostom (viii. 111) makes a similar remark.
The MS. authority for another name differs in many ways. Thus it assumes
the name of fSti9aaapa, C2 K T U A II, fitBajBripa in cursive MS. 69. 262. /3))0a-
pafia is used twice by Orig. iv. 140, also fir/Bapa, and /3a9apa, Orig. iv. 280.
The Text. Recept. adopted the pti9ajSapa of Origen. Tischendorf, Tregelles,
Alford, Meyer, Griesbach, Scholz, and others concur in reverting to the original
reading. There was probably such a. place as Bethabara, rrQ17rp-2.
"a house of ford," or " passing, "irepav row 'lopSdvov. Such a place is referred
to by the Greek Fathers, and is found in the Onomasticon of Eusebius. Dr.
Alexander, Kitto's Ency., suggests that it may have had just the same mean
ing as firiBavta, ^SrVg, " the house of a ship," or ferry. The Greek word
would thus represent two Hebrew words, and having been used for both places
for a time, subsequently gave way in common parlance for Bethabara. The
fact that the additional clause irepav r. lop. is added to discriminate it from
the Bethany that became so well known in the Evangelic history, is important,
and shows that the suggestion of Hilgenfeld, that it was fabricated by the
author of the fourth Gospel, in order that the ministry of Jesus might seem to
have begun and closed at the same place, is quite untenable. The name of
Bethany has not as yet been found lingering in the neighbourhood of the ford.
Further, it is not improbable that Origen and Chrysostom confounded with it
the Beth-barah mentioned in Judges. The LXX., however, reads /3ai0j)pa, as
the scene of the slaughter of the Midianites, and made the correction from
Bethany to avoid the topographical difficulty. Dean Stanley (Sinai and Pales
tine, p. 304) still thinks that Origen was probably right in making his correction,
but his arguments do not seem conclusive or even strong.

vi.] The Son of God. 363
The people had rapidly conjectured that John himself
was the Messiah, and were ready to obey him as their
master. But the ruling religious party, the political and
social magnates, must have held a very different notion.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, and lawyers derided him. In
all probability they had begun to plot the overthrow
of the dangerous prophet, and to do to him "whatsoever
they listed." The baptism of Jesus had been followed
by His immediate departure into the wilderness, and
the opened heavens and the Shekinah glory were at
once exchanged for the wild beasts of the desert and
the temptations of the devil. For forty days He was
lost to the view of John. Full of awful expectation,
the Baptist and his disciples probably followed Jesus
across the Jordan to the spot spoken of as Bethany ;
or John may have thought that beyond Jordan his
prophetic mission would have been left undisturbed
by the pragmatical and treacherous advances of the
Pharisaic party in the Sanhedrim. Even here the de
putation of Pharisees and priests discovered him, and
received the solemn and mysterious announcements
which throw light on what John meant by " the Son of
God." It was to this Bethany that Jesus returned in all
the power of the spiritual triumph He had gained
over the tempter ; and the author of the fourth Gos
pel records a great revelation now made by John the
Baptist, as that of a man "sent from God" "to bear
witness " to that Eternal Light which was " the life
of men," and which had "come into the world." He,
moreover, cites the words of John as the Baptist's
confirmation of the declaration which he had himself
just made, that the Logos had become flesh, and

364 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
manifested in human life the glory of the only be
gotten Son of God. We are told that he uttered the
mighty saying with a loud cry,1 as though the words
were forced from him by some transcendent, pro
phetic, supernatural impulse. " This is He of whom
I spake.2 He that is coming after me has been as
signed greater dignity than I, for He was anterior
to me."
This was mysterious enough. The prophet here
plunged his fathoming line into a deep ocean. He
could not understand his own thought, or at all events
comprehend its full bearing. Yet this was probably
the key note which ultimately led to the composition
of the prologue to the fourth Gospel. Standing on the
Old Testament platform, John must have pondered the
coming and the pre-existing glory of the Messenger of
the Covenant. He was undoubtedly anticipating some
apocalyptic vision, a sign of the great King in the clouds
of heaven, a manifestation of Jehovah terrible and ju
dicial. The baptism with the Holy Spirit was how
ever, as he had just learned, to be administered by a
man like himself, though he was One over whom the
1 KiKpaye Xkyuiv. De Wette says, '< laut mit Nachdruck sprechen."
2 oirog iari vir'ep ov eytii eiirov implies an earlier utterance of the same fun
damental truth. In fact, as Euthymius and Chrysostom by their interpretations
imply, the words epirpoa9'ev pov yeyora/ do but express more forcibly the
iaxvporepog pov itsriv of Matt. iii. 11. See Genesis (LXX. ) xlviii. 20. On that
supposition the ort irparog pov y\v is no tautological adjunct, but the reason
and ground of the previous saying. His pre-existent glory in the bosom (not
with Baumgarten-Crusius, in the counsels) of the Father, is the justification of
his elevated rank, so greatly exceeding that of John. Luther, Kuinoel, Meyer,
Mai, take the first clause as expressing the pre-existent glory of the Logos ;
but, as Tholuck has remarked, this reference of ylyovt to the constitution of the
Xdyoc would be in harmony with the Arian interpretation of the created nature
of the Xoyog. The yeyove seems to me to point to the dispensation of the Son
of God on earth, the r\v to the eternal glory of One who was in nature and
in time irplnepbg — irpwrog, " before, " John. Hengstenberg sees in irpdrog
the idea of absolute priority. See Lange on John i. 15.

vi.] The Son of God. 365
heavens had opened and whom God approved. Must
our modern canons of criticism exclude the belief that
John did leap to the conclusion of the pre-existing life
of Him who was yet to come after him?
It was an enigmatical, obscure, and bewildering ut
terance, but it is neither inconceivable nor irrational,
and it does much to account for the effect at once pro
duced by Christ on that "other disciple." The testimony
was repeated frequently, and was delivered in a wild
cry of transcendental awe. He was as one who had seen
a spirit, and who cried out with fear. The reputation
of John was so considerable, that the echoes of this cry
reached from " Bethany " to Jerusalem, and provoked a
special deputation of Pharisees to examine his claims,
and make further inquiry into the strange announce
ment which they found more puzzling than anything
he had said since " the day of his showing unto Is
rael." They took an apparently constitutional method
of estimating the position of John. The term "priests
and Levites"1 is the current one to denote those who
were employed in the service of the temple, and they
were sent from the Pharisaic society of Jerusalem to
discharge an obvious duty that had devolved upon
them. Eminent as John's position was, he at once dis
claimed the idea of being the Christ of Hebrew expec
tation or prophecy. This incident gives a deep insight
into the extraordinary religious life of the Jews — their
unusual combination of conservative with progressive
thought ; their readiness to receive from prophetic men
a new impulse and direction for their zeal, even while
they were keeping within the lines of the old faith, and
jealously guarding their old traditions. They often per-
' Josh. iii. 3 ; viii. 33 ; Liicke, in loco.

366 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
formed this task with inward contempt and bitter
hate, but with all their worldliness, they must have
had vivid intuitions of the unseen and spiritual world.
It was as before the unveiled throne, as under the
echoes of the thunder of Sinai, that they gave ex
pression to their religious excitability. "Who art
thou ? " " Why baptizest thou ? " Art thou a re-in
carnation, a transmigration, a return of Elijah from
heaven ? Art thou that prophet of whom Moses spake ?
What is thy connection with Messiah ? " Who is
this Son of God ? " Questions like these indicate the
existence of strong underflowing currents of religious
feeling; the national life in which they were evident
and came to the surface must have been very unusual.
I have already discussed the significance of the specific
inquiries, and the association of these suppositions
with that of the religious performance of the baptis
mal rite. John makes a formal repudiation of all claims
to be their Messiah, to be Elijah in the physical sense
of the term, to be the prophet in the common con
ception of a resurrection of one of the old prophets,
or to be an authoritative teacher and prophet such as
Messiah Himself would prove to be. "No," "I am
not," are his laconic replies. The deputation, how
ever, must have an answer to give to the Pharisaic
order at Jerusalem, and now press for his explanation
of the baptismal rite. It would seem that there was
that about John which made them accept his word
as final before returning to their masters. He re
peats his former testimony, " I am the voice ; " "I
prepare the way of the Lord ; " " there is One coming
whose shoe latchet I am not worthy to loose." All
this they have heard before. It seems almost a tame

vi.] The Son of God. 367
repetition, corresponding with the Oriental method of
emphasis by continual assertion of the same formula.
If there were nothing more than this, we should be
astonished at its sameness. Such for months had
been the constant cry of this strange apparition ; but
one short sentence interwoven with this response puts
a new meaning into the whole — one that makes John
abrupt, and hesitating, and impels him to stammer
forth his sense of humility and unworthiness in a
manner which shows that he has been really and
deeply moved. It is not, he replies, in the dim future,
or hidden behind the apocalyptic clouds, or amid the
serried phalanxes of Rome, or in the secret place of
thunder, that your Messiah, your Lord, your Prophet
and Lawgiver, your King of kings, is waiting. He
stands there in your throng, and you do not know Him
(/4«ros Se vixvsv ecrrrjicev bv vfiei1; ovk oiBare). Jesus has
then come back from the temptation of the " forty
days," and this has changed John's entire conception
of Messiah. These had been forty days of strange
doubt and fear and distrust for John : but his question
ings are resolved at last. The heavens have not opened
again. The " might " is the power of the dove rather
than that of the eagle ; of great patience, not of noise
and strife and tumult. Just as to the terrible Elijah
it was in the "still small voice," rather than in the
earthquake, the strong wind, or the fire from heaven,
that Jehovah had revealed Himself, so a voice within
the second Elijah had said, The Lion of the tribe of
Judah has prevailed to unroll the closed book and to
loose its seals, — he turned to see, and behold a Lamb.
The deepest and simplest explanation of this change
of tone in the great forerunner seems to me to lie in

368 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
the possibility that Jesus had made John the confidant
of His fierce and awful trial. Who more likely than
John to have received those confidences from which
the synoptic account of the temptation has really pro
ceeded ? The devil had made dexterous use of the burn
ing words of John, of John's conception of Messiah, of
the baptismal vision and rite, of the heavenly voice, and
the solemn utterance of the Baptist, in order to tempt
the Divine humanity of the blessed Lord. If He is
to fulfil these glowing portraitures, if He is to lay the
axe at the root of trees, if He is to prove His alli
ance with the Eternal powers, if He is to overcome the
resistance of the world and secure the allegiance of its
rulers, if He is to baptize with fire, why not at once use
the might of which John speaks, wield the two-edged
brand, burn up all chaff with quenchless fire ? Jesus
was tempted, it is true, but without sin. His spiritual
nature and the grace which had been given to Him
without measure, conquered the torture of this sugges
tion. Miraculous powers, superhuman insight, physical
agencies and forces, might gain a quick victory, an
apparent success ; but it was not the easy way, it was
the true and new life which He had come to inaugu
rate.. Intelligent, voluntary, spiritual surrender to the
Father's will He. came to exemplify, excite, and effect.
The Captain of salvation was to bring many sons to
glory, and His own way was that of suffering and sym
pathy. " He suffered being tempted." "He must know
all that he may succour all." John has learned the
mystery, the conflict, the agony, the strange victory of
the forty days, and he couples with it the sublime
discovery which he had not only made but had boldly
proclaimed. No wonder, if so, that John should have

vi.] The Lamb of God. 369
been taciturn and self-abasing when worried by the
pretentious, probably hostile, deputation from the San
hedrim, that he should have more to think of than his
own personal claim to baptize his brethren and sisters.
Again, with intensity, and yet in brokenness of spirit,
he cried, " His shoe's latchet I am not worthy to
unloose."1 § 2. The Lamb of God.
On the following day John found a better opportu
nity to say all that was in his heart. There were at
that time other and more susceptible hearers by his
side, men who had entered more deeply into the mean
ing of his revelations, and he too had gone a step further
in his education of himself, of his disciples, and of the
world. He had learned a crucial lesson, one that had
taught him more of his own priestly and prophetic
functions than he had before known. He saw Jesus
coming to him, and cried aloud to two of his disciples,
"Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away
the Sin of the World ! "2
There has been a prolonged controversy on the mean
ing of these words, in which, in my judgment, both
sides have embodied a portion of the truth. The ques
tion has arisen, Were the early Greek interpreters right,
1 The repetition of the words given by the Textus Receptus is not sustained
by later editors.
2 The literature of this passage is considerable, and various attempts have
been made to analyse John's exclamation from his own standpoint, to find in
it, or to exclude from it, the idea of sacrificial or expiatory offering. Lucke,
Commentar, Bd. i. 399-416 ; Lange's Commentary on John (American transla
tion), p. 86 ; Meyer, p. 108 ; Smeaton on The Doctrine of the Atonement
taught by Christ Himself, § xiii. pp. 65-79 ; Crawfurd on The Atonement,
part i. §§ 3, 4. Kuinoel and Gabler have classified all the various interpreta
tions, the latter in the second volume Kleineren Theologischcn Schriften
Opusc. Academ. pp. 514-584. Not a few have boldly referred the whole testi
mony to the author of the fourth Gospel, as Strauss in his Leben Jesu.
25

370 ' The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
on the one hand, in supposing that John had received
the great representation made by the prophet Isaiah J of
the vicarious suffering of the holy servant of God, and
was his idea limited by that oracle ? Was the Lamb of
God the Lamb thus appointed by God, and singled out
for especial contemplation ? or, on the other hand, was
John, as a priest, an ascetic, and a Nazarite from his
birth, reminded of the grand and terrible symbolism
of the sacrificial system which had often been forced
upon his consideration ? On the latter supposition,
was he alluding to the Paschal lamb, whose blood was
poured out before the Lord, by whose death the nation
of priests had been created and delivered from their
cruel bondage, by which, year by year, there had been
remembrance made of sin, and by which the educa
tion of the race had been carried forward ? or was the
last of the prophets gathering into one glance the long
procession of the sacrificial lambs, that had been
brought daily, morning and evening, to the tabernacle
or the temple for fourteen hundred years ?
There need not have been difficulty or controversy
on these points. The sacrificial system of "sin-bear
ing," and the entire providential method in which
the judicial effects of sin were permitted to fall,
not only upon the first transgressor, but on his chil
dren, on the entire people, on the sacrifice pre
sented in the temple, and on the priest who offered it
before the Lord, constituted the material out of which
Isaiah's mind was led to estimate the work of the right
eous servant of the Lord, the great messenger of God,
the king and mediator of the true theocracy. The
Paschal lamb and the daily sacrifice expound the
1 Isa. liii. 4-7^

vi.] The Lamb of God. 371
phraseology of Isaiah's oracle. There God's Lamb is
portrayed in terms which the writers of the New
Testament regarded as a sufficient exposition of the
meaning of the death of their Lord. Whether they were
right or wrong in their exegesis, there can be no doubt
that Matthew,1 Peter,2 the Evangelist Philip,3 Luke,4
John,5 Paul,6 and with these Clemens Romanus 7 and
many others, took the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah as the
best exposition to them of the character, suffering, and
death of the Lord Jesus. Doubtless John the Baptist
stood farther back, and on a thoroughly Old Testament
platform, but we need not suppose any other standpoint
when we find him in a striking metaphor condensing
the whole sacrificial system into a burning word based
upon Isaiah's oracle touching the suffering servant of
Jehovah. The priests and Levites were themselves offer
ings to the Lord. The blending of the offerer and victim
lay deep in Hebrew theology. The Paschal Lamb was a
sin offering. The blood of it was offered to God to make
atonement, and it freed Israel from the curse that fell on
the first-born of Egypt.8 Twice every day a lamb was
presented as a burnt offering, and accepted by God to
make atonement for sin. The main conception of the
daily burnt offering was entire consecration to the will
of Jehovah.9 Consumed by fire, it was a parable of life
dedicated to the Lord, but in each case the victim was
bruised and bled to death for human sin. In addition
to the daily burnt offering, the lamb of the trespass
' Matt. viii. 17. 2 1 Pet. ii. 22-25. 3 Acts viii. 28, ff. * Luke xxii. 37.
5 Rev. v. 6 ; xiii. 8. 6 Rom. x. 16. 1 Clem. / Ep. ad. Cor. xvi.
8 See Hengstenberg, Christology of the Old Test. vol. iv. E. T. p. 351 ;
Baur, quoted by Liicke, Uber die Ursprung und Bedeutung des Passah-festes ,
makes the same admission. Liicke, i. 404, takes a different view, but he gives
no adequate reason.
9 Exod. xii. 5 ; xxix. 38. See art. Opfercultus des A. T. in Herzog's Ency.
25*

372 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
offering was slain for atonement,1 either when physical
defilement excluded the sufferer from temple worship,
when sins of ignorance were revealed to the trans
gressor, or when a Nazarite had lost, by touching the
dead, the advantage of his vow.
The ceremonial of the day of atonement did not re
quire the sacrifice of a lamb, but the high priest took
the blood ' of the bullock of sin offering into the holy
place, to make atonement for himself, because of the
uncleanness of the children of Israel, and because of
their "transgressions in all their sins." Of the two
kids of goats, one was slain, and the other was made
to bear upon him all their iniquities.2 These various
forms of sacrificial worship are, we believe, the true
key to Isaiah's prophecy, which in its turn is the basis of
the cry of John. It is in the LXX. version of the oracle
that we find the words that throw the greatest light
Upon it. Ver 4. ovto? to.? d/j,apria<; rjixSiv tpepei Kai wepl
r/fiav oBvvarai. Ver. 5. avros Be irpav/iaria-07] Bui to?
dfiaprlac; rjfiwv, &c. Ver. 6. Kal Kvpio<; irapeBwKev avrbv
ral<; dfiaprlai<; rj/j,a>v. Ver. 12. koi avrb? dfiapria? 7roX\&v
avr)ve<yKe Kal Bid, rd$ dvofiias avrcov irapeBoOn. There is
a wide and even a universal ring about John's words
which we do not find, totidem verbis, in Isaiah. The
prophets and priests of Israel thought mainly and first
of the deliverance and healing of their own people;
but John in his entire teaching had been rising to the
high position occupied by the greatest of the prophets,
and had conceived the world-wide consequences that
1 Lev., iv, ; xiv. ii ; Numb. vii. 12.
2 Even on the perverse theory of Kalisch, Comm. on Leviticus, that the day
of atonement was a ceremonial not dating back before the Exile, coupled with
the later origin of the second portion of Isaiah's prophecies, it is clear that the
fifty-third chapter may have reflected the strong colouring given to the sacrificial
character of the great Servant and Lamb of Jehovah. 4

vi.] The Lamb of God. 373
would result from the coming of the kingdom of heaven.
The servant of God is God's Lamb, appointed and con
secrated for the highest work of sacrificial suffering and
death.1 Some writers, like Gabler, understood by the expres
sion of the Baptist his profound appreciation of the
sweetness, gentleness, innocence, and patience of the
prophet, who would take quietly the insults and the
antagonism of an unsympathetic and depraved world.
Kuinoel followed in the same line of interpretation,
but connected a little more closely the two parts of
the sentence.2
•The Hebrew formulas Nt?n NtM, f)V NtM, are translated variously by
LXX., but generally in the sense of bearing the consequences of personal guilt
or ofthe sin of another. Thus the Israelites (Numb. xiv. 34) were condemned
to bear their iniquities for forty years, a year for each day that the spies
were searching the land.* In Lev. v. 17, there is the same phraseology used
for the sense of guilt brought to the consciousness. In Lev. xx. 17, the same
combination in both languages is used for suffering the punishment of grievous
moral offence. Numb, xviii. 22, the form occurs which identifies it with ob-
noxiousness to death. t In Ezek. xviii. 19 and elsewhere the same Hebrew
formula is used for bearing the penal consequences of another, of a father's
sin. In Lev. x. 17 it is distinctly used of the priestly expiation for sin to be
effected by Eleazar (iva dipeXtire tt/v dpapriav rrjg awayuiyijg Kai l%,iXaar]a$ie
irtpi avroiv Ivavrt Kvpiov). The word aijiatpeiv is the equivalent for SE92 in
LXX. in several places when God Himself is described as lifting off sin from
the transgressor, and so bearing it as to bear it away. The LXX. , moreover, in
three other places where God is the subject of the verb kiW2, has rendered it by
atptevat, and been in this followed by all the versions, with the idea of forgive
ness, viz., in Psa. xxxii. 5 ; lxxxv. 3 ; Gen. 1. 17 ; and in Isa. xxxiii. 24. Many
have urged that this rendering of the word must govern all the rest of the
places in which it occurs. The word nasa does, however, continually change its
signification with the context, t and such a rendering would be inapplicable
iu many of the passages we have quoted. Hence the Baptist in using the
phrase (6 aipiav r.a. r. k.) was not referring to the power of the Lord to forgive
sin, but to take upon Himself the world's guilt and peril in such a way as to
suffer under it, and remove it from the world.
2 " Spectate hunc innocentem, pium, mansuetum totumque Deo ejusque
consiliis consecratum 1 Hie magna et eggregia praestabit, hie removebit (using
atbatpeiv for dipety) peccata hominum, i.e., pravitatem."
• Xr]^ita9e rag dpapriag ipSiv for E^O's'lV"^ ^HtpR
t rfi£ib Ntptl riWbb. LXX. XaXeiv ctpapriav Qavar^opov.
X See Ftirst and Gesenius. sub. voce.

374 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
The author of Ecce Homo has given recently a new
turn to the passage, by supposing that the twenty-third
Psalm suggested to the Baptist the image of the Divine
Lamb, who by His inward repose and spiritual joyful-
ness would take the sin of the world away— that whereas
he was only one of the dogs of the flock, the Lord Jesus
would be the Precious Lamb of the Good Shepherd ;
dowered with heavenly gifts, and rich in the diffusive
peace which would chase the world's sin away. It is
enough to say that there is no hint of any of these ideas
in the passage, nor of the lifting, bearing, expiating, or
forgiving, of the world's sin, in the Psalm.
The unwillingness to accept the idea of the suffering
servant of God as lying at the root ofthe Baptist's excla
mation, is augmented by the circumstance that the Jews
of our Lord's time, and even the disciples themselves,
were imperfectly prepared to recognize their Messiah
in the vicarious sufferer or the broken-hearted prophet.1
Still, it can be shown from Jewish writings that the
idea was not foreign to the Hebrew mind. Indepen
dently of Isaiah liii. and Psalm xxii., and apart from
the sacrificial system, which conferred upon these fore-
shadowings of the cross their finest significance, there
is proof that J udaism had not been slow to appreciate
the power of sorrow and martyrdom.2 Josephus makes
use of the remarkable language, "that the martyred
saints were [avrtyirxpv] a ransom for the sins of the
nation ; that by the blood of the pious ones, and the
propitiation of their death, Divine Providence saved
Israel, that had previously been so evil entreated."3
1 John xii. 34 : Matt. xvi. 21, 22 ; xvii. 23 ; Luke ix. 45.
2 See Wisd. ii. 6 ; v. 13 ; 2 Mace. vi. 18 ; vii. 42. Schottgen. Hor. Heb.
Tom. ii. on Isaiah liii.
3 Quoted by Liicke, i. 413, from Jos. de Mace. § 17.

vi.] The Lamb of God. 375
The book Sohar l contains the remarkable sentence,
"that the death of the just will expiate the sins of the
world ; " 2 and many curious proofs are produced from
the Talmud by Schottgen and Eisenmenger that at a
later period of Jewish literature, when the temple had
been destroyed, there was a common tradition that the
Messiah's birth would involve suffering, and that the
earlier portion of His work would be the expiation of
the sins of Israel.
De Wette (as well as the Socinian and other modern
interpreters) conceives that the perception of the sacri
ficial and suffering aspects of the Son of God, or King
of Israel, was utterly foreign to all the other testi
monies of John, and is incompatible with the message
he subsequently sent from his prison.
With reference to the first of these positions, it is
enough to remark once more, that the fourth Evan
gelist commences where the synoptic narrative closes.
John has now come into immediate relations with
Jesus. He has, in consequence of the momentous
impression produced upon his own mind, seen new
meaning in the prophetic picture to which he had
already gone for a description of his own official posi
tion. The suffering Messiah may have been in the
background of his consciousness and expectations, for he
had clearly seen that high mountains, deep precipices,
crooked places, rough things, must all be removed out
of the way of the coming King. He had seen Him
axe in hand, and dealing with quenchless fires. He
had imagined Him coming in the clouds of heaven,
1 Ed. Amstelod, p. 3, fol. 218, line 14, seq.
2 See Sommer, Specimen Theol. Soharicce, p. 89 ; quoted by Hengstenberg,
Appendix to Christology of 0. T. vol. iv. 360-364.

376 The Later Ministry of the Baptist* [lect.
wielding His two-edged sword, threatening the ven
geance of the Lord of hosts. There are the elements
of great suffering in all this. The opened heaven, the
audible voice, the divine calm of Jesus, His submission
as a sympathetic sin-bearer to the baptism of repent
ance, startled John. The synoptic narrative describes
the convulsive movement of his diffidence and altered
thought, and then details the disappearance of the
Christ for forty days of deep affliction and intense
agony. He comes back to tell John the mystery of
that conflict, and His own calm repudiation of those
very courses, some of which might have naturally
arisen out of the tone of John's earliest teaching, but
which seemed to Him to be what indeed they truly
were — temptations of the devil. The position of John is
now clearer to him than it was before. Here is the root
out of a dry ground, wounded, bruised, bleeding, but not
for Himself nor for His own sins. He is as a sheep be
fore her shearers, dumb; He is already led as a lamb to
the slaughter, lifting, bearing, carrying away all sin, all
ceremonial impurity, all curse and guilt. His atoning
sacrifice has begun in the wilderness. The sins of the
world have been laid upon Him, and now the cruel
death, the silent grave, the ultimate victory, all float
before the prophet's eye, and he cries, "Behold the
Lamb of God !" That John saw all that the Evange
list and Apocalyptist saw in after years, all that the
Christian consciousness has crowded into his words, is
not to be supposed. But we think it is clear that the
germs of the idea are to be found in the Old Testa
ment, and in the thought of the Jews, that they were
suggested to the Baptist by special circumstances, and
that he was inspired to communicate them to those who

vi.] The Lamb of God. 377
stood in intimate relations with him. One of the two
disciples who heard John speak is, by friend and foe,
supposed to represent himself to be the author of the
Gospel. Upon him the words made deep impression.
The " strong Son of God," whose eyes were as a flame
of fire, seemed to him also to be the Lamb that was
slain. From the baffled and wondering Baptist he
learned his first lessons of the infinite mystery involved
in the person and work of the Christ.
The world is weary with its cumbrous and futile
methods of obtaining deliverance from sin. Conscious
ness of moral law, and the ever-growing conviction of the
comprehensiveness and inflexibility of the physical and
mental consequences of actions, deepen the harrowing
sense of moral evil, fasten on the transgressor the
Nessus- shirt of fire, from which in this nineteenth
century, as well as in the first, he struggles hard to be
free. " The sin of the world " is even now revealed
with awful distinctness to some minds. It is not
necessary to go to the cell of the anchorite, where
some child of superstition is combating those phan
toms of despair which are conjured up by excited brain
and morbid tradition. Nor is it requisite to follow the
explorer or the missionary into haunts of vice and
homes of cruelty, where bold badness deliberately
crushes broken hearts and blasphemes Heaven. It is
scarcely needful to lift the thin veil of poor excuse and
preposterous flattery, with which a flimsy philosophy
conceals the evil. The grim, gaunt forms of sin loom
through the veil, and the fear of men is not hushed by
being told that they should be virtuous and calm, that
evil is an accident, and responsibility a dream. Nature
— the word being used as another name for God —

37S The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
may be very beautiful in her glowing sunrise, and fasci
nating when the light and the mist conceal very much
from view; but Nature, bearing man in her bosom,
and evolving him, sin and all, out of her eternal
depths, "without any interference" of God or devil,
is very ghastly and terrible. Under this awful vision,
the hearts of thousands have been hurried, crushed and
blaspheming, into the darkness. The sin of the world,
in its individual forms and its terrible aggregate, presses
upon conscience as a fault and a removable evil. Hence
its awful burden. From this springs the whole history
of sacrifices and atonements. If sin is to be taken
away from the world, the twofold process of redemp
tion and renewal must be involved in the act. {a) The
conscience must be assured that the law has not been
trifled with ; that it is safe and right to believe in God
as able to save, ready to forgive, waiting to bless ; that
the universal voice of nature has failed to speak all the
truth ; that a Father's heart pulsates behind the eter
nal laws ; that He has revealed Himself, in a higher
form than nature can ever approach, through a human
life which still towers above the loftiest evolution of
humanity ; that Holy Love is at the heart of the uni
verse ; that Grace will reign through righteousness unto
eternal life! But (6) more than this, the sin itself, as
well as all its natural consequences, must be expelled
from the individual and the aggregate. There must be
the new life, as well as the new relationship with God.
It is most impressive to find that John the Baptist
perceived, with an intensity which plainly amounted to
Divine inspiration, and has conferred immortal honour
on his name, the truth that Jesus was not only the Bap
tizer with the Holy Ghost, but the Lamb of God ; and

vi.] The Lamb of God. 379
that He was both, because He was the eternal Son of
the Father. He did more than perhaps any other human
being has done to create this sublime, synthetic view of
the person, work, and glory of Messiah. When the new
light flashed upon his consciousness that Jesus was the
sacrificial and vicarious sufferer who was taking away
the sin of the world, he did not shrink from his pre
vious testimony, but reiterated it. The baptism with
the Holy Ghost, the Divine Sonship, the power to
effect the one and to sustain the dignity of the other,
are not incompatible with the agonies by which He
should expiate the shame and guilt of mankind. John
saw that because He is the Son of God, and because He
can impart the spirit of holiness, therefore He is able
to fulfil the prophetic picture. The entire work of re
demption involves those grand objective facts and pre
requisites which we sum up in the word Incarnation,
and those subjective changes, that fundamental renewal
and transformation, which are involved in the work of
the Holy Spirit. John does not go back from his
superb Hebraic and prophetic ideal of a true Son of
God, of a Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, because he has
passed into a new phase of prophetic insight. On the
contrary, his deepest convictions are confirmed by the
oracle of Isaiah. Doubtless the words were pealing in
his ears, " Therefore I will divide him a portion with
the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong,
because he hath poured out his soul unto death." The
new phrase, then, connotes all that the Old Testament
connected with the Messiah. John has found a form
of words which embraces the whole idea, and he con
denses it into one burning sentence.
Thus it came to pass, therefore, on the day which

380 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
followed his first announcement of the " Lamb of
God," John was once [iraXiv ela-r^Kei] more " standing "
on some well-known spot, when two of his most sus
ceptible disciples were within call. One is Andrew,
the brother of Simon, and the other, without doubt, the
author of the Gospel. Jesus is walking [e/*/3Aei|ra9 rep
'Incrov rrepiirarovvri] in the midst of the crowd, unper-
ceived, unappreciated, unrecognized, a " root out of a
dry ground," and without the form and comeliness that
eager enthusiasts might desiderate. He is not in di
rect communication with John. He. has not assumed
the character of a Teacher or Prophet, a Nazarite or
Essene. There is a cloud of loneliness upon Him.
He has not as yet called one disciple to His tent, not
even John himself; and the Baptist, fixing his gaze on
Him, once more sums up the teaching of the previous
day, " Behold the Lamb of God." It is enough for
these two disciples. The Baptist has snapped the
bond which had united them to himself, and has
spoken the word which made these men conspicuous
for ever in the group which "follow the Lamb whither
soever he goeth."
The scene was indelibly impressed upon the sus
ceptible mind of the disciple whom Jesus loved. The
two friends had been prepared by John's preaching to
receive something higher. Convinced of sin, they longed
for deliverance from it. Having been summoned to re
pentance, they had been necessarily as dissatisfied with
their unaided efforts to repent, as with their sins. They
must have craved the spring of a higher life. John had
substituted baptism for a vast round of burdensome
ceremonies. They had been set free from a heavy
bondage, but they must have become proportionally

vi.] The Lamb of God. 381
eager for the spirit-baptism. They were yearning to
see and enter the kingdom of heaven. They believed
John when he said that it was at hand, and doubtless
they were as anxious then as at a later period to be
near and with its King. John had placed before them
a lofty idea of morality, of righteous conduct ; but
honest confession of sin throws a fierce light upon the
inner life, and reveals a depth of need and helpless
ness which makes some at least long after a higher
teaching, and the gift of a new and heavenly righteous
ness. This was not the case with all the disciples of
John. The way of Christ had been prepared in some
hearts, but many of John's hearers were content with
that purification, the need of which had formed the bur
den of his teaching. Such felt that the gospel of moral
conduct, of appropriate lustration, and eager hope, was
enough for them, and they still clung to their Master.
But these two disciples, and in all probability the
entire group introduced to us in the narrative of the
fourth Gospel, viz., Simon Peter, Philip of Bethsaida,
and Nathaniel, had all submitted themselves to the
baptismal rite. It is not improbable that Nicodemus
also had been coming to the light and seeking repen
tance, divine help, and teaching at the hands of John. In/
various ways they had each been prepared for their Lord.
Their slightly-sketched characteristics reveal in every
case the kind of impulse towards Christ that had been
quickened by the teaching of John, and moreover in
volve some elements of that self-revelation on the part
of Jesus which now began to evince itself. There is one
little touch which Renan magnifies into a circumstance
that would go far to annihilate the chronological if not
the historical trustworthiness of the narrative. Andrew

382 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
and his companion excite the attention of Jesus. He
sees them following Him, and turns towards them with
the inquiry, "What seek ye ? " They say, " Rabbi, where
dwellest thou ? " This is the minute hint which we
imagine leads Renan to say that when John and Jesus
met on the banks of the Jordan, the latter "was
already surrounded by a group of followers." There
is no proof of this. The title which they gave to Jesus
was doubtless one of technical significance, but it was
a term of courtesy peculiarly appropriate to one who
could fulfil the portraiture of the Baptist, and was com
petent to be their Master and Lord. Their instinctive
reverence was thus expressed, and nothing more. They
gave Him the name which He was not unwilling to
adopt,1 and they did so at the first glance. We are
not compelled to suppose that there was a still earlier
group of which we know nothing, who had received no
instruction from the forerunner. The special inquiry,
"Where abidest thou?" reveals the characteristic long
ing of the disciple whom Jesus loved to be near and
with his Master, to draw life from close and quiet con
verse, and from intimate fellowship with Him. Not the
laconic sentence, not the solitary word, but the long
communion, the undisturbed instruction, the fulness of
help and spiritual light, were what he craved. Andrew
was convinced that the mysterious stranger was " the
Christ," and this is the inducement that he urges on
his " own brother Simon." Simon must have revealed
himself at once to the Master, as open, impetuous, vehe
ment in his protestations. These impressions arose
easily in minds already prepared to believe in the coming
of the Christ, roused to an intensity of eager expectation,
1 Matt, xxiii, 8 ; John xiii. 15.

vi.] The Lamb of God. 383
and recently assured, by the utterance of the strong
conviction of the last of the prophets, that the Christ
Himself was in the midst of them. There was a gentle
side of the Baptist's nature which the fourth Evangelist
has exhibited, but which the Synoptists also reveal in
the exceeding humility and self-abasement to which
they frequently refer. It would seem as if his disciple
John knew the inmost soul of the great prophet, had
come into his deepest intimacy, and found there that
which moulded his desire to know after the same
fashion the Holy Lamb of God.
No further communion between John and Jesus seems
to have taken place. They were near to each other, but
not more closely related. John did not himself at once
proceed, as his disciples did, to follow Jesus. Still more
remarkable is it that our Lord did not command him to
do so, but arranged to leave the spot so sacred and so
awful to Himself, and return to Galilee. Either before,
or on the journey from the Jordan to Galilee, Jesus called
Philip to join the little group of the first disciples.
Very shortly he too is convinced that the long-expected
One of whom Moses had written and the prophets had
spoken, had indeed come to them in the obscure, almost
extinguished family of David. Philip seems to have
known the family history and parentage of Jesus as it
was commonly understood, and he is not baffled by
this untoward beginning of a grand career. The per
sonal influence of Jesus seems to have flashed convic
tion upon his mind, as it had done by a glance upon the
Baptist. The strongest argument he could use with
Nathaniel was " Corre and see." " To look is to be
lieve." He had much more to learn, and it was to this
man that Jesus said on a subsequent occasion, " Have

384 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not
known me, Philip ? " The argument on which He
dwelt was characteristic of the use which the apostles
and the early patristic writers made of the Old Testa
ment — " We have found him of whom Moses in the
law and the prophets did write " — but this reveals
strongly the purely Hebraic position in which the
disciples of John were standing. If, as Lange and
Schaff suggest, the spot where the conversation with
Nathaniel took place was near to the ford where
Jacob received the name of Israel, and wrestled with
the angel of the Lord ; near to the spot where the
tribes of Israel had crossed the Jordan and left their
memorial of deliverance, and where the first Elijah had
passed on his last journey to the skies ; it is not
remarkable that the Lord should promise to the
" Israelite indeed " further visions of the opened
heavens and the establishment of glorious communica
tions between earth and heaven. But all is yet more
comprehensible, if we assume that Nathaniel under the
fig tree had been intently pondering the teaching of the
Baptist and his latest utterances. Did he reason thus ?
" He who has his axe at the root of the trees, who, by
his judicial glance knows the fruitful from the barren
tree, who will burn up the worthless with unquenchable
fire, has come. Can it be true that the Christ, the King
of Israel, the Lord of the temple and the Baptizer with
the Holy Ghost, is in the crowd? Will the Christ
crush me or save me ? Would that I, too, might have
visions of the opened heaven ? " Is it unreasonable
or unhistorical to suppose this train of thought passing
through the mind of a disciple of John ? If not, then
we can understand the conversation that passed be-

vi.] The Lamb of God. 385
tween Nathaniel and Jesus. " Before Philip called
thee, when thou wast under the fig tree I saw thee.
Nathaniel answered and said to him, Rabbi, thou art
the Son of God ; thou art the King of Israel. Jesus
answered, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under
the fig tree, believest thou ? Thou shalt see greater
things than these. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Here
after ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God
ascending and descending upon the Son of man."
Jesus disappeared from the fords of the Jordan.
Several weeks elapsed, and events of astonishing interest
occurred. The Passover was celebrated, and further re
velations of the glory of Jesus convinced many of His
Divine mission. All Jerusalem was excited, and even to
some extent exasperated by the supreme claims of the
young Prophet of Nazareth. The Sanhedrim itself trem
bled. " We know," says one of them, " that thou art
a teacher sent from God, for no one could do the signs
which thou art showing unless God were with him."1
The crowds flocking to the feast seem to have broken up
the baptismal gatherings on the banks of the Jordan,
and the name of Jesus is on the lips of multitudes.
These events and teachings do not come into our present
discussion, and we have simply to inquire into their
bearing on the position and attitude of John. He has
not been to the feast. He has not shared in the excite
ment. True to his ascetic, Nazaritic training, he is still
saying to his countrymen, " If you would hear my mes
sage, you must come out into the wilderness to hear it."
He has indeed changed his scene of work, not however
without leaving a deep impression on the permanent
residents there, for towards the close of our Lord's
1 John iii. 2.
26

386 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
ministry He retired to this very place where John at first
baptized, out of the jurisdiction of Pilate, and away from
the excitement of the metropolis. The people of Bethany
were impressed with the contrast between John and
Jesus, as appears from their remark, "John did no
miracle, but all things that he spake of this man were
true," and it is added, " many believed on him there."
§ 3. The Bridegroom.
John had discovered, by Divine teaching and pro
phetic inspiration, the profound and unique relation of
Jesus to the Father-God. He had further perceived in
Him a relation to the whole human race; he had struck
the key-note of that glorious chorus of entreaty and con
solation which had been sounding in the world from that
day to this : " Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh
away the sin of the world." But John had yet more to
learn and more to teach. What induced him to remove
from Bethany to ffinon is not stated, but it is probable
that the excitement and enthusiasm of the people had
rendered his position insecure. Our Lord referred to
the evil things which John suffered at the hands of the
rulers of the people, and also to the fickleness of the
multitude concerning him. John may have sought to
give the Samaritans the same glorious and terrible as
surance which had already stirred the people of Judsea
and Galilee to their depths; but he must have looked
eagerly for the signs which would prove the accuracy
of his predictions and the justness of his delineations.
The first thing that must have startled him was, that
Jesus commenced His ministry by a practice similar to
his own. " He made and baptized more disciples than
John." He adopted the emblematic rite, and the mul-

vi.] The Bridegroom. 387
titudes who had become familiar with it in John's
hands, went to Jesus for the confession of their sin, and
the expression of their faith in the kingdom of God.
But there were marvellous differences between the
modes in which these two men pursued a similar
work. The entire method of Jesus differed profoundly
from that of John. He went at once to the homes of
the people, and shared in their domestic joys ; took His
place at a wedding feast, and vindicated His Divine
origin and powers by the exuberance of His bounty,
and the brilliance of His sympathy with common needs
and with innocent mirth. He who would not turn stones
into bread to save Himself from starvation, turned
water into wine to gladden human hearts, and honour '
the great institution of the family. The news of this
extraordinary event must have profoundly affected John,
and, probably upon its suggestion, he began at once to
think of the great Bridegroom of the true Israel, and
of the joy of His friendship. Such "glory" as this,
coupled with the preaching of repentance and of the
kingdom of heaven, formed a chasm between the two
prophets that could not be bridged. The story of
the miracle has been the crux of the mythicist, for it
seems impossible to discern the tendency which could
account for, or the party who would or could have in
vented, however innocently, such a mythus. John was
capable of noble self-sacrifice; though fierce and terrible,
he was also meek and self-denying, and he saw that
sympathy was " mightier " than reproach, th^fhe
ministration of the Spirit was more glorious than the
ministration of death. " He must increase," thought
John; "I must decrease." Jesus, as we have seen, had
travelled from place to place, from the Jordan to Cana,
26 *

388 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
from Cana to Capernaum, amid the busy sights and
scenes and synagogues of the lake of Galilee, and
then throwing Himself into the Passover group, had
made His way to the metropolis, surrounded by dis
ciples. There He put forth His power. He was angry
with the desecration of His Father's house. His
sympathy with innocent joy, and with scenes from
which the Essenic spirit had turned away in partial
reprobation, was not sympathy with sin. The long-
permitted profanation of the temple by traffic that
destroyed its character as the symbol of the accessible
God, as the earthly picture of the Holy Father's house,
aroused His wrath. The money-changers, the priests,
and the cattle dealers, who were growing unjustly rich
on "the sin" of the people, were summarily ejected from
the courts of the temple. The moment when the Living
Temple was about to reveal its own transcendent supe
riority to that built by Herodian gold, encrusted with
precious marbles, and distinguished by splendid and
terrible ritual, was not the moment in which the typical
sanctuary could be disfigured by lust and worldliness !
His word, His prophetic denunciation, His uplifted rod,
seemed for a moment to transform the Lamb of God
into the Lion of the tribe of Judah. The mysterious
words that followed this surprising act were not, accord
ing to his own confession, understood even by the author
of the fourth Gospel until after the resurrection of Jesus.
It was not remarkable that John should take this theo
cratic act for a grand inauguration of the new kingdom.
It seemed for a while as if his more specific predictions
of the coming One were being justified by the event. The
axe was being laid even with violence at the root of the
trees. The days were coming that would burn as an

vi.] The Bridegroom. 389
oven. John, in his most daring mood, had not bearded
the lions in their den. He had not gone into the haunts
of sin and the scenes of irreverence, and taken a
revolutionary step like this.
It was while the news of the temple - cleansing and
other conspicuous signs of the Divine commission of
Jesus were producing their effect on different classes in
Jerusalem, that the first — by no means the last — sacra
mental dispute arose. Jesus left the metropolis, and
probably proposed to return with some of the numerous
Galilean caravans to the home of His childhood.1
1 'lovdaiav yfjv is discriminated from Jerusalem, and perhaps also from the
AiVoiv iyyvg rov SaXeip where John was baptizing. SaXeip seems to have been
the better known spot. According to the Onomasticon of Jerome and the state
ments of Eusebius, CEnon lay "in octavo lapide Scythopoleos ad meridiem
juxta Salem etjordanem," and Salem " in octavo lapide a Scythopoli in campo
vicusSalanua." If Scythopolis was the old Bethshean, the two places must have
been in Samaria. With this, Jerome, Ep. ad. Evagrium, 73 ; Epiphanius, Har.
52. 2 ; Rosenmuller, in his Biblical Geography ; Winer's Real- Wort; Liicke, in
loco, agree. Thomson, Land and Book, ii. 176, takes the same view, though he
could not hear from the Arabs of any site corresponding with these names. Robin
son, iii. p. 322, found a Salem near Nablous, far from the Jordan. Hengsten
berg thinks, on the other hand, that the two places correspond rather with
Shilhim and Ain of Josh. xv. 32, the position of which appears to be on the
southern boundary of Judah's territory. fla-!! ]>V') DTlbtT, or in LXX.
2aX?j without Aw. In Vatican MS. we read 'S.eXeeip Kat "Pepptav. In Neh. x.
29, the two places are combined in En-rimmon, and Hensgtenberg thinks that
being in the desert, the expression, "there was much water — or many waters —
there," iroXXd vSara, would have special meaning. But so also would such a
statement with reference to any place at some distance from the Jordan on a
high-road from Bashan to the sea-coast, or from Galilee to Jerusalem. Wieseler
adopts the same view on the ground that Jesus is represented to have gone
ei'c Trjv 'lovScdav yrjv, and there abode. But the territory of Judaea is, as
Winer (Real- Wort, i. 34) shows, distinguished from rather than identified with
CEnon, near to Salem. See also F. R. Foy on Joshua, in Lange's Bible Comm.,
where this place is identified with a spot between Gaza and Beersheba. Dr.
Barclay (1858) reports the discovery of CEnon at Wady Farah, a. secluded
valley five miles north-east of Jerusalem (Smith's Diet. art. by Grove), but the
grounds of his identification are not satisfactory. It seems highly probable
that CEnon was in Samaria rather than Judaea, whether near Nablfis, or near
the Jordan and Bethshean, is beyond our power to settle. We have the partial
identification of name to set over against the statements of Eusebius and
Jerome. Liicke sees a difficulty in any Jews going into Samaria for the purpose
of baptism. But the very circumstance may be one of the reasons of the inquiry
of the Jew.

390 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
The two prophets were in close proximity, though it
is not said that they came into personal relations.
Jesus, with His disciples, tarried awhile, and was bap
tizing by their hands the multitudes who thronged to
Him. John was also baptizing still, and though he had
left Bethany for GJnon, was still producing a great im
pression. He was not yet imprisoned. This fact is
expressly mentioned, as though the Evangelist meant
to imply that force, and not resignation of office, at last
brought John's public ministry to a close. While two
great teachers were laying emphasis on baptismal rites,
certain Jews, who had not accepted the demand of
either the one or the other, begad to debate their re
spective claims ; and the nature of John's purifying
{KaOapicrfio'i) was the matter in dispute.
John, in the prosecution of his official work as fore
runner, was preparing in Samaria the way of the Lord.
The lessons conveyed in his baptism may, to some ex
tent, account for the ideas of the Samaritan woman and
her friends, and their readiness to receive the Messiah.
At all events, the two prophets were producing effects
that were not dissimilar in their outward appearance.
As far as Pharisees could judge, they strongly resembled
each other, and it merely appeared that the fascination
of Jesus, as tested by the ever-increasing number of His
disciples, was greater than that of John. This also was
involved in the querulous inquiry of the Jew. The
Ka6apicrfjb6<; of the two teachers began at once to excite
attention. We can read between the lines, and see that
the discussion (fijTTyo-t?) between the Jew and John's dis
ciples turned on the sufficiency or exclusive right and
virtue of John's own baptism. Might another administer
similar rites ? Could another receive the confessions of

vi.] The Bridegroom. 391
the people ? Was John's ministry to be terminated by
the appearance of the One to whom the Baptist, beyond
Jordan, had borne witness ? These were serious in
quiries, which it was perfectly reasonable to carry at
once to John. He alone was competent to solve them,
and the reply he made is not without difficulty. In
some respects it is so Unlike the ordinary manner of
John, that it has often been used as an argument
against the genuineness of the fourth Gospel. There is
prima facie force in the argument, but closer investiga
tion reveals the essentially Hebraic position still re
tained by John. As we have had occasion to remark
before, the Johannine narrative takes up the character,
speech, and office of John, just where the Synoptists
lay it down. He has undergone a great crisis in his
spiritual history. His brief intercourse with Jesus, the
demeanour, the baptism, the temptation of Jesus, have
altered his idea of the Christ. John is walking in the
blinding light of a novel thought, but he has not received
an impulse which has compelled him to relinquish his
office. He felt his work to be still a preparatory one,
and he did not rise beyond the position of the fore
runner. John did not begin to baptize into the name of
Jesus, but after his old fashion, into the coming of the
Christ;1 he proclaimed the nearness of the kingdom,
and the necessity of repentance and righteousness. In
doing this he did not provoke the antagonism of the
Pharisaic party to the extent that Jesus had done thus
early in His ministry, so that the shadow of the cross,
which was already falling on the Lamb of God, left him
1 See Acts xix., where it is obvious that the Ephesian disciples, though they
had received John's baptism, were for the first time baptized into the name of
the Lord Jesus by St. Paul.

392 The Later Ministry of , the Baptist. [lect.
still in comparative sunshine. But the first tones ofthe
outcry which would culminate on Golgotha were already
heard at Jerusalem. The multitude of Christ's adher
ents raised the first symptom of alarm. The Jew may,
indeed, have wished to enlist the enthusiastic disciples
of John against Jesus, to create an angry and jealous
feeling, which might have the effect of arresting such
dangerous and troublesome claims. Every word was
bitter, or charged with innuendo. " He that was with
thee (dependent on thee, apparently a humble disciple
of thy message) beyond Jordan (in a better baptizing
place than this, on a grand historic site, at a moment
of thy greatest influence, when even the Sanhedrim sent
to examine and endorse thy self-assertions), to whom
thou hast borne witness (thus making his position depen
dent in some respects on thy influence with the people),
behold the same baptizeth, and all men come to him." " Are
these two baptismal communions to coexist ? " " Dost
thou approve of the course taken by the new prophet? "
Doubtless this question, however it should be resolved
by the Baptist, was a momentous one. The issue of
the inquiry was a complete schism among the disciples
of John. Some were guided by the reply of the Baptist
to the higher life, to the fulness of the Master's teach
ing, to the Spirit-baptism, to the idea of a righteousness
that should exceed the righteousness of the Pharisees,
to the bearing of His cross, to the absolute trust of soul
in the power of the Christ to heal, to help, and to save;
but others remained where they were, content with bap
tismal purification, with personal amendment accord
ing to a new and simpler ritual, with the attitude of
waiting and of hope, ignorant of the gift and promise
of the Holy Ghost.

vi.] The Bridegroom. 393
Our Lord does not appear to have taken any further
step in the way of baptismal ceremonial. The fourth
Gospel does not again refer to the subject. It seems
to have been quietly dropped by the disciples of Jesus
from this time onward, until readopted after the resur
rection, and made the symbol of the baptism with the
Spirit, the pledge of union with the Christian com
munity. But the question presses, If John, according
to the fourth Gospel, recognized so much of the Divine
nature and sublime functions of Messiah, why did he
continue to prepare His way, instead of following in
His train ? Having done so much, why not complete
his work by heroically laying it down ? I answer by
another question. Is not the language of John in Matt.
iii. 14 quite as difficult to understand in the light of the
subsequent doubt of the Baptist ? Is not the clear utter
ance of the forerunner's consciousness as to the fact
of the Divine Sonship of Jesus, as gathered from the
synoptic Gospels, quite as perplexing in view of our
Lord's language, "that the least in the kingdom of
heaven was greater than he?" The bare fact of John's
continuing his baptismal office is preserved in the
fourth Gospel only, so also is the obvious implication
that the strength and enthusiasm of John's prophetic
insight did not lead him into direct fellowship or
further intimacy with Jesus, nor produce absolute self
surrender to the supreme authority of the Christ.
John's treatment of the Messianic idea, and his rela
tion to the kingdom of God, correspond with those of
the nation of Israel as a whole. Prepared for the recep
tion of Messiah by a network of natural and supernatural
influences, by specific training and national institutions,
they yet stood outside of the kingdom of God. The

394 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
temple and the ritual and the nation itself had to be
ground to powder by external means. Judaism clung
with such tenacity to its prescriptive privileges, and
so gloried in its own destiny, that it knew not the time
of its visitation. Hebraic conceptions moreover, after
wards so crept into the Church of Christ, and held
Christians themselves so spell-bound, that even they
were ready to insist upon the insensate shibboleth,
" Except ye be circumcised and keep the law of Moses,
ye cannot be saved." The inspired logic, the self-
sacrificing enthusiasm of St. Paul, and the awful doom
of Jerusalem, were the means used by God to prevent
Christianity itself from being imprisoned in the chrysalis
which had been for a while necessary to its forma
tion, and indispensable to its proffer of itself to the
world. We are still encountered by the same processes
and the same punishments, by the strange persistence
of forms of thought and of institution which have
done their work. The strong vitality residing in all the
forces which have been necessary to the development
of truth and grace, has given them a lease of energy
after they have fulfilled their course. Many things, if
they had not possessed an energy and vitality which
refused to succumb when their work was really done,
would never have done that work at all. This seems to
be a fundamental law of nature, but by no means justi
fies the imputation that this record of John the Baptist
is unhistorical, or that it is a fiction of a later time.
Perhaps, judged more truly, the apparent puzzle is so
much in harmony with the nature of the forces that
rule the development of nature and humanity, that its
unexpounded presence in the fourth Gospel is evidence
of its historical character, rather than of the contrary.

vi.] The Bridegroom. 395
As Moses himself never entered the promised land,
and, although, in the glorious fulness of his matured
manhood, only gazed from the height of Pisgah on the
scene of its future conflicts, glories, and rest, and then
died in the embrace of Jehovah, and was hidden in God
— so we have in this last utterance of the great prophet
of the desert, the record of his brightest vision, the ex
pression of his highest experience, the glance which he
cast into the great spiritual kingdom of Messiah, which
softened and subdued him, but did not bring him down
from his lofty Pisgah, nor enroll him in the army of the
second Joshua who was now commencing His strange
and wonderful work of bringing many sons unto
glory. What is it that he says ? " A man is unable to receive
anything," any office, any function, any life-work, " except
it has been given him from heaven." J Surely this is a
universal proposition, applicable alike to John himself
and to Jesus; to John's official mission, and to the course
adopted by the Messiah.2 Surely this was all along the
predestinarian view of life and duty that made John the
strong, intense man that he was, and it will help to ex
plain the infinite difficulty that he would feel in thinking
that his own particular cast and kind of work would ever
be finished. " Ye yourselves bear me witness (for you have
already referred to it, and it is the basis of your present
remonstrance) that I said I am not the Messiah, but that
(This dW on may be in reference to the discourse, or
simply involve transition to the exposition which fol-
1 sk rov oipavov = dviaSev.
2 Wettstein. " Non possum mihi arrogare et rapere quae Deus non dedit."
Lange says wrongly that Liicke refers the position to the Baptist's own ex
perience. On the contrary, Lucke agrees with Luthardt and himself in the
double reference.

396 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
lows.) / have been sent before Him (not the Messiah, but
iKeivov, viz., that one of whom you have spoken). John
so far only reiterates his former position, except that he
boldly implies : " This is the Christ, but my place is
not at His side, not waiting in His train, but breaking
up a way for Him. I am here still, making the moun
tains low and filling up the valleys for the approach of
the great King." After this he seems to have turned
in thought to the prophetic representations which
sometimes portray Jehovah, and sometimes "Jehovah's
King," as the Bridegroom of the theocratic people.1 John
may have been profoundly touched by the extraordinary
intelligence that must have reached him, how that Jesus
had manifested His glory at a wedding feast. He, the
forerunner, had come neither eating nor drinking, and
many had shrunk from his rigid abstinence : Jesus had
shown at once that His entire conception of the king
dom was to be realized in human life and society, and
not in separation from it. There was power in this
pure and holy sympathy which would captivate the
heart of the true Israel, and John, full of the Old Testa
ment poetry, thinks of the bridal of heaven and earth
in this new and wonderful mission of Messiah. But he
throws in an original thought, and one foreign to the
Old Testament illustration. It is one which our Lord
once more uses when dealing with the disciples of John
and their dispute with His own disciples. He says :
"He that hath the bride is the bridegroom, but the friend
of the bridegroom,2 who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth
1 Thus Psa. xiv. ; Isa. liv. 3 ; Hos. ii. 18, 19. The poetry of Canticles and
many passages in Ezekiel had familiarized the Jews with the image of the
Bridegroom, and of His royal espousals with the daughter of Judah.
2 Suicer, arts, irapavvptptos, tp'tXog row wptpiov, and dpxtrpiKXtvog. Schott
gen and Liicke speak of the strange duties devolving on the Schoschben.

vi.] The Bridegroom. 397
with joy, by reason of the voice of the bridegroom : this
my joy hath been made full."
The friend of the bridegroom, one who was neither
bride nor bridegroom, had in Hebrew custom an im
portant function ; he mediated between the two parties,
he prepared the way for their love, he smoothed their
difficulties, he presided as master of ceremonies over
the marriage processions and the feast ; and it is not
impossible that as John had heard that the friend of
the Cana bridegroom was the emphatic witness of the
greatness and the quality of the sign which Jesus had
given of His Divine commission, so he bethought him
that he was himself the witness of the superlative
claims and the glory of this mysterious Being who
was, in a sense in which he could never be, the bride
groom of the theocracy.1 The " standing and hearing "
may be a part of this poetic picture, not resting on
any closer resemblance than a reference to the habits
of the times. John's knowledge of the Christ, and the
revelation of the glory of His sympathetic suffering and
congenial gladness, completed his joy, and utterly satis
fied him. The stern prophet is shouting Hallelujah.
Still he is independent of the bride herself, he has official
work to do on her account and his, but he does not
merge himself in his work, nor does he either abolish or
resign his office. Then come the memorable words, "He
must increase, but I must decrease." John was capable of
this. His greatness of nature, as presented in the
synoptic narrative, has abundantly prepared us for this
sublime self-abnegation. Yet it is full of instruction to
notice that he does not speak of relinquishing his pecu
liar functions. He must pale in the glory of the risen
1 See John ii. 1-12.

398 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect.
sun, but he will not be extinguished. He must decrease,
but a "voice" he is still, and he still cries, " Repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand." He decreases, his
mission is approaching its end, but it is not ended. A
kingdom of righteousness and spiritual power and holy
love must be proclaimed, and will still need all his
might as a herald and messenger from heaven.
Commentators like Bengel, Olshausen, Tholuck, Da
Costa, and others, as well as Paulus, Strauss, Weisse,
and many who lose no opportunity of disputing the his
torical character of all the discourses of the fourth Gospel,
maintain that the closing words of John iii. 31-35 are
a comment of the Evangelist, in accordance with a re
cognized manner in which he continually glides from
the fact or word he is reciting into reflections of his
own, less in the character of the interlocutor to whom
he refers, than in that of the reverent and sympathising
friend. I am disposed to admit that there are discourses
of the Evangelist, expositions of the words of our Lord,
summaries of His teaching, which are appended to
the solemn testimonies that he recites. It does not
seem to me unreasonable to suppose that we have here
a specimen of this peculiar method of the fourth Evan
gelist. Still, every such instance of these expansions
demands careful study and comparison, and the effort
should be made to discern whether any different im
pression be conveyed by him. If we admit that the
author of the fourth Gospel wishes us to believe
that he is reporting the words of Jesus or John, when
he can be clearly seen to be constructing a supposed
speech, then the authenticity of these discourses would
not exceed that of the speeches in Thucydides or
Tacitus, and they would, to a great extent, lose their

vi.] The Bridegroom. 399
claim to convey to us the thoughts, the innermost heart
of the incarnate Logos. It seems to me that we may
recognize in the fourth Gospel summaries of longer
discourse, but not unauthorized additions to the brief
gnomonic sayings of his great teachers. With Meyer,
Lange, Liicke, and others, I am inclined to think that,
difficult as it is to suppose a testimony like this issuing
from one who subsequently sent the message from the
prison, there are peculiarities about it which can only
have proceeded from the Baptist himself. One suppo
sition seems to me to be imperative : it is that the
reporter of the discourse on this occasion was the au
ditor of the conversation with Nicodemus, and that
there was a style of utterance, a peculiarity of phrase
current among the more spiritual of the disciples of
both John and Jesus, which must be recovered if we
hope ever to solve the difficult problem.
We have seen that the Baptist was aware of the
pre-existence of Messiah, of the incarnation of God
in Jesus, of the lofty claims of this divinely- sent mes
senger, and that he knew that He who would baptize
with the Holy Ghost was greater than he. Is there
any need then to suppose an evangelistic expansion of
the thought that " he that cometh (6 dvatdev ipxofievos)
'from above is above all " ? Is not this a conclusive
answer to the question of his disciple ? And is not the
oft-repeated contrast between his own mission, origin,
and call, and that ofthe Christ, expressed here in terms
perfectly Johannine to the last? Jesus had spoken of
the need and fact of spiritual regeneration, as one of
the earthly things (rd eTrijeia) contrasted with the
heavenly things (rd hrovpdvia) , which answered to the
difficult question of Nicodemus, "How can these things

400 The Later Ministry of the Baptist. [lect
be ? " Christ did go on to speak of the heavenly things,
to show the mystery of heavenly love, the' reasons and
laws of Divine procedure. John could only testify of the
earthly forms and outward facts of the heavenly king
dom. He had not gazed on their hidden meaning, and
knew not the method in which that kingdom was to be
set up. Let us make the supposition that the language
that passed between Jesus and Nicodemus was with
other matters reported to John, and then the entire
meaning of his word flashes into light. He whose being
and origin is (e/e rfj<; 7^9) from the earth, is himself, as a
teacher and commander of men, also (e/e 7779 7^9) of the
earth, and he speaks (rd eiruyeia) the earthly things; but
He who is from above, who (eK ovpavov ip^op-evo^) cometh
from heaven, though He is still in heaven,1 is " above
all." Is not John revolving here the enigmatical words?
And in spite of the appeal, " the same baptizeth, and
all men come to him," is he not repeating the Master's
tragic confession, and confirming his solemn state
ment, " that which he hath seen and heard, that or this
alone (rovro) he testifieth. And no one (i. e., no one
in comparison of his claims) receiveth his testimony ? 2
But John has to justify the course taken by many of
his own disciples, and to modify the sweeping, hyper
bolical assertion, "no one receiveth his testimony."
He refers to exceptions, he knows that some were
deeply entering into the fellowship of the One mightier
than he. They, according to John, were finding out
that God was true to His own promise. Surely the
thirty-fourth verse (whoever wrote it down for us)
refers to Christ, not to the Baptist. It is a vindication
of the previous statement. The words (prjpara) of God
' See John iii. 13. = Compare John iii. 11.

vi.] The Bridegroom. 401
were uttered by Him to whom boundless measures of
the Spirit were given, and hence to receive His testi
mony is to see the Father's heart, to read His thought,
to discern His faithfulness, to set a seal to the fact
that God is true. The use of the word (irarrjp)
Father, the reference to the love of the Father, to the
power of faith, to the abiding of wrath upon the dis
obedient, and the enjoyment and realization of the
eternal life in faith, are in advance of John's general
position ; but they may be accounted for on the suppo
sition that the auditor in the chamber where Nicodemus
learned of Jesus had repeated the substance of that
discourse to the great forerunner, and that this is his
comment upon it. It seems to me we are driven either
to this supposition or to the hypothesis that these
closing words are the narrator's supplement to the
discourse of John.
But John has learned and has declared the sublime
conception involved in the living, loving intimacy that
should prevail between the eternal Son of God and
those who should surrender themselves to His love.
The Fatherhood of God, the vision of the Lamb, the
bridal of the Church : these were the themes on which
he dilated at last, but he did not withdraw the summons
to repentance, nor cease to believe in the curse which
was hanging over pride, sensuality, and selfishness. Is
it from the blending of these strange and solemn words
that his own most susceptible disciple, and he whom
Jesus loved, should, like his first master, have spoken
of "the Bride" and " the Wrath of the Lamb" ?

27

LECTURE VII.
THE MINISTRY OF THE PRISON.

27

LECTURE VII.
the ministry of the prison.
WE have seen John's ministry exposed to sundry
checks, and have obtained certain hints of the
existence of organized and malicious opposition. For
some unstated reason, the crowded baptismal scenes on
the borders of Jordan were brought to an abrupt conclu
sion. When John retired into Persea, and there came
into contact with the Christ, and passed through a moral
and spiritual change of amazing influence on his subse
quent career, he was pursued by official, pragmatic in
terrogatories on the part of those who had no belief in
his claims, and who apprehended very imperfectly the
mission that he had undertaken to fulfil. The division
among his followers consequent on his emphatic testimo
nies to Jesus, or some other unrecorded event, induced
him to come directly into the very heart of Samaria,
and there to continue his baptism of repentance and his
testimonies to One mightier than himself. Here he must
have exposed himself to the observation of the court of
Herod, which would hold itself responsible for a breach
of the peace. The prophet who had not shrunk from
exposing the special vices of the extortionate publicans,
and the secret insincerities of the Pharisees and scribes,
a man whose whole life was a witness to the sanctities

406 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
of the law of God, who had retired into the wilderness
that he might pursue the dream of a lofty Levitical
and ascetic purity, could not be silent when he saw
the shameless lust of the Herodian house, and the
specific violation of the law of nature and of God in
the person of the tetrarch. By the Levirate law,1 it
was the duty of a man to marry the widow of his brother
if she was childless, but in the case of the existence
of offspring, the practice not only revolted the natural
sense, but violated the legal requirement.2 Herod
Antipas had not the excuse of the Levirate law for
marrying or proposing to marry his brother Philip's
wife. That brother was still living,3 though in ob
scurity.4 Herodias had already married her uncle, and
was now proposing to exchange one blood relation
for another. Further, she was the mother of Salome,
whose existence not only obviated the incidence of the
Levirate law, but brought the act under the ban of the
distinct enactment of the Mosaic code,5 made the Le-
1 Levirate, from levir, Latin for husband's brother, a word which corresponds
with the Hebrew word E3^ a brother-in-law. The latter gives its name to
the treatise in the Mishnah called Jebamoth, which is mainly concerned with
the various regulations for enforcing the Levirate law. See Deut. xxv. 5-10,
where the law and its modification occurs ; art. " Marriage" in Kitto's Cycl.,
by Dr. Ginsberg ; and art. ' ' Marriage, " in Smith's Diet. Bible ; also art.
" Leviratsehe " in Herzog's Ency. Cf. Gen. xxxviii.; Ruth iii. 1, ff.; iv. 1, ff.
From Matt. xxii. 24 and parallel passages, it is clear that the law was in
force at the time of our Lord. In some form the same law has been found in
operation among the Moabites (Ruth i. 11-13), the Hindus, the Persians (Zen-
davesta, iii. 226, quoted by Leyrer in Henog's Ency. ), and even by some Arabian
tribes to the present day. Among Oriental nations the idea of preserving the
name of a family will lead to great sacrifices. 2 Lev. xviii. 16 ; xx. 21.
3 We learn this from Josephus, Antiq. xviii. 5. 4 (Siatrrcio-a Jwvroc).
* See ante, pp. 49-54, for the confusion between this PhiUp and Philip the
tetrarch of Ituraea, and Appendix A.
s Lev. xviii. 16 ; xx. 21. Kalisch, in loco, urges the impossibility of the
two laws being coexistent, and thinks that the Levitical legislation, being post-
exile, ignored the ethnic Levirate. This, however, is completely refuted hy the
Gospels, and by the later prevalence of the practice and its restrictions.

vii.] The Ministry of the Prison. 407
vitical law prevail, and stigmatized as incest what might
on the death of Philip have been at least condoned.
Further, in order to accomplish his object, Herod had
to divorce the daughter of Aretas.
Josephus mentions the irregularities of Herod Antipas,
and his passion for his brother's wife, and alludes, as we
have seen, to the divorce of the daughter of the Arabian
Emir, and to the way in which this event led to the ulti
mate ruin of Herod. He also refers to the circumstance
that Herod imprisoned John at the castle of Machaerus,
and put him to death. He does not, however, connect
the brave rebuke administered by the Baptist with his
imprisonment or death, but assigns political reasons for
the step. " When many," says he, "had rallied round
John, for they were greatly excited at his words, Herod,
fearing lest his great influence over them might lead to
a rebellion or revolt, for they seemed to act in all things
according to his advice, thought it better, before any
revolutionary movement had occurred, to seize and put
him to death, rather than fall into trouble and repent
when the change had occurred ; and he (John) was sent
bound to Machaerus, and there put to death." This is
not incompatible with the synoptic narrative. If the
profligate prince were anxious to keep his subjects from
any outbreak of fanatical morality, and if John had
bearded him to his face with the cry, " It is not lawful
for thee to have thy brother's wife," he may have
shrewdly conjectured that John had not confined to
royal ears alone his denunciation of a gross act of
adultery committed in high places. The political ne
cessity was the ostensible cause of the act ; the malice
of Herodias, kindled by the conjectural effect of an out
break of popular violence, wrought upon the weak nature

408 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
of Herod, and provided the true motive for the impri
sonment and martyrdom of the last of the prophets.
Matthew1 expressly tells us that Herod wished to put
John to death, but was restrained by the reverence of
the people. Mark* penetrates more deeply into the
secret, by showing that the source of Herod's apparent
wish was the hatred of Herodias, rendered impotent
for a while by Herod's high esteem for John's cha
racter. " He knew him to be a just and holy man,"
so, though he kept him in guard, " he heard him, did
many things, and (even) heard him gladly." Herod's
composite nature is revealed in the threefold narra
tive. His superstitious fears combated for a while his
ambition. His dislike of his censor was checked by his
involuntary admiration. His irresolution was goaded
by the bitter resentment of Herodias. As long as
John, summoned from his dungeon to the presence of
the tetrarch, could persuade Herod to do many things,
or as long as the hated influence of the Baptist was
admitted, Herodias knew that her crown, and perhaps
her life was at stake. She imagined that, in a fit of
ungovernable repentance, the tetrarch might dismiss
her to her deserved shame, and shatter all her am
bitious schemes. Josephus is silent on these more
hidden features of the tragedy, but contents himself
with giving the political reasons for the detention of
John in the castle of Machaerus.3 In a previous chapter
he had mentioned Machaerus as the fortress to which
the divorced wife of Herod had requested to be sent, as
soon as she had discovered the infidelity of her husband.
" Herod sent her thither, as thinking that his wife had
not perceived anything. Now she had sent a good while
1 Matt. xiv. 5. - Mark vi. 17-20. i Antiq. xviii. 3. *.

vii.] The Ministry of the Prison. 409
before to Machaerus, which was subject to her father, and
so all things necessary for her journey were made ready
for her by the generals of Aretas' army, and by that
means she soon came into Arabia." The statement by
Josephus, that John was imprisoned and executed in
Machaerus, is sufficient proof that he regarded the occu
pation of the fortress by Aretas as a very temporary
arrangement.1 The fortress rendered thus memorable was built by
Alexander Janna?us and demolished by Gabinius when
he made war on Aristobulus.2 Subsequently the site
belonged to Herod the Great, who adorned it, and gave
it the character of a palace as well as a stronghold.
"What was walled in," says Josephus,3 "was itself
a very lofty crag. This simple fact made it very hard
to be subdued. It was so contrived by nature that it
could not be easily ascended, for it is surrounded on all
sides by deep ravines, which could not be crossed or
filled up with earth. The ravine which falls off from
the west extends sixty furlongs to the Asphaltic Lake.
On this same side Machaerus crowned the highest
peak. 4 But then for the valleys that lay on the north
and south sides, although they be not so large as the
1 Lardner, Jewish Testimonies, u. iv. ; Works, vol. vii. p. 116. For the dif
ferent explanations of the transfer of the fortress, see1 Wieseler, Chron. Syn.,
and Greswell, Dissertation ix.
2 Antiq. xiv. 5. 4. The proximity to Hyrcania and Alexandrium are twice
referred to. In B. J. i. 8. 2 and 6, the circumstances ot the demolition of the
fortress are detailed more fully. Strabo, lib. xvi., mentions Machaerus among
the fortresses on the east side of Jordan, not far from Jericho. Pliny, v. 16, calls
it the second fortress of the Jews next after Jerusalem.
*B. J. vii. 6. i.
4 Dr. Tristram, The Land ofMoal ; Travels and Discoveries on the East Side
ofthe Jordan and the Dead Sea, 1873, says that Josephus, in describing the
extreme abruptness and depth of the ravine, was probably speaking of the pre
cipitous cliffs of the parallel Wady Z'gara, but that he is correct in saying
that the valleys north and south were strategically impassable.

410 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
western ravine, it is equally impracticable to cross
them, while the depth of that on the eastern side could
not be less than one hundred cubits." The wall is fur
ther represented as enclosing a city as well as a battle
ment, out of which there was a way that led up to the
citadel on the top of the crag. More than this, a
second internal wall surrounded the brow of the hill,
and lofty towers surmounted the corners of the fortress.
In the centre of the doubly-defended citadel a magni
ficent Herodian palace was erected, and other richly
adorned edifices. There were reservoirs of water pro
viding ample supplies, hot and cold springs and medi
cinal wells, which conferred some special attraction on
the rocky fastness. Recent explorers tell us that a
magnificent view rewards the climb to the site of this
Herodian palace. The whole extent of the Dead Sea,
Jerusalem, Hebron, and the whole of the valley of the
Jordan, can be seen from this eagle's eyrie. John, if
permitted to walk on the ramparts, could take in al
most at a glance the scenes of his recent ministry.
The account given by Josephus of the siege of
Machaerus, under the Roman general Bassus, reveals
the fact that there was access to the lower portion
of the walled enclosure, and that by a Roman road,
remnants of which have now been brought to light.
Along the savage ravines of these Moabite hills the
prophet must have been led as a prisoner. He must
have entered the lower city, and passed the inner
wall, and was probably immured in some portion of
the citadel. Dr. Tristram thinks he has found the
dungeon where it is not improbable that John met
his fate. Here he was not altogether shut out from
the society of his friends and disciples ; he heard

vii.] The Ministry of the Prison. 411
reports, he sent messages, and received answers from
the outside world.1
1 The following description of M'Kaur from a MS. of Seetzen, Zwcite Reise
zum Todten Meere, is quoted by Carl Ritter, Comparative Geography of Pales
tine, part i. chap. v. vol. iii. (Clark's translation) p. 65, and accurately corre
sponds with the account of Josephus. The journey of Seetzen was made in Jan.
1806. Ritter says "he inquired carefully of his Arab guides if they knew the
location of Machaerus, a place mentioned by Josephus. They spoke, in reply, of
several ruins in the neighbourhood, giving their names, among which he noticed
that of M'Kaur, which he at once conjectured to be the one he sought. Further
inquiry confirmed his suspicion. The ruins are important. They have but a
single approach leading over a bridge. He had the year before suspected that
the ancient Machaerus lay where he now found it to be, but had been unable to
confirm his conjecture. The ruins lie on the highest peak of a long ridge, the
lower extremity of which towers above the deep rocky valley of Serka Maein.
Large hewn stones are still to be seen. The mountain was inaccessible on three
sides. It is not at all improbable that the place is the same square seen by Irby
and Mangles while on their way from Maein, but which it was beyond their
power to reach. In descending westward from M'Kaur, Seetzen encountered a
large tract of lava, red, brown, and black in colour, but very porous and light.
Still farther down he saw black masses of basalt, resting on a foundation of
limestone, visible only in the bed of the stream which ran through the valley.
From this place Seetzen went an hour farther along the southern side of the
mountain, to spend the night at a little village of the Beni Hameide, a tribe
which gave him a hospitable reception." This description by Seetzen appears
to have been overlooked by Canon Tristram in his recent work, who describes
at full length the interesting researches made by himself and partyin 1872. These
also confirm the description of Josephus. Dr. Tristram approached it from the
river Callirrhoe, travelling due south, and crossing the Wady Z'gara, with its stu
pendous ravine, having precipitous cliffs eight hundred feet high on one side.and
which runs down by a series of steps three thousand eight hundred feet to the
Dead Sea. In approaching the next valley the party struck the remains of the
old Roman road which connected the town and fortress of Machaerus with Cal
lirrhoe, and with the great road which started from Petra, and passing through
Kerak, Areopolis, Aroer, Heshbon, went northward to Damascus. The branch
road led our travellers to the ruins of the town of Machaerus, which, without any
very striking feature, "cover, in solid mass, more than a square mile of ground."
One very curious discovery was made by Canon Tristram, that there was a small
temple of the sun erected in the city, showing that, "up to a period not far re
moved from its destruction, fanatic as may have been its Jewish population,
there must have been a large population, either Greek or Syrian, who enjoyed
full Uberty to practise the rites of the sun-god worship. " The town itself, as we
leam from Josephus, was not strategically defensible, but was dominated by the
fortress, separated from the town " by a narrow and deep valley not quite a
mile across." The citadel and the fortress were at two extremities of a long
narrow ridge, nearly a mile in length from west to east. The citadel was on
the highest point of the ridge, and was compactly built, being about one hundred
yards in diameter. The travellers seem clearly to have discovered the dungeons
of this citadel, and to have been able to discriminate them from cisterns.
Under the protection of the citadel was the fortified city, stretching westward

412 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
The imprisonment of John at this critical moment in
the history of the kingdom of God is an event strangely
dissonant with what we should beforehand have sup
posed to be the law of its evolution. But the kingdom
of which he was the herald was the kingdom of self-sa
crifice and mysterious suffering. He prepared uncon
sciously the way of the Crucified. He believed himself
to be weaving a crown, but it was a crown of thorns.
The sudden termination of his ministry arrested any
further divergence between John and Jesus with respect
to the nature of the kingdom, and had a wonderful
effect upon the majority of John's disciples. It was,
moreover, the occasion of our Lord's return to Galilee.
The two events are brought more or less together, by
both the fourth Gospel and the synoptic narrative,
whether we take the earlier or later date of the im
prisonment.1 Our Lord did not escape or avoid the
hostility of the secular power by advancing into the
territories of the tetrarch, and proclaiming everywhere
the kingdom of heaven. From the very first the shadow
of the cross fell upon Him, and at the beginning of His
ministry, both in Judaea and Galilee, He encountered
malice and rejection and murderous designs.
The ministry of John was not, however, brought to
a full end. The company of his disciples was not dis
banded. The Baptist had not lost his prophetic prestige
by being shut up in prison. Many of his disciples held
aloof from the disciples of Jesus, and the claims of the
two teachers were brought into open rivalry. Hints of
by a steep slope to the square tower or fortress which frowned over the ravine.
Along this ridge are the debris of the Herodian palace, and from the spot could
be obtained a magnificent view of the Dead Sea, of the line of the Jordan, of
Jerusalem, Hebron, Neby Samwil, Gilead, of the companion fortress of Mas-
sada on the opposite side of the sea, of the cliffs of Engedi, and the oasis of
Jericho. See Land ofMoab, pp. 253-265. I See Appendix A

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 413
these instructive rivalries, which we are not at liberty
to pass over, arise in the synoptic narrative. The new
wine ofthe kingdom was bursting some of the forms or
"old bottles" into which even our Lord's disciples were
anxious to pour it. The marriage at Cana and the
feast at the house of Levi were stumbling-blocks to the
disciples of John and the Pharisees. Pharisees would,
and did, find much less to object to, in the Johannine
counsels of perfection and ritual observances, than in
the new and Divine life of the Spirit which Jesus
boldly preached. John's personal character and habit
was a recommendation of the ascetic repression of
human nature. It would seem that his disciples con
sidered it as an injunction to fasting, and were making
themselves conspicuous by the practice.
And now they were pushed forward by the Pharisaic
party to make the antagonism more telling. The in
tended effect of John's final testimony had failed.1 The
jealousy which he had so nobly rebuked had broken
forth in his absence, and was augmented by a practical
grievance. There were certain points of habitual de
meanour and conduct in which the Pharisaic cultus
and the Johannine asceticism coincided, and which
might be used against our Lord. Christ is asked to
explain why the disciples of the Pharisees and of John
fast frequently," and His own disciples "fast not," or
(Luke), "eat and drink." The addition of the word
" prayer " by Luke should be compared with another
circumstance mentioned only by him.3 Christ's dis
ciples, after watching Him at prayer in a certain place,
1 Keim (l.c. ii. Bd. 365), by conceding a Pauline origin for this discussion,
loses half its meaning. See Matt. ix. 14 ; Mark ii. 18.
2 "And make many prayers," Luke v. 33. 3 Ibid. xi. 1-3.

414 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
came when He had ceased, with the request, " Master,
teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."
Hence the disciples of John and Jesus were practically
discrepant in their habits during a considerable portion
of our Lord's ministry. These elements of the Divine
life, on which the disciples of John and the Pharisees
laid so much emphasis, viz., fasting and prayers,
were two of the instances which our Lord chose in
His Sermon on the Mount,1 in order to illustrate
His tremendous utterance, " Except your righteous
ness exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pha
risees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of
heaven." This combination of facts intimates a close practical
agreement of the disciples of John with the Pharisaic
party, and shows how striking was the contrast between
them both, and the true subjects of the kingdom of
God. Nevertheless, our Lord, possibly in consideration
of the fact that the question was brought forward for
His solution by the disciples of John, made an obvious
reference to the words of the Baptist, as they are re
ported in the fourth Gospel. It is one of the unde
signed coincidences which tend to prove that the
synoptic narrative and that of the fourth Gospel are
dealing with the same circle of facts and experiences.
John had reproved his disciples for their eagerness and
jealousy, by saying, " He that hath the bride is the
Bridegroom." The position he claimed was that of
" the friend of the Bridegroom," the medium by whom
the two were brought into loving nuptial fellowship.
Then John recognized in Jesus the guest at a wedding
feast, one who was thus pouring a new wine into new
1 Matt. vi. 1-18.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 415
bottles, transforming water into wine, augmenting and
enhancing, not trampling upon the joys of human life ;
purifying, not extinguishing human passions and earthly
joy. But he did more than this. He hailed Him as
the Bridegroom of the true Israel. Many prophetic
voices were thus approaching their fulfilment, and our
Lord does not hesitate to adopt this illustration of the
relation between Himself and humanity.1
But, with infinite tenderness and delicacy, Jesus
builds His own doctrine of fasting on the peculiar con
dition of the disciples of John at that moment, and
makes some gentle excuse for the moroseness, mourn
ing, and fasting with which they were greeting the
daybreak of the world's jubilee. Their master had
been taken from them, a sad prelibation of the deeper
agony which His own true disciples would experi
ence when the Bridegroom should be taken from the
children of the bridechamber. They could not be made
to fast while He was with them. But a time will
soon come, and may often return in the experi
ence of the true Israel, when the Bridegroom of the
Church will be taken from her sight : then there will
be mourning and fasting enough. Then they may for
get to eat their bread. Then the demands of the soul
will become more clamorous than appetite, and there
will be much inward fasting, " fasting in secret," and
" unto the Father." " They will fast in those days."
Christ's teaching repudiates fasting as a means of pro
fession, and most doubtfully admits it as a means of
grace. In all cases it is something which is to be real
and not hypocritical, the genuine expression before God,
' Matt. xxii. 1-13 ; xxv. 1-13. Compare also the language of St. Paul, Eph.
v. 24-32 ; 2 Cor. xi. 2 ; and the imagery of Rev. xix.

416 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
not before man, of the unseen and mighty movements of
the Divine life. It is not to be a badge of discipleship,
nor the rule of a society, nor the law of a Church.
Fellow-man is to know nothing of it, neither as priest
nor as confessor. It is a matter between the soul and
God, and there will be many seasons when fasting,
in this aspect, will not only be seasonable and wise,
but imperatively demanded. The disciples of John
are warned against mending the old garment of Juda
ism with a new patch of unmilled cloth. It would be
worse still to take for the purpose some fragment
torn from another garment. In other words, they are
unwise who endeavour to foist in a newly - devised
ceremonial that will not assimilate with the venerable
robe of Judaism, or who attempt a reconstruction
of the outer garments of religious ritual with frag
ments of Essenic pride or Oriental philosophy. Christ
refused to put the new wine of His kingdom into old
skins. He poured it into new ones, into the hearts of
men, not into a prescribed ceremonial. From the new
life, all that is necessary in the way of abstinence or
prayer will undoubtedly and spontaneously grow. The
Lord here enunciated the principle of all true fasting,
one which is immeasurably superior to any code of law.
Fasting, enjoined for fasting's sake, will choke the prin
ciple by which it ought to be regulated. The Johannine
regimen had never approached the grandeur of this
" law-making power." Essenism, Buddhism, Pharisaism,
fell short of this. Strange to say, it has taken ages to
establish this law of the kingdom, even in the Church
of Christ. The Johannine custom has for a while tri
umphed over Christianity. Christ foresaw, and even
prophesied this in words which Luke alone has pre-

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 417
served : ' "No one having drunk old wine [straightway]
desireth new, for he saith, The old is better." This is
the reception ever given to new ideas, to revolutionary
principles, either in criticism or observance, classifica
tion or nomenclature. The world and the Church
alike exclaim, " The old is better." Christ, with His
wondrous patience and condescension to human weak
ness, admits the difficulty that His doctrine of fasting
and Sabbatic observance, and His doctrine concern
ing devout habits and professions, will meet with.
Even the Divine life, as well as the old law, is " weak
through the flesh." The many prayers (Berjo-ei<;) of
John's disciples doubtless corresponded with the "many
prayers" of the Pharisees, and the liturgical forms
of the Essenes, " the vain repetitions " against which
the Lord protested, and the hypocritical and ostenta
tious religiousness which loved to offer prayer in pub
lic places, for the sake of the reputation for sanctity
which it achieved. Withering scorn on the practice
fell from our Lord's lips, and prayer, like fasting, is
declared by Him to be a matter between God and
the soul of man. The Eye that seeth in secret, the
Father who knows all our need before we ask, who
is more willing than an earthly father to bestow His
richest gifts, is the sole necessary witness of our
prayer. " Alone with God " is the motto of the Chris
tian disciple. The Lord, on both the occasions when
He was asked for guidance in the matter of prayer,
gave substantially the same simple, comprehensive
enumeration of all human need. This is not the place
to comment upon it. Far from believing " the Lord's
1 Luke v. 39. The tvOeug is rejected by Tregelles and Tischendorf, although
it is to be found in many uncials and in the Vulgate, a, b, c.
28

418 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
Prayer" to be a Pharisaic, Rabbinic, or Essenic prayer,
which may have been common to our Lord and to John,
and which was recited at their command by the disci
ples of both, we rather see reason to believe that it was
in its fulness the original thought of the Divine Master.
It is yet to be proved that more than a few isolated
petitions — found in the latest Jewish literature — can
be traced to any earlier source than the Gospels. The
divinity of " the Lord's prayer" does not consist in the
details, but in the Lord's choice of them, and in their
marvellous comprehensiveness. The freedom with
which Christ Himself varied its form, and condemned
the "vain repetition" of any prayer, ought to have
rescued it from the " battology " to which it has been
degraded. No hint is given us of the " prayer" which
John taught his disciples ; but it becomes almost cer
tain that they made themselves conspicuous by their
profession of devoutness, and their frequent iteration of
some liturgical forms.
There is one event which casts a ray of burning light
into the dungeon of Machaerus. The revelation it sup
plies is of prime importance in estimating the relation
of John to the kingdom of God.1
Doubtless grave difficulty is encountered when we
endeavour to blend the literal truth of the tradition
1 In the earliest times the great ecclesiastical writers differed in their estimate
of the significance of the message from the prison. Tertullian [adv. Marc. iv.
18, A.-N. L. vol. iv. p. 246] accounts for it by the departure from John of the
prophetic gift of the Holy Spirit. Origen, Horn, xxviii. on Luke vii. ; Chrys.
Horn. Matt. xi. ; Augustine, Sermo de verbo, take a different view. Maldonatus,
Matt, xi., eagerly maintains the position that John simply sought on behalf of
disbelieving disciples the confirmation which the words of Jesus alone could
give. This view has been recently sustained with great eloquence by Stier,
Words ofthe Lord Jesus, vol. ii. pp. 59-130. Stratiss ascribed unusual credi
bility to the synoptic narrative of the message, making it to be the one genuine
indication of the relation of John to Jesus. See Keim, 1. c. ii. 353.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 419
as preserved by the synoptic narrative with the historic
character of the closing testimonies of John to Jesus as
preserved by the fourth Evangelist. If John the Bap
tist had recognised in our Lord the Eternal Son of God,
the Divine Lamb, and the Heavenly Bridegroom, is it
possible to believe that he could, within a few months,
question whether Jesus was the Christ; and that he
should, with a simple desire for information, have
asked, " Art thou he that should come, or look we
for another ? "
The difficulty is in some respects augmented by the
circumstance that the language of Christ in reply to this
extraordinary request does not justify our supposing
that John had changed his judgment, or even wavered
in his convictions. Jesus on this occasion claimed for
him the dignity of a Hebrew prophet, and even more
than this, a lofty official position, that of being His
forerunner, the Elijah who fulfilled in his own person
the predictions of the ancient seers. These and other
words of still stronger approbation fell from the lips of
Jesus, revealing no sense of disappointment or chagrin.
We are bound, therefore, to presume that they were in
harmony with the knowledge of the position that had
been taken by John up to the time of his imprisonment.
It has been said that incarceration in Machasrus had
soured his temper or broken his spirit, that he expected,
at the hands of Jesus, a miraculous deliverance from
his persecutors, and that his confidence in the reality
of the mission of Jesus wavered when the gloomy
days rolled by without a rescue.. But this supposition
is incompatible with all that we have seen of the moral
fibre of the Baptist. While we must admit that Elijah
succumbed for a moment before the furious animosity
28*

420 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
of Jezebel, yet prisons and prophets are far from being
strangers to each other. The spirit of a martyr, the
self-repression of an ascetic, the dogged obstinacy of a
Nazarite, and a Hebrew prophet's sublime careless
ness of reputation or personal comfort, were not likely
to be utterly sapped by the air of a dungeon, in which,
as we incidentally find, John was not even debarred
from the society of his disciples.
Other explanations of John's inquiry have turned on
the parallel it affords with the spiritual doubts of Chris
tian believers, with the gloomy clouds which darken
the experience of the children of light, with the hiding
of the Father's face from those that have been walking
in love, with the terrible temptations of God's saints.
But the denial of Peter, the flesh-thorn of Paul, the
recantations at the stake, and the fierce conflicts un
dergone by such men of God as Augustine and Bene
dict, Luther and Cranmer, Fox and Bunyan, will not
help us to unriddle the mystery ; for no word of reproof,
but rather a calm summary of the entire Johannine
position, forms the substance of our Lord's reply to
the question.
We are compelled to ask whether the Johannine tes
timonies, including those recorded in. the fourth Gospel,
do without doubt recognize in Jesus the final and com
pleted manifestation of all that John had himself pre
dicted. John was a prophet, looking on the present
and the future with prophetic eyes. He therefore
blended in one dazzling but perspectiveless picture,
the whole of the hope of his people — the kingdom,
the righteousness, the wrath, the Mighty One, the
Baptizer with the Holy Ghost, the Son of God, the
Lamb of God, the Bridegroom of the true Israel. But

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 421
with all this, we gather even from the fourth Gospel that
John retained his independent position. Months of
profound interest to the establishment of the king
dom elapsed, and John made no sign. His ideas were
vivid and his enthusiasm boundless. He prepared
others to recognize the high functions of Jesus. He
pointed them to Him, but did not enrol himself among
His adherents. It must be admitted that the full de
tails of the picture drawn by John were but partially 1
realized by the Lord Jesus, and John's idea of the
Christ was to some extent revolutionized, or blended |
with new elements, which had only partially coalesced
with it. The composite notion of Messiah given by
the prophets had suggested to Jewish writers a double
Christ, and His anticipated personality had been often
vague and featureless. Until the death, resurrection,
and ascension of Jesus had taken place, until the de
scent of the Spirit as His personal gift, until in fact He
came again on Pentecost, and baptized with fire, until
He came and smote the land with the curse, subjected
Israel, its nation and its temple, to a new and more
rigorous test, and erected the spiritual temple of His
body on the ruins of the system which prepared the
possibility of His appearance ; until all this was real
ized, John's prophecies were not completely fulfilled.
He may, nay, he must have had ideas of the Coming
One which Jesus had as yet not realized. There is
nothing therefore unworthy of John's character, no
thing incompatible with John's testimonies, in the sup
position that he did not see the whole of his ideal
embodied in the ministry of Jesus.
We are too apt to put together our ideas of a
coming Messiah, and to suppose them in their in-

422 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
ception to have been more sharply definite, indi
vidualized, centralized, and personal than they really
were. The Messianic idea was obviously as complex
in John's day as the millennial idea is at this moment.
It was made up of many parts and manifestations, of
political and ecclesiastical elements, of physical and
spiritual transformations, of angelic and Divine reve
lations. John may have been perfectly, prophetically
convinced that Jesus was the commencement of the
sublime series of changes, and may have been eager to
see Him accomplish the whole process of which he
had spoken ; and yet he may have been in doubt
whether Jesus was or was not the completion of the
series, whether or no there was a manifestation of
another kind [erepov <jrpo<;BoKa)p,ev] ,x which would com
plete the Messianic hope. If so, the inquiry was justi
fiable and reasonable. The Church, the kingdom, as it
then existed, did rightfully expect more at the hands of
its King. A wondrous succession of events practically
answered John's question. Our Lord's reply to the
two disciples a was an admission that the full evidence
of His being the Coming One awaited the unfolding of
Providence. Our Lord was reticent (save on one or two
1 Dean Milman went a step too far when he wrote : " It is assumed without
warrant that John himself must have had a distinct or definite notion of the
Messiahship of Jesus ; he may have applied some of the prophetic or popular
sayings supposed to have reference to the Messiah, without any precise notion
of their meaning ; and his conception of the Messiah's character, and of Jesus
Himself, may have varied during different passages of his own life." I think,
however, he is right when he says, " If the whole had been more distinct and
systematic it would be more liable to suspicion,." Milman, Hist, qf Christianity,
vol. i. p. 142.
2 Whether Std or Svo be the true reading, we cannot save the consistency of
John at the expense of his straightforwardness, by throwing the doubt upon
the head of his disciples. If Std be the reading it is decisive, and our Lord's
words, ' ' Go and tell John, '' show that He took the inquiry and treated it as
proceeding from John, th§ Baptis.t himself. TregeUes and Tischendorf (8th ed. )
re^d $(cf in. Matt. xi. a.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 423
remarkable occasions) with regard to His Messianic
claims. He aimed at purifying the entire conception
from its political concomitants. He did not reject the
title of " Son of David," but He refused the political
leadership which His excited followers would have
thrust upon Him, and allowed that the supreme evi
dences of His loftiest functions lay still in the future.
"What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend to
where he was before ?" " I, if I be lifted up, will draw
all men to me." "Except ye eat my flesh and drink my
blood, ye have no life in you." In answer to the high
priest, He admitted that He was the Christ, but He
added, " Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man seated
on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of
heaven." These were elements of the "Coming One"
which were clearly a part of that type of Messiah
which entered into John's predictions, and he was
specially tempted or moved to ask, " Art Thou the
Coming One, or must we expect another of a different
kind from Thyself, to fulfil the large hope that is throb
bing in the heart of Israel ? "
John heard in the prison the works of Christ. It is
singular that the word "Christ" is used here absolutely
of our Lord. The rarity of this usage by the Evan
gelists suggests that the healing powers of Jesus had
been detailed to John as proof of His Messiahship. The
reply of our Lord is a repetition of the kind of evidence
already referred to, and then He added: "Go and show
John again the things which ye do hear and see : the
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up,
and the poor have the gospel preached unto them; and
blessed is he whosoever is not offended in Me." He

424 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
does not even now say, "I am the Coming One." He
suggests, however, that the social and moral breadth
of the kingdom, as conceived of and as developing itself
around Him, and that the Divine forces being wielded
by Him for the deliverance of the diseased and even
raising of the dead, ought to satisfy John that his
visions are all in the course of accomplishment.
John personally needed this teaching and this assur
ance as a complement to that which he acquired from
his own penetrative glances. There is no reason to
deny, with Keim, the literal truth of the appeal to the
miraculous healings ; but in effect the Lord did say, '
" Tell John that I am revealing my power to take away
the sins of the world, to bear the sicknesses and infir
mities of mankind, that I am baptizing with the Holy
Ghost, that I possess a spiritual might which can
face all the power of the enemy, can cast out the
devil, cleanse the moral leper, make glad the broken
heart, proclaim good tidings to the poor, and that I am
treating the whole house of Israel as my bride, on
whom I lavish all my love." The answer of Jesus is
undoubtedly more adapted to realize John's idea of
Messiah as it is exhibited in the fourth Gospel, than
to fulfil the conception of One whose wrath would flame
out against sin, and burn up the worthless with un
quenchable fire.
It is possible that the closing words of the message
of the Lord Jesus to the Baptist imply that some
offence had been taken by John at the continued re
ticence and quiet demeanour of our Lord. "Blessed
is he whosoever is not offended in me." Does John
fail to secure this blessedness ? Does he abide so
obstinately in the dazzling light of his own prophetic

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 425
intuitions, that he cannot blend them into one per
sonality, and is he still abroad in his identification
of the entire Christ ? It has been suggested that
John, took a position similar to that of the Lord's own
mother, who while she knew that it was He who had
come to redeem His people, to cast down the mighty
from their seat, to scatter the proud, and to fulfil the
promises made to their fathers, yet failed to under
stand that the hour of His full manifestation had not
arrived. It has been said that John, like others, wished
to force upon the Lord a more pybH£ avowal of His
claims, to obtain a confession from the lips of Jesus
which should satisfy waverers and confirm with His
own authority the popular impression of His Messiah-
ship. The language of our Lord to the multitude
after the departure of John's disciples leaves no doubt
as to the significance of the entire Johannine dispen
sation, and in my opinion solves the problem.
First, there is vindicated for John a lofty personal
character, an unwavering integrity. The people who
went out into the wilderness did not expect to find a
reed shaken with the wind, nor did they do so.
Circumstances, changes of public feeling, would not
be likely to modify his message. Winds of doctrine
would not shake his constancy. From the ground
he took in the first weeks of his ministry he never
swerved.1 The Lord reminds His audience, in addition,
that they had not expected to find in the wilderness
the royal courtier, the gentle, smooth-tongued, softly-
dressed time-server. It was not in a palace but a
1 Grotius, Wettstein, Baumgarten, Crusius, De Wette, think that this first
question was a simple literal inquiry as to objects that might have arrested
their attention in the wilderness. Stier, Meyer, Olshausen, justly regard this as
utterly meaningless.

426 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
desert that he had gathered his disciples. They had
heard of the solemn apparition which brought to mind
the terrible form of Elijah, the destroyer of idolaters,
the man who wielded the fire of heaven, who wore the
garment of hair, and threatened with punishment every
form of trespass and all the spirit of sin ; who sum
moned men to penitence, to sacrifice, to righteousness.
Secondly, our Lord gives to John all his official
grandeur. " He is a prophet." " Yea, I say unto you,
more than a prophet." "Among them that are born
of women there hath not arisen a greater than John
the Baptist." Moral force and official dignity are
separately specified as the elements of his greatness.
He has occupied a unique position in the development
of the Divine purpose. He is the last and greatest of
all the prophetic company. He is foreshadowed as a
second Elijah, to prepare the way of the Lord. He
has declared the kingdom of God to be at hand.
Thirdly, our Lord explicitly declares, with refer
ence not merely to this inquiry, but to the entire posi
tion of John, that he has not entered the kingdom.
"He that is least in the kingdom of heaven (or of
God: Luke) is greater than he."1
I have already referred frequently to this Divine
canon by which the Johannine position was inter
preted, and have applied it in a thorough-going manner
to the various elements of John's official character and
teaching; so that it is unnecessary here to do more
than record the confirmation of this Divine judgment
1 The effort to make 6 piKporepog ev rj? fiaatXeicf rffiv ovpavdv to be Christ's
own description of Himself, though it was the interpretation of Chrysostom,
Euthymius, Cornelius a Lapide, Luther, and Fleck, De Regno Divino, p. 83, is
rejected by almost every modern interpreter, Calvin, Beza, Gerhard, Maldo-
natus, Grotius, Bengel, Stier, De Wette, Meyer, Van Rohde, Alford.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 427
derivable from the peculiar circumstances in which
the words were uttered. John had undergone no moral
or official deterioration by his imprisonment. Though
he had seen so much of the kingdom, he had always J
missed its deepest significance. Its tenderness for
sorrow and weakness, and its pity for darkness and
death, was the very thing which induced him to say,
" Do we look for another ? " Can this be the Lord in
His majesty ? Is this the Spirit that will burn up the
enemies of the Lord ? Is this the fire that will baptize
the true Israel? He had discerned in Jesus the Divine
Lamb, the Sin-bearer, the Son of God, the Servant of
Jehovah, the Bridegroom of the daughter of Israel; but
where was the Great King ? the Lord in His glory ?
the Judge of all the earth ? the great and terrible day
of the Lord ?
The fact, as Christ declared it, was that the least
in the kingdom, the children of the bridechamber,
they who had begun to offer in sacrifice a priestly
consecration of their own life to the Lord, were greater
than the greatest of the Old Testament priests. They
who had found out the real significance of prayer
to the Father and fasting to the Lord, because of
the keenness of their spiritual hunger, were " greater "
than the most vigorous ascetic, the loneliest recluse
of Mount Horeb, who in all the bravery of unkempt
hair, or all the mystery of self-abnegation, was set
ting an example of the higher life. They who had
faith in the gift of eternal life [consciously revealed
to them in the manifestation of the Son of God] were
"greater" than any official prophet. Such indeed had
become members of a " goodly fellowship of prophets,"
who were witnesses of that for which prophets and

428 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
righteous men had waited in vain ; but those who were
or should be baptized with the Spirit of God, were
"greater" than even he that baptized with water.
Our Lord continued : " All the prophets and the law
prophesied until John." They had all anticipated the
kingdom. They saw it in dim representation and im
perfect realization. The Law drew its outline, prefi
gured its institutions. The Law revealed the corruption
of human nature,1 and provoked that corruption into
violent activity. When the commandment came, sin
revived.2 The law was added for the sake of trans
gressions.3 It made sin exceeding sinful ;4 and John
reasserted the law with all its condemning force, and
delivered thereby his prophetic burden. He summed
up, moreover, and reaffirmed the visions of all the
prophets — the visions of the King and of the Lamb,
— he was the Moses and the Elijah in one. John
had declared the advent of the kingdom. From the
earliest days of his ministry to the hour when Jesus
spoke, the excitement had been intense. Men had
sought to establish the kingdom by forcible means.
The kingdom suffered violence, and they who would
use temporal and physical force to set it up had
done their utmost. Some would have compelled the
Lord to put His supernatural energy at the disposal
of their selfish patriotism, or local jealousy. They
would have come by force and made Him a king,
they would have compelled Him to manifest Him
self to the world, and to restore the kingdom to
Israel. He had • Himself been tempted by the Devil
to do these very things. The multitudes who crowded
about Him were eager for the establishment of the vain
1 Rom. iii. 19. 2 Ibid. iv. 15 ; vii. 7-9. 3 Gal. iii. 19. ? Rom. vii. 13.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 429
carnal ideal of a kingdom of heaven. Violent measures,
armed propaganda, secular motives and inducements
would, if they could, have besieged the invisible battle
ments of the kingdom ; and thus an endeavour had
been made to take possession of it by unlawful means.
The violent (fiiacrral) were all who were, with partial
understanding of its spiritual character, seeking to
take forcible possession of the kingdom (dpird^ovcri) .
But our Lord did not justify this method of realizing
an age-long dream.
Often since the day when the Lord lamented the
abuse of the Johannine dispensation, the Christian
Church has fallen back on "the beggarly elements"
of force to do the work of the Spirit. Enthusiastic
princes have compelled men to believe the gospel of
love at the point of the sword, and punished all recu
sancy by secular penalties. Hierarchies have found
physical force ready to abet their stout conservatism and
exclusiveness. Violent men have striven to enforce
unanimity of spiritual conviction by gagging the out
spoken dissentient, and banning or burning the hope
less disbeliever. Intensity of religious feeling has often
steeled the heart of man to all the pleadings of nature.
The fiuurral are now not conspicuously armed with steel
and fire, but there are many ways in which it is possible
to crush the heart, " to stone men with hard words till
they die," to exclude from fellowship, to force change
of opinion by organised social persecution. All such
" violence " proves how far the Church of Christ still is
from a perfect conception of the breadth and fulness
and charity of the mind of Jesus.1
1 Many take another view of fSiaorai. Neander, Life of Christ, E. T. p.
201, says : " These words are expressly chosen to denote the earnest will, the
struggle, and the entire devotion of soul which are requisite to enter the king-

430 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
In St. Luke's account of this remarkable testimony
we read : z " All the people when they heard this (i.e.,
the declaration that the least in the kingdom of heaven
was greater than John), and the publicans, justified
God, having been baptized with the baptism of John,
but the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected the counsel
of God against themselves, not being baptized by him."
The thirty-first verse appears to resume the discourse
(with ovv), making it turn upon the contrast thus in
dicated between the conduct of the Pharisees and the
publicans. On another occasion,2 when the Pharisees
derided our Lord's condemnation of covetousness, He
assured them that they were judging themselves by
human standards rather than by the Divine law, and
that that which some men regarded as lofty excel
lence was abomination before God : and He continued,
" The law and prophets were3 until John." From that
time (dirb rore), from the commencement of John's
ministry, the glad news of the kingdom of God has
been proclaimed, and every one is violently pressing
into it. (7ra? et? airrjv f3id£erai.) This seems nearly
equivalent to the declaration, " The kingdom of heaven
suffereth violence, and the violent (fiiao-ral) take it by
force." The question arises, Does this treatment of the king
dom of heaven. . . The worldly notions of the Messiahship had to be struggled
against. The nature of the case shows that fitdZeiv is to be thus taken, the
usus loquendi does not contradict it." Lightfoot, Schneckenburger, Hilgen
feld, explain the passage of the hostility and persecution with which the Mes
siah-kingdom was pursued. Meyer considers that the " violence " is used in
a good sense, and has no reference to the zealot fury or party. Baur thinks,
in accordance with his perverse theory of the composition of the Gospels, that
there is here an Anti-PauUne manifesto put into the lips of our Lord.
1 Luke vii. 29, 30. * Ibid. xvi. 14-16.
3 Or prophesied, lirpocjirirevaav, only sustained by D, is rejected by Tischen
dorf.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 431
dom imply a reception or a rejection of the ministry
of John ? Clearly it was independent of the personal
treatment accorded to John. Those who were vio
lently endeavouring to establish or take possession of
the kingdom had given a most imperfect attention to
the message of the Baptist. The Pharisees and
lawyers had rejected the counsel of God, they had
come to his baptism, they had gone into the wilder
ness to see him, but John had scared them back with
his terrible cry, " O generation of vipers, who hath
warned you to flee from the coming wrath ?" They
had retired from him confounded, when their deputa
tion had heard his enigmatical utterance concerning
the extraordinary functions he had assigned to himself.
Though all men, i.e., the bulk of the people, had recog
nized his prophetic career, " counted him for a prophet
indeed," the Sanhedrists (high priests, elders, and
scribes, most probably of the sect of the Pharisees)
were unable to answer our Lord's inquiry, " whether
the baptism of John was from heaven or of men," i.e.,
was justified by a Divine commission or not.1 The
reason of their silence is given by the Evangelists.
.They reasoned among themselves (Luke), in themselves
(Mark), " If we shall say, ' from heaven ; ' he will say,
Why did ye not believe on him ? If we shall say,
'from men,'" — they feared the people, and the popular
verdict touching John's prophetic mission, — " all the
people will stone us, for they have been persuaded
that John was a prophet."2 It thus is clear from three
distinct declarations of our Lord that a large proportion
of the religious and ruling classes, the cultivated and
ceremonious Pharisees and scribes and lawyers, must
1 Matt. xxi. 23-27 ; Mark xi. 27-33 ; Luke xx. 1-8. 2 Ibid. xx. 6.

432 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
have repudiated the lofty claims of John. Although
they inquired into l these claims, came to his baptism,2
associated and sympathized with his disciples,3 they
were not baptized of him.4 They were affected by his
prophetic summons, they believed in the gospel of the
kingdom, but they misapplied the message. They tried
to take the kingdom by force. Repentance, righteous
ness, baptism with fire and with the Holy Ghost, as
conditions of the privileges of the kingdom, were tests
too severe for them. The severity of John's de
meanour, the sacrifices he imposed, the testimony he
bore to Jesus, were all too great a trial of their faith.
They " rejected the counsel of God against them
selves." Their language with reference to the austere
Elias was, " He hath a daemon.1' They could neither
accept him nor his baptism ; could not say whether
his mission was Divine, human, or diabolic. " John
came to them in the way of righteousness, and they
believed not." They were as the son in the parable,
who said, " I go, sir, and went not." They were sum
moned to holy service, they professed some interest in
the mission of the great prophet; but the moral test
was repudiated. The demands for spiritual refoi-
mation were unheeded by them. The only practical
consequence of the ministry of John evinced, in the
behaviour of Pharisees, lawyers, priests, and scribes,
was their endeavour by physical and political means
to govern the development of that kingdom of
God which John had promised them. As a body,
or class, they rejected him, but the " publicans and
the harlots," the moral offscouring of the earth,
¦John i. 19, 24. 2 Matt. iii. 7.
3 John iii. 25 ; iv. 1 ; Mark ii. 18 ; Matt. ix. 14. « Luke vii. 30.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 433
had received the message of John, had been broken
into penitence, had accepted the standard he had
propounded, had submitted to his baptism, and re
cognized the righteousness of God, "the counsel of
• God," the judgment of heaven, alike in his warnings
and promises, in the curses with which he threatened
them, and the hope he held out of pardon and ac
ceptance with God, as well as of the baptism with
the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, " Verily I say unto
you, that the publicans and harlots go into the king
dom of God before you. For John came to you in
the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not ;
but the publicans and harlots believed him : and ye,
when ye had seen it, repented not afterwards, that
ye might believe him."1 This representation of the
effect of John's teaching upon the publicans and
harlots seems at first sight somewhat inconsistent
with the language used by our Lord on the occasion
of the message from the prison. On that occasion
Jesus contrasted the receptions severally accorded to
John the Baptist and to the Son of man by the
men of that generation. He represented them as
fractious, unwilling to be won by either form of the
Divine message. The message and mission of John
were rejected because they could not bear his stern
self-restraint. On the other hand, the Son of man
has shown the heavenly life in the midst of the earthly,
has taken His place at the table of the Pharisee,
and at the feast in the house of the publican ; and
they say, " Behold a man, gluttonous and a wine-
bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."
Now the publicans and sinners who " repented at;
1 Matt. xxi. 31, 32.
29

434 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
the preaching of John " would not be likely to charge
upon the Son of man the heinous crime of being their
"friend," They "justified God," and accepted the
Lord's verdict on the nature of the kingdom, and the
relation which John had occupied towards it. Matthew
the publican, who recorded both of these discourses,
and also the significant and divinely-interpreted par
able of the two sons, was probably one who had been
strongly moved to penitence and restitution by the
thunder-peals of John, but who had found the Lord
Jesus ready to answer the cry of his sinful but awakened
nature. These broken-hearted, hated, persecuted men
had received the message of the Lord as well as that of
His forerunner. They were entering the kingdom of
God before the Pharisee, and the lawyer, and the chief
priest, and there may have been a secondary sense in
which they too were taking the kingdom by storm.
A remarkable confirmation of the attitude held by
the people towards John is found in the fourth Gos
pel.1. The language of Jesus there recorded belongs
to the same period of our Lord's ministry. Certainly
John's public career had closed when the Lord enu
merated the testimonies by which the Jews should
have been convinced of His own Divine mission.
Here, as in the synoptic narrative, Jesus rebuked the
treatment which John received at the hands of a fickle
multitude, admitted the value of the testimony of John,
expressed grief at the feeble impression it had left
behind it upon the leaders of popular thought, and
emphatically proclaimed His own independence of the
testimony of John. The chief commentators of early
and modern times agree in thinking that the "other"
'John v. 31-36.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 435
testimony concerning Himself which He knows to be
true, is that of the Father.1 To this He subsequently
reverts with varied exposition, but He pauses a moment
to speak not of a continued witness, but of one which
had reached its highest expression. "Ye have sent unto
John, and he hath borne witness unto the truth," i. e.,
his language concerning me was a witness to the truth
about me. As we read afterwards, " All things that
John spake concerning this man were true."2 " Still,"
said Jesus, " I receive not testimony from man."3 For
the highest purposes of my Messianic function and
claim, I am not dependent on human testimony. The
Father Himself, His inworking and co-working, His
word and His direct manifestation of His will are all-
sufficient. Thus Christ's independence of the Johannine
mission is boldly proclaimed in the fourth Gospel, which
nevertheless contains undoubtedly the most express and
spiritual utterances lavished by John on his most sus
ceptible disciples. This statement must be allowed its
full weight when we are contrasting " the John of the
fourth Gospel" with the representations of the Synop
tists. Still our Lord rebukes all disregard of the mes
sage of John. " I say these things that ye might be
saved." As far as you are concerned, it would have
been well for you to have received his testimony, and
thus to have been fitted for the life and light and grace of
the true kingdom. " He was the lamp, the torch kindled
¦Cyril, Augustine, Bengel, Liicke, Tholuck, Olshausen, Lange, Meyer,
Alford, Godet ; in opposition to Chrysostom, Erasmus, Grotius, De Wette,
and Ewald. 2 John x. 41.
3 In chap. iii. 11, 32, the phrase Xap^avoi rrjv paprvpiav is used of reception
or acceptance of testimony as proof. B. Crusius, Beza, Grotius, De Wette,
take it to mean, "I do not seize hold of it ; " and Tholuck, " I reject it," which
is too strong. Meyer is content with saying, "Jesus will gar kein menschliches
Zeugniss in dieser Verhandlung fiir sich gelten lassen, er weist es von sich."
29 *

436 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
and shining." Perhaps there is a reference to Ecclus.
xlviii. 1 : " Then stood up Elijah the prophet like a fire,
and his word burned like a lamp."1 This is just con
ceivable, if, as is easily shown, ideas of this nature with
reference to Elijah were current in the popular speech.
I do not think that our Lord's having quoted from the
Apocrypha is the explanation of the definite article,
as the "quotation" is not sufficiently exact to have
justified this.2 The article is explained by a reference
to "the lamp," by pre-eminence, which was needed to
prepare the people for their Lord, to light the bridal
party to the home of the Bridegroom, to break in upon
the moral darkness and apathy of the age. The lamp
(Xvxvov) was not the light of the world. He was not
" that light," as the Evangelist says, but he was a
lamp kindled by the great Light-giver, by Him whose
life was the light that lighteth. every man, and who has
come into the world.3 " He was the lamp kindled and
shining, and ye were willing (7r/309 &pav) for a while to
rejoice (d<jaX\iao-8r)vai), to exult in his light. It was
but for a season ; when he called you to his baptism,
and proclaimed the advent of the kingdom, you exulted
— as summer flies that dance round a midnight torch.
When he called you to repentance, when you saw the
severe and terrible side of his ministry, you said, ' He
hath a devil, and is mad.' You did not believe either
his proclamation of the law-sanctions. or his testimony
about Me."
This is in harmony with the solemn judgment on the
Johannine dispensation, on which I have just com
mented, and;«there follows this remarkable saying of
A suggestion made by Bengel, followed by Stier and Alford.
2 Liicke, Meyer. 3 John i. 8, 9.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 437
Christ : " I have greater testimony than that of John,
the works which the Father hath given me to finish
bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me."
These are the works of physical and moral healing, to
which our Lord called John's own attention, as the true
answer to his mysterious question. The proof that the
Father had sent Him was the unveiling of the Father's
heart rather than the baring of Jehovah's sword. It
was in the gift of the Holy Spirit, rather than in any
political convulsion of Palestine, or the smiting of the
earth with a curse. "The blind receive their sight,
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are
raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached
unto them." The works of mercy and sacrifice that
the Father had given Him to finish would be a greater
testimony that the Father had sent Him than was the
entire public ministry of John.
John prepared the way of the Lord, but he did not
fully know the Lord. John came to bear witness to the
light, that all men through Plim might believe, but
there was grander testimony still in the Voice from
heaven. He was the harbinger of the morning, glow
ing with reflected lustre, which was lost in the bright
shining of the Day-spring. He baptized with water
unto repentance, saying that they should believe on
Him who should come after him, but he did not see in
Jesus all he had anticipated as the Christ. He knew
that Jesus was the Lamb of Isaiah's prophecy passing
through a strange agony of temptation to His Messi
anic throne, but he did not see how thus the Lamb
was to divide His portion with the strong. When the
marriage feast was graced by His miracle, John was
confounded, and said, " He must increase, I must de-

438 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
crease ; " but still he urged fasting, and liturgies, and
baptisms, and reiterated the stern and ancient cry,
"This do and ye shall live." He bore witness to
the fact of the kingdom, to one side of its manifesta
tion, to a portion of the truth, to the coming of the
Christ, to the Messiahship of Jesus, up to the extent
of his inspirations; but Christ had " greater testimony
than that of John," for " he that was least in the king
dom of God was greater than he."
We can never know the effect of the language of
Jesus upon the imprisoned prophet. It is moreover
difficult to estimate the length of time during which he
lingered in prison. If we compare Matt. xiv. 13 with
the parallel passages, and with John vi. 4, it would seem
that the Passover which preceded that at which our
Lord suffered, followed rapidly after the death of John ,
and consequently that his imprisonment, which com
menced shortly after the first Passover of our Lord's
ministry, must have lasted from eight to twenty months,
according as we regard the feast of the Jews mentioned
in John v. 1 as a Passover or not. At all events a con
siderable portion of our Lord's ministry, including a
visit to Jerusalem,1 and the consequent and growing
malice on the part of the Pharisees, with discourses,
journeys, and special ministrations of our Lord, must
have intervened between the mention of John's imprison
ment and the mention of his death. On the supposition
that the feast mentioned in the fifth of John was that
of Purim, we have already seen that the Passover de
scribed as 677119 in John vi. 4 must be the second' of our
Lord's ministry, and that one year has elapsed since
the cleansing of the temple and indications of the still
1 John v.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 439
active ministry of John. The miracle of the multipli
cation of the loaves was closely synchronous with the
trial mission of the twelve apostles, an event which led
incidentally to the revelation of Herod's superstitions
and remorseful anxiety. Wieseler supposes that the
journey from Judaea to Galilee, which the synoptic nar
rative associates with the imprisonment of the Baptist,
was that which is implicitly referred to in John vi. 1.
This theory involves a prolongation of the ministry of
John, and a very brief imprisonment. It is beset with
other difficulties, on which I have commented else
where.1 While Pharisees were discussing the relative claims
of John and Jesus, and while publicans melted and ter
rified by the fear of judgment were pressing into the
kingdom of God before them, the great enemy of John
was plotting his speedy death. Herodias resolved to
free herself from the fearful possibility of Herod's yield
ing to his stern censor's rebuke.2 The fears of Herod,
and his partial reverence for the prisoner, shielded
John for a few months from the inveterate malice of
his wife. But the time came when he must make
public his marriage with Herodias, and the high pro
bability is that he proposed to do so by a great banquet
at'Machaerus. With not unnatural fondness for the stronghold
which must have been very recently recovered from his
insulted father-in-law, he lusted for the sight of his
prize. He had, therefore, on the occasion of his birth
day,3 summoned to Machaerus a gathering of the gran-
1 See Appendix A
2 evtixev aiirip, Mark vi. 19. The word only occurs here and Luke xi. 53.
3 ra ytveata is a word originaUy used of the offerings presented on anniver
saries of the birthdays of the dead, ra yevs9Xta is more frequently used to

440 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
dees, the military commanders, and leading men of
Galilee.1 Such a gathering boded no good to the im
prisoned prophet. Herodias and her daughter Salome,
with their suite, must have accompanied the royal
cortege. The vulture was swooping on her prey.
Herodias hoped in an hour of weakness to gain from
the licentious passions of her husband what she had
hitherto failed to extort from his fear or his indigna
tion. She was mad with vexation at the idea of being
so near to the bold fanatic who had appealed to Jewish
law and universal conscience against her adultery, and
had thus imperilled her crown. She schooled Salome
in the part she was to play. The wickedness, spite,
and extravagant indecency of the proceeding that fol
lowed, can hardly be paralleled even in that age of
cruelty and lust. To work upon the heated passions
of her husband by the indecorous exhibition of her
own daughter's charms, and thus to bribe him to
utter a hasty promise which he would not be able to
recall, was her deliberate and malicious intention. The
daughter was prepared to ask, when the moment
should arrive, for the life of the helpless prisoner of
Machaerus. As the procession wound up the moun
tain pass, with the bravery of nuptial banners and
music, and while Roman officers with flashing armour
denote birthday festivities. Meyer says that there is no Greek example of the
word yev'eata used for birthday. Passow refers to Philo and Josephus in vindi
cation of N. T. usage. See also art. " Funus, " in Diet, of Antiq. Wieseler
considers it the festival of his accession to the throne.
1 Seiirvov iiroirjoev role peyiordot airov xai rolg x^dpxotg Kai rdig irptarotg
Trjg FaXtXa'tag. The word peyiarefveg was common in LXX., Josephus, and
later writers. There were six j£i\idp%oi, literaUy, "captains or chiefs of a
thousand men," with ten centurions under each, in the Roman legion. These
chiliarchs were probably the' leading military commanders of the then army of
occupation, or of mercenaries in his pay. See, for the presence of such an
officer in Jerusalem, John xviii. 2 ; Acts xxii. 26, 28 ; xxiii. 17, 22.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 441
and plumed helmet rode as body-guard of the prin
cesses, and all the grandees and wealthy lords of
Galilee and Persea were gathering from various ap
proaches to this eagle's eyrie, and when the garrison
stood forth and presented arms as the great nobles
entered the gates, and the city crowd of many tribes
— among them Greeks and Bedouins, white -robed
Essenes and Oriental traffickers, priests and Levites
from Jerusalem, and disciples of the prophet eager for his
release — sent up their shout of welcome ; accustomed
as men in that age were to deeds of vengeance and blood,
it could hardly have occurred to any that the veiled
ladies of the court were revolving a murderous plot, as
godless and foul as any that had already stained the
annals of the house of Herod. The banquet is spread,
and the tetrarch and his boon companions are merry
over their cups. Many a rough jest at the expense of
Philip and Aretas passes from lip to lip, and many
shrewd suggestions are being made as to the defence
of the invulnerable fortress. The music and the wine
and the laughter are all at their height, and the sounds
of the revelry reverberate through the marble corridors.
Purple shadows of the mountain peaks are beginning
to fall across the deep ravines, and to shroud the
towers of the fortress in their gloom. The grand
daughter of the murdered Mariamne, sister of Herod
Agrippa, is in vehement consultation with a daughter
who seems to have shared in the bloodthirsty passions
of her mother,1 and would be ready to urge the fulfil
ment of that mother's request, and to become herself
1 Matthew expressly states that she was thoroughly primed by her mother.
ij Se irpoj3tl3ao9eioa vico rr\g pryrpbg airrjg. Mark teUs us that consultation
with the mother foUowed on Herod's preposterous offer, but he adds that she
entered with eagerness into the plot, ti9eoig perd oiravdrjg.

442 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
the bearer of the hideous proof of her malice and in
decency. Clearly at her mother's suggestion she went
into the banqueting hall, and played the revolting part
of an almeh — "she danced before Herod and his guests."1
The kind of dancing is obviously that which disgraces
the East to the present day.2 Nothing but shameless-
ness or inveterate malice, or both combined, could have
driven a princess of royal blood to practise such a pro
fession before the assembled magnates and the Roman
officers of the court of Herod. Herodias had calculated
the result. A wild tumult of applause rings through the
banqueting hall, and the tetrarch, maudlin with wine
and excited passion, cries, " Ask what thou wilt, even
to the half of my kingdom."3 Her eye flashes fire and
hate as she hisses out her murderous prayer, and cla
mours for the instant destruction of the grandest man
living on the earth. " The head of John the Baptist
on one of these golden dishes of your birthday ban
quet!" is her infernal demand. " Here, now, to-night, I
ask you to redeem your promise." In hotter haste than
Herodias herself, she seeks to clutch the ghastly trophy
of her rage and spite. Even the tyrant is hushed and
sobered now by the revelation of the nest of scorpions
he has folded in his bosom. He is "sorry;" — at least
he thinks the act impolitic. He is superstitious, and
shrinks from coldblooded murder. He trembles for a
moment between disgrace and fear, and then " for the
oath's sake," and out of respect to the witnesses of the
¦ See art. bpxqatg, saltatio, in Smith's Diet, of Antiq.
2 The dancing at feasts was an excess of effeminacy and voluptuousness, and
was condemned by Cicero when clearing the character of Deiotarus from such
a charge. Even Tiberius and Domitian condemned the practice.
3 The Oriental courts have other traditions of similar acts of tyrannical
bounty. See Esther v. 3, 6, and vii. 2. See also, for a similar explosion of ex
cited prodigality on the part of Xerxes, Herodotus, ix. 109. ^

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 443
riot and the pledge, who must have felt their own lives
trembling in the balance, he is unwilling contumeliously
to refuse her, and utters the military order which shall
give effect to her fiendish design.1 A grim horror
darkens the scene. The music, the wine, and the danc
ing scarcely avail to keep off the ugly spectre of the
avenging Elijah on his pyramid of skulls. Salome waits
amid the din ; waits till the deed is done — and bears in
triumph to Herodias the bleeding token of her eternal
shame.2 Tradition has augmented the horror of the synoptic
narrative, and so we read in Jerome that Herodias was
not yet satisfied with the success of her vile plot, but
had the barbarity to prick with a bodkin, as Fulvia
had done that of Cicero, the silenced tongue of the
inflexible Preacher of Repentance.3 The disciples of
John were permitted to bury his body, and they "went
and told Jesus." Thus in the silence of his dungeon,
without warning from his foes or consolation from
his friends, was the great Baptist's ministry and life
brought to a tragic and ignominious end. He was
brutally murdered as a consequence of the malice en
gendered by his faithful, fearless proclamation of the
law of God.4 " They did to the Elijah whatsoever they
1 airtKovXdrtopa eirera^ev.-cfireK is found in Rabbinical Hebrew. It may
mean (Passow) speculator, a body-guard, or prison-warder, or equal spiculator,
one armed with a.spicula (Schleusner, Alford, Meyer), whose Special duty (Julius
Firmicus) was the cutting off of convicts' heads.
2 See Livius xxxix. for the fury of Marius. Several of our modern German
critics think that the whole transaction is dressed up with ornamental and
mythical adornment in the evangeUc narrative ; but the indication given else
where that the wife of Herod's steward, Chuza, was a disciple of Christ, makes
it extremely probable that we have the report of an eye-witness to this event
as well as to the subsequent remorse and anxiety of Herod.
3 Contra Rufin, t. n, quoted by Witsius ; and TiUemont, Me'moires, torn. i.
p. 105.
4 Witsius quotes from Chronicon Regum Templi Secundi, fol. 54, words
Strongly resembUng the fragment of Josippon, and similarly from a Hebrew

444 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
listed,"1 said our Lord, " and likewise also shall the
Son of man thus suffer from them." There was
against the Baptist a combination of fierce and angry
passions resembling that against Christ; yet with all his
vehemence he had not wounded so many susceptibilities
as Jesus had done, had not preferred claims that were
so unpardonable in the eyes of Pharisaic or sacerdotal
sanctity. He had bravely denounced folly, extortion,
uncleanness, and hypocrisy, and he had made one
implacable enemy. No judicial process affirmed his
crime, no sacred court adjudicated upon his assumed
violation of law, no Roman tribunal affirmed his inno
cence of the political charge brought before it. He fell,
not in the face of day, but in the hour and power of
darkness ; not before all the people, but alone in his
cell ; certainly without many witnesses, and without
leaving one further testimony on record, or one part
ing word either for the King for whose advent he
yearned, or for the disciples who buried his corpse.
Keim attributes to the execution of John our Lord's
departure to the extreme limits of Herod's dominions.
On the contrary, though Jesus recognized the part
which Pharisaic jealousy had taken in the sentiment
which led to John's imprisonment and death, He ex
hibited a sovereign independence of the wishes or spite
of Herod.2 It seems, moreover, that not long after this
work entitled Zemach, part i, A.D. 1770, the foUowing translation : " Herodes
Antipater quem nonnuUi tetrarcham appellant fuit filius Herodis primi, et frater
Archelai, fuitque rex tertius de familia Herodis. Etiam iste fuit impius pessi-
mus, et vir perditus plurimos Sapientum Israelis occidit gladio, et accepit uxorem
fratris sui Philippi, hoc adhuc vivente, sibi in uxorem. Jochanan vero Sacer-
dotem magnum, propterea quod ipsum redarguisset ob hoc facinus jnteremit
gladio, cum plurimis ex Sapientibus Israelis."
1 Mark ix. 13 ; Matt. xvii. 12. liroaiaav Iv avrip (to Elias) oaa r)9iXi)oav,
ovroi Kai 0 v'iog tov dvQpunrov peXXet irdox^tv vtc1 airuiv. rore avvi}Kav oi
uaQt)Tai on vepi 'Itodvvov tov BaitTtarov iiiriv airdig. a Luke xiii. 31, 32.

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 445
tragic consummation of the Baptist's life, the Lord
Jesus sent His twelve apostles in every direction, to
proclaim the gospel of the kingdom, to heal disease,
to command all men everywhere to repent. This
gave great publicity to the name of Jesus. The
general resemblance between the message of the
Twelve and the earliest harangues of the Baptist cannot
be overlooked. Their work was like his, a preparatory
mission. They too prepared the way of the Lord.
The deeper realities of the Lord's person and work
could not as yet be proclaimed. Their preaching
vividly recalled the thunder-peals of the Baptist, and
the evidence of this resemblance appears in the manner
in which the renown of Jesus is said to have been
received at the court of Herod.1 Matthew's report is
the most simple : " Herod said to his servants, This is
John the Baptist; he has been raised from the dead,
and on this account the Powers are mightily working
in him." Mark tells us, in addition, that many reports
were circulating about Jesus : " Some said, He is
Elias; others, He is a prophet, or one of the (old)
prophets;" but when Herod heard the rumour, he
cried (Sadducee though he was), "He whom I beheaded
— John — the very man has been raised up." Luke gives
us a modified and enlarged statement that Herod was
in perplexity because it was said by certain persons
that John had been raised from the dead. The other
suppositions are also made known to the tetrarch, that
"Elias has appeared; that a prophet (one of the an
cient ones) has risen up. But Herod said, I be
headed John. Who is the man concerning whom I
hear such things? and he sought to see him." So that,
' Matt. xiv. 1, 2 ; Mark vi. 14-16 ; Luke ix. 7-9.

446 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
according to Luke, Herod rather refutes than originates
the idea of the resurrection of John. It is clear, from
each Gospel, that a discussion took place in his pre
sence, involving the possible revivification of John.
Hence there was prevailing the kind of remark and
eager expectation out of which it was not unlikely
that a mythical report of the resurrection of John
might have arisen. A surmise was undoubtedly ha
zarded by some that he had broken the bands of death.
It must have been by those who were ignorant of the
previous relations between John and Jesus, and who
were disciples neither of John nor of Jesus. The myth
did not flourish, although there were strong inducements
in the hearts of John's eager partizans to believe in his
continued ministry, and to welcome such a vindication
of his preternatural mission. The simple explanation
is, that it was only a passing hallucination : it most
probably arose in the breast of a superstitious and weak
tyrant, struck with momentary remorse for his dark
deed of blood, and it disappeared at once before the
well-known facts of the case. John perished ; he was
buried ; and his sepulchre soon became a sacred shrine
to his followers. But the influence of his life-work did
not die with him. The community which he founded
reveals some traces of its existence even to the present
day. Ideas prevailing before his time, and practices
to which he lent the sanction of his great name,
were readily associated with the grand memory of
the Baptist, and with belief in him as the last and
greatest of the prophets ; but the existence of this
early rumour, the undoubted sublimity of his position,
and the perpetuation of his personal influence, did
not avail to create a mythical legend of his resurrection,

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 447
nor did it expand itself into evidential details. Even the
rumour vanished. History tells us that he died a cruel
death, that he fell as a martyr to truth and virtue. He
was laid in his grave. After-generations did him re
verence, but their subjective consciousness did not call
him from his eternal repose, or see him seated in a
human body at the right hand of power.
Here we have a striking note of divergence from the
career of the Lord and Head of the Christian Church,
to which modern criticism might, with advantage, take
heed. The external resemblance between our Lord and John
was in many respects so great, that those who looked
at both from a distance could confound them with each
other, and actually imagine the one to be a metempsy
chosis of the other ; but the real relation between them
is of a profoundly different order. They were alike
lofty and sublime expressions of the Old Covenant ;
they presented, in living and expressive form, its highest
teachings and its deepest spirit. John was indeed the
last flower on the gorgeous but long-barren stock of
Judaism, but he represented rather the falling and
perishable petals of the flower, which, in dying, ful
filled its course; while Christ was the rich and pregnant
seed of the kingdom of God, which, though it might
itself fall to the earth and die, yet in dying would
bring forth much fruit.
They were both priests unto God ; and more than
this, they alike offered up themselves as a sacrifice to
the holy Will of God. But the death of John was the
abrupt close of a ministry that might have been singu
larly beneficial to mankind, and which, humanly speak
ing, would if prolonged have exercised a mighty

448 The Ministry of the Prison. [lect.
influence on the full manifestation to his generation of
the Eternal Light. His imprisonment and death cut
short his true work. On the other hand, the death of
Christ was the climax and completion of an earthly
ministry, was a chief purpose of His human service;
occurs as a sublime event in a perfect and endless life,
and provides the fearful prelude to His more glorious
and effective ministry as the great High Priest of our
profession. The mission of John acquires a tragic in
terest from its melancholy end; but no doctrine that he
taught was made more obvious, no position that he took
became more significant, no influence that he exerted on
his nation or on mankind was augmented by that death.
We may learn from his fate the danger of honesty, the
perils of moral courage, the sublimity of the quiet en
durance of wrong. When he hesitated and questioned
Divine Providence, and interrogated Jesus from his
prison, he was thinking more of his nation than of him
self. We hear of no exceeding sorrow, no mighty cry of
anguish, no sweat of blood, no covenant made in his
death. "Art thou he that should come, or look we for
another ? " is the last and only murmur that escapes from
the cloud that enwrapped him. He was grand in his sim
plicity; he was "more than a prophet." His austere life
recommended abstinence and mortification. His burn
ing words proclaimed the coming of a day of wrath and a
kingdom of righteousness ; but his words were not made
more energetic, and his legacy to Israel did not become
one whit more significant, either by the fact or the
method of his death. On the other hand, the death of
Christ was, from the first, a foreseen purpose, an antici
pated work, a baptism that He yearned for. It was the
sign that. He would give of His right to cleanse the

vn.] The Ministry of the Prison. 449
temple; the proof to Israel that He was the Good Shep
herd ; the mode in which He should fulfil all righteous
ness and all prophecy ; the most expressive utterance of
the love and justice of His Father; the indispensable
condition in His ransom of the world. But if the re
cord of Christ's life had ended as did that of Peter's or
Paul's or John's, and we had received from His con
temporaries only the memory of the perfect beauty of
His character, the creative originality of His teaching,
together with the chronicle of His miraculous heal
ings, and the portraiture of His holy gentleness and
His sublime fervour and passion of piety — even if the
record had told us more than this, and led us to believe
that He spake of a God-consciousness unique in the
history of human thought and literature ; and if then
and there the record and the portraiture had ter
minated abruptly, it is certain that the most essential
consideration towards comprehending Christ would
have been absent. His power over mankind might
have been signal and memorable, but it would have
been deprived of almost all that gives it enduring in
fluence. His promises would have had no realization,
His discourses would have lost the chief key to their
interpretation, and His bold on the human heart would
never have been a factor in the evolution of humanitv.

30

LECTURE VIII.
RESULTS, ECHOES, AND LESSONS OF THE
MINISTRY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

30*

LECTURE VIII.
results, echoes, and lessons of the ministry
of john The baptist.
THE last of the prophets is cut off in the prime
of his early manhood. His "sun is gone down
while it is yet day ;" but a luminous spectrum lingers
for a while in the atmosphere of Judaism, and casts a
side light upon the significance and progress of the
kingdom of God. The memory of the murder in the
castle of Machaerus haunted the tetrarch, and brooded
over the banqueting halls of Tiberias and Sepphoris.
The courtiers of Herod knew his superstitious fears.
The common people anticipated Divine retribution for
the crime. Josephus, referring to the destruction of
Herod's army by Aretas — an event which occurred
nine years after the death of John — adds, it was
"utterly destroyed by God, who thereby very justly
punished and chastised him by way of retribution for
John, called the Baptist." Thus the echoes of the
crime still sounded in the ears of the populace, and
the belief in John's moral grandeur, and in the Divine
approval of his mission, was at the date of Herod's
reverse of fortune sufficiently strong to have attracted
the notice of Josephus. The conflict between Herod
and Aretas originated in the indignity offered by the

454 Results of the [lect.
former to the daughter of the Arabian king. The
people never forgot that John had denounced Herod's
treatment of his wife and his marriage with Herodias
and when the final issues of hostilities which had thus
commenced, proved utter ruin to Herod's army, they
remembered the word of the Lord by His servant
John. Lofty authority condemns any such interpreta
tions of the Divine Providence which rules over men
and nations, but the fact remains. This opinion on
the part of the people — whether rightly or wrongly en
tertained — is a remarkable testimony to the effect of
the Baptist's ministry upon contemporary life.
A more impressive fact is the repeated proof furnished
by the New Testament that our Lord and His apostles
regarded the message and ministry of John as a Divine
preparation for the Dispensation of the Holy Ghost.
I have already referred to the undoubted implication
of our Lord that " the baptism of John " was " from
heaven ;" and the solemn assurance given by Christ to
the people, that if they had accepted John's mission,
they would have been morally bound to admit His own
claims. The same tone pervades the last word spoken
on earth by our Lord : "John baptized with water, but
ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many
days hence." T These words imply that the disciples
had been baptized with water by John, and therefore
that the nucleus of the Christian community had ori
ginated in the work of the great forerunner. This is
confirmed by other considerations. Peter undoubtedly
follows the same connection of ideas in his sermon on
the day of Pentecost. The tenor of his discourse is:
" The Holy One has been exalted to the right hand of
• Acts i. 5.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 455
power. He has shed forth this great spiritual mani
festation which ye now see and hear. Repent, and be
baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus unto the
remission of sins, and ye also shall receive the gift
of the Holy Ghost."
It is not necessary to suppose that among the thou
sands who submitted to baptism, there were many who
would undergo the ordinance a second time. A vast
host of proselytes from every country under heaven
were present. The grand event took place far away
from the scenes consecrated by the baptism of John, so
that it may be reasonably supposed that the majority
were hearing for the first time of the inauguration of
the kingdom of God, and even of the baptismal rite.
The apostles adopted the baptismal method of their
first teacher as a continuous prophecy and symbol of
the cleansing of human nature, and the renewal of
life effectuated by the special operation of the Spirit
of God.
The entire ministry of John was denominated by Peter
"John's baptism," and this apostle reckoned the ministry
of our Lord to have begun " after the baptism which
John preached." On two memorable occasions, viz., the
election of a twelfth apostle, and the opening of the door
of faith to the Gentiles,1 John's work was prominently
before him, as something closely associated in his mind
with the greater mission of Him " whom God anointed
with the Holy Ghost and with power." Again, when re
counting2 to "the apostles and brethren at Jerusalem"
the memorable circumstances attending the visit to
Cassarea, Peter implied that the descent of the Spirit,
the conferring of the special graces of Pentecost on the
1 Acts i. 22 ; x. 37. 2 Ibid. xi. 15, 16.

456 Results of the [lect.
uncircumcised Gentiles, reminded him of the word of
the Lord when He said, " John indeed baptized with
water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost."
The water-baptism of John, with all its immediate
associations, was still cited as the antithesis to the
life-giving baptism with the Spirit. These two things
stood in organic connection with each other both in
the mind of Peter and in that of the early Church.
Again, even Paul, in his elaborate speech at Antioch
in Pisidia,1 referred to the preparatory work of John.
"John," said he, "first preached the baptism of re
pentance to all the people of Israel;" and he added:
"As John fulfilled his course" — therefore implying
that this was the language of John to the last — " he
cried, Whom think ye that I am ? I am not He ;
but behold there cometh one after me, whose shoes
of His feet I am not worthy to loose." This quotation
by Paul (with a peculiar use of the preposition p^erd,
only found in the Acts) gives further confirmation of
the historic validity of these words so frequently at
tributed to the Baptist. It is the intense conviction
of the prophet that he was only a transitional step
in the way of the Divine manifestation, and that, great
as his mission was, he knew it would be swallowed
up and lost in the ministry of One mightier than
himself. Jews and Gentiles alike were to be convinced
of the supreme rank, the lofty claims of the Christ,
by the prophetic mission and words of one whose fame
had crossed the seas, and whose work and memorable
testimonies were the commonplaces of Hebrew medita
tion in that era of startling energy and new life.
Apart, then, from any ulterior or independent pro-
1 Acts xiii. 24, 25.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 457
longation of his influence beyond the limits of the
Church, John's name was a tower of strength. In
this discourse, and also in another report of Paul's
opinion concerning John, there is no distinct mention
of John's specific testimony to Jesus as Messiah. Paul
rather recites John's unqualified repudiation of the
Messiahship for himself, coupled with his emphatic
belief that the Messiah was standing on their thres
hold. " John verily baptized with the baptism of
repentance, saying to the people that they should be
lieve on him which should come after hirri — [that is,
on (Christ) Jesus] ." x Here again then, apart from
certain specific hints afforded by the narrative, we find
that in Ephesus the mission of John was recognized
and appealed to, as one reason for believing in the
Lord Jesus. Hence it appears that in Jerusalem,
Cassarea, Antioch, and Ephesus, hearers of the apos
tles were familiar with the career of John. These
references must not be classed with other allusions to
that sacred history, which was part of the canon of
Scripture; but they are proof that Israel was accus
tomed to hearken to the voice of prophets, and to
admit the supernatural authority with Which they
spoke. Consequently I am disposed to think that the
real "influence" of which Josephus speaks, had refer
ence to the practical consequence of John's teachings
and to the veritable, though in part unconscious, prepa
ration he had made in the mind of Israel for the eoming
of the true Christ. It seems probable that many ofthe
Lord's disciples had been profoundly affected, and guided
towards Him by the religious revival effected by the
1 Acts xix. 2-4. The clause, tovt' ianv elg tbv [yptarbv'] 'Irjaovv, is an
explanatory addition by Paul or the author of "the Acts " of the previous
assertion quoted from the words of the Baptist.

458 Results of the [lect.
ministry of John, and that the good ground, on which
the seed of the kingdom produced such abundant har
vest, was that which had been ploughed deep by the
words of the Baptist.
There are, moreover, significant hints in the New
Testament itself that John's position, notwithstanding
his own sublime self-abnegation, bulked too largely to
disappear with him. He merely handed on the torch
of prophecy, but there were those who continued to
regard him as the greatest of the sons of men ; there
were those who were content with what was com
mon in the teaching of John and Jesus, disciples who
had not come to any consciousness of the power and
presence of the Holy Ghost, who had accepted the bap
tism of repentance, and had arrived at a deep belief in
the necessity of righteousness, of self-government, and
of ceremonial Pharisaism, or separation from the world
of sin, but who entertained low views, or no views, of
the person of Christ. They were zealous for the law ;
they did not abandon or cease to preach circumcision.
They were observant of the traditions of the elders, in
cessant in their ablutions, fastings and prayers, and were
far from admitting the claim of the Gentiles to enter on
terms of equality with themselves into the kingdom of
God. There was a strong party of Hebrew Christians,
the phases of whose history were very varied, verging
here on pure Judaism and there on mystical Gnosticism,
wh'ose writings have left their mark on Christian lite
rature, and whose ultimate development into hostile
sects, or absorption into the dominant form of Catho
lic Christianity, has formed no inconsiderable element
in the history of the Church. Modern controversies
have conferred factitious importance upon them, and it

viii.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 459
may be safely said that the battle of the faith will be
fought out when it is finally decided by competent
scholarship how far the Ebionitism, of which we have
abundant traces, affected the composition of the
Gospels, and how far it was identical with the theology
of the first and second centuries. It has been left for
critics of the present generation to imagine that they
can discover, within the substance of the synoptic Gos
pels, an old Ebionite document — a tradition which was
variously modified by the Hellenistic and Pauline Chris
tianity of the close of the first century ; that they can
find the anti-Judaic element strongly embodied even in
the Greek Matthew; that they can -discover throughout
the Gospels of Mark and Luke the animus of men who
wished to depreciate the twelve apostles, and expose
their spiritual incapacity. The ingenuity of these
speculations is only equalled by their rashness and per
versity. This method of analysing an ancient docu
ment, and deciding the origin of certain portions by an
imaginary standard set up in the moral consciousness,
of what an unknown author could or could not have
written, seems to us so hazardous, that no writing that
has ever been offered to the world would come un
scathed out of a similar ordeal of criticism. The
method is very fascinating, but it will surely be re
garded by posterity very much as the allegorizing
expositions of the Alexandrines are now treated by
us — as an ingenious device, but a canon of criticism
absolutely untrustworthy and unscientific.
The peculiar speculation of the school of Baur,
touching the method and purpose of the author of the
Acts of the Apostles in the composition of that work,
receives apt illustration from Baur's own treatment of

460 Results of the [lect.
the remarkably interesting narrative I in which, for the
last time in the New Testament, reference occurs to
the baptism and disciples of John. Baur 2 sees in the
conversion of Apollos and the twelve Ephesian dis
ciples of John, in the re-baptism of the latter, and in
the descent upon them of the Spirit, a mere device of
the narrator, in an apologetic and conciliatory strain,
to show that Paul's apostolate was distinguished, as
Peter's had been, by the bestowal of the Spirit of
God on a new group of recipients. He supposes that
since Peter had been thus distinguished at Pentecost,
in Samaria, and Csesarea, in administering this gift to
Jews, Samaritans, and Gentiles, so for Paul a new
class, neither Jews nor Gentiles, had to be invented,
that he might have the honour of conferring a similar
grace upon thent, and that the author of "the Acts" hit
upon the plausible expedient of dignifying Paul's min
istry by assigning to him the baptism of John's dis
ciples. If this had been the intention of the writer,
it is very remarkable that he did not represent
Apollos himself as one of the fruits of Paul's ministry,
and that he did not thus provide for his hero something
like an effective counterpoise to the splendid story of
Cornelius^ Unfortunately for the hypothesis, Aquila
and Priscilla Were the instruments of the conversion
and spiritual endowments of Apollos ; and notwith
standing the tempting association of his name with the
baptism of John, no re - baptism, and no miraculous
speaking with tongues, is referred to in his case. The
1 Acts xViii: 24-xix. 7.
2 See Paul-: his Life and Workst his Epistles and Teachings; a Contribution
to a Critical History of Primitive Christianity. By Dr. F. C. Baur. Issued
and edited by E. Zeller: translated from German. Williams and Norgate,
vol. i. pp-. 191-197.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 461
narrative is puzzling to those who are unwilling to
admit the facts to which it obviously bears witness.
The facts, however, are of considerable interest. The
narrative distinctly reveals the diffusion in different
directions of believers said to be the disciples of John,
who had a very imperfect conception of Christ and
of His kingdom. They had shared the religious
revival effected by John's ministry. They were even
regarded by the Christians of Ephesus as in some
sense disciples (jj.a0r]rdi). Paul addressed them as
" believers " (iritrrevtramesy In the case of Apollos,2
who had come from Alexandria, and is expressly
described as a Jew, born in Alexandria, we are
further told that he was a learned or eloquent man
(X07W5) ; that he was mighty in the Scriptures and
fervent in spirit, able to expound and apply the Old
Testament; that he was instructed, moreover, in "the
way ofthe Lcrd ;" 3 and that he even spoke and taught
(aKpifim) accurately the things concerning Jesus,
knowing only the baptism of John. Baur sees so
much difficulty in this statement, that even on his
own hypothesis he is anxious to expunge this clause,
1 The Rev. Dr. A. Mahan, in his interesting and devout work on The Bap
tism ofthe Holy Ghost, lays great emphasis on this .word, which he uniformly
translates "since ye beUeved." On the supposed priority of the faith of these
disciples to their reception of the Holy Spirit, an argument is built up to the
eifect that faith in Christ to salvation always precedes the gift of the Holy
Spirit in the order of Divine operations, and that St. Paul was referring to this
order in the form of the sentence. A frequent use ofthe aorist infinitive and
aorist participle to denote a time simultaneous with that of the principal verb,
ought to have prevented such a theological use of this passage. ' ' When ye
beUeved" would be a more adequate translation. The faith, moreover, is
shown by the context to have been most imperfect and inadequate. Afford,
Gloag, Meyer, in loc, and Winer, Gram, of N. T. Gr. p. 430. Cf. Acts i. 24 ;
Rom. iv. 30 ; Eph. iv. 8 ; Col. ii. 13 ; 1 Tim. i. 3, &c.
* Or ApoUonius, as Codex Beza reads ; or Apelles, according to S,
1 A phrase used in relation to the ministry of the Baptist (Mark i. 3 ; Matt.
iii, 3).

462 Results of the [lect.
as eminently unhistorical, and a contradiction in
terms. But what was it that Aquila and Priscilla
explained to him " more accurately " ? Surely the
truth of which he had been left in ignorance — the
scriptural and other evidence that was available to
prove the full Messiahship of Jesus. It is conceivable,
without recourse to the rough and desperate remedy of
Baur, that the burden of John's teaching about the
Lord had been enough for Apollos. Jesus was the
Messianic Man. The kingdom of God was one of
righteousness and purity and holy judgment. A bap
tism with the Holy Spirit, which he did not appreciate
or know to have been realized, was as yet a splendid
dream. The mystery of the Cross and the Resurrec
tion, and the wondrous illumination of Pentecost, had
not been made known to Apollos. He was ignorant
of the nature of the kingdom as it was proclaimed by
Paul. He occupied a position not unlike that of one
Ebionite section of the Church. With strong Hebrew
leanings, with great natural powers, he was still wait
ing for " the consolation of Israel." The light cast
upon his mind was gladly accepted, and he became the
messenger and representative of the Ephesian Chris
tians to the Church in Corinth. He was of immense
service to the Corinthians " who had believed through
grace."1 He " watered " 2 the seed which Paul had
planted. He aided them in resisting the attacks which
the Jewish Christians and which orthodox Jews le
velled at the doctrine of the Cross ; and he did this
with so much effect, that a section of the Corinthian
Church made his name the badge of a partisanship,
which it is obvious, from Paul's noble language about
1 Acts xviii. 27. " 1 Cor. iii. 6.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 463
him, was distressing and contrary to his best feelings.1
In several allusions made by Paul to this distinguished
man, it is evident that there was not the slightest
breach in their friendship, or in their religious sym
pathy. Apollos appears to have been with Paul when
he wrote the First Epistle to the Corinthians.2 Pos
sibly he contrasts his own harsher style of speech with
the polished rhetoric of his friend, the one having been
trained in the Jewish schools of Tarsus and Jerusalem,
the other amid the more Hellenized influences of the
philosophy and manners of Alexandria.3 Several bib
lical critics of eminence, following a suggestion of
Luther,4 have rendered plausible the supposition that
Apollos was at least the author of the diction of the
Epistle to the Hebrews.5 This supposition throws
scarcely any light upon the previous relations of Apollos
with the disciples of John, unless we have a quiet hint
in this direction in the importance there laid on " the
doctrine of baptisms." 6 It is extremely probable that
some intimate relations subsisted between Apollos and
these twelve disciples. It is not unlikely that Apollos
had baptized these disciples " unto repentance," know
ing baptism only as the commission of John ; and,
moreover, that he had taken this step quite recently —
that is, long after the foundation of the Church,
and without understanding the higher authority and
grander significance of the Christian rite. However
that may be, it is obvious from the narrative that
these men were not baptized by John himself. When
Paul asked them, " Unto what, then, were ye bap-
1 1 Cor. i. 12. 2 Ibid. iii. 4, 6, 22 ; iv. 6 ; xvi. 12. Cf. Titus iii. 13.
3 1 Cor. ii. 4 ; 2 Cor. xi. 5. * Commentary on Genesis, xlviii. 20.
5 De Wette partially adopts the hypothesis. Lunemann, Bleek, Tholuck,
Reuss, Lutterbeck, and Alford. 6 Heb. vi. 3.

464 Results of the [lect.
tized ?" their answer was, — not that they had been
among John's disciples from the first, or that they had
been baptized by him ; but — " Unto John's baptism."
The significance and purport of their being baptized
was the " baptism of John," a synonym for the doctrine
and commission and ideal of life set forth by John. The
inquiry, " Did ye receive the Holy Ghost when ye
believed (irio-revo-avre<;) ?" implies that some influences
had been brought to bear upon their understanding
allied to that which brought men into the Church.
But the wonderful effects produced on the intelligence
of first converts — expository of far deeper, more com
prehensive, and blessed changes effected in their
hidden life — was an experience to which, as yet, they
had been strangers. The baptism which they had
received was accompanied by no such startling
manifestation. They did not so much as know that
the Holy Ghost promised by John had ever been im
parted. If this was their state of mind, their case
reveals an almost unread page of the earliest Church
history. It seems to me more reasonable to unroll
that page than to invent motives for the composition of
an utterly unhistorical narrative of events which never
happened. Either from the teaching of Apollos, or
of some other disciple as much impressed as he
undoubtedly was with the spiritual revival effected
by John, they had acquired a very loose and imperfect
conception of the indispensable importance of the
greater name and mightier work of Jesus. To multi
tudes of Jews He may have been little more than a
nominis umbra. Though some very enthusiastic men
counted all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of that name, perhaps nearly all that others

viii.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 465
had learned in their ascetic, therapeutic isolation, may
have been, that Christians constituted " a sect every
where spoken against." John was their hero, their
second Adam, their king of men, and his memory was
the principal link of connection amongst them. They
were not indisposed for further light. They accepted
the assurance of Paul that John's ministry was tran
sitional and introductory to the kingdom of Christ,
and they were baptized into the name of the Lord
Jesus. Paul laid his hands on them, and the Holy
Ghost came on them, and they spake with tongues,
and prophesied. The same result may have followed
similar contact with many another group ofthe followers
of John who were thus absorbed into the Christian-
Church. There were as we know many allied forms of Judaic
Christianity which fell far short of the standard of Paul,
or even of Peter. Some endeavoured to retain much if
not all that was distinctive of Judaism, and yet to take
advantage of the kingdom of Christ. They were ready
to accept the gospel, but at the same time to " preach
circumcision;" they were willing to believe in Jesus,
and also to believe in the privilege of their race and
the sanctity of their temple. There were many who
undoubtedly did not go beyond the Essenic position,
and while they took spiritual views of the old law
and its more burdensome ritual, never dreamed of
breaking loose from Judaism. Their " faith " fell short
of any deep conviction of the true nature and real work
of Christ, and they did not know whether there had
been any manifestation of, or baptism with, the Holy
Ghost. To what extent they made common cause with
the disciples of John cannot be historically shown, but
31

466 Results of the [lect;
some suggestive hints are found in the Clementine
Homilies, which throw a passing gleam of light on the
ideas entertained with reference to John the Baptist at
the end of the second century. Thus " there was one
John, a Hemero-baptist (one who baptizes every day),
who was also, according to the method of combination,
the forerunner of our Lord Jesus ; and as the Lord had
twelve apostles, bearing the number of the months of
the sun, so also he (John) had thirty chief men, fulfilling
the monthly reckoning of the moon, in which number
was a certain woman called Helena, so that not even
this might be without a dispensational significance. . . .
But of these thirty, the first and most esteemed by John
•was Simon." J The following chapter relates in detail
how one Dositheus obtained by stratagem the supreme
position, as John's successor after his death, but was com
pelled to yield to the greater might and magical force of
Simon, and how Simon, at the head of the twenty-nine
disciples, received the homage due to their chief.
This singular assertion finds its parallel and some ex
position in the first book of the Clementine Recognitions,"
where Peter is represented as describing the Jewish
sects which had sprung up ever " since the days ofthe
Baptist." We find in this address some remarkable
historical blunders, such as the origination of the sect
of the Sadducees at the time of John ; but the asser
tion is made, that the Samaritans were hindered by the
wickedness of Dositheus from believing that Jesus was
Christ. Scribes and Pharisees, we are told, " being
baptized by John, and holding the word of truth received
from the tradition of Moses, have hid it from the hearing
IHom. ii. c. 23. z^.A.-N. L. vol. xvii. p. 42.
2 Recog. Ub. i. cc. 54-60. A.-N. L. vol. iii. pp. 178-182.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 467
of the people. Yea, some even of the disciples of John,
who seemed to be great ones, have separated themselves
from the people, and proclaimed their own master as
the Christ." In chapter lx. one of the disciples of John
is said to have asserted that "John was the Christ, and
not Jesus, inasmuch as Jesus Himself declared that
John was greater than all men and all prophets." The
arguments by which this heresy was confuted are then
given. These passages may at least be taken to show
that in the middle or end of the second century, dis
ciples of John were existing who urged his claims as
Messiah, who separated themselves from the Christian
Church, and from that which this Ebionitic writer con
ceived to be orthodox doctrine touching the rank and
glory of the Christ. They point also to Dositheus and
Simon as embodying this opinion. Throughout the
pseudo-Clementine literature Simon is the heresiarch,
the antagonist of Peter and the enemy of all righteous
ness ; and to represent him as the leader of the thirty
chief disciples of John, was to pronounce a very severe
condemnation upon them. A certain element of passion
is betrayed in the statement which suggests that the
disciples of John were showing themselves antagonistic
to the Christian community, as judged from the stand
point of the Clementines.
The early Christian writers are silent on the subject
of this community, and treat the function and work of
John in a manner that is in harmony with the biblical
narrative. Thus Justin Martyr1 discusses at length the
prophecies concerning John, and he identifies him with
the forerunner of Isaiah's prophecy and the Elijah of
Malachi, basing his judgment entirely on words of our
1 Dial. c. Tryp. chaps. xlix.-U.
31 *

468 Results of the [lect.
Lord. Hippolytus1 recognizes the simple biblical ideas
concerning the forerunner of Christ, though he holds out
a further hope of the coming of Elijah before the final
advent of the Lord ; and in his description of the bap
tism of our Lord he adopts the view of the thoroughly
subordinate transitional character of John's mission,
and the transcendent excellence of the Lord. Origen2
quotes Josephus as an historical vindication of the func
tions and character of John, without furnishing any ad
ditional trait of reverence or controversial conception
of his character.
Tertullian3 declares "that all John's doings were
laid as groundwork for Christ until when ' He had in
creased,' — just as the same John used to foreannounce
' that it was needful that He should increase and him
self decrease,' — the whole work of the forerunner passed
over together with his spirit itself unto the Lord." He
adds that John's form of prayer was not extant, and pro
ceeds to comment on the Lord's prayer. As we have
previously seen, Tertullian stood almost alone in a con
viction that the Spirit of God was withdrawn from
John as a prophetic gift when he closed his public
ministry, and that he occupied a thoroughly transitional
position between the Old Testament and the New.
There are no hints that we can discover in Tertullian of
the community still adhering to the name and glorying
in the baptism of John. The later fathers of the Church
use language about John closely resembling that ofthe
earliest writers. He is the forerunner, the preacher of
repentance, the great agent by whom the Messiah
was baptized, the ascetic, the martyr, the saint, the
1 Treatise on Christ and Antichrist, 44-46 ; Works of Hipp. A.-N. L.
vol. ii. pp. 25-27. = C. Celsum, chap, xlvii.
2 Treatise on Prayer. A.-N. L. vol. i. p. 179.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 469
pattern monk, if not the model man. The following
passages may be sufficient to establish the theological
position in which he was held during the fourth cen
tury. Chrysostom in many discourses is eloquent in
his praise of the penitence, abstinence, and sanctity
enjoined by the Baptist, as well as in indignation over
his cruel martyrdom. In the discourse * on " the fore
runner," John's proclamation is made the basis of a
rhetorical appeal for penitence. His " camel's hair,"
" leathern girdle," and " loins " are alike spiritualized,
and his baptism of Jesus is thus explained: "Jesus
said, Suffer it to be so now; thou must be the witness of
the voice now issued concerning me. It is fitting that
I should teach how a man must be born of water and of
the Spirit, or he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.
It is necessary that I should first act and then teach,
lest the Jews should take exception and say, He teacheth
others, let him teach himself. I must open the womb
of water and the spirit, and thus be the firstborn among
many brethren." So also in the discourse 2 on " the
Holy Theophany and St. John the forerunner," he ex
hibits the warmest enthusiasm about this great hero,
and enlarges on the astounding effect produced on the
mind of John by the appearance of our Lord among
the candidates for his baptism. " Dost thou bend thy
head to me, who hast bended the heavens that thou
mightest come down to earth, whose head is God Him
self, the head that cherubim adore?  Why
shouldst thou submit to the baptism of repentance,
thou who hast pity on the repenting ?" and in glowing
rhetoric he accumulates every element of the incon-
1 eig rbv irpoSpopov. Chrys. Opera, Ed. Fronto Parisiis, 1536. Tom. vi.
pp. 311, ff. 2 L. c. pp. 363-368.

470 Results of the [lect.
gruous and perplexing in the demand, to which Christ
replies : " I admire thy modesty, but require thine
obedience in this matter. Thou hast been made the
patron of my kingdom, thou oughtest to be the minister
of my dispensation. I have come to thee, that all men
may come to me." There is also a sermon by Chry
sostom on " the dancing of Herodias and beheading of
John," * charged with high enthusiasm for the martyr.
" When the sword smote his sacred neck, the wild
beasts of the desert trembled, the dragons and young
lions shook with fear, the wild bees hushed their
toil : the head of the Baptist, from the charger of the
executioner, shouted to the king, ' It is not lawful for
thee to have thy brother's wife.' "
The reference to this subject in the Apocryphal Gos
pels sheds no historical light upon the prolongation of
John's influence. But the "Gospel of Nicodemus"
contains a picturesque description of the appearance of
the Baptist in Hades, whither he went before the King
of Glory, to prepare His way, even as he had done on
earth. Adam and all the patriarchs accept with lowly
reverence the claims of the prophet who baptized the
Christ, who had discerned "the Lamb of the Lord, the
Son of God." With slight varieties, the same scene is
repeated in both the Greek and Latin forms of the
second part of the Gospel, entitled " the Descent of
Christ into Hell."2 There is strong indication given of
the intimate acquaintance ofthe writer with the synoptic
and Johannine Gospels, and there are hints of the reve
rence felt within the heart of Christendom for the great
forerunner. There is no suspicion here of any rivalry
1 L. c. p. 379, ff.
2 See Ante-Nic. Lib. " Apocryphal Gospels," pp. 170-200, 217, 218.

vui.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 471
between the Christ and John. The most striking form
of the imaginative representation is as follows. After
the prophet Hesaias had explained the meaning of a
great light shining over the abysses of Hades, " there
came into the midst another, an ascetic from the
desert, and the patriarchs said to him, Who art thou?
And he said, I am John, the last of the prophets,
who made the paths of the Son of God straight,
and proclaimed to the people repentance for the remis
sion of sins. And the Son of God came to me, and I,
seeing Him a long way off, said to the people, Behold
the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the
world. And with my hand I baptized him, and I saw
the Holy Spirit like a dove coming upon Him, and I
heard a voice of God, even of the Father, saying, ' This
is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.' " And
on this account He sent me also to you to proclaim how
the only begotten Son of God is coming here, that
whosoever shall believe on Him shall be saved, and
whosoever shall not believe on Him shall be con
demned. On this account I say unto you all, in
order that when you see Him you may adore Him,
that now only is for you the time of repentance for
having adored idols in the vain upper world, and for
the sins you have committed, and that this is im
possible at any other time." It should be added that
some of the Greek Fathers condemned this conceit.
Gregory of Nazianzus and Hippolytus accepted it, but
Chrysostom rejected it.1
This document, whatever inferences may be drawn
from it as to the state of departed souls, and the power
of prayer, prophecy, special revelation, personal re-
1 Tillemont, M/moires, i. 518.

472 Results of the [lect.
pentance, and faith in the unseen world, does not add
anything to our knowledge of the influence which John
exercised over the less instructed portions of the Chris
tian Church.
The Donatists and Novatians had justified their
repetition of baptism on the ground of the rebaptism
of the Ephesian disciples. Augustine vehemently con
tended against the inference drawn by them, that Chris
tian baptism could be invalidated by the unworthiness
of the hands that administered it. He did so by draw
ing what he conceived to be an important distinction
between John's baptism and Christian baptism. "The
baptism of Judas would have been valid ;" " the sacra
ment of Christ is so sacred, that even the ministration
of a murderer would not pollute it." But "the bap
tism of John is of an essentially different nature."
This opinion was, as we have seen, subsequently formu
lated by the Tridentine divines into an article of creed.
In later times it has been maintained by different theo
logical schools, with different objects in view. The
interesting controversy between Kinghorn and Robert
Hall on the " terms of Christian communion " led the
latter to delineate the essential distinction between the
baptism of John and Christian baptism. The points
on which he insisted were, (i) that John's baptism was
not a Christian ordinance ; (2) that it did not demand
faith in the historic Christ, nor was it administered in
the name of Jesus ; (3) that it was not followed by the
baptism with the Holy Ghost ; and (4) that John's
disciples were rebaptized by Paul. The conclusion is
that Christian baptism had no existence before the day
of Pentecost ; and, therefore, that the plea of those
who would make the supposed priority of that ordi-

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 473
nance to the Lord's Supper a ground for insisting on
baptism as a term of communion, falls to the ground.1
Mr. Hall wrote also an extended treatise on the same
subject in criticism of Mr. Kinghorn's " Plea for Primi
tive Communion," in which he reviews his own position
and those of his opponent with that consummate skill,
candour, and mastery of English, for which he is so
justly remarkable.2 In this treatise a fresh point made
by Mr. Hall is that Christian baptism is one into the
death of Christ, a prime peculiarity which could not be
attributed to John's baptism. There is much in Hall's
eloquent argument which illustrates the position I have
ventured to maintain in this volume as to the inchoate,
imperfect, and transitional work of John, and therefore
the symbolic, prophetic, anticipatory quality of his
baptism with water. But the identity of the physical
act in both instances, and the reiterated distinction
drawn by John, by Christ, and by the apostles, between
the baptism with water and the baptism with the Holy
Ghost, show that water-baptism under the Christian
dispensation is as symbolic and anticipatory as it was
in the hands of John. Mr. Hall is abundantly justified
in disputing "the plea for primitive communion" based
on the supposed identity of the baptism of John with
that of Christian baptism ; but it seems to me that he
does not see that the identity of the rite in both cases
leads to still broader conclusions as to the real place
of the rite in the dispensation of the Spirit.
1 Robert HaU, Works, vol. ii. 1-43. 2Ibid. pp. 180-232.

474 Echoes of the [lect.
§ i. In the existence of obscure Johannine Sects.
A sect of Jewish origin, calling themselves Hemero-
Baptists, claimed a John as their founder, whether or
not he can be identified with John the Baptist.1 Euse
bius informs us that Hegesippus enumerates these
Hemero-Baptists among the Jewish sects.2 Epipha
nius3 describes their opinions as resembling those of the
Pharisees and Sadducees, and as differing only in the
folly of supposing that daily baptism would wash away
all sin. The Clementine Homilies4 speak of John as
their founder, though in such a loose manner that no
dependence can be placed upon it, as historic evidence
of fact. Their daily religious ablution indicates, how
ever, some correspondence with a similar custom among
the Essenes.
Under various names, certain sectaries of dubiously
Jewish, Gnostic, Mohammedan, and Christian origin,
have, down to the present day, inhabited certain dis
tricts of Persia. They have called themselves Mendai-
Ijahi, and are termed by others Sabeans. European
travellers have denominated them " Christians of St.
John." The Arabs call them El-Mogtasila, " the Bap
tists," and M. Renan assures us that the Aramaic word
Seba is synonymous with baptize.5 Very different ex-
1 Mosheim, De Rebus Christianorum ante Constantinum Magnum, p. 44 ;
also Ecclesiastical History, translated by A. Maclaine, 1811. vol. iv. p. 251.
2 Hist. Ecc. lib. iv. 22.
s Adv. Hcereses, lib. i. ; Hcer. xvii. Ed. cit. vol. i. p. 37.
* Horn. ii. 23.
S Vie de Jesus, c. vi. ; Histoire des Langues SCmitiques, iii. 4. 1. M. Nor-
berg also thinks that Tsaba is equivalent to intinxit or immersit, and may
account for their name. Sale, in Preface to Translation of Koran, p. 15.
thinks that Seba refers to the "host of heaven " worshipped by them. He
adds : "They use 'a kind of baptism,' which is the greatest mark of their
resemblance to Christians." "Travellers," says he, "commonly call them
Christians of St. John. "

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 475
planations have been given of their ¦ opinions.1 The
only source of information to which it is safe to appeal
is found in the books which they attribute to Adam
and John the Baptist, a prophet whom they hold in
high esteem. The latter book contains an " office for
baptism," and a dialogue between John and Christ.
Christ asks John to baptize Him, but John brings a
number of charges against Jesus — such as His accusing
Moses of falsehood, and forbidding marriage. Both
these charges are denied. Meanwhile, as John hesi
tates, a message comes from " the house of Abatur,"
permitting it; but "the blue waters of the Jordan
become dark, and a cross appears." The book also
contains "the precepts of John," which consist of short
moral maxims.2
1 They have been referred to by Thevenot, Voyages, torn. iv. 584 ; Assemanus,
Biblioth. Orient. Staudlin criticised various Sidras or fragments of their
sacred books, which had found their way into European libraries. Bayer
and La Croze advocated their Manichaean origin. Mosheim appeals rightly to
their sacred books. Gibbon, Decl. and Fall. Smith's Ed. vi. 214, says : "It
is a sUppery task to ascertain the creed of an ignorant people, afraid and
ashamed to disclose their secret traditions." See Calmet, Dictionary and
Fragments. 2 Matthew Norberg, 1815, a Swede, edited and translated into Latin, in two
volumes quarto, the Codex NasOrceus, Liber Adami Appellatus. with notes and
a Syriac glossary. He discusses their feeble claim to be regarded as Christians,
notwithstanding their preservation of a species of baptism and holy commu
nion. The pubUcation of Norberg led Tychsen to dispute the antiquity of the
document, and a warm discussion between De Sacy, Tychsen, and Norberg
ensued, in which Norberg proved that though there might be modern admix
tures, the Codex does represent a product of older faiths. Norberg introduced
a curious sketch written in Galilean Syriac by Germanus Conti, about 1650,
descriptive of a sect of Johannites, the substance of which is as follows :
"That these people formerly dwelt in Galilee of Palestine, and thence migrated
to Mercab, in the Lebanon ; * that John the Baptist was their founder, and
that their community represents the closing phases of Judaism. Their priest
is robed in tiara and garments of camel's hair, and administers a sacrament of
locusts and wild honey. These elements being consecrated, are distributed to
those who are present, and taken to the homes of the absentees. On no occa
sion is either element partaken of without the deepest reverence. The day on

* Peterman, in Herzog, Ency. art. " Mendaer," thinks this improbable.

476 Echoes of the [lect.
The Liber Adami is a portion of a much larger book,
Sidra Rabba, which contains the workmanship of many
successive generations ; and the religious system it con
tains is an amalgam of different religions of antiquity.
It is unnecessary to recite here the principal features
of these Gnostic speculations. The people who rever
ence the book do undoubtedly -exist at the present day.
They practise baptism, and celebrate the Holy Supper
with the elements of bread and water. Among their
various annual festivals, there is one which lasts fifteen
days, called the Paatscha, when every Mendsean is
bound to be baptized, though the most ceremonious
among them celebrate the rite every Sunday.
Their numbers are gradually diminishing. Towards
the middle of the seventeenth century they exceeded
twenty thousand families. They are now reduced to
which this is sacramentally taken is a festival on which they abstain from all
other business or pleasure, and as much as possible from speech. Once a
month a solemn convocation is held in the temples. The commencement of
their service is a repetition of John i. 1, but they do not admit Christ to be the
Son of God, but His prophet. There is no ornament in their temples, but
there is a font for baptism, and a table for the honey and locusts. They offer
this prayer : ' John, whom we revere in place of our Father, we pray thee be
gracious to us, free us from all hostile power, and make the light of true
religion illumine our mind. ' Then follows sacrament and teaching, recitation
from the sacred book, with closed and guarded doors. The festival of John's
birth is kept, then that of the day on which he originated baptism, when all
the community approach the water, enter it, drink it, and are sprinkled with it,
the chief priest exclaiming, ' I renew your baptism in the name of the Father
and of our saviour (John). May he who baptized the Jews in the Jordan, and
preserved them in like manner, preserve you. ' On the day of John's decapita
tion there is solemn deprecation of the act ; and finally, on the day on which
John killed a dragon in Lake Tiberias, it is the custom to lead cattle and flocks
around the temple with great rejoicing." The whole of the statement is open
to grave scepticism, as it stands alone, and is unconfirmed by other testimony.
The language of the Codex has features which the Jews say were characteristic
of the Galilean dialect, and thus indicate its source, but there are undoubted
references to Mohammed, and sundry very curious Gnostic speculations. Art.
" Mendaer," Herzog's Ency., refers to L. E. Burckhardt, Les Nasorlens ou
Mandai-Jahia appelis ordinairement Zabiens et Chritiens de St. Jean Baptiste,
1840. I have not been able to obtain this treatise.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 477
about fifteen hundred individuals, inhabiting a region
south of Bagdad, between the two rivers, and in certain
portions of Chusistan. Mosheim particularly signalized
Bosra (Bassorah), nearer the Persian Gulf, as their
special habitat. I have given in the note the curious
recital of Germanus Conti, who found persons enter
taining somewhat similar opinions in the Lebanon.
They do not distinguish themselves externally from the
Mohammedans amongst whom they live.
The examination we have given to the matter brings
us to the conclusion that the connection of this sect
with John the Baptist, or his earliest followers, is of
the feeblest kind. Still, they treat his name with pe
culiar reverence, and give him a rank in the universe
and in the history of Divine revelation higher than that
assigned to any other mortal.
§ 2. In the Honour done to the Name of John in the
Roman Church.
The honour that has been done to the Baptist's name
in the Roman Catholic Church is remarkable. Though
the fundamental distinction between his baptism and
that of Christ has been asserted on the highest au
thority, he has been canonized as a saint of the Roman
Church, and two festivals are celebrated in his honour
in the Roman calendar. A grand exception is made in
his favour, that whereas for the most part the death
of the saints of God is the event especially commemo
rated by the Church, the birth of John was so remark
able, that it is deemed worthy of special distinction.
Indeed, St. Bernard1 tells us "that the Church which
1 S. BernarcU Opera. Ed. MabiUon. Paris, 1839. vol. i. 390, ep. 174.

478 Echoes of the [lect.
judges and pronounces precious the death of other
saints, in this case has made singular exception, and
commemorates the nativity of him concerning whom
the herald-angel strangely said, ' Multi in nativitate
ejus gaudebunt:' 'many shall rejoice at his birth.'
Why should not he who leaped in the womb for joy
have holy, festive, joyful issue thence ? " The 24th of
June is celebrated with special honours in devout re
membrance of the " birth " of St. John. But it has
not been enough to celebrate his birth ; the Church has
also set apart another day, August 29th, to commemo
rate his " decollation."
Ecclesiastical tradition has adorned with a variety
of curious details the historical statement that his
disciples buried his corpse. Ruffinus and Theodoret
inform us that this tomb was at Sebaste, in Samaria,1
and around it Jerome saw the same wild orgies cele
brated as those which still disgrace the Holy Sepulchre
of Jerusalem. Mohammedans call it the tomb of the
" Prophet John, the son of Zacharias." The tomb,
we are told, was rifled by the pagans in the days of
Julian. Portions of the relics were burned, and the
remainder, preserved by the Christians, were sent to
Athanasius, at Alexandria. In the year a.d. 396 Theo
dosius built a church in Alexandria, over the relics.
Portions of these sacred ashes were sent to other
churches. Thus Theodoret claims to have received
some for his church at Cyrus. The head of John
was said to have been found in Jerusalem, and trans
ported to Emessa, in Syria, in a.d. 453, and a church
was built over it. In a.d. 800 the precious treasure
was conveyed to Constantinople. When that city was
1 See Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 242.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 479
taken by the French, a.d. 1204, the face was brought
to Amiens, and around its shrine, in the cathedral
church, may still be seen the splendid group of alto-
relievos which portray different scenes in the life of the
prophet. Part of the skull is said to be preserved in
St. Sylvester's Church in Rome, and Cardinal Wise
man has argued at great length,1 that because these
scattered portions, if brought together, would fit into
one another, they may together constitute the head of
John the Baptist ! It is consistent that the supposed
remains of the prophet should be honoured by the
Church which has accepted as essential to Christianity
so large a portion of the Johannine position and teach
ing; nevertheless, he who cried, "Now is the axe laid at
the root of the trees: whosoever bringeth not forth good
fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire" — would have
laughed to scorn this scrambling for his skull.2
§ 3. In the Position assigned to John the Baptist in
Christian Art.
The task of representing the echoes of the ministry
of John would not be complete without a brief refer
ence to the influence which the memory of this great
saint has exerted on Christian art. Standing between
the Old Covenant and the New, and indissolubly con
nected with the whole cycle of events by which the
kingdom of God has been established and revealed to
men, he has become dear to the heart of the Christian
Church; and the affection felt towards him, and the
awe and reverence inspired by his name, have found
expression in the habit of dedicating churches and
1 See Appendix D.
2 The details are given in great length in Acta Sanctorum, and in TUlemont,
Mlmoires, vol. i. pp. 106-113, 520-533.

480 Echoes of the [lect.
baptisteries to his memory, both in the East and the
West. Not only in Sebaste, where it was reported
that his martyred remains were first buried, but in
Alexandria and Rome— to both of which it was be
lieved that in subsequent days fragments of these
sacred relics were conveyed — churches arose in his
honour. Moreover, wherever in early and mediaeval
times a building was erected for baptismal purposes,
it was associated with his name, and decorated with
the sculpture or painting of some of those events in
John's career which so readily lend themselves to artis
tic representation. " In all the Christian edifices, even
in the catacombs, there was set apart a baptistery,
with a font for the baptizing of children and converts,
always dedicated to St. John." * Thus the Basilica of
St. John Lateran, in Rome, which is called omnium
urbis et orbis ecclesiarum mater et caput, though first de
voted to Christian uses in the reign of Constantine,
was finally dedicated to St. John the Baptist in the
pontificate of Lucius II. When, in a.d. 1644, the
ancient building was restored by Urban VIII., the
work of decorating the font was entrusted to Andrea
Sacchi. Little can be said in praise of his work. The
Princess Theodolinda reared in Florence, in the year
A.D. 589, a baptistery on the site of a heathen temple,
and in later years, Giotto, Ghiberti, and Andrea Pisano
lavished upon the gorgeous structure the wealth of
their genius. It is, together with other adornment,
a dream in stone and precious bronzes of all the
heroism and the mystery of the life and life-work of
1 The History of our Lord, as Exemplified in Works of Art, with that of His
Type, St. John the Baptist, Sec. , commenced by the late Mrs. Jameson, con
tinued and completed by Lady Eastlake. Vol. i. p. 282.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 481
John. Florence itself is especially placed under his
patronage. " In that city I dwelt,
Who for the Baptist her first patron changed,"
says a Florentine in Dante's Divina Commedia.1 " Tell
me," says another — " Tell me of the fold
That hath Saint John for guardian !" 2
The church of Santa Maria Novella is decorated with
a series of pictures by Ghirlandajo, illustrating the his
tory of the Baptist. The superb cathedral of Amiens
is not only dedicated to John, but its choir is sur
rounded by a series of crowded sculptures, in alto-
relievo, representing successive events in his wonderful
career. The famous font of bronze gilt in the bap
tistery of Siena was adorned by the greatest artists
of the time with six historical scenes, in basso-relievo,
taken from events in the life of John. A similar
group is found, in fresco, on the walls of Lo Scalzo at
Florence, the work of Andrea del Sarto ; and another
in the cathedral of Prato, dedicated to St. John the
Baptist and St. Stephen, by the hands of Fra Filippo
Lippi. The scene and circumstances of John's nativity, and
the sanctity thus conferred upon Elizabeth, are among
the commonplaces of Christian art; and every repre
sentation of the "salutation" of Mary by the mother
of the Baptist is charged with the idea on which the
Roman Catholic divines, by a strained exegesis, lay
so much emphasis, viz., the prophecy of the unborn
babe. Through many of them there seem to vibrate
the accents of the hymn of Pistor : —
1 Inferno, xiii. 145. Carey's Trans. 2 Paradiso, xvi. 23.
33

482 Echoes of the [lect.
" Prsecursore nondum nato,
Nondum partu reserato,
Reserantur mystica,
Nostro sole tunc exclusus,
Verioris est perfusus,
:Solis luce typica."
The " Holy Family" is seldom complete without the
introduction of the infant John, as conscious in child
like innocence of the glory of his youthful companion,
and as prematurely alive to the meaning of the Cross
and the symbolism of the Lamb. Leonardo, Raphael,
Rubens, Vandyck, and Murillo put forth their varied
powers to represent the holy childhood of the herald
of Christ, and the lovely blending of his earliest
thoughts and cares with those of Jesus ; while there
are not a few representations of the youth of John in
the desert, already bearing the reed cross, and the
scroll, Ecce Agnus Dei. Not unfrequently he is re
presented as an adoring worshipper of the Lord,
sometimes as seated, sometimes kneeling before the
enthroned and glorified Saviour. In the celebrated
Madonna di Foligno of Raphael, " he stands as patron
and witness, pointing up to the Saviour with a sort
of wild, haggard, yet inspired look." J In this, as in
many representations of the canonized saints of the
Church, John takes his place in defiance of all chron
ology. Thus the ascetic prophet not only appears in
maturity during the childhood of Jesus, but is often
grouped in company with saints of after ages — as
with St. Antony, St. Nicholas, and St. Catherine, St.
Lawrence, St. Francis, and St. Bernard. In most of
these groups we see conspicuously taught the dignity
of John's self-abnegation, the grandeur of his martyr-
' Mrs. Jameson, 1. c. p. 289.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 483
dom, the glory of his ascetic conquest of self. He is
the pattern eremite of Oriental and Latin Christianity,
of Greek and Italian art.
In the historical pictures in which John is intro
duced, and which are often grouped in a series, Chris
tian painters have seldom wandered beyond the ample
scope provided for them in the narratives of Scripture;
In two or three representations of his birth, however, the
Virgin Mary is seen to be a spectator and participant in
the joy of Elizabeth.1 Artistic feeling has sometimes
transformed the young eremite into a youthful Apollo ;
and one remarkable picture in the Academy at Siena
represents the descent of John into Hades, as indicated
in the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.2 But the more
common themes are his ministry in the wilderness, the
baptism of Jesus, the reproof of Herod, the banquet at
Machaerus, the decollation, and the burial.
Mr. Ruskin,3 speaking of the baptism of Christ as
a subject for art, says : " However important, and
however deep in its meaning, it supplies not to tbe
ordinary painter material enough ever to form a pic
ture of high interest. From the purity of Giotto to
the intolerable, inconceivable brutality of Salvator,
every order of feeling has been displayed in its treat
ment ; but I am aware of no single case, except this of
which I am about to speak, in which it has formed an
impressive picture." He refers to Verrocchio, Giotto,
Angelico, with moderated approval, and the one ex
ception of which he speaks in eloquent words is that
of Tintoret.4
Mrs. Jameson is far less sweeping in her condemna-
1 Mrs. Jameson, 1. c. p. 291, 303. 2 See ante, p. 470.
3 Modern Painters, vol. ii. p. 170. * See Appendix E.
32 *

484 Echoes of the [lect.
tion, but she says truly : " For a subject of such deep
religious import, it has often been treated as a group
accessory in a fine landscape." Even Milton's mighty
lines scarce reveal the hand which drew the glories of
Paradise and the crown of hell. l The innumerable
efforts made to portray the sufferings and the martyr
dom of John show the powerful hold which the mission
of the Baptist, and its tragic close, took upon the
sympathies of the Christian Church. A heroism more
sublime, a character more lofty in its aims, a self-
sacrifice more complete, humility more nobly blended
with majestic energy, personal devotion and purity
crowned with a more impressive martyrdom, have not
illumined the annals of mankind. " Among them that
are born of women, there hath not arisen a greater
than John the Baptist."
Art, which is ever searching for ideal manhood, and
crowning its own conceptions with aureoles of rever
ence and love, never found, save in Incarnate God, a
nobler theme than the childhood and the manhood, the
life-work and the death-agony of the Baptist. In Chris
tian art the " Voice " still echoes through the corridors
of time, the " burning and shining torch " has gleamed
1 ' ' Now had the great proclaimer, with a. voice
More awful than the sound of trumpet, cried,
Repentance, and heaven's kingdom nigh at hand
To all baptized. To his great baptism flocked
With awe the regions round, and with them came,
From Nazareth, the Son of Joseph deem'd,
To the flood Jordan ; came as then obscure,
Unmark'd, unknown ; but Him the Baptist soon
Descried, divinely warn'd, and witness bore
As to his worthier, and would have resigned
To Him his heavenly office, nor was long
His witness unconfirmed. On Him baptized
Heaven open'd, and in likeness of a dove
The Spirit descended, while the Father's voice
From heaven pronounced Him His beloved Son."

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 485
athwart the darkness of ages of despotism, selfishness,
and lust. The Morning Star has pierced the shades of
night, and now and again has taught the nations to
hope. There is a work still for John to do. Every
valley is not exalted, nor every mountain and hill
made low ; and there is need that even now art as
well as history, music1 as well as science, the song
as well as the pen, should proclaim and prolong the
work of this great Herald of the morning.
The General Lessons Derivable from the Career
of John the Baptist.
The final portion of the task I have imposed upon
myself is an attempt to estimate the Lessons deriv
able from the very imperfect review now taken of the
various relations of John the Baptist with the kingdom
of God upon earth. I.
Something is gained for the authenticity and trust
worthiness of our most precious literature, if we dis
tinctly appreciate the historical position of John. We
have seen that, independently of the evidence of the
New Testament, there is sufficient reason to believe,
that in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea, certain
communities of saintly, ascetic men strove to realize
the kingdom of God on earth. They practised baptism,
and thus expressed a desire to be delivered from sin,
whether considered as a moral offence, a blood-stain,
or a ceremonial impurity. Pliny, Philo, and Josephus
were loud in their praise. We have found further, that
1 The recently produced Oratorio by Mr. Macfarren is charged with fine
perception of the significance of the narrative to which he has given an epic
grandeur.

486 Lessons of the [lect.
very similar notions on prayer, purity, self-sacrifice,
and ascetic conduct of life were widely diffused
throughout the East, and received a high expression in
Buddhism. We have learned, on good authority, that
certain Jewish sects practised daily baptism ; and that
some of them, with more or less of constancy, even to ,
the present day blend their gnostic speculations and
religious customs with the name of John, and call
themselves his disciples. On the wings of a tradition
distinct from that of the New Testament, the Mussul
man reveres the name of " John the Prophet, the son
of Zachary," and deprecates his death and his mar
tyrdom. The famous and well-accredited passage in
Josephus, has moreover determined on indisputable
authority the leading features of his life and character.
A later Jewish tradition has connected John with the
priestly family of Aaron, and has explicitly referred
Herod's conduct to indignation at John's interference
with his adulterous domestic life. The differences
between the biblical and the secular narratives are
mutual confirmations of no small value, and the lead
ing features of the biography and character of John
(unencumbered with the strictly miraculous element)
commend themselves as substantially accurate and
historical, even to the most rationalistic of modern
critics. So far as John represents one of the tenden
cies of the age in which he lived, and so far as he
embodied one of its most crying necessities, and was
a link between Oriental and Judaic ideas and the
Christianity of (say) the end of the first century, he
is an auxiliary that the student of human development
cannot afford to dispense with. It is a matter of vast
importance to know that the prophetic spirit of Israel

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 487
was not extinct. It is an authentic fact that a He
brew prophet did, by moral earnestness and the
adoption of a special symbolic rite, which in later
times acquired enormous weight of meaning, move
great multitudes in such a way as to compel the notice
of Herod Antipas, Aretas, and Josephus. This cycle
of facts furnishes one clue to the historic verity of
the New Testament. It is readily granted that the
Christ of our Gospels is seen there in familiar rela
tions with one indubitably historic character; and since
the additional information obtainable from the evan
gelic records is not incompatible with what we have
gathered elsewhere, our confidence in other portions
of the same narrative ought to rise in proportion.
We have seen, further, that the poetic character of
the first chapter of Luke's Gospel does not justify our
treating it as a myth ; and we have tried to show, not
only that it is destitute of some of the leading cha
racteristics of a mythus, but that this hypothesis is
beset with greater difficulties than the supposition of
its being the work of those who were intimately ac
quainted with a whole cycle of wonderful events which
did happen, for which the world was waiting, and the
occurrence of which has revolutionized the subsequent
history of mankind.
We have seen, further, that the much-vaunted in
congruity between the synoptic and Johannine idea
of the Baptist is capable of adequate explanation, with
out sacrificing either the one or the other.
If the mythic nebula be resolved into a cluster of
stars, and if the entire conception of John, as gathered
from all quarters, is self-consistent, I venture to main
tain that it is rational and credible. If the portraiture

488 Lessons of the [lect.
of John that we have thus obtained be justified, much
more may follow. With it one of the chief objections
to the authenticity of the fourth Gospel disappears,
and the mythical hypothesis fails in a crucial illustra
tion of its supposed power to explain the origin of the
four Gospels. II.
A second conclusion which we may fairly draw from
the entire argument is the testimony borne by it to
the originality of Christ.
Neither Pharisaic nor Rabbinic nor Essenic philo
sophy contained within itself the life-stream for the
refreshment of the nations. They may have been
needful conditions, without which the higher life, the
mysterious teaching, and the unique work of Christ
would never have taken the form with which we have
become familiar; Let it be clearly perceived that a
few isolated sentences or gnomonic sayings of the
Rabbis; that a mode of self-abnegation, which our
Lord treated under certain circumstances as indis
pensable to the salvation of individuals ; that a spi
ritual interpretation of certain Mosaic rites ; that
large and liberal views about the Sabbath and the
Passover; and even that the emphasis laid in the
prayers and teachings of some of these sects on holy
love, do not constitute Christianity. These fragments of
truth, these parhelia will not account for the brightness
of the Sun of righteousness, nor unravel the mystery
of the Love of Christ. We have endeavoured to
review the noblest of these teachings, to summon their
brightest representative, the highest exponent of the
prophetic spirit of the Old Covenant before us; we
have made a special study of all that has reached us

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 489
as the outcome of his teaching and manner of life ;
and it has satisfied us that the wildest hyperbole could
never have induced, even so rhetorical a mind as that
of Apollos to have exclaimed, " I count all things but
loss for the excellency of the knowledge — of John the
Baptist." The prophetic gift of John, which was itself a Divine
method of rousing the enthusiasm or stirring the fears
of the people, did little more, after all, than gather to a
focus the scattered rays which the vigorous consciences
of the prophetic men of past ages had caused to shoot
athwart the darkness of human life ; little more than
reveal the need in which the people of Israel stood of
a great Saviour. In some respects John's teaching was
revolutionary and sceptical of current orthodoxy. He
did not, however, originate a new type of righteousness.
He did not supply a new or life-giving view of the
character or nature of God. He was conscious of his
own transitional work, and hence his moral majesty.
He knew that his mission was closed when the Sin-
Bearer and the Life-Giver came, though how the pro
phecies he had uttered could be compatible with the
grace involved in the sorrows and the love of Jesus,
baffled and bewildered him.
There is an infinite difference between the God-con
sciousness of John and that of Jesus. To perceive the
difference, is to feel the overwhelming originality of
Jesus. To the world in its wild wandering from God,
and to the true Israel in its cruel disappointments and
with its broken heart, the great harbinger of a brighter
day could do little more than say, " This is the Son of
God :" " Behold the Lamb of God." But it was an
other thing for any human being to have replied, as

490 Lessons of the [lect.
Jesus did to the assembled Sanhedrim, in answer to the
question, "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?"
"I am," and "Thou sayest that I AM;" or to have
created in human minds the irresistible conviction that
He had " come forth from God." It is undoubted-
whatever Eastern sages or early Pharaohs or Roman
emperors may have ever professed regarding their own
divine nature— that there is nothing in human history
which approximates the obvious blending of the con
sciousness of Jesus with that of His Father, and
the proofs He gave of His supreme alliance with the
Eternal Mind, and with the Infinite Power of the uni
verse. It is true that Oriental philosophy had dreamed
of Divine manifestation in human form. Much specu
lation had prevailed as to the relation which the
Eternal, the Absolute, or the One, sustained to the
temporal, the relative, and the many. The yearning of
the Eastern mystics after union with the awful power
of God, after identification with the eternal thought of
God, called into existence the legend of numberless
incarnations, and the history of gods coming down in
the likeness of men. The variegated robe which Ori
ental and Slavonic fancy has thrown round the great
powers of nature, and the humanification of the phy
sical forces, have evoked many Sagas, of charm both
superb and grotesque. The Egyptian Pharaohs were
accustomed to do homage to the divinity of their own
nature, and the haughty theocrats of Persia dared to
call on their subjects to adore them. But in all these
cases one factor of the synthesis — the humanity — was
overshadowed and absorbed by the supposed divinity.
The manhood was lost in the nimbus of celestial
glory. The result of the conjectural incarnation was

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 491
neither God nor man, and did not become a renovat
ing source of moral and religious life to humanity.
Nor does the Roman deification of heroes and kings pre
sent a just parallel to the claims of Jesus. Doubtless
the Western figment and practice of apotheosis served
for a time to retard the degradation of the old pagan*
ism to a mere fetishism ; but they helped at last to
explode and shatter the temples of the gods, and they
to some extent prepared the way for the reception of a
truth which had been shadowed forth imperfectly and
darkly in the popular superstitions.
Jesus accepted the sublime appellation, "Son of
God," and proved that His willingness to do so was
rooted in an awful depth of conscious verity. He met
the great need of humanity in this stupendous admis
sion, because it was supplemented by the lofty and
perfect expression He gave, at the same time, to the
ideal of humanity. It is the incomparable sympathy
with man of Him who said, " I and my Father are
one," which has made Him the Head of the race, the
Life and Light of the world.
John discerned some of these features, but he did
not emulate them. He saw the King in His beauty,
he perceived beneath the exterior semblance of the
Man some flashing of those imperial splendours which
have since enlightened the world, but he was not the
King of men, nor was he " that light." It was one
thing to feel the awe of the approaching sacrifice, to
comprehend the mystery of the Lord's temptation, and
to forecast the bridal of earth and heaven ; but it was
another thing to rule royally by the might of sym
pathy, and to sway the sceptre of love. It was one
thing to cry, " Behold the Lamb of God which taketh

492 Lessons of the [lect.
away the sin of the world ;" it was another to exclaim
confidently, " If any man thirst, let him come unto me
and drink :" " The Son of man came not to be min
istered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many." The Baptist made the grand dis
covery that "he who was from above was above all."
He knew that in some way Jesus would fulfil the sig
nificance of the prophetic and the ceremonial Lamb,
and would bear away the sin of the world; but it was
left for Jesus to show, by dying, by sacrificing that
wondrous life of His, in deference to the curse resting
upon the nature which He had taken into union with
His own, that death could become the true life, that
precious blood thus shed could be the life - stream
for the world. Christ's language about His own
death and the significance of it, when He teaches His
disciples to regard it as a new event in the universe,
as war made upon the power of evil, as a mode of
casting out the prince of this world, as a ransom for
many, is so marvellously in advance of the Baptist's
teaching, that we can never feel the independence of
the career and mission of Jesus so strongly as when
bringing it side by side with the great prophetic spirit
who felt the advent, heralded the approach, and pre
pared the way of the Lord.
That we should find a few of the words of John on
the lips of Jesus is what the whole burden of the nar
rative and the relation between these two leads us to
expect; but these very terms, "repentance," "remis
sion of sin," "kingdom of God," "Son of God," "wrath
to come," have all acquired a depth and fulness of
meaning from the words and work of the Lord Jesus,
which the teaching of John not only could not supply,

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 493
but did not approach. John was distinctly aware that
he was not the Christ. He repeatedly repudiated the
idignity which his disciples appear to have proffered.
He had a clear idea of his function and of the limita
tions of his work. He did not hush the garrulous
repetition of his own claims by unthinking disciples ;
nay, he was jealous of them. He would not have the
joy taken from him of being the "friend of the Bride
groom," but he never allowed popular enthusiasm to
muse even in silence on the delusion that he was " the
Christ." He gave living, vehement, explicit utterance
to the need of the people. He found a voice for their
"unutterable groaning." He expressed with matchless
force and energy the moral weakness and peril of the
nation, and exposed the hypocrisy of the religious
classes ; he revealed the urgent need of a new kind of
grace and help, but there he paused. He was con
scious of utter inability to supply the void which he
disclosed. He had the prophetic gift, but he knew that
the nation, and indeed the universal heart of man,
needed more than the appearance of a new prophet.
It had wearied of burning words and flashes of predic
tion. It had been stunned by the blows which had
fallen on its hardened heart, and the melancholy dis
aster which had crushed its fairest hopes. John knew,
and Jesus taught, that something more than a prophet
was required— One wiser than Solomon, greater than
Jonah, more mighty than even Elias. There was
needed the creation of a new kind of man, the regene
ration of the Spirit of God, the gift of eternal life.
John was a sage : he had in early manhood assumed
the garb of the ascetic community which embodied
many of the speculations and habits and counsels of

494 Lessons of the [lect.
perfection of the great sages and recluses of the East.
He had gathered together, as in a focus, the wisdom of
the Aryans and the traditions of the Semites ; but he
found them all to fail when fairly brought face to face
with the great evils of humanity. He saw a wrath
coming which he could not avert, a kingdom and an
order of things approaching which he was incompetent
to direct. The world was wearying of speculations : it
wanted facts. Metaphysics and science had done their
utmost, ascetic contemplation had led to the extinction
of some of the integral elements of human nature, and
to grave suspicions of the supremacy of goodness.
Dualism was threatening to undermine the faith of men
in the Creator and Preserver of the world, Pantheism
to obscure the vision of the living God, and foreclose
all access to Him. The speculations of Oriental phi
losophy tended to establish the unreality of all pheno
mena, and to coerce consciousness into a repudiation
of its most essential, its primal deliverance. Evil was
being charged upon matter, and thus man was rendered
irresponsible for his own disobedience. John took the
part of a true sage. He awakened conscience and re
vealed the ideal law of human life, but he did not meet
the exceeding bitter cry for help except by pointing to
the Coming Man, to the Christ. Christ's essential
originality consisted in His being and doing that for
which all the sages of the East, all the philosophers
of the West, had cried out, but hitherto had cried in
vain. Buddha had essayed to unriddle the problem
and relieve the misery of life by proclaiming its un
reality and illusion, and all the ascetic schools had
more or less pursued the methods which were cal
culated not only to condemn the lusts of the flesh, but

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 495
to suppress and stifle the emotions which constitute
the largest part of the nature of man. Christ con
ferred intense reality on these emotions, and claimed
the whole of man for God. He extinguished base
desire by quickening a heavenly desire, and proffering
a Divine object to the strongest affection. Dualistic
speculation steals over the mind, whenever it is left to
grapple unaided with the resistless force of things, of
evil customs and inherited propensities, and the law of
the punishment of sin by sin. The divorce of nature
from God, and the deadly blight of virtue and piety in
volved in the identification of evil with matter, have
been agelong perils of the human race. I do not
charge John with the error, but I maintain that he did
little to arrest or confute it. The Incarnation is the
sublime reply, and indeed the only response to the
delusion. The life and death, the flesh and blood,
the burial and resurrection of Christ, are the answer
of God to the self-deception of the world.
A few Ebionitic, Essenic, or Johannine injunctions
are discovered by certain writers, in the language of
Jesus to the seventy disciples, and in the unworldly
injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount. If we admit
that in this case, as in many others, our Lord recog
nized the good, the available elements in the current
social, theological, and ecclesiastical systems, we can
not fail to see that the whole burden and spirit of His
teaching transcends them as far as the meaning of the
Eucharist does that of the Passover. He was clearly
giving to the seventy disciples and to the twelve apos
tles, on their experimental mission, regulations of a
temporary kind, to test their faith and prepare them
for a different and a world-wide ministry. The vast

496 Lessons of the [lect.
majority of His parables — apart from the special les
sons they convey — show how tenaciously He held the
sanctity of nature, the Divine forces ever at work in it
and in man. Indeed, what has been called " Christian
Pantheism " has even cited our Lord as the supreme
example of one who identified the All with God, and
who knew that His consciousness and the Father's
were one. This latter statement is made with the
apparent idea of showing Christ to be the Chief of all
Pantheists. It has been said by Mr. Picton, that on
this hypothesis a rational idea of His life has yet to be
written ! Let it be honestly tried with the material
now at our disposal, and we shall see that the " Father"
of Christ is infinitely more than the " All " of nature,
the " All in all " of Pantheism. While Jesus claimed
to be " one " with the Father, and to be the revelation
of the Father, and the Giver of the Comforter to men,
He most distinctly discriminated the mind of God, the
working of God, the will of God, from His own human
mind and will and working. He proclaimed, moreover,
the existence of an evil spirit opposed to God. He
charged human nature with evil, and asserted that
while in its noblest form, and when discharging its
grandest functions, it still needed redemption ; and in a
method essentially distinct from that of either Oriental
sage or Essenic philosopher, He proceeded to deliver,
not Himself, but the human race from the bondage of
sin. It is what Christ was, and knew and said that
He was, which contrasts so mightily with what John the
Baptist knew and said of himself. John's teaching was
one of the conditions by which the teaching of Christ
became more comprehensible to human intelligence.
He came before Him to prepare His way ; but John

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 497
was not the Christ, nor did the essential features of
Christ's mission reproduce or merely intensify or enlarge
the teaching and position of John. It has served the
purpose of many theorists to thin down the distinction
between the mission, character, education, and position
of John and those of Christ — to exalt John at the ex
pense of Christ. Nothing is wanted but a thorough
consideration of the true functions of John, in order
to disabuse the mind of such a misconception. When
Jesus came into the world, as great a fact occurred as
when the first man appeared upon the scene. The
very points in which John approached Him, and pro
voked comparison with Him, are those which reveal
the fundamental uniqueness of the Christ. John was
a divinely-sent prophet. He belonged to that marvel
lous group of men to whose ideal of righteousness and
of the kingdom of God the world owes a debt of eternal
gratitude. Human nature per se is insufficient to ac
count for their strange and marvellous influence upon
mankind. However, while in view of the existence of the
Hebrew theocracy and institutions, of the prophetic
order, of the priestly rank, of the national expectations
often so cruelly blighted, we admit that the career of
John becomes more explicable ; yet, on the other hand,
the entire Old Testament history, and the culmination
of it in John, are altogether insufficient to account for
the life and claims of Christ and the doctrine which He
taught. To use John's own words, " There cometh
one after me mightier than I, whose shoe's latchet I
am not worthy to stoop down and unloose." " He
that is from above is above all."
35

498 Lessons of the [lect.
III.
A third general conclusion to be derived from this
investigation is the superiority of the kingdom of God,
as revealed in the life and work of Christ, to the Old
Covenant, which in the days of John the Baptist was
waxing old and ready to vanish away.
Christ, while bearing His emphatic testimony to
John, magnified the Law.1 He declared that heaven
and earth might pass away rather than the smallest
fragment of the law fall to the ground ; and in refer
ence to the charge on which Herod had imprisoned
the Baptist, He added, " Whosoever putteth away
his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery ;
and he that marrieth her that has been put away
by her husband, committeth adultery." As much as
to say, " The law of God must be revered, at all
hazards its lofty standard of perfect manhood must be
vindicated. The kingdom is not established on the
abrogation of the law, but on its fulfilment." He had
come to fulfil the whole law. Only " the least in
the kingdom of heaven" would trifle with the letter
of the law, in their eagerness to proclaim the spirit.
The obedience He came to render and inspire, issuing
from the possession of the Spirit which had given the
law, would embrace it in all its fulness, and would
exceed the righteousness of the scribe and Pharisee.
Among those born of women there hath not risen a
greater than John, in his utterance and vindication of
the law. The rabbinical glosses on the law, the tra
ditional interpretation, the practical evisceration or
modification of the Mosaic legislation by carnal or cere-
1 Luke xvi. 17. Cf. Matt. v. 17, 18. Tholuck, Commentary on Sermon on
the Mount, E. T. in loc. ; Fairbairn, Revelation of Law, p. 223, ff.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 499
monial additions, by which the law of God was made
void, were severely condemned.1 John's method of pro
claiming the sanctity of the law had made him tower
above the entire school ofthe contemporary Rabbis. His
free, bold, self-sacrificing utterance of the law of God,
had lifted him immeasurably above the punctilious de
fenders of the oral traditions. Sent by God to arouse
the conscience of Israel, he had attacked the practi
cal immorality of the boasting traditionalist, and had
bearded the voluptuous tetrarch on his throne. Our
Lord magnified the law, recognized its highest func
tions and its grandest embodiment. Further, Chri-t
vindicated on numerous occasions the function and dig
nity of the prophetic oracles. The prophets had pre
pared His way, they had from the first been the great
corrective force in Judaism. They had torn off the mask
from hypocritical literalism, and called attention to the
spirituality, the humanity, the eternal and unalterable
significance of the law which underlay the laborious
system of symbols which they endured with only par
tially-restrained impatience. They had foretold the
coming of the kingdom and the King, and now a
greater than the whole of the prophets had arisen —
one who conceived of the Messiah and His kingdom in
a higher and more spiritual sense than they had done ;
one who, moreover, had discerned in Himself the true
Son of God, the King of Israel, the Baptizer with the
Holy Spirit : and our Lord declared that John was a
prophet and more than a prophet ; yet notwithstand
ing the lofty dignity assigned by Jesus to the Baptist,
He unhesitatingly placed him on the threshold of the
kingdom, and not within it. He who was greater
1 Matt. v. 21, 27, 33, 38 ; xv. 1-20 ; xxiii. 16-23.
33 *

500 Lessons of the [lect,
than those who sit in Moses' seat, and more effective in
his work than the utterers of all the ancient oracles, was
in the judgment of Jesus less than the least of those who
had really justified Eternal wisdom. The defects, the
• official inferiority (not the subjective moral weakness)
of John, the relative imperfection of his standpoint —
notwithstanding its being the culmination of the Old
Testament economy — reveal in brilliant light the ex
traordinary independence of the Christ and His king
dom. Christ was not the development of Judaism, not
the mere expander of ideas that lay in their seed-form
in the old faith. He came with a new revelation.
The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came
(were) by Jesus Christ. Christ reproduced and reas
serted all the ancient promises of God". He fulfilled and
established the venerable law. He was the true Priest,
Prophet, Nazarite, Baptist, King, Sacrifice, Temple,
Sabbath, of the older covenant, but He was infinitely
more, and He knew that He was. His disciples pro
claimed Him as " the Son of God," as " the Word made
flesh," as " the Prince of life," as " the Lord of all."
Christianity was not a reformation of Judaism. It
was the Biopda>cri<;,1 the right and full setting forth of
its own hidden significance. Christ was the diorthosis
of the temple and the Sabbath and the Priesthood,
of the various functions of the prophetic order, of the
ascetic community and of the sacrificial ritual. The
life of Christ on earth was the tabernacle of God with
men. He that had seen Him had seen the Father.
His delight in the Divine will, His entrance into rest,
was the fact of which the Sabbath was an enduring
1 Heb. ix. io. See Argument of the Epistle to the Hebrews, by the late
George Steward, p. 290, ff.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 501
type. The offering of His body once for all was a
priestly act which transcended the accumulated sacri
fices of a thousand years. It meant and accomplished
more for humanity than all of these combined. He
was the " Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of
the world." The ministration of death was glorious,
but it had no glory by reason of the glory of the
ministration of righteousness. The ministration of the
body, its specific rules, restrictions, articulation, and
order, were glorious; all the sumptuous splendour of its
ceremonial, all the satisfaction thus rendered to the
great craving of human nature after the outward
manifestation and the definite rule ; all the grandeur
of its robing and all the harmony of its songs were
glorious ; but in comparison with the gift of the
Spirit— the dispensation of the Holy Ghost — it waxed
old and was ready to vanish away. The ministra
tion of the letter that killeth was glorious. Nothing
else before Christ can compare with the moral excel
lence and vigour of the Mosaic and prophetic law.
It was holy, just, and good ; but it was law, and not
life. It could slay, but could not save. " When the
commandment came, sin revived." " The law was
added even (%a/3ti>) for the sake of transgressions." It
turned sinful principles into acts of open disobedience.
It fanned the flame of passion into rebellion. " I had
not known sin (said Paul), except the law had said,
Thou shalt not covet." The letter killed. The thunder
of denunciation broke in terrible peals over the troubled
heart. The light that flashed from the shrine of the
Old Covenant burned up the souls of men. It was the
power and glory of a carnal commandment, not the
power of an endless life. He who came that we " might

503 Lessons of the [lect.
have life, and have it more abundantly," to "give eternal
life," to make living water leap up and flow for ever from
the innermost depths of the human soul ; He who came
to set us free from the bondage of the letter, from the
fear of death, from the tutelage and harsh guardian
ship of a stereotyped ceremonialism, was clothed with
a glory that reduces that of the " letter," that of the
dying and killing " form," that of the gorgeous but
moribund " body," to a vanishing point. The light of
the morning star, the flashing of the aurora, the gleam
of the lightning, the artificial illumination of the night,
may all give us some hint of what the dawning of the
day may reveal ; but the Sun of Righteousness, the
Light of the World, is more than all. Christ is not the
development of Hebrew faith, the outgrowth or forth-
putting of its hidden powers. He is the Dayspring
from on high. He came down from heaven.
But more than this, the new life He gave is more
than all the gift of law and ordinance and letter. John
.may have been the development of these. He brought
them to their highest expression. He made evident,
by the intensity of his moral convictions, by the clear
ness of his conscience, by the brilliance of his pro
phetic insight, and by the self-sacrifice of his spirit,
the awful need of the soul of man. The highest types
of Rabbinism, in their tender fancy, in their noble
passion, in their lofty patriotism, in the reflections of
the new light that had shone into the deep recesses
of the Jewish schools, have carried forward the work
of John in the religious education of the most ex
traordinary people on the face of the earth ; but
the least in the kingdom of heaven are greater
than these, in the deep springs of their life, in the

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 503
quality of their graces, in the perpetuity of their
privileges. The Christian life in its most elementary and essen
tial features transcends the spirit and the functions of
the Old Covenant even in the highest form in which
these were providentially exhibited to the world. The
body of the believer in Christ becomes a temple more
sacred than that on Zion. The Sabbatism, the rest
conferred by the Lord on those who take His yoke upon
them, is a more intimate fellowship with God than
was secured by the most strenuous literalism and Sab
bath-keeping. The priesthood of every one who offers
spiritual and living sacrifice of self to the will of God,
dispensing with all sacerdotal functions except those
fulfilled by the risen Lord, transcends all the priestly
ceremonial, and is not a development but a fulfilment
of its significant ritual. Union to Christ by spiritual
acts of living faith is death to sin and life unto God, a
conscious participation in the death of Christ and in
His resurrection. In the cross of Christ the Christian
is crucified, and he is risen again by faith of the opera
tion of God which raised Him from the dead. He has
died and risen from the dead, and his life is hidden in
God as Christ is hidden in the Eternal Light.
There were moreover great limitations in the ancient
prophetic gift. The mystic vision, the Divine call, the
subtle and untraced sources of the heavenly unction of
the prophets of old, were grandly reproduced in the
last of the prophets of Israel. But in the dispensation
of the Spirit all are prophetic. All the Lord's people
are prophets. The Holy Ghost is shed forth abund
antly. A stream of living water, clear as crystal,
issues from the throne of God and of the Lamb. " Ex-

504 Lessons of the [lect.
cept a man is born of water and of the Spirit, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God." When so born,
when he has received the " unction of the Holy One,"
he too is a son of God, an heir of God, a joint-
heir with Christ. The fulness from which he draws
inspiration, the law of the Spirit of life of which he
is the illustration, the strength of his hope, the be
ginning of his triumph, are all crowded into his con
sciousness. The old prophet is only one type of the
new life. Prophetism has its diorthosis in the powers
of the endless life. The witness of the Spirit that we
are sons of God, the full assurance of faith, and the
heaven opened to the eye of faith, transcend the
visions and break up the limitations of the goodly
fellowship of the prophets. " We all, beholding as
in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into
the same image from glory to glory, even by the
Spirit of the Lord." IV.
A further conclusion, that I believe has been more
or less established in the course of this discussion,
is that the Church of Christ has preserved in its or
ganization and theology several elements of the Old
Covenant, which received legitimate expression in the
mission of the Baptist, but which are due to him, or to
those tendencies of which he was the highest develop
ment, rather than to Christ or His apostles. It may
become a very serious inquiry whether in these respects
the Church has not departed from its faith and deprived
itself of the elements of strength. In some cases, the
prolongation of the Johannine dispensation has been
simply the exaggeration of what is common to the Old
Covenant and the New; it arises from the undue em-

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 505
phasis that some have laid upon what is temporary
and transitional, introductory, and imperfect in form.
In other cases it has been due to the puerile and
sensuous condition of those to whom it makes its
appeal. Although the teaching of John, as far as it went,
embodied eternal truth; though his words were words
of fiery love, and expressed the thoughts of God, and
though his definite assurances were added to the sum
of things, became the heirloom of humanity, and may
be regarded as a portion of the Divine Oracle — a
page of that Scripture which is given by inspiration
of God — it would be perilous to Christianity to suppose
that they constitute the revelation of God in Christ.
Several extremes of theological opinion and philosophic
speculation have, however, unfortunately coincided in
representing the Johannine message and dispensation
as of the essence of the kingdom and gospel of Christ.
(1) Those who have urged the position that Chris
tianity is simply the re-edition, either of the law of
nature or of the law of Moses, and who speak of it as
being " as old as the creation," or as embodied in the
religious ideas or systems of the East, or who regard it
as an etherealized or vitalized morality, as " morality
touched by emotion," as the manifestation of "a
stream of tendency which makes for righteousness,"
as identical with Buddhistic, Ethnic, Essenic ideals, or
Stoical philosophy ; who can see nothing essentially
loftier or better in it than they can find in the
best side of the Talmud, or in the speculations of
Marcus Aurelius or the maxims of Seneca or Epictetus;
and further, those who measure Christian missions
and their efficacy by the degree in which the heathen

506 Lessons of the [lect.
tribes have adopted something like Christian morality,
<md clothed themselves in the garb of a moral civiliza
tion ; these all seem to me to have been confounding a
temporary, ancillary, preparatory dispensation with the
true essence of Christianity, and to resemble those who
saw the grandiose form of the Baptist, heard him
speak, and, being baptized with his baptism, have as
yet learned ho more of the Lord.
(2) Ceremonialism and symbolic ritual have received
a development in certain forms of both Eastern and
Western Christianity which has threatened to extin
guish its vitality. The hierarchy has needed, for the
justification of its own existence, the right to perform
undemonstrable prodigies, and generation after genera
tion has added to the pomp and mystery of a ritual
which has conferred distinction upon art order of men
apart from their moral fitness or spiritual worth.
Virtues have been attributed to common things
when in the hands of the privileged class, to words
spoken by official persons, to gestures executed by
certain individuals presumably endowed with super
natural powers of conferring grace, not one of which
do they inherently possess. Symbols have multiplied
with the craving for an authentication of purely
imaginary claims. The poor puppet of an order,
covering himself with symbolic dress, and standing on
an imaginary elevation, has ostentatiously assumed to
hold the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and presump
tuously claimed to know and execute the designs of the
Almighty. The Lord Jesus Christ embodied the whole ideal of
the Hebrew priesthood, fulfilled the typical meaning
of its sacrifices, and declared Himself to be "greater

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 507
than the temple." His earliest disciples enunciated
the universality of the Christian priesthood, the duty
of each believer to be a sacrificing priest, the fact that
the body of each believer was a temple of God, and
proclaimed the access of the whole Church " by one
spirit unto the Father." The readoption, by the Chris
tian Society, of the sacramental and sacerdotal system
after the new life had repudiated it and outgrown its
trammels, is one of the most melancholy facts in the
history of the world.
Great emphasis was doubtless laid by John on bap
tism with water, yet even he never confounded it with
a spiritual process, and always spoke of the spiritual
baptism as infinitely transcending any symbolic lustra
tion he could effect. The apostles laid little emphasis
on the mere rite, and though they practised it, they
did not confound it or suppose it inseparably connected
with the Spirit-baptism. It has been left for after ages
to exaggerate even the Johannine emphasis on the sa
crament, and thus to pervert the spiritual character of
Christianity. Though glorious efforts have been made
to throw off the bondage of ceremony and the tyranny
of priestcraft, to establish the grand truth of individual
self-responsibility, and to proclaim the personal relation
of every soul of man with the living God ; yet the
attraction of symbolical ceremony and the charms of
hierarchical pretension have been too strong even for
the awakened intellect and cultured powers of the
human race. The claims of self-constituted vicegerents
of heaven have gone on augmenting with every fresh
indication of the credulity of mankind, but they have
provoked new antagonisms, angry remonstrances, and
repeated schisms. The illimitable incongruity of pro-

508 Lessons of the [lect.
fessing to accomplish results in the region of the spi
ritual, unseen and eternal, by symbolic rites in the region
of the purely material and temporal, will before long
become conspicuous to all. Meanwhile, wherever we
turn we mark some signs of this great perversion of the
gospel. The most consistent of all, are perhaps those
who make their pilgrimage to Palestine and bathe in
the waters of the Jordan ; but he that is least in the
Kingdom is greater than even he who baptized the
Messiah in those waters. I have already described the
legitimate place which ritual and sacrament occupy in
the kingdom of God, but our whole discussion warns
us against magnifying the ritual of worshipping love,
into the indispensable channel of Divine grace, against
substituting the ceremonies of the infancy of the King
dom for the life of God in the soul.
(3) The extraordinary emphasis which the career of
John impressed on asceticism as a rule of life compels
me to refer once' more to the contrast in this respect
between the law of John and the law of Christ, between
the life of John and the life of Christ. We do not
undervalue the career of the great solitaries of the
wilderness, the self-control of the hermit, the self-
sacrifice of the noble anchorets who devoted their life
to the benefit of mankind, and found joy and love and
light in their solemn seclusion, in their holy work, and
their life-long repudiation of the flesh and the world.
There are those now who are able to " receive " the
most extreme ascetic rule for the sake of Christ. To
their own Master they stand or fall, but the relation of
John to the kingdom of God compels us to recognize a
higher kind of man. The law of the eremite and the
coenobite corresponds with the transitory dispensation

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 509
of John. He called into brilliant prominence an ethnic
custom ; he sanctified it for a while by his example ;
but this method of life is pre-Christian, and has in it
no essential element of the Divine life or the minis
tration of the Spirit. There is a yearning prevalent on
many sides after what is called catholic custom and
venerable rule, a system which sets at nought the laws
of brotherhood and the claims of parental love, and
tends to the destruction of true manhood, and to the
creation of the spirit of the slave rather than that of
the child. This is often recommended to us as the
higher Christian life, and as a " counsel of perfection,"
as " the way of peace," and as the " law of Christ."
The history of the precursors of John's asceticism has
shed some light on the real origin of monastic rule.
The modern revival of it reveals the deep unrest pro
duced alike by the excitement of speculative thought
and the fierce and heated urgency of worldly business,
and it proclaims the need of that Spirit-baptism of
which the great forerunner spoke ; but the drivelling
weakness to which it reduces strong men, and the de
gradation which Christianity suffers at its hand, force
us to ask if either its advocates or its victims have
"so much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost" ?
Though he that was least in the kingdom of heaven
was greater than John, there were nevertheless prin
ciples of transcendent force and truths of perpetual
significance embodied in his ministry, by a brief enu
meration of which I shall conclude this discussion.
I.
• John was the great preacher of righteousness. He
enunciated a few undying principles, he urged with

510 , Lessons of the [lect.
fiery earnestness, upon his fellow-countrymen, the ne
cessity of right conduct, of godly living, of self-control.
It was in this way that he reproduced the spirit of the
prophetic order. He quickened the conscience by au
thoritative appeal to the Divine sanctions of right.
He assumed that there would be an immediate response
in conscience to his voice. The law for him was no
dead letter, but was the utterance of the will of God.
He boldly attacked the moral degeneracy and profligacy
of his age. The religious sects, the public officials, the
titled monarch, the willing disciple, were all compelled
to measure themselves by the law. Moreover, he did
not hesitate to declare that the law of right was de
fended by sanctions of the most fearful kind. The axe,
the fan, the fire, the curse, the wrath to come, were
the weapons which he, like the prophets of old, wielded
with persistence and terrible effect. The terrorism of
his teaching was one of its striking features. Seeing
as he did the invisible, alive as he was to the crushing
forces of violated law, he spoke of that which he knew.
His imagination, vivid as the lightning, created the
most fearful images of Divine vengeance, and scathed
and shattered where it could not melt the hearts of
men. He was not so terrible in the administration of
judgment as Moses was, nor did he call down fire
from heaven like Elijah, nor did he elaborate his curse
like Jeremiah or Ezekiel or Malachi; but he repro
duced the attitude and the leading characteristics of
all the great preachers of righteousness. It must,
moreover, never be forgotten that in this respect he
does but anticipate one aspect of the work of the
Great Teacher arid Saviour and Judge of the world.
No preachers have been more severe in their utterance

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 511
of the law of righteousness, than our Lord and His
apostles. The law, as conceived and proclaimed by Jesus
Christ, was more comprehensive and searching than it
was in the hand of Moses. He showed that it em
braced the religion of motive as well as of conduct;
that the "heart" as well as the outward life was exposed
to its condemnation. The lascivious glance and the
cherished purpose of revenge were classed by Him
with adultery and murder. The fires of Sodom were
threatened against unbelief and impenitence — the fall
of Tyre and Sidon was appealed to as the great ana
logue of the national judgment about to fall upon the
holy people. To hear, and not to do the sayings of
Jesus, was to incur utter confusion. For men to reject
them was to die in their sins. Swift death would fall
upon the impenitent, and the most terrible figures of
speech were used by Him to describe the condition of
the soul of man when thus ushered, or hurried into the
presence of the supreme Lawgiver.
Paul and Peter, James, John, and Jude, repeated in
the same tones the unchangeable laws of righteous
ness, the fearful consequences which attend the non-
realization of the perfect ideal of manhood. John the
Baptist did but hand on to them the blazing torch of
prophetic judgment upon all unrighteousness and un
godliness of men. It is thus that he prepared the way
of the Lord, and thus the Lord has ever since con
tinued to prepare His own way to the consciences and
hearts of men. Not only do the apostles and the first
preachers of the gospel, but the evangelists and apolo
gists of later times continuously lift up the same warn
ing voice. It is of the very essence of the kingdom of
God to know that a day of righteous judgment is ever

512 Lessons of the [lect.
about to dawn, " when God will render to every man
according to his work." Unless the standard and test
of true righteousness, holy living, upright conduct, were
applicable under the gospel as they were under the law,
there would have been no relation between them. But
Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil the law.
So far then there is a legitimate prolongation of the
ministry of the Baptist. It is still needful to proclaim
the Divine standard of righteousness, to spur and whip
the conscience into activity by the demands of the law.
The ministry of the New Covenant cannot dispense
with the broad facts of the righteous judgment of God.
It is still of consummate moment that it should " cry
aloud and spare not," that it should show God's people
their transgressions and the world around them its
sins. The missionary of the Cross is always a preacher
of righteousness : he must denounce iniquity, and sum
mon conscience to his side in the great conflict with
the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is a grievous
misapprehension of his mission if he soothes the un
godly and the sensual, the idolater and the liar, with
words of peace when there is no peace ; if he blinks
the terrors of the Lord, as though they were the
dreams of a weak or morbid fancy; if he turns away
from the thought of judgment, and offers apologies
for the righteous Lord, who loveth righteousness and
hateth iniquity. There is no truce possible with sin.
It cannot be explained away as a mistake, as a venial
ignorance, as an illusion, as the obverse of good, as
the harmless shadow cast by the finite upon the All, as
the inseparable accident of responsibility, as the in
teresting accompaniment of humanity, as a lesser good
in itself, as one of the modes in which the infinite

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 513
life has manifested itself. The entire discussion of the
relation of John to the kingdom of God is charged
with this lesson — that sin, though permitted by God, is
hateful to Him, abominable in His sight, and deserves
to be condemned and punished by the vigorous ac
tivity of conscience, and by the laws of the govern
ment of God. All prophets and all prophetic men
are banded together to expose and denounce it. John
was one of these, and we have still to do his work.
He was the type of the " law-work " of the kingdom of
God, nor must we dare to repudiate the validity of
such service.
There are some who are still under the law of Moses :
there are a larger number who are still under the law
of nature. Not a few have transformed the gospel into
a law or into a carnal commandment, and have received
the spirit of bondage and terror. All these make their
boast of a law which they imagine themselves to have
received and obeyed. They have only partially con
ceived it. They are soothing themselves with the mere
possession of the law. It is transformed into a salvo
to conscience, by which others are condemned rather
than self rectified. Some are so weak in will and so
corrupt in habit, that the principle of obedience, the
life of love, the inward law of the living Spirit, is in
conceivable to them. They are kept in garrison by the
law, they are in their nonage, in the infancy of the
Divine life. They cannot understand or appreciate a
religious idea or principle which does not come to them
under the form of some definite rule. They are under
the law. Before they can receive the Spirit, before
they are ready to receive the Christ, before they can
know anything of the baptism with the Holy Ghost,
34

514 Lessons of the [lect.
they still need the ministry of the Baptist. The
preacher of righteousness must show them the reality
and force of that law wherein they are held. They must
be compelled to cry, " Who will deliver us ? " Much
self- righteousness and self-complacency must be dis
turbed in their insane security by the thunder - peal
of the prophet. Respectable.vices, which take shelter
under the eaves of the Church, need nothing so much
as the stern iconoclast, the keen satirist, the practical
moralist, who loathes hypocrisy, who is independent of
smiles, curses, or tears, and who never ceases to cry
aloud against all unrighteousness and dishonour, and
against whatsoever loveth or maketh a lie.
It will be of disastrous augury to the Christian
Church if inadequate views of sin are allowed to pre
vail in it ; if disloyal treatment of the Divine ideal of
righteousness, or extenuation of man's rebellion against
the just judgment of God, be tolerated. We need no
new prophet to tell us that if lawlessness be treated as
independence; if the consequences of sin are trifled
with ; if the corrupt dispositions of men are regarded
as any palliation of gross compliance with temptation ;
if Christian conscience is afraid to condemn character
as well as conduct ; if the holy will of the living God
is arraigned at the bar of scientific research; if the
physical antecedents of transgression be supposed to
obliterate responsibility ; if involuntarily or wilfully ac
quired disease is cited as the explanation and condo
nation of deliberate vice or overt trespass, — then the
moral fibre of this generation will be paralysed and
the doom of millions sealed, and the curse pronounced
on those "who call evil, good," will fall upon us.
It must be admitted with grief that the very terms

viii.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 515
"right" and "wrong "are passing out of some ethical
vocabularies as antiquated delusions, and are being con
demned as theologie nomenclature. A blatant, inso
lent materialism threatens to engulf moral distinctions,
and to plunge the fairest thing of earth into the darkest
abyss of perdition. There is no grand reality of
morals, no truth of revelation, no fact of the govern
ment of God, which is not darkened and distorted
by this blinding and poisonous exhalation of the phi
losophy of the (carnal) human mind.
If these vague and pernicious views of sin and law,
and the moral order of the universe, be entertained, re
velation becomes needless, the promise of reconciliation
with the Source of violated order is superfluous, Atone
ment is a work of supererogation, and the renewal of
humanity a vapid and foolish dream. Our view of the
whole doctrine of Christ is undoubtedly shaped by the
feelings which are entertained by us as to the peccancy
of sin ; by the sentiment cherished by us with reference
to our own hearts' weakness and the follies of our own
life, and by the .estimate we form of the sin of the
world. It seems to me that the prime message of
John, the accumulated " voice " of all the prophets
and the law, as reasserted in his commission, was
echoed by Christ and His apostles, and that it is im
peratively needed at this moment. If there was any
truth in his "baptism," if it was "from heaven," then
this most essential element of it will bear repetition
now. We must still ask the question, "Who may
abide the day of his coming ? " We may still revert
to the prophets of God with the cry, " What must we
do?"

34*

516 Lessons of the [lect.
II.
While John was the preacher of righteousness, he
was the herald of the future. It cannot be said that
all the future which he foresaw, has become for us as
yet either the present, or the past. The Christian
Church and the Divine life in Christ are throughout
their entire sphere prophetic, and still look forward to
a more perfect day. Finality is not the dream nor the
hope of the child of God. The Christian looks for a
yet greater and more satisfying manifestation of the
kingdom and power of the Lord Jesus ; he expects and
declares his conviction of the doom which will fall on
every institution, on every nation, on every soul, that
refuses to receive the kingdom of God. The New
Testament from end to end is charged with the hope
of a tremendous and sublime future, which was as yet
unrealized when the last of the apostles laid down
his pen. The way ofthe Lord still demands a Johan
nine preparation. We need to-day a prolonged and
powerful iteration of the cry, " The Lord will come."
In what manner the convincing proof of His supreme
authority and awful Presence shall be given to the
world, it is not for us to say. It is not for us " to know
the times or the seasons" or the methods of its mani
festation ; whether through overwhelming argument, or
resistless Providence, or the vividness of a universal
intuition ; whether all who have pierced Him will have
the eyes of seers, and see Him ; or whether the occur
rence of tremendous cataclysms and world-wide cosmic
changes will reveal Him to the eyes of all. But one
function of the Church is still, with John, to prepare
mankind for His coming, to herald His approach, and
to quicken the hope of the world. John did not know,

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 517
nor has any one of the goodly fellowship of the prophets
known precisely the work he was himself doing in hold
ing out the torch of prophecy towards the darkness of
the future. No age, however bright its "vision and
faculty divine," has fully understood the real part it
was taking in the education of the after ages. But
each generation has nevertheless been a link between
that which has gone and that which is to come. Some
men have had mighty though unconscious influence on
all succeeding times ; but none have exerted so much
sway on those that followed them as the men whose
prophetic insight, hope, and prediction, have been the
strongest. Let the Church of Christ renew its hope, and be more
confident of the future. Without a loftier ideal, with
out the hope of a more abundant " manifestation," of
a more " glorious appearing," of the " new heavens
and the new earth," the faith of the Church would have
stagnated, and the fire of its zeal would have been
quenched. There is much to repress joyous and con
fident expectation. The prophets of doubt, the false
prophets of the spirit of the world, are eagerly proclaim
ing the fall of the Christ, and heralding the republic 'of
humanity in place of the tottering kingdom of God.
Let those who have by grace looked through the mists
of doubt and seen the King in His beauty, proclaim with
urgent and reiterated cry the coming of the world's
jubilee, the triumph and the glory of the Lord of all.
III.
John was the interpreter and prophet of Divine inter
position. He became the powerful instrument in God's
hand for convincing the men of his day that the hope
of the world was not to be found in the development of

518 Lessons of the [lect.
Judaism or the education or evolution of nature, but in
the grace of God. The hope he heralded was the work
of the King, the Judge, the Christ, the Son, the Lamb,
the Bridegroom, the Holy Ghost. So far we have to
perpetuate and repeat his assurance. Whatever names
the Church gives to the personal communion of the
soul with the living God, as the Redeemer, Sanctifier,
and Judge of men, it must preserve the reality of this
conviction. The so-called scientific spirit seeks in humanity and
in nature, and even in physical force and matter, for
the entire reserve of energy which is to eventuate in
the realization of all its hopes. The "cosmos " cannot
and never will satisfy the longing of a man who is
" born from above," who is conscious of the Divine life,
who knows that he was dead but is alive again, and
that he is recreated in Christ. The very heart and
core of John's strength was that he knew that "nature"
was not " grace," that " grace " was not " nature." In
this respect there is a foreshadowing in his mission of
the eternal distinction between the dead and the living ;
between man as he is by himself, and man baptized
with the Holy Ghost; between the "cosmos" and "the
living God;" between the flesh and the Spirit; between
the infinite complexity, mechanism, and conflicts of
human life, and the spontaneous and glorious liberty
of the sons of God. IV.
John was the instrument and precursor of a revival
of religion. He was the originator and personal occasion
of one of the most remarkable outbursts of religious
feeling of which we have any record, and he foresaw
the complement of his own influence in the mysteries

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 5ig
of Pentecost. This is hardly the place even to touch
upon the question — Are such renewals of humanity the
law of the kingdom of heaven ? I dare not handle it
in its widest relations, nor travel beyond the narrow
limits of my present discussion. John associated the
coming of the King, the manifestation of the kingdom,
with the outpouring of the Spirit and the fiery baptism.
The deep impression which his prophetic message pro
duced, prepared untold thousands for the reception of
a great spiritual change, which breathed around them
a new and subtle atmosphere of thought, filled them
with new ideas, infused new habits of life, inspired an
enthusiasm for unseen and eternal things, a passionate
love of man, a victory over self, a triumph over death,
and a mysterious joy in the face of persecution and
martyrdom, which have revolutionized the world.
And even now that the work of the Spirit has re
newed men after this type, and the royalty of Christ
has been recognized, and societies of men have been
fashioned on a common faith in this great power, the
ordinary and constant operations of grace do apparently
retire within narrow limits. The stream of living water
contracts its swell. Those who are wise and energetic
may forsake their early love. The strain of intense
yearning over the new generation ever pressing into
life may be relaxed. Compassion over the lost may
cease to fuse and fire the souls of men. Philosophy
may take the place of piety, and cynicism expel strong
emotion. The world may threaten to overcome the
faith of God's elect, and the Church need again and
again the renewal of the Holy Ghost.
Under these sources of depression the great promise
of the Spirit -baptism is the brightest hope that the

520 Lessons of the [lect.
Church can ever cherish. It is no dishonour to the
Holy Ghost, if we seek and expect the renewal of high
tides and copious showers of blessing, if we long and
wait for the descent of His Power from on high.
We cannot read the past history of the Church with
out seeing that it is a law of the spirit of life that great
multitudes of men should at times be moved by the
contagion of a common faith in the unseen. God does
revive His work in the midst of the years. He sheds
His Holy Spirit upon men in showers of mercy, and
He floods the river of life with abounding fulness.
The Spirit of God does now occasionally reveal Christ
in a manner which altogether transcends the ordinary
methods of teaching, the common means of grace, the
daily ritual of the Church, and the threadbare ex
perience of the world. In the consuming light of a
Divine revelation the hesitation of years vanishes. The
doubts born of sceptical habits of thought, the critical
perplexities, the generalizations which run counter to
faith in the unseen, the cynical condemnations of en
thusiasm, the proof-armour for the heart forged on the
anvil of purely speculative science, the grotesque pal
liations which worldly custom has woven for indiffer
ence to the tremendous realities of life, are all alike
consumed when the fire of God tries every man's
work, and the eyes of men are opened by the Holy
Ghost to the truth of things. No ecclesiastical in
stitution however respectable, no organ of criticism
however apparently logical and fair, no dogmatism
however placid or self-complacent, can explain away
the revelation that is made to the souls of men by the
baptism of the Holy Spirit. When this great fire de
scends from heaven, it consumes the sacrifice laid on the

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 521
altar, and licks up the water that is in the trench, and
the priests of Baal do not escape. The Elijah is ever
standing on the threshold, and we know not how soon
the mighty revelation may be made. Enthusiasm may
indeed disturb the better judgment, a fear of the un
known and a sense of unfathomable danger may make
cowards of brave men. It is true that sometimes un
der the spell of resistless fanaticism the real lessons of
history or science may be disregarded, with grievous
peril to the progress of society ; that passionate appeals
of infuriated zealots may rouse populations to frenzy ;
but I am not speaking of such things as these. They
simply show what the mind of man is capable of, what
reserves of unused, undeveloped, and volcanic power lie
concealed behind the calm exterior of society; and they
reveal moreover the region where the grace of God as
well as the undisciplined passions of men may put forth
mighty energy. But there is a genuine alliance of the
soul of man with the unseen and eternal, and when
the circuit which unites it with the infinite is completed,
the tremendous and resistless force is liberated before
which nothing can stand. There have been such mo
ments in the history of humanity. They will probably
recur. Unfortunately, the one subject about which strong
emotion is thought to be incompatible with common
sense, concerning which enthusiasm is regarded as
childish drivelling, and vehement opinion denounced
as presumption, is that to which it is in reality more
appropriate than to any other. In the politics of the
senate and the municipality, in the arena of scientific
research, in business and in love, boundless eagerness,
consuming zeal, are applauded and defended; but if

522 Lessons of the [lect.
men are in deep, dread earnest, about the reconcilia
tion of their own disordered nature with the infinite
Power that sways their destiny; if they are in eager
search after the salvation which would not only cover
their earthly life with love and beauty, but would fill
with peace and hope the eternity to which they have
found that they belong ; then men whose eyes are shut
on the eternities babble to them of the evil of enthu
siasm. The normal activities of the Divine life within
us ought, in respect of intensity of conviction, to re
semble those experiences that many are too prone to
slight as "revivals of religion." It is the great func
tion of the Church to attain such a continuous fervour
of spiritual worship, vision and service, as shall make
its daily life and its constant influence on the world,
akin to the phenomena of revival.
Now we may learn from John the Baptist some
thing of the method of revival, of the law of deep
impression, of the way in which the heavens are opened
to human vision. His preaching was no hysterical
shriek, no mystical appeal to fanatical passions. He
stood firmly on the great moral order of the Divine
government. He looked through the murky clouds
that covered the political horizon, and saw the Lord
seated on His throne. He prepared the way of the
Lord by practical piety and moral earnestness. He
revealed the inability of formal obedience or ceremonial
purity to satisfy the craving of conscience ; and he so
turned the light of the old revelation upon the con
science, that he anticipated the stern sentence of the
Master : " There is one that accuseth you, even Moses,
in whom ye trust." This was not all : he promised
deliverance from sin. He saw the twofold misery of

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 523
evil, its curse and its weakness. He discerned the
doom of sin and the corruption of nature ; and his pro
phetic glance anticipated both the redemption and the
sanctification of man. His most persistent hope — and
it was one that dominated all his teaching and deepened
all his influence — was the coming of the Holy Spirit,
the descent upon man of such a spiritual energy of
thought and feeling, that all the current of regenerated
life, all the dispositions of the newly-made man would
spontaneously move in harmony with the will of God.
The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the summation of
John's highest hope for the true Israel. Whilst he
gazed and pondered, whilst he waited for One who
could impart the Divine life and transform the heart of
man, he was brought into such relations with Jesus,
that he knew Himself commissioned and impelled to
cry, " Behold the Lamb of God ! " Only He who had
already by suffering, sacrifice, temptation, begun His
redemptive work, only He who could and would take
away the shame, the curse, and the peril of sin, could
also baptize with the Holy Spirit.
The Son of the Father unveiled to John the heart of
God. Because He was the Son of God, He became
the sacrificial Lamb. Since He was thus dowered
with energy and exalted in function, He also fulfilled
in John's vision the sublime conception of the Bride
groom of the Bride whom He welcomed into the
pavilion of His love. We must survey the whole
career of the man if we wish to understand his unique
relation to the kingdom. It was the entirety of his
teaching which constituted his ministry the beginning
of " the great and notable day of the Lord."
We believe that now no deep effect will be produced

524 Lessons of the [lect.
on the world by the ministers of the gospel, unless they "
too blend law with love, unless hope is built on right
eousness, and conscience is satisfied with sacrifice,
and sanctity accompanies salvation. The gospel that
we preach must not hide from view either the Father
hood or the Royalty of God. The dispensation of the
Spirit must not be so expounded as to conceal or
empty of all meaning the sublime fact that the Lamb
is " in the midst of the throne."
The revival of the religious life will still involve the
quickening of conscience, the preaching of righteous
ness, the insistence on practical duty ; it will still assure
the bewildered intellect and crushed and broken heart
of the Father's righteous love. It will involve and en
hance the truth that all the evil of sin from which it
is impossible for man to escape, the Lord hath laid on
One who is willing to bear it, and able to take it away ;
and those who have found out the ineradicable evil
which clings to their nature, will also find that the great
fountain of cleansing and the great source of power
is put within the reach of a living faith.
The most powerful revivals of religion are those that
begin with the Church. The disciples who heard John
speak came into living fellowship with the Christ.
They received into their life His body and blood, they
heard His dying intercessions. They knew that He
rose from the dead. He breathed on them the illumi
nation and energy of the Holy Spirit, but even this did
not fulfil all their hopes. From that hour to this, the
hope of the Church has been the continual outpouring
of the Holy Spirit, the flow of the river of life, clear
as crystal, issuing from the throne of God and of the
Lamb.

vm.] Ministry of John the Baptist. 525
Let us then anticipate the speedy outburst of spiritual
power, the higher revelations of the truth of the Person
and the Spirit, the sacrifice and imperial glory, of the
Lord Jesus. With this hope in us, may we not take
up the mighty invocation of our own Milton, when
he anticipated the day of revelation and revival and
triumph ?
" In that day it shall no more be said as in scorn,
this or that was never held so till this present age, when
men have better learnt that the times and seasons
pass along under Thy feet, to go and come at Thy
bidding; and as Thou didst dignify our fathers' days
with many revelations above all the foregoing ages,
since Thou tookest the flesh, so Thou canst vouchsafe
to us (though unworthy) as large a portion of thy
Spirit as Thou pleasest ; for who shall prejudice Thy
all-governing will ? seeing the power of Thy grace is
not passed away with the primitive times, as fond and
faithless men imagine, but Thy kingdom is now at
hand, and Thou standing at the door. Come forth out
of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the
earth ! Put on the visible robes of Thy imperial majesty;
take up that unlimited sceptre which thy almighty
Father hath bequeathed Thee ; for now the voice of Thy
Bride calls Thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed."

L'ENVOI.
Then from the dawn it seem'd there came, but faint
As from beyond the limit of the world,
Like the last echo born of a great cry,
Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice
Around a king returning from his wars.
Thereat once more he moved about, and clomb
E'en to the highest he could climb, and saw,
Straining his eyes beneath an arch of hand,
Or thought he saw, the speck that bare the king,
Down that long water opening on the deep
Somewhere far off, pass on and on, and go
From less to less and vanish into light,
And the new sun rose, bringing the new year.
Tennyson.

APPENDIX.

APPENDIX A.
Pages 123, 406, and 412.
The chronology of the life and ministry of John the Baptist is
beset with all the difficulties which encumber the dates of the
Nativity and Passion of our Lord. Nor can the duration of John's
official career be determined without a previous settlement of
the larger question of the length of our Lord's public ministry.
Opinions have been much divided, and I do not presume to dis
cuss their relative merits. A review of the chronological views
of Keim would require a lengthened treatise, and much greater
facility in dealing with the principles of chronological science
than I possess. I will briefly indicate a few of the data upon
which the whole question turns.
1. Taking the synoptic narrative as a trustworthy guide, it is
clear that John must have been bom before the death of Herod
the Great.1 The date of that event is accurately determined to
be before the Passover of 750 a.u.c On this Schiirrer, Lichten-
stein, Browne, EUicott, Wieseler, and Greswell, agree. The birth
of our Lord could not be placed later than February, 750 A.U.C,
nor that of John later than August, 749 A.U.C.
2. At the first Passover of our Lord's ministry 2 the Jews de
clared that the temple \<pKoSopr)9ri) was built or in building forty
and six years. The use of the aorist throws some uncertainty
round the meaning of the expression, but we may reasonably
compare this statement with that of Josephus, 3 that Herod com
menced the rebuilding of the temple " when the eighteenth year
of his reign had come." 4 Chronologists differ as to the mode of
reckoning the years of Herod's reign, but there is strong proba
bility that Herod's reign commenced in 716 A.U.C, that its
eighteenth year was 734 A.U C, and forty-six years would bring
the date of the Passover, at which our Lord was (&aet) about
thirty years old, 5 to 780 A.U.C, and therefore the birth of John,
six months earlier, would correspond with this conclusion, being
"about" 749 A.U.C6
' Luke i. 5-26 ; Matt. ii. 1. * John ii. 20. ' Antiq. xv. 10. 3.
* S«e Browne, Ordo Scsclorum, p. 68, ff. * Luke iii. 23.
6 See the Dissertations of Greswell, vol. i. pp. 239-333-
35

530 Appendix A.
3. The statement that John commenced his ministry in the
fifteenth year of Tiberius, 1 is encumbered with serious difficulties
on the above hypothesis. There can be little doubt that Augustus
Cassar died on 19th August, 767 A.u.c. Browne 2 maintains that
this fifteenth year cannot be reckoned other than from the death
of Augustus, and that the reign of Tiberius must date either from
August, 767 A.u.c, or Nisan of that year ; or if the imperial is
identified with the consular year, either January, 767 or 768 (as
the first of these years would embrace five, and the latter seven
of the months of the first imperial year). The fifteenth year might
be 783 A.u.c, and could not be earlier than 782 A.u.c As we
have seen that our Lord was bom at the end of 749 or beginning
of 750, this would afford a date in which He could scarcely be
spoken of as about thirty years of age. Wieseler has argued that
" the fifteenth year of Tiberius,'' with the other indications of
date in Luke, 3 do not refer to the commencement, but to the close
of the Baptist's ministry, which moreover he prolongs to the close
of the ministry of our Lord.4 He argues with great learning and
candour that the note of time has reference to that great date at
which the comprehensive ministry of our Lord in Galilee com
menced, and he maintains that it comprised the year between 19th
August, 781, to same date in 782, and that this date corresponds
with all the other notes of time mentioned in Luke. This arrange
ment lengthens the ministry of John and shortens the period of his
imprisonment. It involves the coincidence of our Lord's return to
Galilee, given in synoptic narrative with that implied in John v.
and vi., rather than that described in John iv. Browne (1. c.) goes
still further, and considers that " the fifteenth year of Tiberius
Csesar" represents the one " acceptable year " of our Lord's min
istry, as well as of John's, terminating at the Passover, 782 A.U.C,
with the Passion of Jesus. On this hypothesis the various feasts
of the fourth Gospel are the feasts of that one memorable year.
He considers that the unnamed feast of chap. v. 1 is the feast
of Pentecost ; that the Passover referred to in John vi. 4 is an
interpolation, mainly because it could not have been present
in the MSS. used by Origen and other Fathers. If it had been,
according to this writer, they would never have spoken of the
ministry of our Lord as only lasting a single year. He argues
that John vii. 2 represents the feast of Tabernacles in the month
of September ; that John x. 22 mentions the feast of Dedication,
which occurred in December ; and that the last Passover occurred
in the March of the following year.
1 Luke iii. r, 2. s Ordo Saclorum, p. 66. 3 Luke iii. r 2.
« Wieseler, A Chronological Synopsis of the Four Gosples, translated by
E. Venables. 1864. pp. 157-186. Cf. Ellioott's Historical Lectures on the Life
of our Lord,_ p., 104, n.

Appendix A\ 501
This^««rt is subverted by the textual validity of John vi. 4.
There is no indication of any deviation in the MS. authority for
this verse, so that we do not feel justified in exgluding it from the
text, however interesting the resulting harmonies between the
synoptic and Johannine Gospels might prove to be. The fact
that the second Passover was not known to Origen, Irenasus,
Clemens, or Tertullian, does not prove that the "text" was not in
existence. The theory of Wieseler is far less difficult of acceptance
although it is encumbered with the grave objection th-at our Lord,
in John v. 33, refers to the ministry of John as a thing of the past.
The tenour of this testimony to John implies the close of the
ministry, if not the martyrdom of John.1
There is another hypothesis by which "the fifteenth year of
Tiberius" may be shown to coincide with the first year of our
Lord's ministry, without either curtailing the length of that
ministry, prolonging that of John unduly, or abbreviating the
imprisonment of John to a few weeks. It is one, however, which
Wieseler and Browne condemn. Usher, Bengel, Pagi, Greswell,
Lichtenstein, and other chronologists have maintained with various
success the position that the fifteenth year of Tiberius must be
reckoned from the date of Tiberius's being associated in the
principate with Augustus, rather than from the death of the
latter.2 Velleius Paterculus, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, all refer to
the decree of the senate, at the request of the emperor, that in
the provinces especially Tiberius should be entrusted with supreme
power. Greswell certainly makes it evident that there was a
genuine co - principate of Tiberius and Augustus, which took
effect before the middle of 765 A.U.C Greswell refers to the state
ment of Eckhel that there is reason to believe in the existence
of two coins of Antioch, which bear the date, 765-6, 766-7, and
exhibit the head of Tiberius, with the title 2EBA2T0S, and which
if genuine would demonstrate the point. Browne 3 replies that
the question does not turn upon the fact of the co-principate,
but on the result of the inquiry "whether, after the death of
Augustus, there exists any reckoning of the years of Tiberius
from any other date than that." This, he says, has to be proved.
If Luke used this computation, others would have done the same.
Wieseler observes that no other writer, not even Josephus, adopts
the method. Others have suggested that Luke might have
reckoned the regnal years of the Roman princes from Nisan to
Nisan, thus losing a year of actual time. If he made the first
year of Tiberius to consist of seven months, from August, 767,
to Nisan, 768, the fifteenth year might commence Nisan, 781.
1 See EUicott, H. L. p. 129.
2 See Greswell, vol. i. Diss. viii. pp. 334-344.  3 L. c. p. 67.
35 *

532 Appendix Ar
Wieseler rejects this as a shift which has no parallel. EUicott
doubtfully repudiates both methods of overcoming the difficulty.
Dr. Farrar, in his recent life of Christ,1 has however assented
to the hypothetical computation of Greswell, and declares it
to be '' a method of computation which was likely to prevail in
the provinces, and which certainly existed." So also does Arch
bishop Thomson, in Smith's Diet, of Bible, 2 who, reckoning the
commencement of 765 A.u.c as the first year of Tiberius, reckons
779 as the fifteenth, and therefore the date of the commencement
of the ministry of John and inclusive of the baptism of Jesus.
I am disposed to think that this is the true solution of the pro
blem. It is undoubtedly in harmony with the other notes of time
furnished by Luke.
(a) It corresponds with the period during which Pontius Pilate
was governor of Judasa. He was recalled from his post by Tiberius
before the Passover, 789 A.U.C, having held his office ten years : 3
this would show that he had been installed in 779. Several special
corroborations of this position are given by Greswell.+
(b) No difficulty is found in identifying the fifteenth year of
Tiberius with the tetrarchate of Philip, who entered on his office
in Nisan, 750 A.U.C, on the death of Herod, and died in twenty-
third year of Tiberius, i.e., before Nisan, 787.
(c) The same may be said of Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee,
who was deposed in the autumn of 792, having, like Philip, en
tered on his dignity in the spring of 750, and therefore being one
of the princes of Palestine during the whole period required.
(d) It is also stated that the appearance of John the Baptist
was iiri dpxtepeoig "Avva Kai Kaidtpa, which is not without perplexity.
Annas was deposed from the high-priesthood by Valerius Gratus
in 759, but was clearly possessed of great influence for many years,
since his sons and son-in-law were successively appointed to the
office. Caiaphas was elevated to the dignity in the year 77o,5
and was deposed from the office at nearly the same time as Pontius
Pilate was dismissed, viz., in 789. Some difficulty has been raised
by the association of Annas and Caiaphas in the high-priestly office,
but while the great influence and practical duties of the older man
may be quite sufficient to account for the use of the phrase iiri
dpxtepewg "Avva Kai Kaidtpa, it is also desirable to remember that the
word dpxtephg is used somewhat loosely to denote the Nasi, or
president of the Sanhedrim, when he was also a priest.6 Moreover,
the Sanhedrists generally were styled ol dpxtepetg, oi irpeaf}vrepoi xai
oi ypapparetg.7 1 Vol. ii. p. 450. » Vol. i. pp. 1041, 1074.
3 Antiq. xviii. 4. 2, and ibid. 6. 5. 4 Diss. ix. s Antiq. xviii. 2.
6 Acts. v. 21, 27 ; vii. 1 ; ix. 1, &c. See Wieseler, p. 171.
7 Matt, xxvii. 1 ; Mark xv. 1 ; Luke xxii. 16.

Appendix A. 533
(e) The singular addition of "Lysanias being tetrarch of Abi
lene" has occasioned much difficulty. It has arisen in the follow
ing way. Josephus l mentions a " Lysanias, the son of Ptolemy, the
son of Mennceus, who made a league of friendship with Anti-
gonus." In xiv. 7. 4, this same Ptolemy, the son of Mennceus, is
spoken of as the ruler of Chalcis, under Mount Libanus. In Jewish
Wars,2" Lysanias" is given as the name of the "son of Ptolemy."
In Antiq. xv. 4. 1, Cleopatra, in her passion and cupidity, is repre
sented as instigating Antony to get the dominion of Lysanias
conveyed to her. This deed Antony accomplished by slaying
Lysanias, the son of Ptolemy. Now Strauss maintains that this
murdered Lysanias, governor of Chalcis, in the neighbourhood of
Abila or Abilene, must be the governor of Abila also, and since he
was put to death by Antony, 718 A.U.C, Luke must have made
a gross blunder in his chronology. Straups adds that " no other
Lysanias is mentioned by Josephus, or any other writer of that
a^e." 3 If that is true, Luke's note of time is very confusing and
unhistorical. But Josephus, in Antiq. xix. 5. 1, when referring to
events seventy-five years later on, and describing the extent of the
dominion of Agrippa I., says of Claudius that " he restored to
Agrippa, Judaea and Samaria, as due to his family ; but for Abila
of Lysanias, and all that lay at Mount Libanus, he bestowed them
upon him as out of his own territories." In Jewish Wars, ii. 1 1. 5,
he refers to the same circumstance, and calls it the kingdom of
Lysanias, and adds that " Claudius bestowed on his (Agrippa's)
brother Herod (who was his son-in-law, by marrying Berenice),
the kingdom of Chalcis ; " and once more : " Caesar removed
Agrippa from Chalcis into a greater kingdom, for he gave him the
tetrarchy which had belonged to Philip, and he added to it the
kingdom of Lysanias and that province which Varus had governed." 4
Now, nothing could be less probable than that Josephus should
describe a district of country as the kingdom of Lysanias, if Lysa
nias had been dead for seventy-five years, and no other prince of
the same name had taken his place. It becomes, then, highly
probable that Josephus does refer to a second Lysanias in these
several passages. This is made still more evident by Antiq. xx.
7. 1, where the transfer of Abila to Agrippa is spoken of; and it is
expressly added that " this last had been the tetrarchy of Lysa
nias," 5 and is distinguished from Chalcis, which, by the same act
of imperial favour, was taken from Agrippa. We have seen above
that it was given to Herod, his brother. These various references
discriminate Chalcis from Abila, which latter, in more than one
* Antiq. xiv. 13. 3. ' B. J. i. r3. 1.
3 Paulus, Comm., endeavours to show that the tetrarchy of Philip included
that of Lysanias. 4 B. J. ii. 12. 8.
5 See also Antiq. xviii. 6. 10.

534 Appendix A.
place, is spoken of as a " tetrarchy. ." Josephus could not have
referred to the Lysanias of Chalcis, who was murdered 34 B.C., as
a " tetrarch," without gross inaccuracy ; and he could not have sug
gested (as Strauss would have it) that Chalcis is identical with
Abila, because he expressly states that Chalcis was taken from
Agrippa, and Abila, the tetrarchy of Lysanias, was given him in
exchange.1 There are other references to this same dominion or
house (otKog) of Lysanias as for awhile in the possession of Zeno
dorus.2 At the death of Zenodorus, the country was wholly as
signed to Herod. On Herod's death, Augustus gave to Philip a
part of Zenodorus's possessions.3 The probability is that the
remainder were in the hands of a younger Lysanias. "In modern
times a coin was found bearing the inscription Avaavtbv rerpdpxov
Kat dpxtepetog, and belongs to the period after Herod's death. Sestini
Lettere e Dissertazione numismatische. Tom vi. p. 101, tab. 2." 4
Wieseler concludes his argument with the words of Hug, who
must be credited with the ingenious confirmation of Luke's state
ment : " We have another opportunity of proving that in the cases
in which the endeavour has been made to convict Luke of a want
of knowledge of facts, the honour, such as it is, belongs else
where." The note of time lies between 734-790, and is conformable
with either interpretation of the date of " the fifteenth year of
Tiberius Caesar." All these notes of time are compatible with John
being a little over thirty years of age in the year 779-780.
4. The grounds on which the date of Zacharias's service in the
temple is supposed by Greswell and Wieseler to coincide with the
same date for the birth of our Lord, have been recounted, ante, p. 76.
5. The astronomical calculations based upon the identification
of the " Star in the East " with conjunctions of the great planets, in
747 and 748, though set forth with great learning by Ideler, and
partially accepted by Greswell and Alford, are far from satisfac
tory, and are dismissed as data for the period of the visit to Jeru
salem of " the wise men," or as chronological evidence of the true
date of our Lord's birth.
6. The baptism of Jesus by John must have taken place during
the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, and before the Passover of
that year, and therefore the period of the year when this great
central movement of John's ministry occurred is of importance.
Greswell, as we have seen, makes this year to be from the be
ginning of 779-780, and Wieseler between 19th August, 781, and
same date 782. All the other notes of time are compatible with
' Davidson, Introd. N. T. 1848. vol. i. 215, ff. ; Ebrard, Gospel History.
§ 3T ; Wieseler, Chron. Syn. p. 174, ff. E.T. 159, ff.
¦' Antiq xv. 10. 1 ; B. J. i. 20. 4. 5 Ibid. ii. 6. 3 ; Antiq. xvii. 11. 4.
t Davidson, l.c. 1. 218 ; Wieseler, p. 167. De Saulcy, Renan, and Reich-
hardt agree.

Appendix A. 535
both hypotheses. But Wieseler, in order to bring this chronological
conclusion into harmony with the other notes of time, which make
Christ to have been born before 750 A.U.C, asks whether Luke
does represent this celebrated date (according to him, 781-782)
as that of the commencement or the close of the Baptist's ministry,
and decides on the latter. He argues that Luke describes a second
awakening of the Baptist, distinct from that mentioned in Matthew,
and one immediately preceding his baptism of Jesus ; that he goes
on to mention his imprisonment, and gives the date of the imprison
ment as that from which Christ's public ministry is to be reckoned.
That imprisonment he supposes to have taken place in 782, and to
be given by Luke at the outset of his account of the life of our
Lord ; but Wieseler holds that the indications given in Luke of the
date of our Lord's baptism, when He was about thirty years old,
compel us to suppose that it occurred in 780 A.U.C Moreover, he
agrees with Greswell in supposing that the portion of the ministry
of John which preceded the baptism of Jesus lasted about six
months, so that the whole difference in their reckoning of the
"fifteenth year" of Tiberius Caesar is referred to the period after
the baptism and before the imprisonment. It is worthy of notice
that the period of John's first ministry, between Tisri, 779 A.U.C,
. and Tisri, 780, was a Sabbatical year,1 and this would have
greatly contributed to the widely-spread impression produced by
John's preaching. But the date of the imprisonment of John is
made to coincide with the feast of Purim, which Wieseler identi
fies with the unnamed feast of John v. 1 ; and the journey to
Galilee, mentioned by all the Synoptists after John's imprisonment,
to have been about the feast of Purim, which in the year 782
occurred on 19th of March. The ministry of John on this under
standing must have lasted two years after John's baptism of Jesus.
The conclusions of Wieseler on the chronological relations of this
period are as follows : —
" The first public appearance of the Baptist (taking place in the
wilderness of Judaea, probably in the autumn of 779 A.U.C.) and his
later ministry. — Matt. iii. 1-12 ; Mark i. 1-8.
"Jesus, about thirty years old, is baptized by John in the Jordan,
in the spring or summer of 780 A.U.C — Luke iii. 21-23 ; Mark i.
9-1 1 ; Matt. iii. 13—17.
li Immediately afterwards our Lord's forty days' temptation in the
wilderness (of Judaea).— Mark i. 12, 13; Luke iv. 1-13; Matt.iv. 1-11.
"Then a longer interval, from five to six months, in the hfe of
our Lord, of which nothing is recorded.
"The testimony of the Baptist with regard to himself and his
relation to Christ, before the messengers of the Sanhedrim (John
1 See Wieseler, p. 186.

536 Appendix A.
i. 19-27), most probably in February, but at latest at the beginning
of March, 781 A.U.C At this time John was baptizing in Bethany,
in Persea (John i. 28 ; cf. x. 40), which is not to be confounded with
Bethany near Jerusalem.
" The next thirteen or fourteen days bring us to the arrival of
Jesus in Capernaum in Galilee Qohn i. 29 -ii. 12), where He
tarried " not many days."
" Our Lord takes His journey to Jerusalem for the Passover
(March 30), and tarries there and in Judaea till four months before
the 15th of Nisan, i. e., till December, 781 A.U.C — John ii. 13-
iii. 36.
" The return of our Lord through Samaria, occupying about
seven days (John iv. 1-44), and His residence of two or three
months in Galilee. — Ver. 45-54.
" Our Lord's journey to Jerusalem for the feast of Purim, i.e.,
the 14th of Veadar= March iotb, 782 A.U.C, and His hasty retreat
to Galilee after the imprisonment of the Baptist. — John. v. 1-47.
" Between this journey of our Lojrd through Samaria, in De
cember, 781 A.U.C, and His return to Galilee, immediately after
the feast of Purim, and the imprisonment of the Baptist, subse
quently to the middle of March, 782 A.U.C, must be placed the
narrative (Luke iii, 1-20) which closes with the Baptist's imprison
ment. " It follows then that from our Lord's baptism by John, up to His
return to Galilee, after the feast of Purim, and the imprisonment
of the Baptist, subsequently to the middle of March, 782 A.U.C.,
there was an interval of a year and a half, or a year and three
quarters, of which only the latter portion, of about a year's dura
tion, is described in any detail, and that by John. Our Lord's
Judaean ministry preponderated during this period, for He tarried
there some nine or ten months : on the other hand, that in Galilee
was subordinate, His sojourn only lasting two or three months."1
The advantages of this arrangement are that it becomes easier
to harmonise the statements of the Synoptists with that of John,
but it leaves long spaces in the first two years of our Lord's min
istry, of which we have scarcely any traces whatever. It supposes
moreover, that during the whole of this interval John must have
continued his ministry, and though he and Jesus were in near
proximity, they avoided all personal intercourse. Such a discovery
makes the message from the prison, in some of its aspects, the
expression of a more formidable doubt, and more out of harmony
with the great testimony recorded in John iii. It moreover
greatly aggravates this difficulty by reducing the length of John's
imprisonment to a very brief sojourn of three weeks in Machaerus.
1 Wieseler, Chron. Syn. E.T. p. 232.

Appendix A. 537
This, however, is complicated by another class of considerations
arising out of —
7. The date ofthe marriage of Herodias with Antipas. The date
of the imprisonment and death of John has been supposed to be
associated by Josephus with the disaster which befel the army of
Herod. Now, as this happened shortly before the death of Tibe
rius, 790, Keim, Holtzmann, and others have gone so far as to shift
the whole chronology in virtue of this reference. Wieseler has, I
think, shown conclusively that all that can be definitely inferred
from the statement of Josephus is that the intercourse between Hero
dias and Antipas took place before the outbreak of the war between
Aretas and Herod, in 789. If we can discover the precise date of
this intimacy, and the consummation of the marriage, the date of
the imprisonment and death of the Baptist may be determined.
Now Wieseler and Greswell differ in every particular in their
method of solving this problem. Wieseler follows Sol. van Til and
Anger in his solution. (1) He shows by a variety of considera
tions, based on the date of the return of Agrippa I. from Rome
to Palestine, and his residence in Tiberias, that the marriage must
have taken place before 784 A.u.c, as it was expressly referred to
by Josephus in connection with that event. (2) He makes use of
the reference in Josephus1 to the fact that it was on a journey of
Antipas to Rome, on his private affairs, that he visited Herod
{Mariamne or Philip), fell in love with his wife, and agreed to
marry her on his return. (3) The next step is to discover the
occasion of this visit to Rome, and Wieseler accepts the ingenious
argument of Van Til that this occasion occurred after the death of
the Empress Livia, for Herod had built the city Julias in her
honour, and was anxious to secure some portion of the empress's
bequest of territory in his own neighbourhood. This Wieseler seems
to think included Machaerus, which must at this time have passed
from the hands of Aretas to Herod. With this view Schiirrer
agrees. Now Livia died in 782, and the visit to Rome, if then made,
must have been made hurriedly, for Herod to have returned to
Galilee before the feast of Purim, in March, 782. This, however, is
the supposition. It seems to me that Greswell shows quite as strong
a probability for this visit of Antipas having been paid two years
earlier, at the moment when, by a series of calculations, he makes it
probable that Antipas had completed the erection of his splendid
city Tiberias, in honour of the emperor, in the year 780 A.U.C. He
conjectures that the marriage had been proposed and the betrothal
arranged in the spring, and that before it was consummated John
had said, "It is not lawful for thee to have the wife of thy brother,"
thus rousing the indignation of Herodias by the effect he produced
* Antiq. xviii. 5. 1.

538 Appendix A.
for a while upon the mind of her intended husband ; and that the
chronological arrangement is as follows : — ¦
A.U.C 780 (Spring). — Herod fell in love with Herodias, was
rebuked by the Baptist, imprisoned him in Machaerus, and after
wards proceeded to Rome.
A.U.C. 781 (Spring). — He returned from Rome, and about feast of
Tabernacles put John to death in Machaerus.
Greswell supposes that Machaerus after this fell into the hands
of Aretas, and that the daughter of Aretas fled to it ; and it was
not until a year after this that the marriage was consummated.
Keim (1. c. iii. pp. 489-502) places the death of John 787 A.U.C,
in consequence of his view of the reference of Josephus to the
event in connection with the defeat of Herod's army ; and with him
Holtzmann, Hausrath, Savin, Schenkel, and virtually Hitzig, agree.
The dates of the imprisonment and death seem to me far more
probable than those advocated by Wieseler. The chief difficulty is
the statement of Josephus that the daughter of Aretas fled to
Machaerus, " then in her father's possession." If the death of
John took place before the marriage, the fortress must have passed
again immediately into the hands of Herod from this temporary
occupation by Aretas ; and we have seen in Lecture vii. that it was
not improbable that Herod and Herodias desired the sight of the
prize and pledge of their illicit love. This arrangement cuts
abruptly short the ministry of the Baptist in 780, before our
Lord's journey through Samaria, i.e., four or five months before the
harvest of 781, and suggests that the Baptist lingered in prison till
the yeveota of Antipas, in 781 or 782, till the annual festival of his
accession, on that occasion held in Machaerus. If this festival
corresponded with the date of the death of Herod the Great, it
would be held about the time of the Passover. It is moreover
clear that the news of John's death reached Jesus not long after the
Passover alluded to in John vi. 4. The imprisonment, on this cal
culation, must have lasted about four months, or a year and four
months, according as we take one other element into considera
tion. That element is the question whether the unnamed feast in
John v. 1 be another Passover or the Purim feast preceding the
Passover of John by a few weeks.1 Some of the latest critical
editors preserve the definite article before eoprri, though this does
not settle the question.2
' See Wieseler, EUicott, Greswell, Hengstenberg, Comm Tohn v 1
2 See Tisch. 8th Ed. Tregelles omits it.

comparative chronology of the principal events referred to.

Herod proclaimed King by Senate
Accession of Herod the Great ...
Commencement of Rebuilding the
Temple 
Birth of John the Baptist 
Birth of Jesus Christ 
Death of Herod the Great 
Principate of Tiberius 
Death of Augustus 
" Fifteenth year of Tiberius." Ap
pearance of John 
Baptism of Jesus 
First Passover 
Imprisonment of John 
Marriage of Antipas and Herodias
D eath of J ohn 
Death of Christ 
Deposition of Pontius Pilate 
Defeat of Herod's Army 
Death of Tiberius 
Exile of Herod Antipas 

Usher. A.U.C.

747 74875°765 767 779780 7837§3786

Greswell, A.u.c.

717734
749 Summer
750 750765767
779-80 780 780
780 Spring
782
78l 784789 789790793

3

4

Wieseler.

Hales.

A.U.C.

A.U.C. 7'7

717

734

*..

749

748

750

748

750

766

767

781-2

779

780 Summer

780

781

781

782 March.

781

782

782
782
783
784
789
790
5
6
Winer.
Schiirrer.
A.U.C.
A.u.c.
7H
717
733
734
746
747
750
750
767
767
781
781-2
782
...
780-1
782
Before 785
782
783
782
784
7«3
789
789
789
790
792
792
Lichtenstein. A.u.c.
717
748 Dec.
749
750 765767
779-80779-80 780
781 782
783
8 Holtzmann. 9 Hitzig.
ro Keim.
A.U.C.
7H
734
751-2 750767
781-2
786-7 787
786-7 787 7,88
788-9 789
792
Browne. A.U.C.
7H 717
734748
749-So 750767
781
781781
781
782782
789-90 790
792
1 A. V. Cambridge Ed. by Scrivener, 1870-2. 2 Dissertations on the Gospels, vol. i. and iii. 3 Chronological Synopsis of tlie Four Gospels. Trans, by Venables.
4 Analysis qf Chronology, vol. i. ii. 5 Biblisches Real-Worterbuch. 6 Lehrbuch der Neutestamentlichen Zeitgeschichte. 1874. 7 Lebensgeschichte des Herrn I.C.
and Herzog. Ency. vol. vi. 592. 8 Judenthum und Christenthum im Zeitalter der Apocryphischen und Neutestamentlichen Literatur. 1867. 9 Geschichte des
Volkes, vol. ii. 10 Geschichte Jesus von Nazara, bd. i. 11 Ordo Sceclorum. 12 Introduction to the Bible, edited by Home, Tregelles, and Davidson, vol. ii.
540 Appendix B.
APPENDIX B.
BAPTISMAL RITES PRACTISED BY HINDUS.
Page 278.
Bathing accompanies solemn investiture into various degrees of
Buddhist sanctity. See account of the commencement of the no
vitiate, Kbppen, Die Religion des Buddha, vol. i. p. 333-
The sacramental cleansings of the Hindus are thus described
and summarized by Wiittke, Geschichte des Heidenthums, ii. 378 :—
" Die Reinigungen bei alien religiosen Handlungen sind in den
Gesetz-biichern sehr genau vorgeschrieben. Bei der Geburt, dem
Zahnen und dem Tode eines Kindes, so wie der Aufnahme des
selben in die Kaste miissen seine Verwandten solche Reinigungen
vornehmen, . . . Das Hauptmittel der Reinigung ist meist Was-
chen und Baden; heilige Terche (Tirtha) sind zu diesen Zwecken
zahlreich angelegt, am hochsten gilt das Baden in dem heiligen
Ganges ; oder man nimmt Wasser in der Mund. ..."
The following interesting account of the habits and religious
customs of the Vaishnava Brahmins has been furnished to me by a
missionary of long standing, Rev. G. Oliver Newport, of Nagercoil,
and it may throw some light upon the wide diffusion of the bap
tismal rite. There is much in the account which, if the native in
formant can be trusted, reveals the influence of Christian example
and theory.
" The Vaishnava Brahmins (z. e., worshippers of Vishnu) have a
peculiar ceremony, called Saranakathi (lit., Refuge, or Blissful
Security). They say that this corresponds to the Christian rite of
baptism. It takes place but once in a lifetime, and all who have
undergone that ceremony are said to have undergone the ' new
birth.' Apart from this ceremony, there is no heaven for them.
The assuming of the Punul, or Sacred Thread of the Brahmin, is
in no way connected with this ceremony. That assumption takes
place at about the age of seven, and in the case of boys only.
" Formerly this ceremony of Saranikathi did not take place till
the intending recipient had reached the age of thirty years, but
now all who have attained the age of sixteen, or thereabouts, are
eligible for the rite. Children also, under special circumstances,
have this ceremony performed upon them ; and, indeed, every living
thing (especially a cow) in the Brahmin's house must be thus bap
tized when in articulo mortis. The formula used at the baptism of
a dying cow or other animal is a very brief one, and amounts to
merely a prayer to the deity to accept the life thus passing away.
" The person desiring this rite must apply to the Guru (high-
priest), who subjects the applicant to a kind of probation for a few

Appendix B. 541
months, in order to be thoroughly satisfied with his conduct, after
which the ceremony may take place in any of the following ways.
" 1. The applicant visits the sacred tank, or river, where such
ablutions are performed, and bathes himself (z. e., he stands in the
water up to his thighs, and closing his mouth and nostrils, dips
himself frequently under the water), repeating, as he does so, the
Mantra, or sacred invocation specially appointed for that purpose.
He then visits the temple, and standing in front of the deity there,
he makes confession of his sins, appeals for pardon, and promises
amendment of life, very much in the following manner : — ' O great
and holy god ! I have broken thy laws, and committed many
sins. I am indeed a sinner. If thou shouldest deal with me ac
cording to my sins, I should be utterly undone. But oh, deal not
thus with me ! Have mercy upon me ! Forgive my sin ! Teach
me thy way, and I will hereafter walk therein ! From this time
I forsake all my former life. From this time I live altogether
anew. I will obey thy commandments most minutely, whatever
they may be. Forgive my past sins ! Accept the offerings which
I now present ! Here, at thy shrine, in thy temple, I vow, I
swear, that my future life shall be holy, in accordance with thy
will ! ' He then returns home, ' born again,' ' a new creature.'
His bathing has made ' old things pass away ;' his confession and
vow in the temple have made ' all things new.'
" 2. The applicant bathes exactly as described above, and visits
the temple afterwards. But instead of making his own confession
of sin, &c, he submits himself to the high-priest, who, in his name,
makes to the deity the necessary confession of sin, vows of re
formation, &c, the applicant standing at the shrine and repeating,
after the high-priest, word for word, all that the high-priest says,
from beginning to end.
" 3. The applicant being ill, or old, or disabled, and consequently
unable personally to bathe in the tank and visit the temple, sends
word to the high-priest of his intention and of his hindrances. In
return, the high-priest supplies him with a vessel of water from the
sacred place, with which he bathes himself. In his own room, or
wherever he may be, he takes this water, handful by handful, and
throws or sprinkles it over himself, while he repeats the very same
Mantra that he would have to repeat if he bathed in the proper
place. After this, the high-priest in the temple, in the name of,
and on behalf of, the absent candidate, goes through the same con
fession of sin, &c, that the man himself would have to make ; the
result being the same as in No. 1 and No. 2.
" In whichever of these three ways the ceremony is performed,
it involves profuse offerings of flowers, rice, cocoanuts, sweetmeats,
&c, to the god, fees to the temple, fees to the high-priest, and a

542 Appendix B.
feast to all the families of that particular caste or clan resident in
that village. From the time that ceremony is performed, the reci
pient is bound by higher and more stringent rules of conduct than
before ; and if he fail to act accordingly, he is not only liable to
be reproached by his companions and friends, but also to be cen
sured and made to do penance by the high-priest.
" Males and females equally receive this baptism and new birth,
but females are not allowed to repeat the form of confession, &c,
after the high-priest in the temple. They must simply stand before
the deity, and listen to the high-priest repeating the Sanscrit for
mula, which they cannot, of course, understand ; after which he
tells* them, in the vernacular, the meaning of what he has uttered
in their name. The Mantra which females repeat during the
preliminary ablutions also is a much shorter form than that
used by males. These forms are all in Sanscrit, and are never
altered or varied — a liturgy, in fact, which must never be departed
from. " In the case of moribund children, the high-priest (Guru) need
not be present, nor even the ordinary officiating priest of the
temple ; but in such an emergency, the most learned man amongst
them, the one most conversant with the Vedas and Shastras, is
perfectly competent to do all that is necessary. In such a case
water is procured from the sacred tank, well, or river, as the case
may be, and the child is sprinkled by the person officiating, who
repeats for the child, and in its name, the Mantra, which of course
the dying child cannot repeat for .itself. The sprinkling must go
on, with little or no intermission, during the repetition of the
Mantra, and at certain important points (where the bathing adult
would dip himself) an extra quantity of water is sprinkled by way
of special emphasis.
" If such a child should recover from its illness, the ceremony is
never repeated.
" Infants are sinful, because of the sins they committed in their
former life. If they had not committed sins, they would not be
born into this world at all. Therefore, if this ceremony of Sara-
nakathi is not performed, these sins are not washed away, and
consequently the infants go into an inferior and degraded exist
ence. Hence the necessity of the ceremony. If the baptismal
part of the ceremony should be completed, but the child die before
the subsequent service in the temple be completed, all that has
been done counts for nothing. The child is ' yet in its sins.'
" The heaven of Vaishnavas is the end of births, or liberation from
the bondage of transmigration, by being absorbed into the deity.
No heaven for the unbaptized, in their case, means no present
absorption at the end of this life, but another round of births and

Appendix C. 54^
existences. The service in the temple, after the baptism of chil
dren, is exactly the same as in No. 3, mentioned above.
" My authority for the above is Sesha Iyengar, a priest (not a
high-priest, or Guru, who is always an ascetic) of the Vaishnava
Brahmins, who is now residing at Nagercoil.
" G. O. Newport,
" Missionary of Lond. Miss. Soe.
" Nagercoil, March 2, 1 874."

APPENDIX C.
Page 316.
the estimate formed by hippolytus of the significance
of the baptism of jesus.
" Wherefore John, the forerunner of the Lord, who knew not this
mystery (before), on learning that He is Lord 'in truth, cried out
and spake to those who were to be baptized of him, ' O generation
of vipers, why look ye so earnestly at me ? I am not the Christ,
I am the servant, and not the Lord ; I am the subject, and not the
king ; I am the sheep, and not the shepherd ; I am a man, and
not God. By my birth I loosed the barrenness of my mother. I
did not make virginity barren. I was brought up from beneath ;
I did not come down from above. I bound the tongue of my
father ; I did not unfold Divine grace. I was known by my mo
ther, and I was not announced by a star. I am worthless and the
least ; but after me there comes One who is before me ; after me,
indeed, in time, but before me, by reason of the inaccessible and
unutterable light of Divinity. There comes One mightier than I,
whose shoes I am not worthy to bear. He shall baptize you with
the Holy Ghost and with fire. I am subject to authority, but He
has authority in Himself. I am bound by sins, but He is the
Remover of sins. I apply (irapdirrui) the law, but He bringeth
grace to light. I teach as a slave, but He judgeth as the
Master. I have the earth as my couch, but He possesses heaven.
I baptize with the baptism of repentance, but He confers the gift
of adoption. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with
fire. Why give ye attention to me ? I am not the Christ.'
"4. As John says these things to the multitude, and as the
people watch in eager expectation of Seeing some strange spectacle
with their bodily eyes, and the devil is struck with amazement at
such a testimony from John, lo, the Lord appears, plain, solitary,
uncovered (yvpvog), without escort {airpoo-rvTtvTog), having on Him
the body of man like a garment, and hiding the dignity of the
Divinity, that He may elude the snares of the dragon. And not

544 Appendix C.
only did He approach John as Lord without royal retinue, but
even like a mere man, and one involved in sin, He bent His head
to be baptized by John. Wherefore John, on seeing so great a
humbling of Himself, was struck with astonishment at the affair,
and began to prevent Him, saying, as ye have just heard, ' I have
need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me ? What
doest Thou, O Lord ? Thou teachest things not according to rule.
I have preached one thing (regarding Thee), and Thou performest
another. The devil has heard one thing, and perceives another.
Baptize me with the fire of Divinity ; why waitest Thou for water?
Enlighten me with the Spirit ; why dost Thou attend, upon a crea
ture? Baptize me, the Baptist, that Thy pre-eminence may be
known. I, O Lord, baptize with the baptism of repentance, and I
cannot baptize those who come to me unless they first confess fully
their sins. Be it so then that I baptize Thee. What hast Thou
to confess ? Thou art the Remover of sins, and wilt Thou be
baptized with the "baptism of repentance ? Though I should ven
ture to baptize Thee, the Jordan dares not to come near Thee. I
have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest Thou to me?'
" 5. And what saith the Lord to him ? ' Suffer it to be so now,
for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Suffer it to be
so now, John ; thou art not wiser than I. Thou seest as man ; I
foreknow as God. It becomes me to do this first, and thus to
teach. I engage in nothing unbecoming, for I am invested with
honour. Dost thou marvel, O John, that I am not come in my
dignity ? The purple robe of kings suits not one in private station,
but military splendour suits a king. Am I come to a prince, and
not to a friend ? Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to
fulfil all righteousness. I am the Fulfiller of the law ; I seek to
leave nothing wanting to its whole fulfilment, that so after me Paul
may exclaim, Christ is the fulfilling of the law for righteousness
to every one that believeth. Suffer it to be so now, for thus it
becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Baptize me, John, in order
that no one may despise baptism. I am baptized by thee, the
servant, that no one among kings or dignitaries may scorn to be
baptized by the hand of a poor priest. Suffer me to go down into
the Jordan, in order that they may hear my Father's testimony, and
recognize the power of the Son.' Then, at length, John suffers
Him. And Jesus, when He was baptized, went up straightway out
of the water, and the heavens were opened unto Him ; and lo, the
Spirit of God descended like a dove, and rested upon Him. And
a voice (came) from heaven, saying, ' This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased.'"

Appendix D. 545
APPENDIX D.
Page 479.
the truth of supposed legends and fables, by cardinal
WISEMAN.
" Suffice it to say that, according to travellers, there are three
heads of St. John. Now, as I have said, a body can be divided.
but you can hardly imagine this to be the case with a head. I will
read you an extract, then, from Sir John Mandeville :—
" 'From thence we go up to Samaria, which is now called Sebaste:
it is the chief city of that country. There was wont to be the head
of St. John the Baptist enclosed in the wall, but the Emperor
Theodosius had it drawn out, and found it wrapped in a little cloth,
all bloody, and so he carried it to Constantinople, and the hinder
part of the head is still at Constantinople ; and the fore part of the
head, to under the chin, under the Church of St. Silvester, where
are nuns, and it is yet all broiled, as though it were half burnt ;
for the Emperor Julian, above mentioned, of his wickedness and
malice, burned that part with the other bones, as may still be seen ;
and this thing hath been proved both by popes and emperors.
And the jaws beneath which hold to the chin, and a part of tbe
ashes, and the platter on which the head was laid when it was
smitten off, are at Genoa ; and the Genoese make a great feast in
honour of it, and so do the Saracens also. And some men say that
the head of St. John is at Amiens, in Picardy ; and other men say
that it is the head of St. John the bishop. I know not which is
correct, but God knows : but however men worship it, the blessed
St. John is satisfied.'
" This is a true Catholic sentiment. Right or wrong, all mean to
honour St. John, and there is an end of it. We could not expect a
traveller going through the country like Sir John, not visiting every
place, but hearing one thing from one and another from another,
to tell us the exact full truth. But we have here two very important
points gained. First, we have the singular fact of the division of
the head at all. We occasionally hear of the head of a saint being
at a particular place, but seldom of a part of a head being in one
place and a part in another. Here we have an unprejudiced
traveller going into the East. He comes to the place where the
head of St. John used to be kept, and he finds there the tradition
that it was divided into three parts, one of which was at Constan
tinople, one at Genoa, and another at Rome. Then he adds,
' Other people say that the head is at Amiens.' So much Sir
John Mandeville further informs us. He mentions the places where
it was reported the head was, telling us that it was divided into
36

546 Appendix D.
three. This is a statement worthy of being verified. It was made
a long time ago, and yet the traditions remain the same. It was
as well believed in the thirteenth century in the East, at Sebaste,
as it is in Europe at the present moment. The church of St. Sil
vester in Capite, which many of you remember, is a small church
on the east side of the Corso, entered by a sort of vestibule : it has
an atrium or court, with arches round, and dwellings for the chap
lains. The outer gates can be shut at night, so as to prevent com
pletely any access to the church. The rest is an immense building
belonging to the nuns, running out towards the Propaganda,
When the Republicans in the late invasion got hold of Rome, the
first thing, of course, which they did, was to turn out the monks
and nuns right and left, to make barracks ; and the poor nuns of
St. Silvester were ordered to move. The head of St. John is in a
shrine which looks very brilliant, but is poor in reality. I think it
is exposed high beyond the altar, and the nuns kept it in jealous
custody in their house. The Republicans sent away the nuns in
the middle of the night, at ten or eleven o'clock, just as they were,
with what clothes they could get made into bundles : there were
carriages at the door to send them off to some other convent, with
out the slightest warning or notice. The poor creatures were
ordered to take up their abode in the convent of St. Pudentiana.
The only thing they thought of was their relic, and that they
carried with them. The good nuns received them, though late at
night, and did what they could to give them good cheer : they
gave up one of their dormitories to them, putting themselves to
immense inconvenience.
"When the French came to Rome, they found St. Silvester so
useful a building for public purposes, that they continued to hold
it, but permitted the nuns to occupy some rooms near the church.
I was in Rome while they were still at my titular church, and went
to visit the nuns attached to it. Their guests asked, ' Would you
not like to see our relic of St. John ?' I said, ' Certainly I should ;
perhaps I shall never have another opportunity.' I do not suppose
it had been out of their house for hundreds of years. There is a
chapel within the convent which the nuns of St. Pudentiana con
sider a sacred oratory, having a miraculous picture there, to which
they are much attached, and in this they kept the shrine. On ex
amination, I found that there was no part of the head except the
back. It is said in the extract I have read to you that the front part
of the head is at Rome, but it is the back of the skull merely ; the
rest is filled up with some stuffing, and silk over it. The nuns have
but a third of the head ; and the assertion that they pretend to
possess the head, which travellers make, is clearly false . I can
say, from my own ocular inspection, that it is but the third part—

Appendix E. 547
the back part — which is the most interesting, because there the
stroke of martyrdom fell. I was certainly glad of this fortunate
opportunity of verifying the relic. Some time afterwards I was at
Amiens. I was very intimate with the late bishop, and spent some
days with him. One day he said to me, ' Would you wish to see
our head of St. John ? ' ' Yes,' I replied, ' I should much desire
it.' ' Well,' he said, * we will wait till the afternoon ; then I will
have the gates of the cathedral closed, that we may examine it at
leisure.' We dined early, and went into the chapel of the Blessed
Sacrament, where the relic was exposed, with candles. After say
ing prayers, it was brought, and I had it in my hands. It was
nothing but the mask, the middle and back portions being totally
wanting. You could almost trace the expression and character of
the countenance in the bony structure. It was of the same size
and colour as the portion which I had seen at St. Pudentiana ; but
the remarkable thing about it is, that there are stiletto marks in
the face. We are told by Fathers that Herodias stabbed the head
with a bodkin when she got it into her hand, and here are the
marks of such an operation visible. You could almost say that
you had seen him as he was alive. I have not seen the third frag
ment, but I can hardly doubt that it is a portion of the same head,
and that it would comprise the parts, the chin and the jaw, because
there is no lower jaw in the front part, which is a mere mask.
The only other claimant is Genoa, and its relic I have not seen.
But this is exactly the portion allotted by Mandeville to that city.
I have, however, had the satisfaction of personally verifying two of
the relics, each of which comprises a third part of the head, leaving
for the other remainder exactly the place which our old traveller
allots to it" — From Essays on Religion and Literature. By Various
Writers. Edited by H. E. Manning, D.D.

APPENDIX E.
Page 348.
tintoret's picture of the baptism of JESUS.
" TlNTORET has thrown into this picture his utmost strength, and it
becomes noble in his hands by his most singularly imaginative
expression, not only of the immediate fact, but of the whole train
of thought of which it is suggestive ; and by his considering the
Baptism not only as the submission of Christ to the fulfilment of
all righteousness, but as the opening of the earthly struggle with
the prince of the powers of the air, which, instantly beginning in the
temptation, ended only on the cross.

5-48 Appendix E*
" The river flows fiercely under the shadow of a great rock. From
its opposite shore, thickets of close gloomy foliage rise against the
rolling chasm of heaven, through which breaks the brightness of
the descending Spirit, Across these, dividing them asunder,' is
stretched a horizontal floor of flaky cloud, on which stand the hosts
of heaven. Christ kneels upon the water, and does not sink. The
figure of St. John is indistinct, but close beside his raised right arm
there is a spectre in the black shade ; the Fiend, harpy-shaped,
hardly seen, glares down upon Christ with eyes of fire, waiting his
time. Beneath this figure, there comes out of the mist a dark
hand, the arm unseen, extended to a net in the river, the spars of
which are in the shape of a cross. Behind this, the roots and
under stems of the trees are cut away by the cloud, and beneath it
and through them is seen a vision of wild, melancholy, boundless
light, the sweep of the desert ; and the figure of Christ is seen
therein alone, with His arms lifted as in supplication or ecstasy,
borne ofthe Spirit into the Wilderness to be tempted ofthe Devil.
There are many circumstances which combine to give to this noble
work a more than usually imaginative character. The symbolical
use of the net, which is the cross net still used constantly in the
canals of Venice, and common throughout Italy, is of the same
character as that of the carpenter's tools in the Annunciation ; but
the introduction of the spectral figure is of bolder reach, and yet
more that vision of the after-temptation which is expressly indi
cated as a subject of thought rather than of sight, because it is in a
part of the scene which in fact must have been occupied by the
trunks of the trees whose tops are seen above. And another
circumstance completes the mystic character of the whole, that the
flaky clouds which support the angelic hosts, take, on the right,
where the light first falls upon them, the shape of the head of a
fish, the well-known type both of the baptismal sacrament and of
Christ." — Ruskin, Modern Painters, vol. ii. 170.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.

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