liness, some they suffered to perish, others they themselves brought up and cut to pieces. The latter fact Jeremiah relates [Jeremiah xxxvi. 23], the former he who composed the fourth [second] book of Kings, saying that after a long time the Book of Deuteronomy was hardly found, buried somewhere and lost. But if when there was no Barbarian, then they so betrayed their books, much more when the Barbarians had overrun them. For as to the fact that the prophet had foretold it, the Apostles themselves in many places call him a Nazarene."

IN

CHAP. III.

N those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judæa,

A.D. 26.

Mark i. 4, 15.

Luke iii. 2, 3.
John i. 28.

b Josh. xiv. 10.

1. "In those days." This must have been thirty years after our Lord began to live in Nazareth. This is not put to signify the days which came immediately after the things related in the last chapter, but the days in which those things were to take place which he was preparing to relate; a very frequent introduction to a new subject among the sacred writers. It is used very indefinitely throughout both Testaments. In one case (Mark xiii. 19) it seems to cover the whole period between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of all things.

"Came John the Baptist." John the Baptist was the last of the Prophets. With him closes the old state of things. He proclaimed the Kingdom of Heaven to be at hand; but so far as that kingdom means the state of things established by the Son of God, he was not in it himself, for our Lord says, "among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." And yet our Lord speaks of him as "more than a prophet." He was "Elias which was to come," because he came "in the spirit and power of Elias." He was the friend of the Bridegroom. Through him, as God's instrument, Apostles them. selves were aroused, and prepared to receive and follow Christ.

c

2 And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

c Dan. ii. 44. ch. iv. 17. &

x. 7.

He was sent in mercy to prepare the way of Christ, so that "all men through him might believe." He was the last link in that long chain of preparation which reached from Enoch through Moses, David, Isaiah, Malachi. All these prophesied of Christ as to come. He could point to One, and say, "Behold the Lamb of God."

Other occasions will present themselves on which, if God will, we can speak of his nativity, his career, his character, his special witness to Christ, his martyrdom. We shall now confine our remarks to his mission. He was sent to prepare the way of Christ by preaching repentance, by baptizing, and by pointing Christ out as the Lamb of God: thereby describing Him as the end and completion of the sacrificial system of the Jews.

2. "And saying, Repent ye." We by no means realize how peculiar the preaching of repentance, its nature and efficacy, is to Christianity: how seldom the prophets are represented as preaching it, and how large a part it forms of the commission of the Apostles. Repentance is described in such a Psalm as the fifty-first, but no prophet was commissioned to preach it as John was. Strange it is, but it is nevertheless quite true, that in by far the greater number of places in which repentance is mentioned in the Old Testament, it is as the repentance of God-God repenting Him of some evil or other which He would do to His people. But in the New Dispensation repentance is the one thing needful. St. Peter's first words are, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins." Repent and be converted." St. Paul speaks of God as "commanding all men everywhere to repent," and describes his own preaching as "showing that men should repent, and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance:" and to meet those who are in the Church, and have fallen from grace, Christ's message to four out of the seven Churches is, that they should "repent."

66

Seeing then that repentance and things connected with it were so seldom preached in the Old Testament, and so frequently and continuously in the New, the Baptist prepared the way for this altered state of things by preaching repentance: and he was able to do this because that kingdom was at hand in which repentance was of

3 For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias,

d Is. xl. 3.

Mark i. 3.

Luke iii. 4.
John i. 23.

• Lake i. 76.

d

saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, * Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

universal necessity and efficacy; or rather because He was at hand Who by His Spirit convincing of sin gave repentance, and by His Blood made a full atonement for the sins of which men have to repent, and by His sacramental means conveyed restoring grace to the penitent.

And so John prepared men to receive the Kingdom of God by baptizing. Men in time past had been outwardly cleansed from sin by the blood of innumerable victims. Now the one all-sufficient Victim, the Lamb of God, was to be offered, and His Blood was to be applied to men, and His Death made available to their New Birth by a new and very simple rite, that of baptism. I say "new," for there is little or no evidence of the use of baptism before the time of Christ. Washings there were many and divers: but no such thing as baptism as an instrument of the Spirit. Not that John's baptism was Christian baptism. He himself draws out the contrast between Christ's baptism and his own. Men baptized by

St. John had to be baptized again: but it served to prepare them for receiving a system in which sacramental means were to hold a very prominent place. It had no inward and spiritual grace, but it prepared the way for a baptism which had.

"For the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The kingdom of heaven, or of God, has in Scripture four meanings, ascending in a regular gradation from the less to the more perfect :

(1.) It is, first of all, the kingdom of His natural laws and overruling providence. "His kingdom ruleth over all." In this kingdom He upholds in existence and well-being all sensible and intellectual creatures by the word of His power.

(2.) Then there is the kingdom of His grace. This is in its first and outward aspect the visible Church, with its bishops, priests, deacons, sacraments, written word, preaching, prayers. Not that we should call it outward, for itself and all that belongs to it form one vast sacrament, in that it is the outward visible sign of inward spiritual grace pervading every part of it, so that to those who have spiritual eyes, and believing and penitent hearts, it insures the continued presence of Him Who promises to

Mark i. 6.

4 And 'the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and 'wild honey.

5 k Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan,

g 2 Kings, i. 8.
Zech. xiii. 4.
h Lev. xi. 22.
i 1 Sam. xiv.
25, 26.

k Mark i. 5.
Luke iii. 7.

4. "The same John," rather, "John himself." Ipse autem Johannes. be with it to the end: Who is at once its Head and its Root, its Life and its Power.

(3.) But there is the kingdom of God within, which is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." [Rom. xiv. 17.] This takes place when the penitent holy soul realizes the truths of the kingdom in which it has found itself: so that what was before without and external comes within, and is embraced and fed on by the soul. Then what is within corresponds to what is without. The engrafted word is received with meekness. The grace of the first anointing abides, and is constantly stirred up by prayer. The Lord's Body is discerned in the elements, and so the Lord is formed within.

(4.) And there is the kingdom of God to be revealed at the Second Coming. Now this kingdom in its second and third senses was then at hand in the person of its King, and to be speedily revealed in Him: first in His own Life, Death, and Resurrection: then in the Church founded at Pentecost by His Spirit through His apostles; but it could only be discerned as from God by the change of heart implied in repentance, and so John was sent that, by preaching of repentance, he might enable men to discern this kingdom, and enter into it.

8. "This is he . . . . the way of the Lord." This prophecy may have had a first and narrow meaning, as referring to the preparing of the actual road or way of the children of Israel in their return from the captivity; but such meaning, if it ever existed, sinks into nothingness, and cannot be remembered in the face of that greater and more spiritual significance of the preparation by repentance for the spiritual reception of Christ.

The substance of the Baptist's preaching is given more fully in St. Luke's Gospel as the turning of the hearts of the fathers to the children, that is, as the revival of domestic love, home duties, family religion. This is taken from the prophecy in Malachi. St. Luke also gives the prophecy of Isaiah more in full: "Every valley shall

6' And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their

6. Most of the oldest Greek manuscripts and Syriac read, "in the river Jordan."

be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth." On which Chrysostom remarks: "He is signifying here the exaltation of the lowly, the humiliation of the self-willed, the hardness of the law changed into easiness of faith. For 'it is no longer toils and labours,' saith he, but grace and forgiveness of sins, affording great facility of salvation."

"Make his paths straight." The way of Christ is twofold, without and within. It must be in the nation or Church, and it must be in each man's heart: indeed it is only through the last that the first can take place. Mark the word "straight." All crookedness, all hypocrisy, guile, deceit, absolutely excludes the Gospel: the unrighteous, whether towards God or towards men, cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

4. "His raiment of camel's hair." The old prophets wore rough garments. They had a message from God against the world, and so must live and dress as men mortified to the world.

"And his meat was locusts and wild honey." Locusts are a common food in the East, and are sold in the markets in Arabia. His food is here mentioned, not as being coarse and poor, but as being such as the deserts spontaneously afforded. It indicated that he had no secular communication with the outer world, not even to "buy victuals," as the apostles had.

....

5. "There went out . . . . confessing their sins." All Jerusalem -not the respectable, they stood aloof-but the publicans and harlots, confessing their sins, not their sinfulness in general terms, but their particular sins.

When we consider what the character of the population of great cities is—and Jerusalem was in no way an exception-we shall be inclined to think that the hardest part of this holy man's ministry was the receiving the confessions of the sinners of Jerusalem. To hear the publicans recounting their extortion and fraud, the harlots their unclean lives, and the robbers their deeds of blood as well as of rapine, must have been terrible indeed.

To avoid the sanction which this place gives to confession to a minister, some men say that they made their confessions in public.