Of such unaffected and disinterested humility as this, where shall we find, except in Christ, another instance? Yet with this was by no means united what we are too apt to associate with our idea of humility, meanness and timidity of spirit ; on the contrary, the whole conduct of the Baptist was marked throughout with the most intrepid courage and magnanimity in the discharge of his duty.

Instead of paying any court either to the great men of his nation on the one hand, or to the multitude on the other, he reproved the former for their hypocrisy in the strongest terms; "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come*?" and he required the latter to renounce every one of those favourite sins which they had long indulged, and were most unwilling to part with. But what is still more, he reproved without fear and without reserve the abandoned and ferocious Herod, for injuriously taking away Herodias his brother's

* Matt. iii. 7.

wife,

wife, and afterwards incestuously marrying her, and for all the other evil that he had done. He well knew the savage and unrelenting temper of that sanguinary tyrant; he knew that this boldness of expostulation would sooner or later bring down upon him the whole weight of his resentment. But knowing also that he was sent into the world to preach repentance to all, and feeling it his duty to cry aloud and spare not, to spare not even the greatest and most exalted of sinners, he determined not to shrink from that duty, but to obey his conscience, and take the consequences.

Those consequences were exactly what he must have foreseen. He was first shut up in prison; and not long afterwards, as you all know, the life of this great and innocent man was wantonly sacrificed in the midst of conviviality and mirth, to the rash oath of a worthless and a merciless prince, to the licentious fascinations of a young woman, and the implacable vengeance of an old one.

After

After this short history of the doctrines, the life, and the death of this extraordinary man, I beg leave to offer in conclusion a few remarks upon it to your serious consideration.

And in the first place, in the testimony of John the Baptist, we have an additional and powerful evidence to the truth and the divine authority of Christ and his religion.

If the account given of John in the Gospels be true, the history given there of Jesus must be equally so, for they are plainly parts of one and the same plan, and are so connected and interwoven with each other, that they must either stand or fall together.

Now that in the first place there did really exist such a person as John the Baptist, at the time specified by the evangelists, there cannot be the smallest doubt; for he is mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus, and all the circumstances he relates of him, as far as they go, perfectly correspond with the description

given of him by the sacred historians. He represents him as using the ceremony of baptism. He says that multitudes flocked to him, for they were greatly delighted with his discourses, and ready to observe all his directions. He asserts that he was a good man: and that he exhorted the Jews not to come to his baptism without first preparing themselves for it by the practice of virtue; that is, in the language of the Gospels, without repentance. He relates his being inhumanly murdered by Herod; and adds, that the Jews in general entertained so high an opinion of the innocence, virtue, and sanctity of John, as to be persuaded that the destruction of Herod's army, which happened not long after, was a divine judgment inflicted on him for his barbarity to so excellent a man*.

It appears then that St. John was a person, of whose virtue, integrity, and piety, we have the most ample testimony from an historian of unquestionable veracity,

* Joseph. Antiq. 1. xviii. c. 6. s. 2. Ed. Huds.

veracity, and we may therefore rely with perfect confidence on every thing he tells us. He was the very man foretold both by Isaiah and Malachi, as the forerunner of that divine personage, whom the Jews expected under the name of the Messiah. He declared that Jesus Christ was this divine person, and that he himself was sent into the world on purpose to prepare the way before him, by exhorting men to repentance and reformation of life. If then this record of John (as the evangelists call it) be true, the divine mission of Christ is at once established, because the Baptist expressly asserts that he was the Son of God, and that whoever believed on him should have everlasting life*. Now that this record is true, we have every reason in the world to believe, not only because a man so eminently distinguished for every moral virtue as St. John confessedly was, cannot be thought capable of publicly proclaiming a deliberate falsehood; but because had his

*John, iii. 6; i. 34.