XIX. THE BAPTIST'S HERALDRY. MATTHEW iii, 1-12; MARK i, 1–8; LUKE iii, 1-18. The Voice in the Wilder ness. "GREAT events cast their shadows before." Never was the saying truer than in the case of the inauguration of the public ministry of Jesus the Matt. iii, 1-4. Christ. It was not meet that the Sun of Righteousness should rise without the heraldry of morning-star. When, therefore, the Son of man, having been duly trained for his mighty enterprise in the schools of home, and subordination, and toil, and society, and isolation, and synagogue, and providence, and nature, and routine, and delay, and temptation, and experience, had reached the age of about thirty years, and was just entering Luke iii, 23. his public ministry as the Christ of God, there also emerged into public view a striking character, whose glory it was to be the Christ's harbinger. He also has had his training; but, unlike his Master's, it has been in the school of the desert. And now, the day of his showing unto Israel having Luke i, 80. come, John also begins his public ministry, going Luke iii, 2-6. into all the region round about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance unto remission of sins, saying, "Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven Mal. iii, 1. Isaiah x1, 3-5. [the promised Messianic dispensation] is at hand!" And in thus preaching, he proves himself to be that illustrious herald whose advent Jehovah had foretold through his prophet Malachi, saying— Behold, I send my messenger, And he shall prepare the way before me; and again through his prophet Isaiah, saying— The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of Jehovah, And every mountain and hill shall be made low; And the rough places plain : And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed, For the mouth of Jehovah hath spoken it. The imagery is borrowed from the Oriental custom of preparing the way for monarchs in their royal progresses. Thus, we have records of the triumphal highways built at great expense by Semiramis, Sennacherib, Assurbanipal, and others, through craggy heights and deep gorges.* And admirably does this Eastern custom set forth the office of * The same thing has occurred lately. "When Ibrahim Pasha proposed to visit certain places on Lebanon, the emirs and sheiks sent forth a general proclamation to all the inhabitants to assemble along the proposed route, and prepare the way before him. The same thing was done in 1854, on a grand scale, when the sultan visited Bresa. The stones were gathered out, crooked places straightened, and rough ones made level and smooth. I had the benefit of their labor a few days after his Majesty's visit." The Land and the Book." John as the Messiah's forerunner. The plowman must go before the sower, breaking up the fallow soil, loosening the dense and tangled sod, uprooting the thorns. Repentance must precede remission, the law the gospel, the preacher of wrath the preacher of love. And so the son of the desert went before the face of the Christ in the spirit and Luke i, 17. power of Elijah, turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the just; to make ready for the Lord a people prepared for him. Revival under John. Matt. iii, 5, 6. Then went out unto him Jerusalem, and all The Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. It must have been a most impressive scene. Let us try to realize it. The locality is the wilderness of Judea the wild, cavernous, thinly settled pasture region lying to the southeast of Jerusalem, in the direction of the lower Jordan and the Dead Sea. The preacher is a hermit―stern, uncompromising, denunciatory; his dress, a shaggy garment of camel's hair; his food, locusts and wild honey-a genuine son of the desert. His theme is repentance in view of the approaching reign of the Messiah. His audience is all Judea. There is the supercilious Phari see. There is the scoffing Sadducee. There is the glowering publican. There is the swaggering soldier. And many of these, wonderful to say, are coming to John for baptism, thereby confessing their uncleanness, and desire for purification. It was a striking instance of a general revival or spiritual ferment, recalling the religious awaken Occasion of the Revival. ings under a Hezekiah, a Josiah, an Ezra, a Peter, a Savonarola, a Bernard, a Luther, a Whitefield, a Moody. Nor is it difficult to account for this widespread and profound agitation. In the first place, the people were chafing under the yoke of pagan Rome. Remembering that they were Jehovah's covenant - people, their yearning for deliverance naturally took on a religious form. Again, there was at this time among the Jews, and perhaps throughout the East, the expectation, more or less distinct, of one who was to be a heaven-sent deliverer. Hearing of the sanctity of Judea's hermit, how natural that the Jews, weary of bondage and shame, should flock to John in the hope that he was the promised one. Again, there is in asceticism something which is fascinating. It betokens an exceptional, earnest character; and men are ever moved by the exceptional, especially when it takes the form of terrible moral earnestness. And John was a terribly earnest ascetic. A startling antithesis was he to the phylacteried, selfcomplacent, superficial, hollow rabbi of his day; and his power lay largely in being this antithesis. And therefore all Israel flocked to his preaching, feeling the thrall of his magnetism, even as idolatrous Israel centuries before had swayed under stormy Elijah, and as voluptuous Italy centuries afterward bowed before stern Savonarola, and frivolous France centuries still later grew solemn before saintly Lacordaire. Once more, John's message was. a message of terror. No soothing words were his, no soporific platitudes, |