16. Chapter 2: The Prophet.

CHAPTER 2: THE PROPHET.

Matthew 3:1-12; Mark 1:1-8; Luke 3:1-18.

Some preachers derive a certain amount of influence from the impression made by their personal appearance. When, as in the case of Chalmers, on the broad and ample forehead there rests the air of philosophic thought, and in the liquid eye there shines the sympathy of a benevolent nature, the goodwill of the congregation is conciliated before a word is uttered. Still more fascinating is the impression when, as in the case of Newman, the stern and emaciated figure suggests the secret fasts and midnight vigils of one who dwells in a hidden world, out of which he comes with a divine message to his followers. In the highest degree this advantage attached to the preaching of the Baptist, whose appearance must have been very striking. His hair was long and unkempt; and his features were tanned with the sun and the air of the desert. Probably they were thinned too by austerity; for his habitual food was of the simplest order, consisting only of locusts and wild honey. Locusts, dried and preserved, form still, at the present day, an article of food in the East, but only among the very poor: people in the least degree luxurious or scrupulous would not look at it. Wild honey, formed by hives of bees in the crevices of rocks or in rifted trees, abounds in the desert-places of Palestine, and may be gathered by anyone who wanders there. The raiment of the Baptist corresponded with his food, consisting of a garment of the very coarsest and cheapest cloth, made of camel’s hair. The girdle of the Oriental is an article of clothing on which a great deal of taste and expense is laid out, being frequently of fine material and gay coloring, with the added adornment of elaborate needlework; but the girdle with which John’s garment was confined was no more than a rough band of leather. Everything, in short, about his external appearance denoted one who had reduced the claims of the body to the lowest possible terms, that he might devote himself entirely to the life of the spirit.

John was a Nazarite. The Nazarite vow seems to have been of very ancient origin, perhaps having existed earlier than the beginning of the history of the Hebrew people. But it was adopted into the Mosaic legislation. It was voluntary; and it was usually temporary. For ascetic purposes an Israelite might resolve to be for a certain term of months or years a Nazarite, and at the end of this period he could, by the performance of certain ceremonies, lay the ascetic habit aside and return to ordinary life. The Baptist, however, was like some other great men of his race, such as Samuel and Samson, a Nazarite for life. The vow consisted in letting the hair grow uncut and in abstinence from the fruit of the vine in every shape and form. The object of it was to subdue the bodily appetites and to cultivate an unworldly life in fellowship with God.

Among the learned there has been much discussion as to whether the Baptist, besides being a Nazarite, was an Essene. The Essenes are named by Josephus and other ancient writers along with the Pharisees and Sadducees as a third school of religious thought among the Jews, but they are never mentioned in the New Testament. They were ascetics, who fled from the world and lived as a separate community in the same desert of Judah in which John spent his days before his appearance to Israel. It has even been disputed whether Jesus did not belong to them and owe to them some of his doctrines. But Christianity is fundamentally opposed to Essenism in the high regard it pays to the body, and in its doctrine that the religious life is to be lived not out of the world but in it. John’s teaching, too, is widely separated from the false unworldliness of the Essenes, though in some respects his manner of life resembled theirs. The most curious point of agreement is that the highest object of Essene aspiration was to attain to the spirit of Elijah. Now, John in some respects strikingly resembled Elijah. Not only did his external appearance recall that ancient prophet, who is expressly described, in 2 Kings 1:8, as “a hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins,” but the angel who foretold his birth stated that he would be clothed with the spirit and power of Elijah. The Baptist’s relations to Herod and Herodias were closely parallel to those of Elijah to Ahab and Jezebel; and the suddenness with which he burst into view out of the desert in which he had spent his youth recalled the great prophet who, from his solitary cell on Mount Carmel, used to descend to beard the monarch in his palace or to challenge the assembled nation to, choose between Jehovah and Baal. Our Lord himself taught that in the Baptist Elijah had returned to rouse and warn the people of God. The audiences of different preachers vary exceedingly. They vary in size. Some preachers, even when they are appreciated, preach to a handful; others draw the million. They vary in quality. Some preachers appeal only to a single class, it may be to the cultivated, their words being “caviare to the general or it may be to the common people, their manner offending the fastidious; but the greatest preachers draw all classes John did so emphatically. Jerusalem and all Judaea went out to him. No sooner did his voice sound in the desert than an electric thrill seemed to pass through the country; there arose a rumor and a fame, and the population streamed out en masse to hear him The Pharisee, ever intent on examining any new phenomenon appearing in the religious world, was there as a matter of course; but so was the Sadducee, whose cold soul was usually inaccessible to religious excitement The scribe was there, to hear what new doctrine the famous preacher would produce from the Scriptures, which were the subject of his own study; but the publican and the harlot were also there, who in general cared nothing for Scriptures or doctrines. Even soldiers are mentioned as among John’s auditors, though whether these were Roman or Jewish is uncertain. The scene of the ministry to which this motley multitude flocked was the valley of the Jordan. Different points of the valley are mentioned by different Evangelists, from the desert of Judah on the south to the ford of Bethabara, just below the Sea of Galilee, on the north. These differences as to locality have been treated as discrepancies; but surely without reason. A preacher would naturally move from place to place, and be sometimes on one side of the river and sometimes on the other. The slight indications which are supplied in the Gospels seem to show that John moved, on the whole, from south to north, beginning in the south, near his home, and ending in the north, near the abode of Herod, by whom his career was stopped.

It is especially worthy of note that the population “went out” to John. He did not go to them—to their cities, their synagogues or their temple. The idea of our modern Home Mission movement is to carry the Gospel to the people—to the lanes and courts of the city, to the miner’s hut and the fisherman’s resort, to the man on the street and the woman in the house—so that they cannot get away from it; and we speak fervently of our methods as aggressive. But it should not be forgotten that there is another method—the attractive. Speak the right word, and you will not need to press men to come and hear it. The spiritual instincts of human nature may be dormant, but they are not dead. Let the right music sound outside, and the hidden man of the heart will rise and come to the window to look out and listen. No obstacles can keep people away when a voice sufficiently charged with the Holy Ghost is heard. John had only to lift up his voice, and the entire country hastened to hear him. The message of this preacher was exceedingly simple. It contained only two watchwords, the one being “Repent,” the other, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Repentance is perhaps not the best rendering of the first note of John’s message; conversion would be a more literal translation. It was for an entire change in the habits of thought and conduct that John called; and this change included not only the forsaking of sin but the seeking of God. Still, the forsaking of sin was very prominent in John’s demands; for we are told how pointedly he referred to the favorite sins of different classes. When the publicans asked, “What shall we do?” he had his answer ready, “Exact no more than that which is appointed you;” unjust and vexatious exactions being notoriously the sin of this class. So, when the soldiers demanded, “What shall we do?” he pointed his finger straight at their besetting sins, when he said, “Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content with your wages.” The boldness of such preaching is manifest: the last mentioned word, for instance, “Be content with your wages,” was probably no more popular then than it would be if preached to the poor at the present day. But, if John preached fearlessly to the poor, he had a no less practical message to the rich; for to them he said, “He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.” It is extraordinary how evil habit can, generation after generation, override the most elementary instincts of justice and humanity. The average conduct of both the masses and the classes is at the present day in many respects just as distorted as it was in the days of the Baptist. But the true prophet is he who can see how far the line of custom diverges from the line of righteousness and can summon forth the conscience of every man to acknowledge it too. The other note of John’s preaching was the kingdom of God. This was not a novel watchward. The ideal of the Jews had always been a theocracy. When Saul, their first king, was appointed, the prophet Samuel condemned the act of the people as a lapse: they ought to have wished no king but God. And when, in subsequent ages, the kings of the land with rare exceptions turned out miserable failures, the better and deeper spirits always sighed for a reign of God, which would ensure national prosperity. The deeper the nation sank the more passionate grew this aspiration; and when the good time coming was thought of, it was always in the form of a kingdom of God. It is, indeed, a point which has been much discussed, how far such hopes were prevalent immediately before the Advent. But the New Testament itself proves incontestably that the expectation of the Messianic king was one of the principal features of the deep and hidden piety of the land, while Messianic hopes of a totally different order, crude and earthly, were widely diffused among the people. At all events, in the Jewish mind there was latent a whole system of Messianic ideas, which only a hint was required to awaken into activity.

It was to this that John appealed when he cried, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” But his most effective word was the hint that not only the kingdom but the King was coming. His favorite way of characterizing himself was “as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, ‘ Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’” In the East, when a king was making a progress through any part of his dominions, a herald preceded him, to announce his approach and to clear the way. If no road existed one had to be made, valleys being filled up and even mountains and hills levelled for the purpose. Every obstacle, in short, had to be removed, and the hearts of men prepared for the king’s reception. Such was the office which John claimed to fill in the programme of the Messianic King. The two portions of John’s message—repentance and the kingdom of God—were closely connected: he called on men to repent that they might be ready for the King when he came. Indeed, here was the very point of the Baptist’s preaching. He was profoundly convinced that his countrymen were not prepared, and that no kingdom of God could be formed out of them as they were. They, indeed, had no idea of this themselves; but this ignorance was the supreme obstacle. They imagined that, simply because they were children of Abraham, they could go in a body into the kingdom; but he cried; “Begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father.” Children of Abraham! rather, I should say, children of the old serpent are ye—“O generation of vipers.” The King, when he came, would not admit them, as a matter of course, into his kingdom: on the contrary, the very first thing he would do would be to sit as a judge, to separate the good from the evil. “His fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and will gather the wheat into his garner, but will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” This “wrath to come” must be the first act of the Messiah’s activity. John, therefore, called upon men at once to be converted, that they might be considered meet to enter into the kingdom when Messiah came. Words and professions would be of no avail— “Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.” Is it not obvious that this is a message for all time? In one sense the Baptist’s ministry was an evanescent one: when Christ came, there was no place for him any more. But in another sense the Baptist is always needed. Christ comes to many; but he receives no welcome because they feel no need of him. Unless a man knows that he is lost, the announcement of a Saviour has no attraction for his mind. The deeper the sense of sin, the firmer the grasp of salvation. In the kingdom of God the hungry are filled with good things, but the rich are sent empty away. The prophets of Israel were poets as well as preachers; and one way in which they displayed their poetical endowment was by the invention of physical symbols to represent the truths which they also expressed in words. Thus, it will be remembered, Jeremiah at one period went about Jerusalem wearing a yoke on his shoulders, in order to impress on his fellow-citizens the certainty that they v/ere to become subject to the Babylonian power; and similar symbolical actions of other prophets will occur to every Bible reader. In the Baptist, ancient prophecy, after centuries of silence, had come to life again; and he demonstrated that he was the true heir of men like Isaiah and Jeremiah by the exercise also of this poetical gift. He embodied his teaching not only in words, but in an expressive symbol. And never was symbol more felicitously chosen; for baptism exactly expressed the main drift of his teaching.

Perhaps in the invention of this symbol John was not altogether original. The truth is, washing with water is so natural and beautiful a symbol of spiritual cleansing and renewal that it has been used by religious teachers as an initiatory rite in all ages and in all parts of the world. It is said to have been in use in the Holy Land before the age of the Baptist as part of the ceremonial by which a heathen was made a proselyte of the Jewish faith. If this be correct, the fact lends to John’s adoption of the rite peculiar significance. His countrymen were already familiar with the notion that a heathen, in order to be admitted to a place among the people of God, had to undergo a change which baptism symbolized: he had to wash away his old sins; he had, in fact, to die to his old life, and to become a new creature. But it had never before occurred to them that they themselves, the seed of Abraham, required any such transformation before entering the kingdom of the Messiah. When, therefore, John called upon them to submit to baptism he was teaching the same lesson as our Lord taught Nicodemus when he said, “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Another important end which baptism served in the ministry of John was that it brought his hearers to decision, and was a means by which they made confession. Under the preaching of the Word impressions are often made by which the heart is melted and the whole being thrown into a state of aspiration; but, because nothing is done to bring the mind to a point, emotion cools down, ordinary motives resume their sway, and nothing comes of the impressions. It is well known how missions and revival preachers try to obviate this risk by inquiry meetings, testimony meetings, and the like; and, though such methods may be abused, they have their value. The most august method of the kind is participation in the Lord’s Supper. This sacrament is, like the baptism of John, a symbol of truth; but it is also a means of bringing those who have been impressed with the truth to the point of confessing Christ. And, if John’s call impressed the honest and good hearts among his auditors when he urged them to come forward, in the eyes of all, and submit themselves to the rite of baptism, surely the voice of Jesus Christ should move us far more when he says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”