John the Baptist

by F.B. Meyer

John waxed strong, because, from the earliest dawn of thought, he was taught the necessity of refusing things which in themselves might have been permissible, but for him were impossible.

He comes to prepare the way of the Lord, and to make through the desert of our nature a highway for our God.

The servant who had been forgiven by his king, but took his brother by the throat, brought back upon himself the full penalty from which the royal warrant had freed him; and if any one of us cling to sin, rejecting and trampling under foot the Saviour's work on our behalf, we cancel so far all those benefits of our Saviour's passion which otherwise would accrue, and bring back upon ourselves the penalties from which He would fain have delivered us.

He believed in his near relationship to God, using the well-known Jewish phrase of sonship to describe his possession of the Divine nature in a unique sense, and recalling the utterance of the hour of baptism, to give weight to his assurance that the Father loved Him as Son.

Ah, reader, I would that thou hadst this faith! The open heart towards Christ! The yielded will! Thou needst only will to have Him, and He has already entered, though thou canst not detect his footfall, or the chime of the bells around his garment's hem. And to shut thy heart against Him not only excludes the life which might be thine, but incurs the wrath of God.

It was a relief to Herod's mind to feel that there were many things which he could do, many wrongs which he could set right, while the main wrong of his life was left untouched. Ah! it is remarkable how much men will do in the direction of amendment and reform, if only, by a tacit understanding, nothing is said, or hinted at, which threatens the one sin in which the heart's evil has concentrated itself.

We think, for instance, that if there be a righteous God, He will not permit wrong to triumph; little children to suffer for the sins of their parents; the innocent to be trodden beneath the foot of the oppressor and the proud; or the dumb creatures to be tortured in the supposed interest of medical science. Surely God will step out of his hiding-place and open all prisons, emancipate all captives, and wave a hand of benediction over all creation. Thus we think and say; and then, because the world still groans and travails, we question whether God is in his high heaven.

The evidence of the unseen and eternal must be given, not to the startled physical sense, but to the soul.

"Heaven judges, not by a passing mood, but by the general tenor and trend of a man's life; not by the expression of a doubt, caused by accidents which may be explained, but by the soul of man within him, which is as much deeper than the emotions as the heart of the ocean is deeper than the cloud-shadows which hurry across its surface."

No brighter star shines in the celestial firmament than that of this brief young life, which had only time enough to proclaim the advent of the Lord, and after some brief six months of ministry by the Jordan, followed by twelve months in the gaol, waned here to shine in undimming brilliancy yonder.

The greatness of John the Baptist shone out in conspicuous beauty in his meek confession of inferiority. It is always a sign of the greatest knowledge, when its possessor confesses himself to be as a child picking up shells on the shores of a boundless ocean. And the Baptist's greatness was revealed in the lowliness of his self-estimate.

For there is help and grace in God by which a Herod and a Judas, a Jezebel and a Lady Macbeth, a royal criminal or an ordinary one, may be arrested, redeemed, and saved.

Why was it that they who had been like timid deer, before He died, became as lions against the storm of Pharisaic hate, and stronger as the weeks passed?

"Shine Thou upon us, Lord, True Light of men, to-day; And through the written Word Thy very self display; That so from hearts which burn With gazing on Thy face, Thy little ones may learn The wonders of Thy grace." J. ELLERTON.

It is good to cultivate simple tastes. The pure and childlike heart will find unspeakable enjoyment in all that God has made, though it be as familiar as a lawn sparkling with dewdrops, a hay-field scented by clover-blooms, a streamlet murmuring over the pebbles, or the drawl of the shingle after a retreating wave.

Neither Elisha, the disciple of Elijah, nor the eloquent Apollos, the disciple of John the Baptist, would have dared to say of their respective masters what Philip and Andrew, Peter and Thomas, habitually said of Christ. Greatly as they revered and loved their masters, they knew that they were men like themselves; that their nature was made in the same mould, though, perhaps, of finer clay; that there were limitations beyond which they could not go, and qualities of mind and soul in which they were not perfected. They dared not say of them, "My Lord and my God." They never thought of prostrating themselves at their feet in worship; they never appealed to them after their decease as able to hear and answer prayer from the heaven into which they had passed.

Those who descended the shelving banks of Jordan to be plunged beneath its arrowy waters, declared their discontent with the past, their desire to be free of it, and their belief in the Messianic character of Jesus of Nazareth, who was to introduce a new and better age.