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scribes, the pharisees and sadducees, the publicans and the soldiers, (it appears from Josephus that Herod had sent an army across the desert against his father-in-law, Aretas king of Arabia Petræa) were alike moved by his eloquence, and added numbers to his audience and his disciples'. Nay, Herod himself, till incensed by the severe honesty of his counsels, appears to have held him in honour, and yielded obedience to many of his injunctions as one in whom the Spirit of God in no common measure abode, and whose favour and prayers were not below the notice even of a politician and a conqueror.

Nor can the enemies of our faith pretend that the facts which I have urged, are founded on the representations of Christian and partial authorities only. They are confirmed, circumstantially confirmed, by the last historian of the Jewish nation, who in a passage of undoubted authenticity, has attested the popularity, the virtues, the influence, and the untimely end of him whom our Lord designates as the most distinguished among the sons of women 3.

All things appear to have favoured, all things be said to have solicited his assumption of may the Messiah's name and character. The messengers from Jerusalem, we find actually pressing it on him, and, by a mixture of cross-examination

1

Antiq. Book XVIII. c. v. §. I.

2 Antiq. Book XVIII. c. 5. §. 2.

St. Matt. xi. 11.

and entreaty, persuading him to profess himself that which they so earnestly desired he might be found to be. "Who art thou? Art thou the Christ? Art thou Elias? Art thou that Prophet? Why baptisest thou then, if thou art not? Who art thou, that we may give an answer to them that sent us1?" Surely to the meaning of interrogatories like these, an imposter or a fanatic could hardly have remained insensible, any more than to the command of money and of men which the publicans and soldiers might have furnished, and the important position within his grasp, as occupying the ford of Jordan.

Place Mahomet in such a situation, and consider what answer he would have returned; contrast that answer with the answer sent by John, and enquire of your own hearts whether this last do not contain the words of truth and soberness. He describes himself not as the expected King of Israel, but as a harbinger sent before to smooth and prepare His way; he disclaims the title both of Elias and Jeremiah (the latter of whom was, by many of the Jews, expected to rise again), and instead of smooth and flattering language to those whose good will it was most necessary to conciliate, he exhorts his hearers, one and all, to practical holiness and individual amendment of life; reproving the pharisees for their hypocrisy, and Herod for his uncleanness; the soldiers for their rapine, and

1 St. John i. 19-22.

the publicans for their extortion; while, instead of warming the hearts of men with the hopes of national greatness and political freedom, he forewarns them that the axe was already laid to the root of their tree, and predicts, in no doubtful terms, the approaching rejection and ruin of their church and people'.

Is it urged that St. John was sensible of the dangers which might arise from assuming the foremost and most conspicuous place in a religious revolution; that he preferred the safer rank of vizier to the new Messiah, and was anxious, therefore, to point out to the curiosity and reverence of the multitude, some other head on which might rest the task of redeeming Israel from bondage, the splendours and the dangers of sovereignty?

On whom did his election fall? Did he fix on some well-known character, some powerful and popular leader, who was best qualified to promote his views and to ensure success to his predictions? Herod was at hand, corresponding to all these characters, and would no doubt have done many things, nay, every thing which a reputed prophet could have asked, who undertook to clothe him with the title of Messiah, and Son of David. The Parthian was on the frontier, with the gold and the horsemen of the east at his command, waiting only for such a demonstration on the part of the Jews to rush forward with all his archery. Ro

I St. Luke iii. 7-20.

man generals might have been found (as Josephus afterwards found Vespasian) to listen with greediness to the tale that, from the east, a monarch of the world was, about this time, to issue' ; or, if he preferred a native Jew, and a leader of humbler origin, the neighbouring mountains were filled with popular and warlike chieftains, who had resisted thus far the mandates of the Roman conqueror, and to whom, in their last unavailing struggle for liberty, the nation of Israel at length committed their cause.

But on none of these did the choice of the Baptist fall. He chose an unknown young man, of royal blood indeed, but of obscure and narrow circumstances; the reputed son of a carpenter in a provincial town of Galilee. Him he approaches with the reverence due to a superior being; in terms of the deepest abasement he describes his own inferiority to Him, and points Him out to the multitude of his disciples as the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, the Person who, though his junior by mortal birth, had, in Heaven, existed before him; the latchet of whose sandal he was himself unworthy to loose; but for the manifestation of whom to Israel he had been sent to baptise with

water.

And, here again, the opponents of Christianity have no ground for objecting that our facts are taken from the Gospel alone. The disciples of St.

1 Jos. Bell. Jud. lib. III. c. 8.

John, a sect of Jews still existing in considerable numbers in the north-eastern parts of Arabia, who, by a strange perverseness, while professing themselves the Baptist's followers, reject, in all essential points, his testimony concerning Jesus; have preserved, nevertheless, amid the fable and allegory of their mystical books, an account of how St. John baptised the True Light, the holy Son of God, in the Jordan, with the strange addition, in which, however, some circumstances of truth are mingled, that the person thus distinguished was seen by St. John no more, but that His Spirit rested on him, while He Himself returned to His Father.

They thus, as may be seen by a reference to the passage itself in Michaelis', identify St. John with the Messiah, whom he foretold, and incorporate him with the Second Person in the Godhead. It is strange how such a perversion of the truth should have found place among men who approach so nearly to the truth; but their very blindness makes their testimony, so far as it goes, more valuable, inasmuch as it is, in a certain degree, the testimony of an adversary.

Nor, by those who are constrained to admit the leading facts of our Saviour's intercourse with St. John, will the appearance of any previous or subsequent collusion between them be pretended. They, indeed, were distant kinsmen; but the habits of

For the Christians of

1 Michaelis, vol. III. pp. 295-302. St. John, see also Taylor's Calmet, fifth edit.

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