As he appeared to the Evangelists, John the Baptist was, next to our Lord, the most illustrious personage of his time. And the Evangelists were right, for beneath this towering figure the great ones of the Roman Empire sink into glittering mediocrity. On John alone did our Lord pronounce a panegyric, and this, even in cold print, stirs us with an irresistible crescendo. What was John? A reed, shaken by the wind of opinion? A man, clothed in soft raiment? Such men are seen, not in king's dungeons, where the Baptist was to die, but in king's palaces, where his murderers reigned. A prophet-- with vision? Nay, more than a prophet, since he saw his vision come true. For among men born of women was none greater than he.
A reed, a man, a prophet, more than a prophet, none greater--what a ladder of praise! Yet, standing even on its topmost rung, John had to reach far upwards if he was to unloose the shoe-latchet of his Master. "Stoop down" to do that! Why, of that very stooping he was unworthy, since it would imply a previous equality. John knew that he must raise his arms high above his head and all its thoughts if he was to grasp Christ's feet, scarred as they were with service, and torn, as they would be, with suffering. John was humble, courageous) honest, self-less, but the pathos of his career lies in this--that he was eager, not happy, in his mission. He did not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and the least in that Kingdom is therefore greater than he. Saul, breathing out threatenings and slaughter, was, as a man, despicable beside the Baptist preaching a change of heart. But John in prison, undaunted yet discouraged, does not compare with what Paul became, the calm and contented captive of the Lord, ready to live or die, in poverty or in abundance, because Here and Hereafter were to him, in one word, CHRIST.
John the Baptist and Christ
The waiting multitudes seemed to know that, by some mysterious destiny, they were part of a crisis in the affairs of man. Though Jesus was still hidden, they expected a Messiah; though He had not died, they talked of resurrection. From Jerusalem a deputation of priests and Levites--John's tribe--forgetting Bethlehem and their Bible, put to the Baptist the blunt question whether he was the Christ--and would have taken his " yes ' for an answer! He knew how sorely the world needed a Saviour, but he had to declare that the Saviour must be Someone else. No one realized more clearly than John that the Unitarian Christ--however gracious, however strong--was impossible.
This greatest of men, surveying the task before him, instinctively deduced the Divinity of the now imminent Redeemer. When they suggested that he was baptizing without authority, he turned and rent his own rite. What was water, that flows off a man and leaves him as before? The real Christ would baptize with fire--fire blown on man with the Breath of God, to consume and to purify--leaving the wheat only on the threshing floor, because the chaff, drawn off by that same Spirit, is utterly destroyed. The "burning and shining light"--as Jesus called John--thus began by thinking of the Christ as like unto himself, a second Baptist, but Greater; and it was only when he held Jesus in his arms and baptized Him, that his view changed; and, remembering the altar that his father, Zacharias, knew so well, he spoke of the Lamb of God. The truth broke on him that the Christ would be not the Consumer merely, but Himself the Consumed--who is not content to denounce the sin of the world, but does more--takes it away.
For there was this difference between the audience which gathered around John and the crowds that thronged Jesus. John spoke to the scribes and Pharisees, the tax-gatherers and soldiers, the governing classes, who had two coats and well-filled purses, and were " worth winning." The evils that he dealt with were pride and selfishness--the sins of success. Jesus drew to Him the failures--the blind, and they received their sight; the lame, and they walked; the lepers, and they were cleansed; the deaf, the dumb, the dead. And when John, grown doubtful in his jail, sent two messengers to inquire if He were indeed the Expected One, He answered, as final evidence, that the poor had the good tidings preached to them. To advise, denounce, condemn, as John did, was good; but to heal, uplift, and forgive is better. And while John died as witness against the sins of a monarch, Jesus died as sacrifice for the sins of a thief. The one was Justice, the Other was also Love; and where Justice left the culprit to his fate, Love carried the criminal into paradise.
If John was not the Christ, then, thought the people, he must be Elijah or some other prophet, risen from the dead--anyone but himself. Jesus, in His turn, was said to be Isaiah, the man of hope, or Jeremiah, the man of tears. When the Baptist's very flesh had been severed in twain by the sword of the executioner, and his body buried by his disciples, Herod trembled lest in Jesus his victim should be again stalking abroad; and the people who had heard John gladly, rejoicing in his light, now shared the superstitions of their king.
Resurrection, not Transmigration
Nor is there any evidence more artlessly convincing than this--that popular sentiment, in identifying our Saviour with His forerunner, instinctively attributed a resurrection to them both. These errors faded away noiselessly with the dawn. Men and women were right in rejecting the Sadducee negation of any life, actual and demonstrable, beyond the grave. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is, not as the Sadducees imagined, the God of the dead, but of the living. So far, the people were not deceived. But, on the other hand, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each remains himself and no other. There has been no transmigration of their souls. The inexhaustible God has no need to reissue old coinage from His mint. When Herod on his judgment-seat first set eyes on Christ, he knew that here was no ghost of John the Baptist. And when Moses and Elijah stood on the mountain with Him, it was in their own persons, not as anyone else. The widow's son at Nain, when awakened from his bier, was still her son. When her funeral was interrupted, the little girl came back to Jairus, her father, as his daughter. Lazarus, when they unbound his grave-clothes, was still the brother of Martha and Mary, and shared their meals; while Dorcas, when revived, continued her sewing-parties. These people did not become younger when they were called back, nor did they enjoy over again any of their past opportunities. They only resumed their former existence, with their former powers, and not for one moment did they and their souls part company. Not one of them is heard of afterwards; all of them ultimately died a natural death. And they are ape pointed to teach us, first, that God is absolute Master of our days-to give or withhold as He wills; secondly, that a bodily resurrection, as Hezekiah discovered when his health was restored, adds nothing to our happiness, usefulness, or insight into truth; and thirdly, that the solemnity of this present lies precisely in this--that we cannot, by any miracle, recover one instant of it. In the broad daylight of such truth, we should test every fresh emergence of necromancy, spiritualism, or ghost-lore; on psychic phenomena the Lord Jesus said the first and last word.
With failure already overshadowing his success, and no Messiah as yet revealed to him, John still went on daily with his work, patiently deciding the difficult issues which were submitted to him. He was a people's magistrate, stern yet trusted, whose brief, clear verdicts always dealt, not with the past, which John knew not how to pardon, but with the future, in which he still dared to hope. Of his followers, they whose conscience gave most trouble were the inland revenue officers who collected the taxes, and the soldiers who enforced the laws. There, at the base of the Roman Empire, lay corruption and cruelty; and since violence against some other person can be more easily condoned than an offense on property that is one's own, the dread of the soldier was as nothing compared with the detestation of the publican. John did not require, either of the publican or of the soldier, that he should give up his calling; but he laid down rules by which such callings should be tested. What the publicans had to do was to levy correct taxes, no more and no less; while to the soldiers John did not say, Lay down your arms. He recognized that in the solar system force is an instrument of God, which means that an especial o responsibility rests on those who invoke or apply it. There must be no violence to the individual, no false accusations, no plunder as an addition to rations. War is to be waged as a strict and judicial assertion of equity, without passion, profit, aggression, or diplomatic subterfuge. Civilian life must be respected. Mutiny must be repressed. But the idea that, because war is terrible, therefore a soldier is a worse man than an unarmed Pharisee--to take one instance--receives no warrant in the Gospels. The Pharisee is often denounced, the soldier never--so completely did our Lord and His forerunner judge of the outward act by its inward motive.
The strange thing is that such teaching should have been heard so gladly, not only by the multitude who steadily reverenced John's memory, but by the classes specially rebuked. To the publicans, the vista of honesty opened up an avenue that led back to self-respect, and many of them were baptized. We read, too, of more than one righteous centurion who ape plied John's precepts to his relations with the subject Jews.
Modern Application of John's Teaching
To this day, the careers of men like General Gordon and Lord Kitchener illustrate what may be achieved in Asiatic lands by John's code of financial correctitude, backed by strict military discipline. All that is great in British control of India and Egypt and Uganda resolves itself, politically, to the wisdom of John the Baptist. In every land, he who was the forerunner of our Lord stands forth as a champion of public right against all such hideous allurements as those of Tammany Hall. For States and Municipalities, for democracies and despotisms, this last appeal of Moses and the Prophets is a true word of exhortation. Yet, in the deeper sense, it failed. Those publicans alone entered the Kingdom who, like Matthew and Zacchæus and the crowds that heard the parables, came from John to Jesus. They did not become honest about money until they learnt to value their souls above the hundredth sheep, above the tenth piece of silver, and above the half of the Father's material substance. To Matthew, the receipt of custom was not worth one day with Christ.
And the soldiers--what of them? Three years later, they surrounded the Redeemer, mocked Him, scourged Him, platted a crown of thorns and put it on His head, and in the very presence of His mother seized His garments as their booty. There was violence, false accusation, plunder; and even He was dead, they plunged a spear into His side. Every law laid down by John was set aside.
Yet His love has captured even the soldiers. The centurion whose orderly was sick was the first man to understand Christ's power over disease, and' his view of command and obedience settles for ever the controversy over miracles. God has this authority--and that is enough, The other centurion at the Cross settled for ever the question of Christ's Divinity. He looked on this Man, now dead--saw through the infinite shame of His crucifixion; was not deceived by the hideousness of the scene, but clearly distinguished between the thieves whose bones were broken and their Companion, who died of a broken heart. " Truly, this was the Son of God "; and from that testimony the buccaneer, the freebooter, the mercenary, the raider, has risen, transfigured, into the Soldier of the Cross, the Knightly Warrior, who fights, not to conquer but to defend, and is happier when he dies than when he kills.