THE forty days, which had passed since Jesus had first come to him, must have been to

the Baptist a time of soul-quickening, of unfolding understanding, and of ripened

decision. We see it in his more emphasised testimony to the Christ; in his fuller

comprehension of those prophecies which had formed the warrant and substance of his

Mission; but specially in the yet more entire self-abnegation, which led him to take up a

still lowlier position, and acquiescingly to realise that his task of heralding was ending,

and that what remained was to point those nearest to him, and who had most deeply

drunk of his spirit, to Him Who had come. And how could it be otherwise? On first

meeting Jesus by the banks of Jordan, he had felt the seeming incongruity of baptizing

One of Whom he had rather need to be baptized. Yet this, perhaps, because he had beheld

himself by the Brightness of Christ, rather than looked at the Christ Himself. What he

needed was not to be baptized, but to learn that it became the Christ to fulfil all

righteousness. This was the first lesson. The next, and completing one, came when, after

the Baptism, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and the Divine Voice of

Testimony pointed to, and explained the promised sign.  1 It told him, that the work, which

he had begun in the obedience of faith, had reached the reality of fulfilment. The first was

a lesson about the Kingdom; the second about the King. And then Jesus was parted fro m

him, and led of the Spirit into the wilderness.

Forty days since then - with these events, this vision, those words ever present to his

mind! It had been the mightiest impulse; nay, it must have been a direct call from above,

which first brought John from his life-preparation of lonely communing with God to the

task of preparing Israel for that which he knew was preparing for them. He had entered

upon it, not only without illusions, but with such entire self- forgetfulness, as only deepest

conviction of the reality of what he announced could have wrought. He knew those to

whom he was to speak - the preoccupation, the spiritual dulness, the sins of the great

mass; the hypocrisy, the unreality, the inward impenitence of their spiritual leaders; the

perverseness of their direction; the hollowness and delusiveness of their confidence as

being descended from Abraham. He saw only too clearly their real character, and knew

the near end of it all: how the axe was laid to the barren tree, and how terribly the fan

would sift the chaff from the wheat. And yet he preached and baptized; for, deepest in his

heart was the conviction, that there was a Kingdom at hand, and a King coming. As we

gather the elements of that conviction, we find them chiefly in the Book of Isaiah. His

speech and its imagery, and, especially, the burden of his message, were taken from those

prophecies.2 Indeed, his mind seems saturated with them; they must have formed his own

religious training; and they were the preparation for his work. This gathering up of the

Old Testament rays of light and glory into the burning- glass of Evangelic prophecy had

set his soul on fire. No wonder that, recoiling equally from the externalism of the