The Preaching of the Baptist

S. Mark i. 2–6

We often speak of a “royal road,” or ‘-’king’s highway,” by which we mean one that has been prepared beforehand, from which all obstacles have been removed, to assure a smooth and easy journey for the king or noble whenever he undertakes it.

Such a highway Isaiah seven centuries before had predicted should be made for the King of kings: “Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.” Malachi had taken up his parable, and repeated the declaration: “Behold, I will send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me,” and had closed the scroll of ancient prophecy with the words, “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet.”

From that day onward the Jews have lived and still live in expectation of the prophet’s return. They place a splendid chair for him at the rite of Circumcision, and set the door wide open to welcome him. The noblest cup is filled for him on the first two nights of the Passover. When treasures are found which no one claims, they are put aside, and if perplexing difficulties arise, they are left “till Elijah comes,” who will restore and settle all things.

Just when this eager hope had reached its highest pitch, He by Whose Providence everything happens at the right and at no other time, caused His servant, John the Baptist, “to be wonderfully born,” and to grow up “in the spirit and power of Elias,” as the forerunner of His kingdom.

The points of resemblance between the two prophets are very striking. All that we are told of Elijah’s early years is summed up in the words, “Elijah the Tishbite, of the inhabitants of Gilead:” but brief as they are, they are full of suggestion. Gilead was “a rocky region,” a land of forests rather than of cities, isolated from the rest of Palestine. It was in such separation and exclusion that he was trained, and taught to stand alone, against the days when he would be called to confront a profligate court, and contend single-handed with the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal.

So with the Baptist; all that is recorded of his life during the thirty years’ probation for his office is gathered into a single verse: “The child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel.” And when he came forth to his work he revived at once the recollections of Elijah.

Like him in his rough exterior — “the long-haired man with a leathern girdle” 2 — with the same spareness of diet, the same endurance of hardness and poverty, the same fearless, undaunted courage. And just as the elder prophet had gained his strength in retirement, so John had realised amid the awful stillness of his desert life the greatness and nearness of God. Though he knew that he “had no friend but God,” the consciousness of His friendship was just that without which he would have been impotent for his work; and we can well believe that it made itself felt. Like the after-glow of the Divine Presence on the Lawgiver’s face, fresh from communing in the mount, it inspired the people with awe, and held them spell-bound when he spoke.

Now, apart from his resemblance to the expected prophet, what was the secret of his influence? For there is no question that he exercised a marvellous fascination over his countrymen. We may sum it up by the word “reality.” In an age of hollowness and hypocrisy never equalled before or since, such a characteristic was bound to startle men and arrest their attention. The Baptist, if any one, practised what he preached. His protest against sin was embodied in his example. Take a single illustration from his habit and dress. He came to denounce luxury and soft clothing and sumptuous fare, and he was a living example of the austerity which he called for. And how many preachers have been prompted to imitate him! SS. Martin and Dominic, and Anselm and Boromeo, and a host of others, have themselves worn the same externals of severity, as the surest way of recommending the self-denial they sought to inculcate. And though such asceticism is deprecated in the nineteenth century, history bears abundant witness to its power in the past. It was from a hard life in the desert that SS. Gregory Nazianzen and Basil came forth to preach with such success; and Simon Stylites was by no means a solitary instance to show how men of active lives and varied occupations, how even kings, burdened with imperial cares, were eager to seek counsel and direction from a lonely and austere ascetic.

So when the Baptist came, men were drawn irresistibly to his feet. “There went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan.” It was a mixed multitude of almost every class. The other Evangelists help us to realise its heterogeneous character. There were Pharisees, whose scrupulous routine of external observance had woven around them a web of self-sati led pride; and Sadducees, whose reaction from superstition had landed them in a cold and heartless infidelity. Among these there would be followers of Shammai, cleaving to tradition and rigidly orthodox; sympathisers also with his opponent Hillel, just emerging from that slavery to the letter which had taken the very life out of their religion. There were soldiers, too, who, through the lawless rapacity of their generals, had learned to think only of loot and plunder; and the hated publicans, with their overreaching and fraudulent exactions, the byword for all that was lowest and most contemptible — all were there, and for all he had the same message, “Repent.” The Rabbis have a wonderful comment on the import of that message. “If,” they say, “Israel would repent, they would be redeemed.”

His voice was like an earthquake, “the wrath to come,” “the uplifted axe,” and it sent a shudder, as well it might, through the whole land. It was the echo of what Daniel had heard: “I saw in the visions of my head upon my bed, and, behold, a watcher and an holy one came down from heaven: he cried aloud, and said thus, Hew down the tree, and cut off his branches.”

God knows whether history is repeating itself, and the national vices of another country are preparing a similar judgment to that from which S. John would have saved Jerusalem. There are terrible revelations of a spreading unbelief — active and determined unbelief — and they are such as to make every thoughtful Englishman fall upon his knees and pray God for a second Baptist to startle us to repentance.

“Life is real, life is earnest.” That was the burden alike of the preacher’s precept and example; and just in proportion as individuals acknowledge the obligation to make it such, will the world be ready to welcome the returning Lord with the cry, “Lo, this is our God; we have waited for Him, and He will save us: this is the Lord; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.”

Note: “The Tishbite” found its way into the LXX. version, and appeared to imply the return of the personal Elijah rather than the advent of one who should come in the likeness of his spirit. For the geography of Thisbe, and the correctness of reading in 1 Kings xvii. 1, cf. Smith’s Bib. Diet, in loc.

Note: Edersheim, vol. ii. App. viii., has collected a mass of Rabbinic tradition about the prophet.

Note: Literally “a lord of hair.” In LXX. dvdpuiros 8aavs. “Leathern” is simply “of skin,” as always elsewhere.

Note: “The idea of the wilderness was sacred to the Jews.” “From it,” say the Rabbis, ‘’came the Law, the Tabernacle, the Sanhedrim, the Priesthood, and the office of the Levites. Even the kingship, and indeed every good gift which God granted to Israel, came from the desert.” Quoted by Geikie, i, 392; also by Sepp. ii. 41.

Note: S. Luke vii. 30 implies that they did not submit to the Rite of Baptism.

Note: The above distinction is not always so marked, and instances are quoted from Edujoth (of the Mishnah) to show that sometimes Hillel was more severe than Shammai. They were the last of the five “Couples” who filled up the interval between the death of Simon the Just, the last of the Great Synagogue, and the Advent of our Lord.

Note: In the Greek the title is reXdprjs, a contractor for the revenue, a term equally applicable to the equestrian capitalists at Rome, who made the contract in the first instance, as to the native tax-gatherers, to whom they sublet them. The term “publican” arose from paying the sum in publicum, i.e. the Treasury at Rome, which was done by the Roman knights, not by the provincial collectors. The retention of the term, therefore, in the Revised Translation is unfortunate, apart from the modern acceptation of it,