heretics, probably the Jewish Christians), and all 'Epicureans' [1 The 'Epicureans,' or 'freethinkers,' are explained to be such as speak contemptuously of the Scriptures, or of the Rabbis (Jer. Sanh. 27 d). In Sanh. 38 b a distinction is made between 'stranger' (heathen) Epicureans, and Israelitish Epicureans. With the latter it is unwise to enter into argument.] (materialists), the same punishment is assigned to those 'who read externe writings' (Sepharim haChitsonim) and 'who whispered' (a magical formula) 'over a wound.' [2 Both in the Jer. and Bab.Talm. it is conjoined with 'spitting,' which was a mode of healing, usual at the time. The Talmud forbids the magical formula, only in connection with this 'spitting', and then for the curious reason that the Divine Name is not to be recorded while 'spitting.' But, while in the Bab. Talm. the prohibition bears against such 'spitting' before pronouncing the formula, in the Jer. Talm. it is after uttering it.] Both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud [c Sanh. 101 a; Jer. Sanh. p. 28 b.] offer astrange explanation of this practice; perhaps, because they either did not, or else would not, understand the allusion. But to us it seems at least significant that as, in the first quoted instance, the mention of the Chitsonim is conjoined with a condemnation of the exclusive use of white garments in worship, which we know to have been an Essene peculiarity, so the condemnation of the use of Chitsonim writings with that of magical cures. [3 Bishop Lightfoot has shown that the Essene cures were magical (u. s. pp. 91 &c. and p. 377).] At the same time, we are less bound to insist on these allusions as essential to our argument, since those, who have given another derivation than ours to the name Essenes, express themselves unable to find in ancient Jewish writings any trustworthy reference to the sect.
On one point, at least, our inquiry into the three 'parties' can leave no doubt. The Essenes could never have been drawn either to the person, or the preaching of John the Baptist. Similarly, the Sadducees would, after they knew its real character and goal, turn contemptuously from a movement which would awaken no sympathy in them, and could only become of interest when it threatened to endanger their class by awakening popular enthusiasm, and so rousing the suspicions of the Romans. To the Pharisees there were questions of dogmatic, ritual, and even national importance involved, which made the barest possibility of what John announced a question of supreme moment. And, although we judge that the report which the earliest Pharisaic hearers of John [a St. Matt. iii. 7.] brough to Jerusalem, no doubt, detailed and accurate, and which led to the despatch of the deputation, would entirely predispose them against the Baptist, yet it behooved them, as leaders of public opinion, to take such cognisance of it, as would not only finally determine their own relation to the movement, but enable them effectually to direct that of others also.
THE ASCENT: FROM THE RIVER JORDAN TO THE MOUNT OF TRANSFIGURATION. THE TWOFOLD TESTIMONY OF JOHN, THE FIRST SABBATH OF JESUS'S MINISTRY, THE FIRST SUNDAY, THE FIRST DISCIPLES.
CHAPTER III.
(St. John i. 15-51.) 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 St. John i. 33.] 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 from 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. [1 This is insisted upon by Keim, in his beautiful sketch of the Baptist. Would that he had known the Master in the glory of His Divinity, as he understood the Forerunner in the beauty of his humanity! To show how the whole teaching of the Baptist was, so to speak, saturated with Isaiah-language and thoughts, comp. not only Is. xl. 3, as the burden of his mission, but as to his imagery (after Keim): Generation of vipers, Is. lix. 5; planting of the Lord, Is. v. 7; trees, vi. 13; x. 15, 18, 33; xl. 24; fire. i. 31; ix. 18; x. 17; v. 24; xlvii. 14; floor and fan, xxi. 10; xxvii. 27 &c; xxx. 24; xl. 24; xli. 15 &c; bread and coat to the poor, lviii. 7; the garner, xxi. 10. Besides these, the Isaiah reference in his Baptism (Is. Hi. 15; i. 16), and that to the Lamb of God, indeed many others of a more indirect character, will readily occur to the reader. Similarly, when our Lord would afterwards instruct him in his hour of darkness (St. Matt. xi. 2), He points for the solution of his doubts to the well-remembered prophecies of Isaiah (Is. xxxv. 5, 6; lxi. 1; viii. 14, 15).] 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 Pharisees, and the merely material purism of the Essenes, he preached quite another doctrine, of inward repentance and renewal of life.
One picture was most brightly reflected on those pages of Isaiah. It was that of the Anointed, Messiah, Christ, the Representative Israelite, the Priest, King, and Prophet, [a Is. ix. 6 &c; xi.; xlii.; lii. 13 &c. [iii.]; lxi.] in Whom the institution and sacramental meaning of the Priesthood, and of Sacrifices, found their fulfilment, [b Is. liii.] In his announcement of the Kingdom, in his call to inward repentance, even in his symbolic Baptism, that Great Personality always stood out before the mind of John, as the One all-overtoppingand overshadowing Figure in the background. It was the Isaiah-picture of'the King in His beauty,' the vision of'the land of far distances'[a Is. xxxiii. 17.] [11 cannot agree with Mr. Cheyne (Prophecies of Is. vol. i. p. 183), that there is no Messianic reference here. It may not be in the most literal sense 'personally Messianic;' but surely this ideal presentation of Israel in the perfectness of its kingdom, and the glory of its happiness, is one of the fullest Messianic picture (comp. w. 17 to end).] to him a reality, of which Sadducee and Essene had no conception, and the Pharisee only the grossest misconception. This also explains how the greatest of those born of women was also the most humble, the most retiring, and self-forgetful. In a picture such as that which filled his whole vision, there was no room for self. By the side of such a Figure all else appeared in its real littleness, and, indeed, seemed at best but as shadows cast by its light. All the more would the bare suggestion on the part of the Jerusalem deputation, that he might be the Christ, seem like a blasphemy, from which, in utter self-abasement, he would seek shelter in the scarce-ventured claim to the meanest office which a slave could discharge. He was not Elijah. Even the fact that Jesus afterwards, in significant language, pointed to the possibility of his becoming such to Israel (St. Matt. xi. 14), proves that he claimed it not; [2 This is well pointed out by Keim.] not 'that prophet'; not even a prophet. He professed not visions, revelations, special messages. All else was absorbed in the great fact: he was only the voice of one that cried,
