Part 2 (1/2)
On each of us rests the vow of separation by right of our union with the Son of G.o.d, who was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners.
Remember how He went without the camp, bearing our reproach; how they cast Him forth to the death of the cross; and how He awaits us on the Easter side of death--and surely we can find no pleasure in the world where He found no place. His death has made a lasting break between his followers and the rest of men. They are crucified to the world, and the world to them. Let us not taste of the intoxicating joys in which the children of the present age indulge; let us allow no Delilah pa.s.sion to pa.s.s her scissors over our locks; and let us be very careful not to receive contamination; to have no fellows.h.i.+p with the unfruitful works of darkness, but to come out and be separate, not touching the unclean thing.
But while we put away all that injures our own life or the lives of others, let us be very careful to discriminate, to draw the line where G.o.d would have it drawn, exaggerating and extenuating nothing. It is important to remember that while the motto of the old covenant was Exclusion, even of innocent and natural things, that of the new is Inclusion. Moses, under the old, forbade the Jews having horses; but Zechariah said that in the new they might own horses, only ”Holiness to the Lord” must be engraven on the bells of their harness. Christ has come to sanctify all life. Whether we eat, or drink, or whatever we do, we are to do all to his glory. Disciples are not to be taken out of the world, but kept from its evil. ”Every creature of G.o.d is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the Word of G.o.d, and prayer.” Natural instincts are not to be crushed, but transfigured.
This is the great contrast between the Baptist and the Son of Man. The Nazarite would have felt it a sin against the law of his vocation and office to touch anything pertaining to the vine. Christ began his signs by changing water into wine, though of an innocuous kind, for the peasants' wedding at Cana of Galilee. John would have lost all sanct.i.ty had he touched the bodies of the dead, or the flesh of a leper. Christ would touch a bier, pa.s.s his hands over the seared flesh of the leper, and stand sympathetically beside the grave of his friend. Thus we catch a glimpse of our Lord's meaning when He affirms that, though John was the greatest of women born, yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
III. THERE WAS THE SCHOOL OF THE DESERT.--”The child was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.” Probably Zacharias, and Elisabeth also, died when John was quite young. But the boy had grown into adolescence, was able to care for himself, and ”the hand of the Lord was with him.”
Beneath the guidance and impulse of that hand he tore himself from the little home where he had first seen the tender light of day, and spent happy years, to go forth from the ordinary haunts of men, perhaps hardly knowing whither. There was a wild restlessness in his soul. A young man, pleading the other day with his father to be allowed to emigrate to the West, urged that whereas there are _inches_ here there are _acres_ there; and something of this kind may have been in the heart of John. He desired to free himself from the conventionalities and restraints of the society amid which he had been brought up, that he might develop after his own fas.h.i.+on, with no laws but those he received from heaven.
Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless--a lone man, he pa.s.sed forth into the great and terrible wilderness of Judaea, which is so desolate that the Jews called it the abomination of desolation.
Travellers who have pa.s.sed over and through it say that it is dest.i.tute of all animal life, save a chance vulture or fox. For the most part, it is a waste of sand, swept by wild winds. When Jesus was there some two or three years after, He found nothing to eat; the stones around mocked his hunger; and there was no company save that of the wild beasts.
In this great and terrible wilderness, John supported himself by eating locusts--the literal insect, which is still greatly esteemed by the natives--and wild honey, which abounded in the crevices of the rocks; while for clothing he was content with a coat of coa.r.s.e camel's hair, such as the Arab women make still; and a girdle of skin about his loins.
A cave, like that in which David and his men often found refuge, sufficed him for a home, and the water of the streams that hurried to the Dead Sea, for his beverage.
Can we wonder that under such a regimen he grew strong? We become weak by continual contact with our fellows. We sink to their level, we accommodate ourselves to their fas.h.i.+ons and whims; we limit the natural developments of character on G.o.d's plan; we take on the colour of the bottom on which we lie. But in loneliness and solitude, wherein we meet G.o.d, we become strong. G.o.d's strong men are rarely clothed in soft raiment, or found in kings' courts. Obadiah, who stood in awe of Ahab, was a very different man from Elijah, who was of the inhabitants of Gilead, and stood before the Lord.
Yes, and there is a source of strength beside. He who is filled and taught, as John was, by the Spirit, is strengthened by might in the inner man. All things are possible to him that believes. Simon Bar-Jona becomes Peter when he touches the Christ. The youths faint and are weary, and the young men utterly fall; but they that wait on the Lord renew their strength: they who know G.o.d are strong and do exploits.
IV.
The Prophet of the Highest.
(LUKE I.)
”Ye hermits blest, ye holy maids, The nearest heaven on earth, Who talk with G.o.d in shadowy glades, Free from rude care and mirth; To whom some viewless Teacher brings The secret love of rural things, The moral of each fleeting cloud and gale, The whispers from above, that haunt the twilight vale.”
KEBLE.
Formative Influences--A Historical Parallel--The Burning of the Vanities--”Sent from G.o.d”
”Thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Most High”--thus Zacharias addressed his infant son, as he lay in the midst of that group of wondering neighbours and friends. What a thrill of ecstasy quivered in the words! A long period, computed at four hundred years, had pa.s.sed since the last great Hebrew prophet had uttered the words of the Highest. Reaching back from him to the days of Moses had been a long line of prophets, who had pa.s.sed down the lighted torch from hand to hand. And the fourteen generations, during which the prophetic office had been discontinued, had gone wearily. But now hope revived, as the angel-voice proclaimed the advent of a prophet. Our Lord corroborated his words when, in after days, He said that John had been a prophet, and something more. ”But what went ye out to see?” He asked. ”A prophet? Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet.”
The Hebrew word that stands for _prophet_ is said to be derived from a root signifying ”to boil or bubble over,” and suggests a fountain bursting from the heart of the man into which G.o.d had poured it. It is a mistake to confine the word to the prediction of coming events; for so employed it would hardly be applicable to men like Moses, Samuel, and Elijah, in the Old Testament, or John the Baptist and the apostle Paul, in the New, who were certainly prophets in the deepest significance of that term. Prophecy means the forth-telling of the Divine message. The prophet is borne along by the stream of Divine indwelling and inflowing, whether he utters the truth for the moment or antic.i.p.ates the future. ”G.o.d spake _in_ the prophets” (Hebrews i. 1, R.V.). And when they were conscious of his mighty moving and stirring within, woe to them if they did not utter it in burning words, fresh minted from the heart.
With Malachi, the succession that had continued unbroken from the very foundation of the Jewish commonwealth had terminated. Pious Israelites might have found befitting expression for that lament in the words, ”We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet” (Psa. lxxiv. 9).
But as the voice of Old Testament prophecy ceased, with its last breath it foretold that it would be followed, in the after time, by a new and glorious revival of the n.o.blest traditions of the prophetic office.
”Behold,” so G.o.d spake by Malachi, ”I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the Lord come. And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers; lest I come and smite the earth with a curse” (Mal.
iv. 5, 6).
I. THE FORMATIVE INFLUENCES BY WHICH THE BAPTIST'S PROPHETIC NATURE WAS MOULDED.--Amongst these we must place in the foremost rank _the Prophecies_, which had given a forecast of his career. From his childhood and upwards they had been reiterated in his ear by his parents, who would never weary of reciting them.
How often he would ponder the reference to himself in the great Messianic prediction--”Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your G.o.d.... The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our G.o.d....” There was no doubt as to the relevance of those words to himself (Luke i. 76; Matt.
iii. 3). And it must have unconsciously wrought mightily in the influence it wielded over his character and ministry.