Part 8 (1/2)
And might not Herod attempt to induce the prophet to take back his ruthless sentence? ”Come,” he might say, ”you remember what you said.
If you unsay that sentence, I will set you free. I cannot, out of respect for my consort, allow such words to remain unretracted. There, you have your freedom in your own hands. One word of apology, and you may go your way; and my solemn bond is yours, that you shall be kept free from molestation.”
If such an offer were made, it must have presented a strong temptation to the emaciated captive, whose physique had already lost the elasticity and vigour of his early manhood, and was showing signs of his grievous privation. But he had no alternative; and, however often the ordeal was repeated, he met the royal solicitation with the same unwavering reply: ”I have no alternative. It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife. I should betray my G.o.d, and act treacherously to thyself, if I were to take back one word which I have spoken; and thou knowest that it is so.” And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and a judgment to come, the royal culprit trembled.
John could do no other; but it was a sublime act of devotion to G.o.d and Truth. He had no thought for himself at all, and thought only of the choice and destiny of that guilty pair, from which he would warn and save them, if he might. Well might the Lord ask, in after days, if John were a reed shaken with the wind. Rather he resembled a forest tree, whose deeply-struck and far-spreading roots secure it against the attack of the hurricane; or a mighty Alp, which defies the tremor of the earthquake, and rears its head above the thunder-storms, which break upon its slopes, to hold fellows.h.i.+p with the skies.
How many men are like Herod! They resemble the superficial ground, on which the seed springs into rapid and unnatural growth; but the rock lies close beneath the surface. Now they are swayed by the voice of the preacher, and moved by the pleadings of conscience, allowed for one brief moment to utter its protests and remonstrances; and then they feel the fascination of their sin, that unholy pa.s.sion, that sinful habit, that ill-gotten gain--and are sucked back from the beach, on which they were almost free, into the sea of ink and death.
You may be trying, my reader, to steer a middle course between John the Baptist and Herodias. Now you resolve to get free of her guilty charms, and break the spell that fascinates you. Merlin will emanc.i.p.ate himself from Vivien, before she learn his secret, and dance with it down the wood, leaving him dishonoured and ashamed. But, within an hour, the Syren is again singing her dulcet notes, and drawing the s.h.i.+p closer and closer to the rocks, with their black teeth, waiting to grind it to splinters. Oh that there might come to you the voice that spoke with such power to Augustine, and that like him you might now and here yield yourself to it; so that when the temptress, whatever form she may a.s.sume, approaches you with the whisper: ”I am _she_, Augustine,” you may answer: ”But I am not _he_!”
So John was left in prison. Month after month he languished in the dark and stifling dungeon, wondering a little, now and again, why the Master, if He were the Son of G.o.d, did not interpose to work his deliverance. But of that anon.
III. HEROD'S INEVITABLE DETERIORATION.--Again and again John was remanded to his cell. Probably twelve months pa.s.sed thus. But each time the king failed to act on the preacher's remonstrances; he became more impervious to his appeals, more liable to the sway of pa.s.sion.
Thus, when a supreme moment came, in which he was under the influence of drink and unholy appet.i.te, and the reign of such moral nature as remained was greatly enfeebled, it is not to be wondered at that Herodias had her way, and before her murderous request the last thin fence of resistance broke down, and he gave orders that it should be as she desired.
The story does not end here. He not only murdered John the Baptist, but he inflicted a deadly wound on his own moral nature, from which it never recovered, as we shall see. Ultimately he had no thought in the presence of Christ other than to see Him work a miracle; and when his desire was refused, set him at nought with his mighty men, mocked his claims to be the King of Israel, did not scruple to treat Him with indignity and violence, and so dismissed Him.
Is it wonderful that our Lord was speechless before such a man? What else could He be? The deterioration had been so awful and complete.
For the love of G.o.d can say nothing to us, though it be prepared to die on our behalf, so long as we refuse to repent of, and put away, our sin. We remember some solemn words, which may be applied in all their fearful significance to that scene: ”There is a sin unto death; not concerning this do I say that he should make request.”
XI.
”Art Thou He?”
(MATTHEW XI.)
”He fought his doubts and gathered strength, He would not make his judgment blind, He faced the spectres of the mind And laid them;--thus he came, at length,
”To find a stronger faith his own, And Power was with him in the night, Which makes the darkness and the light, And dwells not in the light alone.”
TENNYSON.
John's Misgivings--Disappointed Hopes--Signs of the Christ--The Discipline of Patience--A New Beat.i.tude
It is very touching to remark the tenacity with which some few of John's disciples clung to their great leader. The majority had dispersed: some to their homes; some to follow Jesus. Only a handful lingered still, not alienated by the storm of hate which had broken on their master, but drawn nearer, with the unfaltering loyalty of unchangeable affection. They could not forget what he had been to them--that he had first called them to the reality of living; that he had taught them to pray; that he had led them to the Christ: and they dare not desert him now, in the dark sad days of his imprisonment and sorrow.
What an inestimable blessing to have friends like this, who will not leave our side when the crowd ebbs, but draw closer as the shadows darken over our path, and the prison damp wraps its chill mantle about us! To be loved like that is earth's deepest bliss! These heroic souls risked all the peril that might accrue to themselves from this identification with their master; they did not hesitate to come to his cell with tidings of the great outer world, and specially of what He was doing and saying, whose life was so mysteriously bound up with his own. ”The disciples of John told him of all these things” (Luke vii.
18, R.V.).
It was to two of these choice and steadfast friends that John confided the question which had long been forming within his soul, and forcing itself to the front. ”And John, calling unto him two of his disciples, sent them to the Lord, saying, Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?”
I. JOHN'S MISGIVINGS.--Can this be he who, but a few months ago, had stood in his rock-hewn pulpit, in radiant certainty? The brilliant eastern sunlight that bathed his figure, as he stood erect amid the thronging crowds, was the emblem and symbol of the light that filled his soul. No misgiving crossed it. He pointed to Christ with unfaltering cert.i.tude, saying, This is He, the Lamb of G.o.d, the Son of the Father, the Bridegroom of the soul. How great the contrast between that and this sorrowful cry, ”Art Thou He?”
Some commentators, to save his credit, have supposed that the emba.s.sy was sent to the Lord for the sake of the disciples, that their hearts might be opened, their faith confirmed--and that they might have a head and leader when he was gone. But the narrative has to be greatly strained and dragged out of its obvious course to make it cover the necessities of such an hypothesis. It is more natural to think that John the Baptist was for a brief spell under a cloud, involved in doubt, tempted to let go the confidence that had brought him such ecstatic joy when he first saw the Dove descending and abiding.
The Bible does not scruple to tell us of the failures of its n.o.blest children: of Abram, thinking that the Egyptians would take his life; of Elijah, stretching himself beneath the shadow of the desert bush, and asking that he might die; of Thomas, who had been prepared to die with his Lord, but could not believe that He was risen. And in this the Spirit of G.o.d has rendered us untold service, because we learn that the material out of which He made the greatest saints was flesh and blood like ourselves; and that it was by Divine grace, manifested very conspicuously towards them, that they became what they were. If only the ladder rests on the low earth, where we live and move and have our being, there is some hope of our climbing to stand with others who have ascended its successive rungs and reached the starry heights. Yes, let us believe that, for some days at least, John's mind was overcast, his faith lost its foothold, and he seemed to be falling into bottomless depths. _He sent them to Jesus, saying, Art Thou He that should come_?