Jesus' increased caution in His movements.
Then Jesus' death. John comes, points to Jesus, and goes. Jesus comes,
walks a bit with John, reaches beyond him and then goes, too.

John baptized. That is, he used a purifying rite in connection with his
preaching. It helps to remember the distinction between baptism as
practised in the Christian Church, and as practised by John, and by Jesus
in His early ministry. In the church, baptism has come to be regarded as a
dedicatory rite by some, and by others an initial and confessional rite.
But in the first use of it, by John and Jesus, it was a purifying rite. It
was a confession too, but of sin, and the need of cleansing, not, as
later, of faith in a person, or a creed, although it did imply acceptance
of a man's leadership. To a Hebrew mind it was preaching by symbol as well
as by word. The official deputation sent from Jerusalem to look John up
asked why he should be using a purifying rite if he were neither the
Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet. They could understand the
appropriateness of either of these three persons using such a rite in
connection with his preaching as indicating the national need of
cleansing. And in the beginning Jesus for a time, through His disciples,
joined in John's plan of baptizing those who confessed sorrow for sin.

Jesus acknowledged John as His own representative, and honored him as
such, from first to last. He gives him the strongest approval and backing.
The national treatment of John always affects Jesus' movements. When,
toward the close, His authority is challenged, He at once calls attention
to the evident authority of His forerunner and refuses to go farther.

A trace of that ominous, puzzling foreboding noticed in the Old Testament
vision of the coming One creeps in here. Pointing to Jesus, John says,
"Behold the lamb of God, who beareth (away) the sin of the world." Why did
John say that? _We_ read his words backward in the light of Calvary. But
_he_ could not do that, and did not. He knew only a _King_ coming. Why?
Even as Isaiah fifty-third, and Psalm twenty-second were written, the
writers there, the speaker here, impelled to an utterance, the meaning of
which, was not clear to themselves.

This relation and intimacy between these two, John and Jesus, must be
steadily kept in mind.

<u>The Contemptuous Rejection.</u>

From the very first, though Jesus was _accepted by individuals_ of every
class, _He was rejected by