inclined for a time toward baptism. Perhaps if the Baptist,
whose authority it would have been difficult for him to escape, had
remained free, Jesus would not have been able to throw off the yoke of
external rites and ceremonies, and would then, no doubt, have remained
an unknown Jewish sectary; for the world would not have abandoned its
old ceremonies merely for others of a different kind. It has been by
the power of a religion, free from all external forms, that
Christianity has attracted elevated minds. The Baptist once
imprisoned, his school was soon diminished, and Jesus found himself
left to his own impulses. The only things he owed to John, were
lessons in preaching and in popular action. From this moment, in fact,
he preached with greater power, and spoke to the multitude with
authority.[1]

[Footnote 1: Matt. vii. 29; Mark i. 22; Luke iv. 32.]

It seems also that his sojourn with John had, not so much by the
influence of the Baptist, as by the natural progress of his own
thought, considerably ripened his ideas on "the kingdom of heaven."
His watchword, henceforth, is the "good tidings," the announcement
that the kingdom of God is at hand.[1] Jesus is no longer simply a
delightful moralist, aspiring to express sublime lessons in short and
lively aphorisms; he is the transcendent revolutionary, who essays to
renovate the world from its very basis, and to establish upon earth
the ideal which he had conceived. "To await the kingdom of God" is
henceforth synonymous with being a disciple of Jesus.[2] This phrase,
"kingdom of God," or "kingdom of heaven," was, as we have said,
already long familiar to the Jews. But Jesus gave it a moral sense, a
social application, which even the author of the Book of Daniel, in
his apocalyptic enthusiasm, had scarcely dared to imagine.

[Footnote 1: Mark i. 14, 15.]

[Footnote 2: Mark xv. 43.]

He declared that in the present world evil is the reigning power.
Satan is "the prince of this world,"[1] and everything obeys him. The
kings kill the prophets. The priests and the doctors do not that which
they command others to do; the righteous are persecuted, and the only
portion of the good is weeping. The "world" is in this manner the
enemy of God and His saints:[2] but God will awaken and avenge His
saints. The day is at hand, for the abomination is at its height. The
reign of goodness will have its turn.

[Footnote 1: John xii. 31, xiv. 30, xvi. 11. (Comp. 2 _Cor._ iv. 4;
_Eph