coats, let him impart to him
that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." It may
be remarked of John, and it is true also of Jesus, that neither
attacked the absent nor inveighed against economic conditions, as
some modern preachers do with, let us say, capitalists and the
morality of other nations. Neither says a word against the Roman
Empire. Slavery is not condemned explicitly even by Jesus, though he
gave the dynamic that abolished it. The practical guidance that John
gave, he gave in response to men's inquiries.

Like an Old Testament prophet (cf. Amos 3:2), John tore to tatters
any plea that could be offered that his listeners were God's chosen
people, the children of Abraham. Does God want children of
Abraham?--John pointed to the stones on the ground, and said, if God
wanted, he could make children of Abraham out of them; a word and he
could have as many children of Abraham as he wished. It was
something else that God sought.

"John," writes the historian Josephus a generation later, "was a
good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue both in justice
toward one another and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism;
for so baptism would be acceptable to God if they made use of it,
not to excuse certain sins, but for the purification of the body,
provided that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by
righteousness."[28] This interpretation of John's baptism makes it
look very like the baptisms and other purificatory rites of the
heathen. The Gospels attribute to John a message, richer and more
powerful, but essentially the same; and the criticism of Jesus
confirms the account. The great note in his preaching is judgement;
the Kingdom of God is coming, and it begins with judgement. Again,
it is like Amos--"The axe is at the root of the tree," "His fan is
in His hand." And as men listened to the man and looked at him--his
intense belief in his message, backed up by a stern self-discipline,
a whole life inspired, infused by conviction--they believed this
message of the axe, the fan, and the fire. They asked and as we have
seen received his guidance on the conduct of life; they accepted his
baptism, and set about the amending of character (Matt. 21:32).

Jesus makes it quite clear that he held John to be an entirely
exceptional man, and that he had no doubt that John's teaching was
from God (Matt. 21:32; Luke 7:35, 20:4; and, of course, Luke
7:26-28). It was all in the line of the g