ransient, some spasm of conviction will pass across many a
conscience, and some will be pointed by him to the King.

II. The second portion of this section is a more detailed account of
John's preaching, which Matthew gives as addressed to the Pharisees and
Sadducees. We are not to suppose that at any time John had a
congregation exclusively made up of such; nor that these words were
addressed to them only. What is emphasised is the fact that among the
crowds were many of both these parties, the religious aristocrats who
represented two tendencies of mind bitterly antagonistic, and each
unlikely to be drawn to the prophet. Self-righteous pedants who had
turned religion into a jumble of petty precepts, and very superior
persons who keenly appreciated the good things of this world, and were
too enlightened to have much belief in anything, and too comfortable to
be enthusiasts, were not hopeful material. If they were drawn into the
current, it must have run strong indeed. These representatives of the
highest and coldest classes of the nation had the very same red-hot
words flung at them as the mob had. Luke tells us that the first words
in this summary were spoken to the people. Both representations are
true. All fared alike. So they should, and so they always will, if a
real prophet has to talk to them. John's salutation is excessively rough
and rude. Honeyed words were not in his line; he had not lived in the
desert for all these years, and held converse with God and his own
heart, without having learned that his business was to smite on
conscience with a strong hand, and to tear away the masks which hid men
from themselves. The whole spirit of the old prophets was revived in his
brusque, almost fierce, address to such very learned, religious, and
distinguished personages. Isaiah in his day had called their
predecessors 'rulers of Sodom'; John was not scolding when he called his
hearers 'ye offspring of vipers' but charging them with moral corruption
and creeping earthliness.

The summary of his preaching is like a succession of lightning flashes.
We can but note in a word or two each flash as it flames and strikes.
The remarkable thing about his teaching is that, in his hands, the great
hope of Israel became a message of terror, the proclamation of the
impending kingdom passed into a denunciation of 'the wrath to come,' set
forth with a tremendous wealth of imagery as the axe lying at the root
of the trees, the fan win