buried in its
bark. The woodman's eye is looking over the forest; he marks with the
fatal red line the worthless trees, and at once the swinging blows come
down, and the timber is carted away to be burned. The trees are men. The
judgment is an individualising one, and all-embracing. Nothing but
actual righteousness of life will endure. All else will be destroyed.

The coming of the kingdom implied the coming of the King. John knew that
the King was a man, and that He was at the door. So his sermon reaches
its climax in the ringing proclamation of His advent. The first
noticeable feature in it is the utter humility of the dauntless prophet
before the yet veiled Sovereign. All the fiery force, the righteous
scorn and anger, the unflinching bravery, melt into meek submission. He
knows the limits of his own power, and gladly recognises the infinite
superiority of the coming One. He never moved from that lowly attitude.
Even when his followers tried to stir up base jealousy in him at being
distanced by the Christ, who, as they suggested, owed His first
recognition to him, all that his immovable self-abnegation cared to
answer was, 'He must increase, but I must decrease.' He was glad 'to
fade in the light of the Sun that he loved.' What a wealth of suppressed
emotion and lowly love there is in the words so pathetic from the lips
of the lonely ascetic, whom no home joys had ever cheered: 'He that
hath the bride is the bridegroom.... My joy is fulfilled'!

Note, too, the grand conception of the gifts of the King. John knew that
his baptism was, like the water in which he immersed, cold, and
incapable of giving life. It symbolised, but did not effect, cleansing,
any more than his preaching righteousness could produce righteousness.
But the King would come, bringing with Him the gift of a mighty Spirit,
whose quick energy, transforming dead matter into its own likeness,
burning out the foul stains from character, and melting cold hearts into
radiant warmth, should do all that his poor, cold, outward baptism only
shadowed. Form and substance of this great promise gather up many Old
Testament utterances. From of old, fire had been the emblem of the
divine nature, not only, nor chiefly, as destructive, but rather as
life-giving, cleansing, gladdening, fructifying, transforming. From of
old, the promise of a divine Spirit poured out on all flesh had been
connected with the kingdom of Messiah; and John but reiterates the
uniform voic