way. The Gospel of John gives us later utterances of the
Baptist's, by which we learn that he advanced beyond the point at which
he stood here. 'Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the
world,' was his message after Christ's baptism. It is the last, highest
voice of prophecy. The proclamation of a kingdom of heaven, of a king
mighty and righteous, whose coming kindled a fire of judgment, and a
blessed fire of purifying, into one or other of which all men must be
plunged, contained elements of terror, as well as of hope. It needed
completion by that later word.

When John stretched out his forefinger, and with awe-struck voice bade
his hearers look at Jesus coming to him, prophecy had done its work. The
promise had been gradually concentrated on the nation, the tribe, the
house, and now it falls on the person. The dove narrows its circling
flight till it lights on His head. The goal has been reached, too, in
the clear declaration of Messiah's work. He is King, Giver of the
Spirit, Judge, but He is before all else the Sacrifice for the world's
sins. Therefore he to whom it was given to utter that great saying was a
prophet, and more than a prophet; and when he had spoken it, there was
nothing more for him to do but to decrease. He was like the breeze
before sunrise, which springs up, as crying 'The dawn! the dawn!' and
dies away.

THE BAPTISM IN FIRE

'He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.'--MATT.
iii. 11

There is no more pathetic figure in Scripture than that of the
forerunner of our Lord. Lonely and ascetic, charged to light against all
the social order of which he was a part, seeing many of his disciples
leave him for another master; then changing the free wilderness for a
prison cell, and tortured by morbid doubts; finally murdered as the
victim of a profligate woman's hate and a profligate man's perverse
sense of honour: he had indeed to bear 'the burden of the Lord.' But
perhaps most pathetic of all is the combination in his character of
gaunt strength and absolute humility. How he confronts these people whom
he had to rebuke, and yet how, in a moment, the flashing eye sinks in
lowest self-abasement before 'Him that cometh after me'! How true,
amidst many temptations, he was to his own description of himself: 'I am
a voice'--nothing more. His sinewy arm was ever pointed to the 'Lamb of
God.' It is given to very few to know so clearly their limits, and to
still few