mates, had they known that He was bound to be in the Temple. Where else indeed should we ever seek the Son of God but in His Heavenly Father's House? We need go no farther to find Him. There is evidently a contrast between the supposed1 father on earth, and the true Father in heaven. Joseph was not the father of His flesh, any more than Mary was the Mother of His divinity. Thus He manifested Himself the second time in His Temple. And later on in His life on earth, at another Epiphany,3 we find Him again thus answering her, who had not yet fully learnt her lesson, in another question. These things they understood not at the first, but this holy woman went the right way to understand these and other sayings of her Divine Son, by not dismissing them from her mind, but keeping them in her heart; meditating upon them in love. "The holy rigour with which the Lord treats those whom He loves, leaving them often under trouble and affliction, is a mystery which self-love understands not."5 Jesus, having sufficiently vindicated His true position, returns with them to Nazareth; setting us the example of subjection to all that are set in authority over us, becoming obedient unto the Law for us. And, as the Evangelist is now dwelling on His human side, he tells us that the Son of God in the days of His flesh grew gradually, even as others do, from youth. to manhood, in both expanding mind and body. In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto those whose nature He took, and whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. In those early days too He was not only, as always, pleasing to God, but even to men, with whom He was not yet brought into collision. Those who were not yet rendered hostile by His public career, could not but be

struck with the sweetness and gentleness of His private life. So ends what we may call the first chapter of His life on earth; all that has been recorded of the childhood of our Lord.

XXXIII.

THE MINISTRY OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

St. Luke iii. 1-4.

Now in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judæa, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituræa and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; as it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.

The son of Zacharias, afterwards called the Baptist, was when we last heard of him "in the deserts." There he remained unnoticed, growing like a strong plant to maturity in its congenial shade, till God called him out of that obscurity. The time is told us when "the word of God came unto" him in the wilderness; when he received his call and commission. The date of that event is fixed by this mention, according to the custom of annals and chronicles in ancient times, of the chief rulers of the country. Tiberius Cæsar was the Emperor over all; Pontius Pilate the governor under him of the province of Judæa; Herod Antipas and Philip (sons of that Herod called the Great, who slew the Innocents) being Tetrarchs or Governors of certain parts of the dominions of their late father; one

1 St. Luke i. 80.

Lysanias being the ruler of another district in the neighbourhood; and Annas, and Caiaphas his son-in-law, the two chief of the Priests at Jerusalem. These marks of

history are fearlessly adduced by the Evangelist. He brings forward this evidence, which if false would so easily have been confuted. He courts inquiry. He calls, as it were, all these witnesses. For these things were not done in a corner. How startling must have been this apparition of the forgotten son of Zacharias! For thirty years he had been content to remain unknown in the wilderness; but when God called him, he as promptly came into all the country which bordered the river Jordan; preaching, in the towns and villages on both its banks, this doctrine, that men must repent of their sins before they can expect to have them pardoned; and baptizing in the neighbouring river those who professed to repent. This, another Evangelist tells us, was as the Prophets had foretold. He cites. two of these first Malachi, who represents God as declaring, in words remembered by Zacharias,2 and applied also by our Lord to St. John,3 that He would send His messenger before the Messiah; and then Isaiah, who in the style of prophecy represents this messenger as already come, proclaiming as a Herald the Advent of the approaching King.

XXXIV.

THE SAME SUBJECT-continued.

St. Luke iii. 5, 6.

Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.

It is still the custom in the East, when the King makes a progress through any part of his dominions, to send Fore

1 St. Mark i. 2, 3.

2 St. Luke i. 76.

3 St. Matt. xi. 10.

E

runners to announce his approach, and pioneers to prepare the roads, which are usually rough and rugged. This they do by filling up hollows, and levelling hills, so that the way may be made as short and straight as possible. This is what St. John Baptist was to do in a spiritual sense, by his teaching, in the hearts of men; striving to remove from their minds those errors and prejudices which impede the progress of the Gospel. St. Luke, as writing for the Gentiles, extends the Prophet's quotation beyond the words cited also by St. Matthew and St. Mark, to assure us that all mankind should see the Saviour, Him who came to bring the great salvation; to not only heal the bodies of men, but to make their souls safe and sound. St. Matthew, who seems to give the very words of the Baptist, the text as it were of his first sermon, the sum and substance of his discourse, has this sentence, "Repent ye, for the Kingdom of heaven," that is the coming of Christ from heaven to found a Church or Kingdom upon earth, "is at hand." St. Matthew 2 adds also a most interesting note as to the simple dress and diet of the Baptist; draws for us, as it were, this picture of the man. He who came among them in the spirit and power of their ancient prophets was fitly clothed in prophet's garb; a sort of sackcloth, woven of camel's-hair, the common habit of the poorer sort in that country. A plain leathern girdle, such as we are told Elijah whom he represented wore, completed his simple attire; and, content with such food as the wilderness wherein he dwelt afforded, his meat (that is his common diet) was locusts; a large winged insect, still the customary food of the poorer classes in the East, and the honey deposited by the wild bees in trees and clefts of the rock. It was not out of affectation of singularity that he did so, but from singleness of purpose. For dainty diet he had neither time nor thought. Every creature of God indeed is good, and nothing to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving; but the Baptist's whole soul was set upon the work assigned him, so that he esteemed the words of God's mouth

1 Another instance of the abstract for the concrete, as in St. Luke ii. 25, 30. The phrase "salvation of God”

is one of the Hebraisms which occur in St. Luke.

2 Ch. iii. 4.

32 Ki. i. 7, S.

more than his necessary food. If in so doing he rebuked the effeminacy of an age ever inquiring "What shall we eat? and what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" let us lay to heart also this wholesome lesson.

XXXV.

THE PREACHING OF ST. JOHN BAPTIST.

St. Matthew iii. 5-7.

Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan, and were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

Here is the people's answer to the Baptist's call; the immediate effect of his preaching. Even "they of Jerusalem," the men of that corrupt capital, went out to him into the wilderness; as well as the more provincial, those who dwelt in the towns and villages of Judæa; and, as we might expect, those in the immediate neighbourhood of the Jordan;-that river in which he proceeded to baptize those who confessed their sins, a sign that penitents are cleansed from sin as their bodies are washed with water. But when this sincere man and uncompromising preacher saw even proud, hypocritical Pharisees, and proud unbelieving Sadducees, men so opposed to him and to one another, following the general example and coming to his Baptism, he could not restrain his surprise. The Pharisees were a party among the Jews who professed to pay the most scrupulous attention to the minor matters of the Law of Moses, while they too commonly overlooked its weightier principles. They were self-righteous as well as superstitious. They

1 St. Mark i. 5.