heaven is at hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the 3 prophet Esaias, saying, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." And the same John had his raiment of camel's 4 hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was tively an uninhabited region round the Jordan. 2. Repent ye] The Greek word literally refers to a change of mind or thought, and implies a change so deep that it reaches the very fountain of thought, and therefore touches the inmost motives which give their shape and coloring to the life. Dr. Campbell and Mr. Norton translate it, Reform; but this to most minds conveys the impression of an external change rather than of one which, beginning in the soul, works outward through the conduct, till mind and heart and life alike are transformed. The word Repent is confined too exclusively to the inward feeling of sorrow, which is only the beginning of the change that is required. 2. the kingdom of heaven] literally, the kingdom of the heavens, - a form of expression used only by Matthew, the other Evangelists using the term kingdom of God. Some stress has been laid, and perhaps not without reason, on this expression as indicating a plurality of heavens, corresponding to the many mansions in his Father's house which Jesus speaks of (John xiv. 2), and adapted to the sons of God in the different stages of their spiritual progress. The idea of the kingdom of Heaven or kingdom of God as synonymous with the Messiah's kingdom was probably familiar to the Jews, borrowed, perhaps, from passages like Daniel ii. 44. It is used in the New Testament with different shades of meaning to indicate the Messiah's kingdom: 1. as an inward principle of life in the soul (the kingdom of God is within you, Luke xvii. 21); a divine power extending through the world and changing its whole character (a little leaven which leaveneth the whole mass, Matt. xii. 33); 3. as an organized polity, like a net cast into the sea, 2. as Matt. xiii. 47, 48, and taking into itself the good and the bad till they shall at length be separated in the end of the world; 4. as the Messiah's kingdom when it shall take the place of the Jewish dispensation after the destruction of Jerusalem, Luke ix. 27; or, 5. as it shall appear in its consummation amid the brighter glories of a higher world, when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of his glory, Matt. xxv. 31, when it shall be fulfilled in the kingdom of God, Luke xxii. 16, or when through much tribulation we shall enter the kingdom of God, Acts xiv. 22. These different meanings melt insensibly into one another. We have no reason to suppose that John the Baptist understood the expression at all in its higher signification, but only as indicating an outward, visible kingdom, founded on the principles of righteousness, but exercising an earthly authority and power. 3. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias] The quotation is from the Septuagint. The whole passage should be read (Isaiah xl.) in order to understand the effect intended by the introduction of a few of the words here. The Baptist, in John i. 23, describes himself by these same words. 4. his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins] The Jews expected Elijah as the forerunner of the Messiah, and this description corresponds to that of Elijah in 2 Kings i. 8, "He [Elijah] was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins." Elijah was intimately associated in the Jewish mind with the Messiah as his forerunner, and Jesus himself xvii. 10-13, distinctly declares that this expected Elijah is none other than John the Baptist. The prophecy which probably gave rise to the locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him Jerusalem, 6 and all Judæa, and all the region round about Jordan; and 7 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 8 warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth expectation is a remarkable one, and, from its place at the very end of the Jewish Scriptures, Malachi iv. 5, 6, must have attracted particular attention: "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord, and he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse." This describes the influence of John in preaching his doctrine of repentance, and thus preparing the hearts of the people, parents and children, for the coming of Christ. and his meat was locusts and wild honey] Locusts, first boiled and then dried in the sun, and carried like parched corn in bags, are still sometimes used as an article of food by the Bedouin on the frontiers of Syria. The insects were grasshoppers, and not locusts, and should be so read wherever the word occurs in the Bible. Jaeger. The wild honey was not, as some have thought, a vegetable product exuding from trees, but honey made by wild bees. "Wild honey," says Thomson, “is still gathered in large quantities from trees in the wilderness, and from rocks in the wadies, just where the Baptist sojourned, and where he came preaching the baptism of repentance." 6. And were baptized of him in Jordan] "When men were admitted as proselytes, three rites were performed, circumcision, baptism, and oblation; when women, two, baptism and oblation. The whole families of proselytes, including infants, were baptized." Alford. Baptism, symbolical or ceremonial washing, such as the Mosaic law prescribed as a sign of moral renovation, and connected with the sac 66 It rificial types of expiation. It was from these familiar and significant ablutions that John's baptism was derived, and not from the practice of baptizing proselytes, the antiquity of which as a distinct rite is disputed." Alexander on Mark. was in itself," says Stanley, "no new ceremony. Ablutions, in the East, have always been more or less a part of religious worship, easily performed and always welcome. Every synagogue, if possible, was by the side of a stream or spring; every mosque, still, requires a fountain or basin for lustrations in its court." 7. Pharisees and Sadducees] Josephus represents these two sects as originating about one hundred and fifty years before Christ. They overlaid the law and the prophets by their traditions, and, like all sects who trust to forms and traditions, they neglected the spirit of their religion, and became remarkable for their superstition and hypocrisy. They had great influence, as their representatives in all ages have among their own people, and, like their successors now, were the most malignant enemies of Jesus, as he appeared in the simplicity of his instructions and the purity of his life. The Sadducees, who were supposed to be so called from a Hebrew word, meaning righteousness, rejected all tradition, and, though it was not originally one of their distinguishing features, yet in our Saviour's time they denied the reality of a future life. By confining themselves to a bare, literal, moral conformity to the law of Moses, they lost all spiritual life, and with it all belief in spiritual influences or spiritual beings. They are the type of the carnal unbelief which prevails among the philosophical classes, and those therefore fruits meet for repentance, and think not to say with- 9 in yourselves, We have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of 10 the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize 11 you with water, unto repentance; but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear ; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his 12 floor; and gather his wheat into the garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. ers. Then cometh Jesus from Galilee to Jordan, unto John, to be 13 whose thoughts are "bound up in "It was the one river of Palestine, sacred in its recollections,—abundant in its waters; and yet, at the same time, the river, not of cities, but of the wilderness, the scene of the preaching of those who dwelt not in king's palaces, nor wore soft clothing. On the banks of the rushing stream the multitudes gathered, the priests and scribes from Jerusalem, down the pass of Adummin; the publicans from Jericho on the south, and the Lake of Gennesareth on the north; the soldiers on their way from from Damascus to Petra, through the Ghor, in the war with the Arab chief Hareth, the peasants from Galilee, with ONE from Nazareth, through the opening of the plain of Esdraelon. The tall 'reeds or canes in the jungle waved, 'shaken by the wind'; the pebbles 14 baptized of him. But John forbade him, saying: I have need 15 to be baptized of thee, and comest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him, Suffer it to be so now; for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness. Then he suffered him. 16 And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water; and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting up17 on him. And, lo, a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. of the bare clay hills lay around, to which the Baptist pointed as capable of being transformed into the children of Abraham'; at their feet rushed the refreshing stream of the never-failing river. There began that sacred rite, which has since spread throughout the world, through the vast baptistries of the southern and Oriental churches, gradually dwindling to the little fonts of the north and west; the plunges beneath the water diminishing to the few drops which, by a wise exercise of Christian freedom, are now in most churches the sole representative of the full stream of the Descending River." Stanley. to be baptized of him] We know too little of the significance of this rite at that time amono the Jews, and especially as it was administered by John, to understand why Jesus should himself have observed it. In addition to what we have suggested in our general remarks on the subject, it may also be true, as Alford says, that he did it " as bearing the infirmities and carrying the sorrows of mankind, and thus beginning here the triple baptism of water, fire, and blood, two parts of which were now accomplished, and of the third of which he himself speaks, Luke xii. 50, and the beloved Apostle, 1 John v. 8, where spirit stands for fire." Great stress is laid on the manner in which Jesus was baptized, whether it was by immersion, effusion, or sprinkling. The coming up out of the water seems to imply that he went down into the water, where he was either immersed, or had water a form. poured upon him while he stood in the river near its bank. We have no certain knowledge on the subject. If it had been important we probably should have had it. But why should his precise mode of baptism be of consequence any more than the particular garment which he then wore? If it is essential to baptism that we should enter the water precisely as he did, why is it not essential to the Lord's Supper that in partaking of it we should recline upon a couch as he did? It is foreign to the whole tone of his instructions to lay any stress on the external and incidental adjuncts of 15. Suffer it to be so now] Let it be so for the present, just now. It is fitting that we both of us should fulfil all righteousness, i. e. all requirements of the law. For the present, therefore, permit me as the fulfiller of the law to receive this rite while you as its agent administer it. and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove] This may have been a mental vision, open to the spiritual perceptions of Jesus and of the Baptist, John i. 32, or it may have been the actual bodily shape of a dove appearing to them as symbolical of the pure and peaceful spirit of God and of him who that day was first publicly set apart for his great and sacred work. We should translate the verse as follows: And the moment that Jesus, being baptized, was gone up out of the water, lo, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the spirit of God, descending like a dove, coming upon him. 16. CHAPTER IV. 1 – 11. — THE TEMPTATION IN THE WILDERNESS. WE suppose that very few able scholars of our day regard the account of the Temptation as an account of events which actually took place according to the letter of the narrative. Some Schleiermacher, for example — look upon it as a parable by which Jesus would impress most important lessons on the minds of his disciples. "Three leading maxims of Christ," he says, in his Critical Essay on the Gospel of St. Luke, "for himself and for those who were invested by him with extraordinary powers for the promotion of his kingdom, are therein expressed: the first, to perform no miracle for his own advantage, even under the most pressing circumstances; the second, never to undertake, in the hope of extraordinary Divine aid, anything which, like the dropping from the pinnacle of the temple, as it does not lie in the natural course of things, would be merely prodigious; lastly, never, though the greatest immediate advantage were by that means attainable, to enter into fellowship with the wicked, and still less into a state of dependence upon them; and Christ could not express himself more strongly against the opposite mode of conduct than by ascribing it to Satan. In such a sense, then, Christ delivered this parable to his disciples." These undoubtedly are in part the lessons taught by the temptation in the wilderness. But it is doing violence to the language and spirit of the narrative to interpret it as applying in no way to the inward personal expe |