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BOOK II.

CHAPTER I. John the Baptist.

JESUS was about thirty years of age when a rumor reached Nazareth of a prophet who had appeared in Judaea. It was more than four hundred years since a prophet had arisen; but it was well known that Elias must come before Messiah as his forerunner. Such a prophet was now baptizing in Jordan; and all Judaea and Jerusalem itself were sending multitudes to be baptized by him. Before long his name was known: it was John, the son of Elisabeth, Mary's cousin, whose birth had taken place six months before that of Jesus. We have no reason to suppose that any person living at this time, except Mary, knew Jesus to be the Son of God. Those who had known it were Joseph, Zacharias, and Elisabeth; and all these were dead. John, to whom we might suppose his parents would tell the mysterious secret, says expressly that he did not know him to be the Messiah until it was revealed to him from heaven. He was familiar with his cousin Jesus, and felt himself, with all his stern, rigid life in the wilderness, to be unworthy to stoop down and unloose the latchet of his sandals; although he was a priest, who was known throughout the land as a prophet, and Jesus was merely a village carpenter, whose life had been a common life of toil amidst his comrades. Mary alone knew her son to be the promised Messiah; and though the long years may somewhat have dulled her hopes, they flamed up again suddenly when the news came that John the forerunner had begun to preach " The kingdom of God is at hand," and that multitudes, even of the Pharisees, were flocking to his baptism, so to enlist themselves as subjects of the new kingdom. But this news did not make any change in our Lord. There was not less tenderness and pity in his heart when he lived among his neighbors in Nazareth than when he healed the sick who came to him from every quarter. Neither was there any more ambition in his spirit when he passed from town to town, amid a throng of followers, than when he climbed up into the loneliness of the mountains about his village home. How could he be touched by any earthly ambition, who knew himself to be not only a Son of God, but the only-begotten Son of the Father? He had been waiting through these quiet, homely years for the call to come, and now he was ready to quit all, with the words in his heart, " Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God! "

It may well be that Mary went with him a little way on his road towards Jordan, on that wintry morning, when he quitted his workshop, and the familiar streets of Nazareth, to dwell in them no more. There was no surprise to her in what had come to pass; but there must have been a thrill of exultation mingled with fear. He had been her son all these years, but now he was to belong, not to her, but to the nation. What sorrow and triumph must have been in her heart when at last he bade her farewell, and she watched him as long as he was in sight, clad in the robe she had woven for him without seam, like the robe of a priest. Was he not a priest and a king already to her?

It was winter, and though not cold in the valley of the Jordan, the heavy and continuous rains must have dispersed the multitudes that had gone out to John, leaving him almost in solitude once more. There could have been no crowd of spectators when Jesus was baptized. Yet even in January there are mild and sunny days when he and John might have gone down into the river for the significant rite which was to mark the beginning of his new career. But John would not at first consent to baptize his cousin Jesus, declaring that it would be more fit for himself to be baptized by one whose life had been holier and happier than his own. The rich and powerful and pious Pharisees John had sent away with rebukes, yet when Jesus came from Galilee, he forbade him.

But Jesus would not take his refusal. For some months John had been waiting for a sign promised to him from heaven, which should point out to him the true Messiah; and the people of the land looked to him to show them the Christ, whose kingdom he was proclaiming. Now, after he had baptized his cousin in the waters of the Jordan, already troubled with the rains from the mountains, and they were coming up again out of the river, he saw the pale wintry sky above them opening, and the Spirit of God descending, visible to his eyes in the form of a dove, which lighted upon Jesus, whilst a voice came from heaven, speaking to him, and saying, " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." What passed between them further, the Messiah and his forerunner, we are not told. Jesus did not stay with John the Baptist, for immediately he left him and the place where he had been baptized, and went away into the wilderness, far from the busy haunts of ordinary men, such as he had dwelt among until now. His commonplace, everyday life was ended, and had fallen from him forever. A dense cloud of mystery, which no one has been able to pierce through, surrounds the forty days in which he was alone in the wilderness, suffering the first pangs of the grief with which he was bruised and smitten for our iniquities, being fiercely assailed of the devil, that he might himself suffer being tempted, and so able to succor all those who are tempted. The compassion and fellow-feeling he had before had for sufferers he was henceforth to feel for sinners. There was to be no gulf between him and the sinners he was about to call to repentance; he was to be their friend, their companion, and it was his part to know the stress and strain of temptation which had overcome them. Sinners were to feel, when they drew near to him, that he knew all about them and their sins, and needed not that any man should tell him. He had been in all points tempted as they had been.