Tf John's perfect freedom from jealousy, leading to the frank and glad recognition of One who would supplant him through the greater fulness of His Divine gifts, seems to have been that which most impressed the Evangelist in the character of the Baptist
1 Joseph Parker.
ST. MATTHEW in. n 37
It was this self-effacement, this entire devotion to the duty which God laid upon him, that gave the Baptist such truth of discern- ment. It was the single eye which gave light to his whole body, the simplicity and purity of heart which enabled him to see things as they really were. We are not disciples of John ; but we should do well to honour and to imitate his noble simplicity, which so entirely subordinated self to the righteousness which he proclaimed. If we have any good cause at heart, we must unfeignedly rejoice when others are able to promote it more efficiently than we can do; otherwise we are loving ourselves more than the good cause. The same is true of every gift which we can legitimately prize ; we must see with pleasure its higher manifestations in another, for otherwise we are prizing, not the gift, but the glory which it brings us. Though not formally a disciple of Jesus, John was a better Christian than most of us ; for he had the simplicity of Christ, an entire forgetfulness of self in his devotion to God and goodness.1
Also of John a calling and a crying
Kang in Bethabara till strength was spent,
Cared not for counsel, stayed not for replying, John had one message for the world, Eepent.
John, than which man a sadder or a greater Not till this day has been of woman born,
John like some iron peak by the Creator
Fired with the red glow of the rushing morn.
This when the sun shall rise and overcome it Stands in his shining desolate and bare,
Yet not the less the inexorable summit Flamed him his signal to the happier air.2
II.
A more effectual baptism was called for — a baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire. This would carry with-it a deep and supernatural change. Fire is an element which has always affected the human mind with peculiar awe. It is in every way so strange and mysterious and, as it were, preternatural. Whether
1 James Drummond, Johanninc Thoughts, 26. * F. "W. H. Myers, Saint Paul.
3
X THE TWO BAPTISMS
glowing on the hearth, or racing in forked darts across the heavens, or carrying all before it in a hurricane of flame, it is always weird and wonderful. And accordingly, from the first, man has felt towards it a fear and dread with which he does not regard any other force whatsoever in nature. In primitive times, as he saw it crawl out of the dry sticks he rubbed together and writhe about his fingers like a live thing, or was dazzled by the splendour of it in the midday sky, he even found a god in it and worshipped it; and where his religious conceptions have ceased to be so crude as this, he lias nevertheless taken it as the most natural of all emblems under which to speak of the Divine. In the Old Testament itself every one will remember how very often fire is associated both with the real and with the visionary appearances of God to man. It is from the burning bush that Moses is commissioned to undertake the deliverance of the people. It is a pillar of fire (and cloud) that leads them through the wilder- ness. Long after, when rival worships have been set up in Israel, and the controversy between them is to be finally decided, it is by the falling of fire from heaven upon the faithful prophet's sacrifice that the people are constrained to cry, " Jehovah, he is God ; Jehovah, he is God." Later still, when the prophetic spark kindles the heart of an exile by the river Chebar he can find no better words in which to describe the Awful One who has appeared to him, than these : " Behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself." And, finally, in the New Testament, where, however, such language has at last become frankly metaphorical, you have such a statement as this : " Our God is a consuming fire." So closely has this unaccount- able, uncontrollable, and everyway mysterious element associated itself in men's minds with the nature and operations of the Deity, that they have felt instinctively that existence furnished them with no more apt or suggestive figure under which to think and speak of Him.
When, therefore, it is said of Jesus that He " baptizes with the Holy Ghost and with fire," we see what is implied. It is implied that the influence He sheds around Him is something more than natural. The spiritual power He exerts, the inspiration He gives, the communication of inward life He makes is altogether different from the ordinary. It does not belong to the common sphere of
ST. MATTHEW in. n 39
resources which are at the command, or of powers whicli are within the gift, of man. It is superhuman, supernatural, Divine.
TJ In course of a letter to Lady Wei by, Bishop Westcott writes : " The full thought of God as Love and Fire on which you dwell is that which is able to bring hope and peace to us when we dare in faith to look at the world as it is. Again and again the mar- vellous succession rises : God is spirit — light — love : our God is a consuming fire." 1