[1639] In Sanh. x. 1.
[1640] Meg. 24 b.
[1641] The Epicureans,' or freethinkers,' are explained to be such as speak contemptuously of the Scriptures, or of the Rabbis (Jer. Sanh. 27 d). In Sanh. 38 b a distinction is made between stranger' (heathen) Epicureans, and Israelitish Epicureans. With the latter it is unwise to enter into argument.
[1642] Both in the Jer. and Bab. Talm. it is conjoined with spitting,' which was a mode of healing, usual at the time. The Talmud forbids the magical formula, only in connection with this spitting' - and then for the curious reason that the Divine Name is not to be recorded while spitting.' But, while in the Bab. Talm. the prohibition bears against such spitting' before pronouncing the formula, in the Jer. Talm. it is after uttering it.
[1643] Sanh. 101 a; Jer. Sanh. p. 28 b.
[1644] Bishop Lightfoot has shown that the Essene cures were magical (u. s. pp. 91 &c. and p. 377).
[1645] St. Matt. iii. 7. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER III. THE TWOFOLD TESTIMONY OF JOHN - THE FIRST SABBATH OF JESUS'S MINISTRY - THE FIRST SUNDAY - THE FIRST DISCIPLES.
(St. John i. 15-51.)
THE forty days, which had passed since Jesus had first come to him, must have been to the Baptist a time of soul-quickening, of unfolding understanding, and of ripened decision. We see it in his more emphasised testimony to the Christ; in his fuller comprehension of those prophecies which had formed the warrant and substance of his Mission; but specially in the yet more entire self-abnegation, which led him to take up a still lowlier position, and acquiescingly to realise that his task of heralding was ending, and that what remained was to point those nearest to him, and who had most deeply drunk of his spirit, to Him Who had come. And how could it be otherwise? On first meeting Jesus by the banks of Jordan, he had felt the seeming incongruity of baptizing One of Whom he had rather need to be baptized. Yet this, perhaps, because he had beheld himself by the Brightness of Christ, rather than looked at the Christ Himself. What he needed was not to be baptized, but to learn that it became the Christ to fulfil all righteousness. This was the first lesson. The next, and completing one, came when, after the Baptism, the heavens opened, the Spirit descended, and the Divine Voice of Testimony pointed to, and explained the promised sign. [1646] It told him, that the work, which he had begun in the obedience of faith, had reached the reality of fulfilment. The first was a lesson about the Kingdom; the second about the King. And then Jesus was parted from him, and led of the Spirit into the wilderness.
Forty days since then - with these events, this vision, those words ever present to his mind! It had been the mightiest impulse; nay, it must have been a direct call from above, which first brought John from his life-preparation of lonely communing with God to the task of preparing Israel for that which he knew was preparing for them. He had entered upon it, not only without illusions, but with such entire self-forgetfulness, as only deepest conviction of the reality of what he announced could have wrought. He knew those to whom he was to speak - the preoccupation, the spiritual dulness, the sins of the great mass; the hypocrisy, the unreality, the inward impenitence of their spiritual leaders; the perverseness of their direction; the hollowness and delusiveness of their confidence as being descended from Abraham. He saw only too clearly their real character, and knew the near end of it all: how the axe was laid to the barren tree, and how terribly the fan would sift the chaff from the wheat. And yet he preached and baptized; for, deepest in his heart was the conviction, that there was a Kingdom at hand, and a King coming. As we gather the elements of that conviction, we find them chiefly in the Book of Isaiah. His speech and its imagery, and, especially, the burden of his message, were taken from those prophecies. [1647] Indeed, his mind seems saturated with them; they must have formed his own religious training; and they were the preparation for his work. This gathering up of the Old Testament rays of light and glory into the burning-glass of Evangelic prophecy had set his soul on fire. No wonder that, recoiling equally from the externalism of the Pharisees, and the merely material purism of the Essenes, he preached quite another doctrine, of inward repentance and renewal of life.