The answer which the Baptist made, may be said to mark the high point of his life and witness. Never before was he so tender, almost sad; never before more humble and self-denying, more earnest and faithful. The setting of his own life-sun was to be the rising of One infinitely more bright; the end of his Mission the beginning of another far higher. In the silence, which was now gathering around him, he heard but one Voice, that of the Bridegroom, and he rejoiced in it, though he must listen to it in stillness and loneliness. For it he had waited and worked. Not his own, but this had he sought. And now that it had come, he was content; more than content: his joy was now fulfilled.' He must increase, but I must decrease.' It was the right and good order. With these as his last words publicly spoken, [1859] this Aaron of the New Testament unrobed himself ere he lay down to die. Surely among those born of women there was not one greater than John.
That these were his last words, publicly spoken and recorded, may, however, explain to us why on this exceptional occasion Jesus sanctioned the administration by His disciples of the Baptism of John. It was not a retrogression from the position He had taken in Jerusalem, nor caused by the refusal of His Messianic claims in the Temple. [1860] There is no retrogression, only progression, in the Life of Jesus. And yet it was only on this occasion that the rite was administered under His sanction. But the circumstances were exceptional. It was John's last testimony to Jesus, and it was preceded by this testimony of Jesus to John. Far divergent, almost opposite, as from the first their paths had been, this practical sanction on the part of Jesus of John's Baptism, when the Baptist was about to be forsaken, betrayed, and murdered, was Christ's highest testimony to him. Jesus adopted his Baptism, ere its waters for ever ceased to flow, and thus He blessed and consecrated them. He took up the work of His Forerunner, and continued it. The baptismal rite of John administered with the sanction of Jesus, was the highest witness that could be borne to it.
There is no necessity for supposing that John and the disciples of Jesus baptized at, or quite close to, the same place. On the contrary, such immediate juxtaposition seems, for obvious reasons, unlikely. Jesus was within the boundaries of the province of Judæa, while John baptized at Ænon (the springs), near to Salim. The latter site has not been identified. But the oldest tradition, which places it a few miles to the south of Bethshean (Scythopolis), on the border of Samaria and Galilee, has this in its favour, that it locates the scene of John's last public work close to the seat of Hearod Antipas, into whose power the Baptist was so soon to be delivered. [1861] But already there were causes at work to remove both Jesus and His Forerunner from their present spheres of activity. As regards Christ, we have the express statement, [1862] that the machinations of the Pharisaic party in Jerusalem led Him to withdraw into Galilee. And, as we gather from the notice of St. John, the Baptist was now involved in this hostility, as being so closely connected with Jesus. Indeed, we venture the suggestion that the imprisonment of the Baptist, although occasioned by his outspoken rebuke of Herod, was in great part due to the intrigues of the Pharisees. Of such a connection between them and Herod Antipas, we have direct evidence in a similar attempt to bring about the removal of Jesus from his territory. [1863] It would not have been difficult to rouse the suspicions of a nature so mean and jealous as that of Antipas, and this may explain the account of Josephus, [1864] who attributes the imprisonment and death of the Baptist simply to Herod's suspicious fear of John's unbounded influence with the people. [1865]