This shows how greatly we need to be filled with the life of the Son of God. In his life and death, our Lord, in our human nature, met and vanquished the power of sin and death; He bore that nature into the heavenly places, whence He waits to impart it, by the Holy Spirit, to those who are united with Him by a living faith. Is not this what the apostle John meant, when he said that his converts--his little children--could overcome, because greater was He that was in them than he that was in the world? He who has the greatest and strongest nature within him must overcome an inferior nature; and if you have the victorious nature of the living Christ in you, you must be stronger than the nature which He bruised beneath his feet.
III. THE CONSENT OF THE WILL.--"The king was exceeding sorry." The girl's request sobered him. His face turned pale, and he clutched convulsively at the cushion on which he reclined. On the one hand, his conscience revolted from the deed, and he was more than fearful of the consequences; on the other, he said to himself, "I am bound by my oath. I have sworn; and my words were spoken in the audience of so many of my chief men, I dare not go back, lest they lose faith in me." "And straightway the king sent forth a soldier of his guard and commanded to bring the Baptist's head."
Is it not marvellous that a man who did not refrain from doing deeds of incest and murder, should be so scrupulous about violating an oath that ought never to have been sworn? You have thought that you were bound to go through with your engagement, because you had pledged yourself, although you know that it would condemn you to lifelong misery and disobedience to the law of Christ. But stay for a moment, and tell me! What was your state of mind when you pledged your word? Were you not under the influence of passion? Did you not form your plan in the twilight of misinformation, or beneath the spell of some malign and unholy influence, that exerted a mesmeric power over you? Looking back on it, can you not see that you ought never to have bound yourself, and do you not feel that if you had your time again you would not bind yourself? Then be sure that you are not bound by that "dead hand." You must act in the clearer, better light, which God has communicated. Even though you called on the sacred name of God, God cannot sanction that which you now count mistaken, and wrong. You had no right to pledge half the kingdom of your nature. It is not yours to give, it is God's. And if you have pledged it, through mistake, prejudice, or passion, dare to believe that you are absolved from your vow, through repentance and faith, and that the breach is better than the observance.
"And he went and beheaded John in prison." Had the Baptist heard aught of the unseemly revelry? Had any strain of music been waited down to him? Perhaps so. Those old castles are full of strange echoes. His cell was perfectly dark. He might be lying bound on the bare ground, or some poor bed of straw. Was his mind glancing back on those never-to-be-forgotten days, when the heaven was opened above him, and he saw the descending Dove? Was he wondering why he was allowed to lie there month after month, silenced and suffering? Ah, he did not know how near he was to liberty!
There was a tread along the corridor. It stopped outside his cell. The light gleamed under the door; the heavy wards of the lock were turned: in a moment more he saw the gleam of the naked sword, and guessed the soldier's errand. There was no time to spare; the royal message was urgent. Perhaps one last message was sent to his disciples; then he bowed his head before the stroke; the body fell helpless here, the head there, and the spirit was free, with the freedom of the sons of God, in a world where such as he stand among their peers. Forerunner of the Bridegroom here, he was his forerunner there also; and the Bridegroom's friend passed homeward to await the Bridegroom's coming, where he ever hears the voice he loves.
"And the soldier brought his head in a charger, and gave it to the damsel; and the damsel gave it to her mother." There would not be so much talking while the tragedy was being consummated. The king and courtiers must have been troubled under the spell of that horror, as Belshazzar when the hand wrote in characters of mystery over against the sacred candlestick. And when the soldier entered, carrying in the charger that ghastly burden, they beheld a sight which was to haunt some of them to their dying day. Often Herod would see it in his dreams, and amid the light of setting suns. It would haunt him, and fill his days and nights with anguish that all the witchery of Herodias could not dispel.