since preached by their successors, whose | listened, and perceived it to be the sound commission still runs-" Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people."

2. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her sins.

or

of that voice which so many prophets and kings had desired to hear, and had not heard it, namely, the voice proclaiming the actual incarnation of Messiah, he breaks forth in transport, "The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness!"

Hark! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers; Prepare the way! a God, a God appears. The voice which thus sounded in the prophet's ears, so long before it was really heard upon the earth, was that of the Baptist, who, at the proper season, was sent, to dispose the hearts and affections of men for the reception of their Saviour, when he should make his appearance.

Good news should be related with a suitable aspect and accent. The manner should correspond with the matter. "Speak ye comfortably," or, as it is in the Hebrew phraseology, "to the heart of Jerusalem;" let your words be as cordials, to revive and cheer her in the midst of her sorrows and sufferings. The topics of consolation, to be insisted on, are three. First, " Her warfare," 4. 66 appointed service, is accomplished;" the days of her continuance under the yoke of bondage are expired; the fulness of time is come, for her passing from that state into the glorious liberty of the sons of God; she will now be relieved from duty, and dismissed from the station on which she hath so long watched, in expectation of the promised redemption; she will be " delivered out of the hands of her enemies, to serve God without fear." Secondly, "Her iniquity is pardoned;" the expiation is about to be made, which all her sacrifices and lustrations prefigured, which all her prophets foretold; the blessed person is born, in whom God is well pleased, both granting and accepting repentance unto "salvation by the remission of sins," that men may be "justified by the law of Moses," although men were justified under that dispensation, through faith in him that was then to come, according to the Gospel preached before unto Abraham. Thirdly, "She hath received of the Lord's hand double for all her sins;" she hath received greater benefits than she hath deserved punishments; mercy hath rejoiced against judgment; where sin abounded, grace hath superabounded.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.

66

These are the words of the prophet himself, unfolding the counsels of God concerning the manner in which Messiah's kingdom should be established in the world, and the alterations which must necessarily take place in order to that end. Every valley shall be exalted;" to the poor in spirit, the lowly and contrite souls, the Gospel shall be preached, and they shall be exalted in faith and hope-" and every mountain and hill made low;" on the contrary, pride of every kind, and in every shape, exalting itself whether in judaical pharisaism, or in Gentile philosophy, against the knowledge of God, shall be made low, and subdued to the obedience of Christ : "and the crooked shall be made straight;" truth and rectitude shall succeed to error and depravity" and the rough places plain ;" every thing that offendeth shall be removed, and all difficulties and inequalities smoothed, till unanimity and uniformity prevail. Thus shall the way be prepared for the King of Righteousness to visit his people, to dwell in them, and to walk among them.

3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilder-5. ness, prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a high way for our

God.

Isaiah, while reciting the divine injunctions to those whose office it should be to "comfort Jerusalem," seemeth to break off suddenly, as one interrupted in his discourse by the sound of a voice. And as if he had

"Far from being the Messiah, or Elias, or one of the old prophets, I am nothing but a voice; a sound, that, as soon as it has expressed the thought VOL. II. 61

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Immediately after the proclamation and preparation made by the Baptist, the Divinity was revealed in human nature, God was manifested in the flesh, seen and conversed with by all ranks and degrees of men, high and low, rich and poor, Jews and Gentiles, Pharisees and Sadducees, pub

of which it is the sign, dies inte air, and is known no more." FENELON.

licans and sinners. The accomplishment of ter the Baptist is held forth to us in the this part of Isaiah's prophecy is exactly predictions of the prophets concerning him, related by St. John the Evangelist in the as one who should go before Messiah in following terms; "The word was made the spirit and power of Elias, to proclaim flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld and prepare the way for the advent of his glory, the glory as of the only begotten God incarnate. of the Father, full of grace and truth."* How perfectly, during the Thus we have seen under what charac- character, will appear in the subsequent course of his ministry, he filled up this

⚫ John, i. 14.

sections.

SECTION V.

Considerations on the appearance, doctrine, and baptism of St. John.

THE days of St. John's retirement were | paired is styled "the wilderness of Judea,"* now ended, and he was to exchange the a country not like the vast and uninhabited pleasures of contemplation for the far differ- deserts in which he was educated, but one ent scenes of an active life: to behold, with thinly peopled, a comparative wilderness, grief and indignation, the sins and follies of chosen by him on account of its bordering mankind, the sight of which must needs be on the river. Hither the inhabitants of the more grating and afflicting to his righteous neighboring cities and villages presently soul, than a garment of camel's hair could flocked in great numbers, attracted by the be to his body; to encounter the opposi- uncommon sanctity of the new preacher, tion of a world that would be sure to take who thus came forth, on a sudden, from arms against him, from the moment in the deserts, like one from another world, which he stood forth a preacher of repent-without any connections in this, that no ence and reformation. But no good could attachment might take him off from the be done to others in solitude, no converts could be made in the deserts; and he must therefore quit even the most refined and exalted of intellectual enjoyments, as every minister of Christ should be ready to do, when charity dictates an attendance on the necessities of his fellow-creatures.

duties of his high calling, or any way impede him in the exercise of it; since a man's worst foes have often been those of his own household, and the ties of flesh and blood have been known to prevail, where tyrants have threatened and inflicted tortures withYet let it be observed, that St. John was rectly opposite to the profession of a proout effect. And as there is nothing so dithirty years of age, when "the word of phet, nothing which so soon or so effectuGod came to him in the wilderness," and ally sullies his reputation, as a tendency to commissioned him to enter upon his minis-indulgence and sensuality; in him, who try; and the holy Jesus was likewise of was more than a prophet," we must exthe same age, when inaugurated to his office pect to find a perfect crucifixion of the flesh, by the visible descent of the Spirit upon with its affections and lusts. "What went him at his baptism: to intimate, perhaps, ye out in the wilderness to see? that neither the exigencies of mankind, nor clothed in soft raiment ?" No, the very A man a consciousness of abilities for the work, reverse; a man, like his predecessor Elijah, can be pleaded as a sufficient warrant for a coarsely attired; "his raiment of camel's man to run before he is sent, and take the hair, with a leathern girdle about his loins ;" sacred office upon himself, without a regu- and content with the plainest food that nalar and lawful call. The institutions of God ture could provide for him; "his meat are not without a reason; and he will not locusts and wild honey;"§ a man, whose be served by the breach of his command-person, habit, and manner of life, were

ments.

The place to which the Baptist first re

• Luke, iii. 2.

themselves a sermon, and the best illustra

* Matt. iii. 1. Luke, iii. 3. † Matt. xi. 9.
+ Matt. xi. 8.
§ Ibid. iii. 4.

tion of the doctrine he was about to teach; " they that wear soft clothing are in kings' a proper person to prepare the way for houses;"* look for them among the attendChrist, and introduce the law to the Gos-ants upon the princes of this world, and not pel; to show men what effect the one ought among my servants. They who thirst after to have upon them, in order to dispose them for the blessings of the other; that mercy might save from the wrath which justice had denounced, and Jesus comfort those whom Moses had caused to mourn.

temporal honors and advantages, must go where such things are to be had. And let them go any where, rather than come into the church with these dispositions. For he who would persuade others to despise the world, while the love of it appears to direct and govern all his own actions, can expect no better success than it may be supposed St. Peter would have met with, had he invited those who stood with him round the fire in the high priest's hall, into the service of that master whom they had just before heard him deny. "When thou

The actions of a prophet, who appears, like the Baptist, with an extraordinary mission, though they are not to be imitated by us according to the letter, may yet convey a moral of general use There is no obligation upon us to be clothed with camel's hair, and to eat locusts and wild honey, nor are we commanded to abstain wholly from wine, as St. John did, according to the pre-art converted, strengthen thy brethren :"+ diction of the angel concerning him, deliv- attempt not to do it till then, lest thou not ered at the annunciation of his birth, "He only fall into condemnation thyself, but lay shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, a stumbling-block in the way of the weak, and shall be filled with the Holy Ghost even and cause the name of God and his Gospel from his mother's womb." But who doth to be thus blasphemed through thy doublenot here perceive, evidently marked out, mindedness, while thy life is at variance the opposition between sensuality and the with thy doctrine. He who undertakes to spirit of holiness, and the impossibility of reprove the world, must be one whom the their dwelling together under the same world cannot reprove. All eyes will be roof?"Into a malicious soul wisdom shall upon him; his actions, his words, his very not enter, nor dwell in a body that is sub-gestures and looks will be observed and ject to sin. For the holy spirit of discip- canvassed by his sharp-sighted enemies. line will flee deceit, and remove from It will therefore behove one, so exposed on thoughts that are without understanding, all sides, to abstain from the least appearand will not abide when unrighteousness ance of evil, to stand at the utmost discometh in." As, therefore, "no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost," who speaks in the Scriptures, who enlightens our understandings to interpret them, and who gives authority as well as ability to preach that great truth revealed in them, every minister of Christ, who succeeds the Baptist in the blessed work of calling men to salvation, should mortify the lusts of the flesh, that the graces of the Spirit may live and grow in him.

tence from temptation, and to prevent even the possibility of a suspicion. The axe must be laid to the root, and the passions mortified, till the man become, in the emphatical language of Scripture, "dead to sin," as a corpse is to the delights and concerns of life. "The dead know not anything, neither have they any more a portion in anything that is done under the sun "§

Strange, therefore, as St. John's appearBy a thorough mortification of the flesh, ance and manner of life might at first seem, St. John had gained a complete victory over they were presently explained, when he the world, which had nothing in it that he began to preach a doctrine harsh and diswanted. And herein consisted that great-tasteful to flesh and blood, as the garment ness of his character foretold by the angel; he wore and the food on which he subsist"He shall be great in the sight of the ed. "Repent ye," that is, Be converted, Lord." Earthly pageantry engages not or changed, in heart and mind, in principle the attention of the spirits above, unless it and practice, from error to truth, from sin be to pity such as set their hearts upon it. to righteousness, from the flesh to the Spirit, They discerned something more truly great from the world to God; "for the kingdom in the person of the Baptist, when he came of heaven is at hand;" a new and heaforth from the deserts, than in that of a tri-venly kingdom is about to be set up amongst umphant monarch at the head of his victo-you, with new and heavenly laws, under a rious army. "Behold," saith our Lord, new and heavenly king, the promised Mes

siah; and none but men of new and heavenly tempers and dispositions can possibly become the subjects of it. I am the person commissioned to prepare you for your happy change, by calling you to repentance, and to my baptism, which is "the baptism of repentance, for the remission of sins," through faith in him, "who cometh after me," to confer pardon and forgiveness. I am the messenger foretold by Malachi and Isaiah, sent in this manner to prepare the way of him who is your King, your Lord, and your God, now ready to be revealed as the Saviour of men. "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." Thus did St. John lay the foundations of the evangelical edifice in mortification and selfdenial; nor did his blessed Master afterward propose the glories of a crown to any but those who should be ready to take up their cross in the way to them.

era of distinguished corruption, but corruption of a different species. During the former, idolatry was the fashionable error, which had found its way into the court, and overspread the face of the church. The characteristics of the latter were on the one hand, a pharisaical hypocrisy, a boast of moral rectitude, which existed only in theory, and a vain confidence in a law which nobody observed; on the other, a Sadducean infidelity, opposed to the national faith and hope, denying a resurrection and future state of retribution. Elijah reclaimed the people from the worship of Baal to that of the true God; John called his hearers from unbelief, hypocrisy, and vice, to faith and holiness.

An ambassador of heaven, sent to preach truth to those who are captivated by error, and righteousness to those who are enamored of sin, will never proceed far in the The appearance of sanctity, put on by discharge of his trust, unless he be endued every impostor, is a proof of the influence with a fervent zeal for the cause and the honwhich it hath, when genuine and unaffect- or of him that sent him. Every holy person ed, over the minds of men. The preacher is not blessed with a spirit, any more than will always be attended, who conforms to his he is invested with a commission, to appear own doctrine, and exemplifies it in his life, in a public capacity, to reprove rulers and be that doctrine ever so rigid. No sooner kings, to look an angry world in the face, was it known that John, the son of Zacha- and overcome all the opposition in can raise rias, was come forth from the deserts, and against him. Zeal, without holiness to suphad begun to preach, but "there went out port it, like a meteor, will blaze and expire. unto him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all Zeal, without knowledge to limit and direct the region round about Jordan, and were it, will waste and destroy, like the element baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their from the effect of which it takes its name, sins."* The discourses of the Baptist were when that hast burst its bounds, and rules sharp and piercing as lancets. He applied where it ought to be in subjection. But them home to the human heart, swollen when knowledge and holiness are first obwith pride, and full of iniquity. And in-tained, it is zeal which must quicken and deed, much anxiety and wretchedness might diffuse them, as the sun doth light and heat, be relieved, much despair and suicide might for the benefit of the universe. "Then be prevented among us of this land, if the stood up Elias the prophet as fire," saith members of our church would but follow the son of Sirach," and his word burnt her direction, and as often as their minds like a lamp." And our Lord, speaking of were oppressed, and they could not quiet the Baptist, gives this account of him, "He their own consciences, go "to some discreet was a burning and a shining light." and learned minister of God's word, and zeal was tempered with knowledge, for it open their grief, that they might receive the gave light; and his knowledge was actuated benefit of absolution, together with ghostly by zeal, for it was burning as well as shining. counsel and advice." His sermons came warm from the heart of the speaker, and therefore found their way to that of the hearer, which was inflamed by them with the love, as his understanding was enlightened with the knowledge, of heavenly things.

The wisdom and goodness of God are seen in his manner of proportioning his aids to the exigencies of his people, and raising up reformers, when religion most needs their help, to revive the true spirit of it among men. If we view the state of things in Judea at two different periods, we shall soon perceive how seasonably Elijah was sent at one time, and John the Baptist, that second Elijah, at another. Each was an

His

For the sins of the people, and the ini- but condemnation. "Bring forth therefore quities of the prince, in the days of Elijah,* fruits meet for repentance :" be not barren, heaven was closed over their heads, the but "bring forth;" bring forth not leaves blessings of rain and dew were withheld, only, or fair professions, promises, and detill the divine author of them should be signs, but "fruits," or good deeds; and again acknowledged, and famine stalked such as may be "worthy" of the tree on through the land, preaching repentance as which they grow; such as may advance to she went. Israel felt the wound, but owned maturity, and ripen into holiness. "And not the hand that inflicted it. The Al- think not to say within yourselves, We mighty had constituted the prophet his have Abraham to our father :" many will vicegerent, and enjoined the elements to hereafter say that to little purpose. A desecond him, in the work of reformation. scent from the loins of Abraham will profit Ahab and his subjects, instead of consult- none but those who are like Abraham. His ing Elijah about the removal of their cala- true children are reckoned by faith, not conmities, regarded him as the occasion of sanguinity. Imagine not that the favor of them, and the sole "troubler of Israel." heaven is hereditary and indefeasible in the At the command of God, he presents him- line of Abraham according to the flesh, or self before the king, and tells him plainly, that the divine promises must fail, if not "Thou art the man." Israel is convened made good to you; "for I say unto you, at Mount Carmel, and reproved: "Why that God is able of these stones to raise up halt ye between two opinions? If Jeho- children unto Abraham;" by the power of vah be God, follow him: but if Baal, then his grace he can make converts of nations follow him." The false prophets appear on at present utterly barren, unfruitful, obduthe side of Baal and his kindred idols, to the rate, who shall inherit the blessing which number of nine hundred and fifty: on the you reject. Nor let the consideration, that side of the true God, Elijah stands single. Messiah has so long delayed his coming, The trial is made, and the grand question induce you to be careless and negligent: determined by a visible token of the divine" for now is the axe laid to the root of the presence. The nation returns to its duty, idolatry is punished in its votaries, the heaven gives rain, and the earth brings forth her increase.

On the banks of Jordan, we behold, in the person of St. John,† another Elijah, reproving the people of Israel, again departed from the Lord their God, while some, as the Pharisees, were hypocrites, and others, as the Sadducees, were unbelievers. Equally a stranger to fear and partiality, and endued with a prophetical power of discerning that serpentine subtlety and malignity which lurked under a specious outside, he rebukes them sharply, if by any means he might convince them of sin and lead them to true repentance: "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" You, who seem to have taken possession of the inheritance, as if Messiah would never appear to claim it; you, who trust in yourselves that you are righteous, and despise others; come you to me, to be baptized with publicans and sinners? What can be the reason of all this? What can be your motive? The business in hand is not one to be trifled with. Hypocrisy has no place here; nor will the external show, without the internal work, in this case, avail to anything

* See 1 Kings, xvii. and xviii.

† See Matt. iii. 7 &c.

tree :" believe me, he is at hand; your trial will soon be over, and your fate determined; the decisive and irremediable stroke will be struck, if not prevented by a timely repentance, a speedy and real change of heart and manners; "every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." Hitherto God hath borne with your errors and iniquities, but he will do so no longer. The law hath been given, and the prophets have been sent; but they are not regarded; and therefore he is coming, after whom no other messenger is to be expected from above. He will be the Saviour of all who, from a sense of their sins, shall be ready to embrace him as such. I am not that person, but the least and lowest of his servants, sent before to give notice of his approach, and prepare you to receive him. "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance;" but it is he who must grant remission of sins repented of; "he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear;" he brings with him Almighty power from on high, to pardon sins, and confer grace: "he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire," to sanctify your natures, to purify, enlighten, and inflame your hearts with the desire and love of celestial objects. At his appearance, he will try and make manifest the tempers and dispositions of men.

De