'But when Herod heard thereof, he said, It is John, whom I beheaded:
he is risen from the dead.'--Mark vi. 16.
The character of this Herod, surnamed Antipas, is a sufficiently
common and a sufficiently despicable one. He was the very type of an
Eastern despot, exactly like some of those half-independent Rajahs,
whose dominions march with ours in India; capricious, crafty, as the
epithet which Christ applied to him, 'That fox!' shows; cruel, as the
story of the murder of John the Baptist proves; sensuous and lustful;
and withal weak of fibre and infirm of purpose. He, Herodias, and John
the Baptist make a triad singularly like the other triad in the Old
Testament, of Ahab, Jezebel, and Elijah. In both cases we have the
weak ruler, the beautiful she-devil at his side, inspiring him for all
evil, and the stern prophet, the rebuker and the incarnate conscience
for them both.
The words that I have read are the terrified exclamation of this weak
and wicked man when he was brought in contact with the light and
beauty of Jesus Christ. And if we think who it was that frightened
him, and ponder the words in which his fear expressed itself, we get,
as it seems to me, some lessons worth the drawing.