Herod killed John without much sense of doing wrong. He was sorry, no
doubt, for he had a kind of respect for the man, and he was reluctant
to put him to death. But though there was reluctance, there was no
hesitation. His fantastic sense of honour came in the way. In the one
scale there was the life of a poor enthusiast who had amused him for a
while, but of whom he had got tired. In the other scale there were his
word, the pleasure of Herodias, and the applause of the half-drunken
boon companions that were sitting with them at the table. So, of
course, the prophet was slain, and the pale head brought in to that
wild revel, and, except for the malignant gloating of the woman over
her gratified revenge, the event, no doubt, very quickly passed from
the memories of all concerned.
But then there came stealing into the silken seclusion of the palace,
where he was wallowing in his sensuality like a hog in the sty, the
tidings of another peasant Teacher that had risen up among the people.
Christ's name had been ringing through the land, and been sounded with
blessings in poor men's huts long before it got within the gates of
Herod's palace. That is the place where religious earnestness makes
its mark last of all. But it finally ran thither also; and light
gossip went round concerning this new sensation. 'Who is He? Who is
He?' Each man had his own theory about Him, but a sudden memory
started up in the frivolous despot's soul, and it was with a trembling
heart that he said to himself, 'I know! I know! It is John, whom I
beheaded! He is risen from the dead!' His conscience and his memory
and his fears all awoke.
Now, my friends, I pray you to lay that simple lesson to heart. We all
of us do evil things with regard to which it is not hard for us to
bribe or to silence our memories and our consciences. The hurry and
bustle of daily life, the very weakness of our characters, the rush of
sensuous delights, may make us blind and deaf to the voice of
conscience; and we think that all chance of the evil deed rising again
to harm us is past. But some trifle touches the hidden spring by mere
accident; as in the old story of the man groping along a wall till his
finger happens to fall upon one inch of it, and immediately the
concealed door flies open, and there is the skeleton. So with us, some
merely fortuitous association may freshen faded memories and wake a
dormant conscience. An apparently trivial circumstance, like some
hooked pole pushed at random into the sea, may bring up by the locks
some pale and drowned memory long plunged in an ocean of oblivion.
Here, in Herod's case, a report reaches him of a new Rabbi who bears
but a very faint resemblance to John, and that is enough to bring his
crime back in its naked atrocity.
My friends, we all have these hibernating serpents in our consciences,
and nobody knows when the needful warmth may come that will wake them
and make them lift their forked heads to sting. The whole landscape of
my past life lies there behind the mists of apparent forgetfulness,
and any light air of suggestion may sweep away the clouds and show it
all. What have you laid up in these memories of yours to start into
life some day: 'at the last biting like a serpent and stinging like an
adder'? 'It is John! It is John, whom I beheaded!'
Take this other thought, how, as the story shows us, when once at the
bidding of memory conscience begins to work, all illusions as to the
nature of my action and as to my share in it are swept away.
When the evil deed was done, Herod scarcely felt as if he did it.
There was his plighted troth, there was Herodias's pressure, there was
the excitement of the moment. He seemed forced to do it, and scarcely
responsible for doing it. And no doubt, if he ever thought about it
afterwards, he shuffled off a large percentage of the responsibility
of the guilt upon the shoulders of the others. But when,
'In the silent sessions of things past,'
the image and remembrance of the deed come up to him, all the helpers
and tempters have disappeared, and 'It is John, whom _I_ beheaded!'
(There is emphasis in the Greek upon the 'I.') 'Yes, it was _I_.
Herodias tempted me; Herodias' daughter titillated my lust; I fancied
that my oath bound me; I could not help doing what would please those
who sat at the table--I said all that _before_ I did it. But now, when
it is done, they have all disappeared, every one of them to his
quarter; and I and the ugly thing are left together alone. It was I
that did it, and nobody besides.'
The blackness of the crime, too, presents itself to the startled
conscience as it did not in the doing. There are many euphemisms and
soft words in which, as in cotton-wool, we wrap our evil deeds and so
deceive ourselves as to their hardness and their edge; but when
conscience gets hold of them, and they pass out of the realm of fact
into the mystical region of remembrance, all the wrappings, and all
the apologies, and all the soft phrases drop away; and the ugliest,
briefest, plainest word is the one by which my conscience describes my
own evil. '_I_ beheaded him! _I_, and none else, was the murderer.'
Oh! dear brethren, do you see to it that what you store up in these
caves and treasure-cellars of memory which we all carry with us, are
deeds that will bear being brought out again and looked at in the pure
white light of conscience, and which you will neither be ashamed nor
afraid to lay your hand upon and say: 'It is mine; _I_ planted and
sowed and worked it, and I am ready to reap the fruit.' 'If thou be
wise thou shalt be wise for thyself, if thou scornest thou alone shalt
bear it.' Take care of the storehouses of memory and of conscience,
and mind what kind of things you lay up there.
II. Now, once more, I take these words as setting before us an example
of a conscience awakened to the unseen world.
Many commentators tell us that this Herod was a Sadducee; that is to
say that theologically and theoretically he had given up the belief in
a future state and in spiritual existence. I do not know that that can
be sustained, but much more probably he was only a Sadducee in the way
in which a great many of us are Sadducees: he never thought about
these things, he did not think about them enough to know whether he
believed in them or not. He was a practical, if not a theoretical
Sadducee; that is to say, this present was his world, and as for the
future, it did not come much into his mind. But now, notice that when
conscience begins to stir, it at once sends his thoughts into that
unseen world beyond.
There is a very close connection, as all history proves, between
theoretical disbelief in a future life and in spiritual existence, and
superstition. So strong is the bond which unites men with the unseen
world, that if they do not link themselves with that world in the
legitimate and true fashion, it is almost certain to avenge itself
upon them by leading them to all manner of low and abject
superstitions. Spiritualism is the disease of a generation that
disbelieves in another life. The French Revolution, with its
infidelities, was also the age of quacks and impostors such as
Cagliostro and the like. The time when Christ lived presented
precisely the same phenomena. If Herod was a Sadducee, Herod's
Sadduceeism, like frost upon the window-panes, was such a thin layer
shutting out the invisible world, that the least warmth of conscience
melted it, and the clear daylight glared in upon him. And I am afraid
that there are a great many of us who may be half-inclined to reject
the belief in another life, who would find precisely the same thing
happening to us.
But be that as it may, it seems to me that whenever a man comes to
think very seriously about his conduct as being wrong in the sight of
God, there at once starts up before him the thought of a future life
and a judgment-bar. And I want to know why and how it is that the
vigorous operation of conscience is always accompanied with a 'fearful
looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.' I think it is worth
your while to reflect upon the fact, and to try and ascertain for
yourselves the reason of it, that whenever a man's conscience begins
to tell him of his wrong, its message is not only of transgressions
but of judgment, and that beyond the grave.
And, moreover, notice here how the startled conscience, when it
becomes aware of an unseen world beyond the grave, cannot but think
that out of that world there will come evil for it. These words of my
text are obviously the words of a frightened man. It was terror that
made Herod say: 'It is John, whom I beheaded. He is risen from the
dead!' Who was it that frightened Herod? It was He who came from the
bosom of the Father, with His hands full of blessings and His heart
full of love: who came to quiet all fears, and to cleanse all
consciences, and to satisfy all men's souls with His own sweet love
and His perfect righteousness. And it was this genial and gracious and
divine form, with all its actualities of gentleness and its
possibilities of grace, which the evil conscience of the terrified
tetrarch converted into a messenger of judgment come from the tomb to
rebuke and to smite him for his evils.
That is to say, men may always make that future life and their
relation to it what they will. Either the heavens may pour down their
dewy influences of benediction and fruitfulness upon them, or may pour
down fire and brimstone upon their spirits. Men have the choice which
it shall be. The evil conscience drapes the future in darkness, and is
right in doing it. The evil conscience forebodes chastisement,
judgment, condemnation coming to it from out of the unseen world, and,
with limitations, it is right in doing it. You can make Christ Himself
the Messenger of condemnation and of death to you. My dear friends, do
you choose whether, fronting eternity with an unforgiven burden of sin
upon your shoulders and a conscience unsprinkled by the blood of Jesus
Christ, you make of it one great fear; or whether you make it what it
really is, a lustrous hope, a perfect joy. Is the Messenger that comes
out of the unseen to come to you as a Judge of your buried evils
started into life, or is He to come to you as the Christ that bears in
His hand the price of your redemption, and with His blood 'sprinkles
your conscience from dead works' and from all its terrors?
III. And now, lastly, I see in this saying an illustration of a
conscience which, partially stirred, soon went finally to sleep again.
Strangely enough, if we pursue the story, this very terror and
clear-eyed perception of the nature of his action led the frivolous
king to nothing more than a curious wish to see this new Teacher. It
was not gratified; and thus by degrees he came to hate Him and to wish
to kill Him. And then, finally, on the eve of the Crucifixion Jesus
was brought into his presence, and Herod was glad that his curiosity
was satisfied at last. His conscience lay perfectly still. There was
no trace of the old convictions or of the old tremor. He 'questioned
Jesus many things, and Christ answered him nothing,' because He knew
it was of no use to speak to him. So 'Herod and his men of war mocked
Him and set Him at nought'; and sent Him back to Pilate; and he let
his last chance of salvation go, and never knew what he had done.
Now, _there_ is a lesson for us all. Do not tamper with partially
awakened consciences; do not rest satisfied till they are quieted in
the legitimate way. There was a man who trembled when he heard Paul
remonstrating with him about 'righteousness and temperance'--both of
which the unjust judge had set at naught--'and judgment to come' And
he 'sent for him often and communed with him gladly,' but we never
hear that Felix trembled any more. It is possible for you so to lull
yourselves into indifference, and, as it were, so to waterproof your
consciences that appeals, threatenings, pleadings, mercies, the words
of men, the Gospel of God, and the beseechings of Christ Himself may
all run off them and leave them dry and hard.
One very potent means of rendering consciences insensible is to
neglect their voice. The convictions which you have not followed out,
like the ruins of a bastion shattered by shell, protect your remaining
fortifications against the impact of God's truth. I believe that there
is no man, woman, or child listening to me at this moment but has had,
some time or other in the course of his or her life, convictions which
only needed to be followed out, gleams of guidance which only required
to be faithfully pursued, to bring him or her into loving fellowship
with, and true faith in, Jesus Christ. But some of you have neglected
them; some of you have choked them with cares and studies and
occupations of different kinds; and you are driving on to this
result,--I do not know that it is ever reached in this life, but a man
may come indefinitely near it,--that you shall stand, like Herod, face
to face with Jesus Christ and feel nothing, and that all His love and
grace shall be offered and not excite the faintest stirring in your
hearts of a desire to accept it.
Oh! my friend, we have all of us evils enough in these charnel-houses
of our memory to make us dread the awakening of conscience, to make us
look with fear and apprehension beyond the veil to a judgment-seat.
And, blessed be God! we have all of us had, and some of us have now,
drawings to which we need but to yield ourselves in order to find that
He who comes from the heavens is no 'John whom we beheaded,' risen for
judgment, but a mightier than he, that Son of God who came 'not to
condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.'