Chester Cathedral. 1872.
St Luke iii. 2, 3, 7, 9-14. "The Word of God came unto John the son of
Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about
Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. .
. . Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him,
O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to
come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance. . . . And now
also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore
that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.
And the people asked him saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and
saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath
none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. Then came also
publicans to be baptized unto them, and said unto him, Master, what shall
we do? And he said, Exact no more than that which is appointed you. And
the soldiers likewise demanded of him, saying, And what shall we do? And
he said unto them, Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and
be content with your wages."
This is St John Baptist's day. Let me say a very few words--where many
might be said--about one of the noblest personages who ever has appeared
on this earth.
Our blessed Lord said, "Among them that are born of women there hath not
risen a greater than John the Baptist, notwithstanding, he that is least
in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." These are serious words;
for which of us dare to say that we are greater than John the Baptist?
But let us at least think a while what John the Baptist was like. So we
shall gain at least the sight of an ideal man. It is not the highest
ideal. Our Lord tells us that plainly; and we, as Christians, should
know that it is not. The ideal man is our Lord Christ Himself, and none
other. Still, he that has not mounted the lower step of the heavenly
stair, has certainly not mounted the higher; and therefore, if we have
not attained to the likeness of John the Baptist, still more, we have not
attained to the likeness of Christ. What, then, was John the Baptist
like? What picture of him and his character can we form to ourselves in
our own imaginations? for that is all we have to picture him by--helped--
always remember that--by the Holy Spirit of God, who helps the
imagination, the poetic and dramatic faculty of men; just as much as He
helps the logical and argumentative faculty to see things and men as they
really are, by the spirit of love, which also is the spirit of true
understanding.
How, then, shall we picture John the Baptist to ourselves? Great
painters, greater than the world seems likely to see again, have
exercised their fancy upon his face, his figure, his actions. We must
put out of our minds, I fear, at once, many of the loveliest of them all:
those in which Raffaelle and others have depicted the child John, in his
camel's hair raiment, with a child's cross in his hand, worshipping the
infant Christ. There is also one exquisite picture, by Annibale Caracci,
if I recollect rightly, in which the blessed babe is lying asleep, and
the blessed Virgin signs to St John, pressing forward to adore him, not
to awaken his sleeping Lord and God. But such imaginations, beautiful as
they are, and true in a heavenly and spiritual sense, which therefore is
true eternally for you, and me, and all mankind, are not historic fact.
For St John the Baptist said himself, "and I knew him not."
He may have been, we must almost say, he must have been, brought up with
or near our Lord. He may have seen in Him such a child (we must believe
that), as he never saw before. He knew Him at least to be a princely
child, of David's royal line. But he was not conscious of who and what
He was, till the mysterious inner voice, of whom he gives only the
darkest hints, said to him, "Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit
descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the
Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God." But
what manner of man was St John the Baptist in the meantime? Painters
have tried their hands at drawing him, and we thank them. Pictures, says
St Augustine, are the books of the unlearned. And, my friends, when
great painters paint, they are the books of the too-learned likewise.
They bring us back, bring us home, by one glance at a human face, a human
figure, a human scene of action, out of our philosophies, and criticisms,
and doctrines, which narrow our hearts, without widening our heads, to
the deeper facts of humanity, and therefore to the deeper facts of
theology likewise. But what picture of St John the Baptist shall we
choose whereby to represent him to ourselves, as the forerunner of the
incarnate God?
The best which I can recollect is the great picture by Guido--ah, that he
had painted always as wisely and as well--of the magnificent lad sitting
on the rock, half clad in his camel's hair robe, his stalwart hand lifted
up to denounce he hardly knows what, save that things are going all
wrong, utterly wrong to him; his beautiful mouth open to preach, he
hardly knows what, save that he has a message from God, of which he is
half-conscious as yet--that he is a forerunner, a prophet, a foreteller
of something and some one which is to come, and which yet is very near at
hand. The wild rocks are round him, the clear sky is over him, and
nothing more. He, the gentleman born, the clergyman born--for you must
recollect who and what St John the Baptist was, and that he was neither
democrat nor vulgar demagogue, nor flatterer of ignorant mobs, but a man
of an ancestry as ancient and illustrious as it was civilised, and bound
by long ties of duty, of patriotism, of religion, and of the temple
worship of God:--he, the noble and the priest, has thrown off--not in
discontent and desperation, but in hope and awe--all his family
privileges, all that seems to make life worth having; and there aloft and
in the mountains, alone with nature and with God, feeding on locusts and
wild honey and whatsoever God shall send, and clothed in skins, he, like
Elijah of old, renews not merely the habits, but the spirit and power of
Elijah, and preaches to a generation sunk in covetousness and
superstition, party spirit, and the rest of the seven devils which
brought on the fall of his native land, and which will bring on the fall
of every land on earth, preaches to them, I say--What?
The most common, let me say boldly, the most vulgar--in the good old
sense of the word--the most vulgar morality. He tells them that an awful
ruin was coming unless they repented and mended. How fearfully true his
words were, the next fifty years proved. The axe, he said, was laid to
the root of the tree; and the axe was the heathen Roman, even then master
of the land. But God, not the Roman Caesar merely, was laying the axe.
And He was a good God, who only wanted goodness, which He would preserve;
not badness, which He would destroy. Therefore men must not merely
repent and do penance, they must bring forth fruits meet for penance; do
right instead of doing wrong, lest they be found barren trees, and be cut
down, and cast into that everlasting fire of God, which, thanks be to His
Holy name, burns for ever--unquenchable by all men's politics, and
systems, and political or other economies, to destroy out of God's
Kingdom all that offendeth and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie--
oppressors, quacks, cheats, hypocrites, and the rest.
The people--the farming class--came to him with "What shall we do?" The
young priest and nobleman, in his garment of camel's hair, has nothing
but plain morality for them. "He that hath two coats, let him impart to
him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise." The
publicans, the renegades, who were farming the taxes of the Roman
conquerors, and making their base profit out of their countrymen's
slavery, came to him,--"Master, what shall we do?" He does not tell them
not to be publicans. He does not tell his countrymen to rebel, though he
must have been sorely tempted to do it. All he says is, Make the bad and
base arrangement as good as you can; exact no more than that which is
appointed you. The soldiers, poor fellows, come to him. Whether they
were Herod's mercenaries, or real gallant Roman soldiers, we are not
told. Either had unlimited power under a military despotism, in an
anarchic and half-enslaved country; but whichever they were, he has the
same answer to them of common morality. You are what you are; you are
where you are. Do it as well as you can. Do no violence to any man,
neither accuse any man falsely, and be content with your wages.
Ah, wise politician, ah, clear and rational spirit, who knows and tells
others to do the duty which lies nearest them; who sees (as old Greek
Hesiod says), how much bigger the half is than the whole; who, in the
hour of his country's deepest degradation, had divine courage to say, our
deliverance lies, not in rebellion, but in doing right. But he has
sterner words. Pharisees, the separatists, the religious men, who think
themselves holier than any one else; and Sadducees, materialist men of
the world, who sneer at the unseen, the unknown, the heroic, come to him.
And for Pharisee and Sadducee--for the man who prides himself on
believing more than his neighbours, and for the man who prides himself on
believing less--he has the same answer. Both are exclusives, inhuman,
while they are pretending to be more than human. He knew them well, for
he was born and bred among them, and he forestalls our Lord's words to
them, "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath
to come?"
At last his preaching of common morality is put to the highest test. The
king--the tyrant as we should call him--the Herod of the day, an usurper,
neither a son of David, nor a king chosen by the people, tries to
patronize him. The old spirit of his forefather Aaron, of his forefather
Phineas, the spirit of Levi, which (rightly understood), is the Spirit of
God, flashes up in the young priestly prophet, in the old form of common
morality. "It is not lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." We
know the rest; how, at the request of Herodias' daughter, Herod sent and
beheaded John in prison, and how she took his head in a charger and
brought it to her mother. Great painters have shown us again and again
the last act--outwardly hideous, but really beautiful--of St John's
heroic drama, in a picture of the lovely dancing girl with the prophet's
head in a charger--a dreadful picture; and yet one which needed to be
painted, for it was a terrible fact, and is still, and will be till this
wicked world's end, a matter for pity and tears rather than for
indignation. The most perfect representations, certainly the most
tragical I know of it, are those which are remarkable, not for their
expression, but for their want of expression--the young girl in brocade
and jewels, with the gory head in her hands, thinking of nothing out of
those wide vacant foolish eyes, save the triumph of self-satisfied
vanity; for the spite and revenge is not in her, but in her wicked
mother. She is just the very creature, who, if she had been better
trained, and taught what John the Baptist really was, might have
reverenced him, worshipped him, and ministered unto him. Alas! alas! how
do the follies of poor humanity repeat themselves in every age. The
butterfly has killed the lion, without after all meaning much harm. Ah,
that such human butterflies would take warning by the fate of Herodias'
daughter, and see how mere vanity will lead, if indulged too long and too
freely, to awful crime.
One knows the old stories,--how Herod, and Herodias, and the vain foolish
girl fell into disgrace with the Emperor, and were banished into
Provence, and died in want and misery. One knows too the old legends,
how Herodias' daughter reappears in South Europe--even in old German
legends--as the witch-goddess, fair and ruinous, sweeping for ever
through wood and wold at night with her troop of fiends, tempting the
traveller to dance with them till he dies; a name for ever accursed
through its own vanity rather than its own deliberate sin, from which may
God preserve us all, men as well as women. So two women, one wicked and
one vain, did all they could to destroy one of the noblest human beings
who ever walked this earth. And what did they do? They did not prevent
his being the forerunner and prophet of the incarnate Son of God. They
did not prevent his being the master and teacher of the blessed Apostle
St John, who was his spiritual son and heir. They did not prevent his
teaching all men and women, to whom God gives grace to understand him,
that the true repentance, the true conversion, the true deliverance from
the wrath to come, the true entrance into the kingdom of heaven, the true
way to Christ and to God, is common morality.
And now let us bless God's holy name for all His servants departed in His
faith and fear, and especially for His servant St John the Baptist,
beseeching Him to give us grace, so to follow his doctrine and holy life,
that we may truly repent after his preaching and after his example. May
the Lord forgive our exceeding cowardice, and help us constantly to speak
the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth's sake;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.