that Jesus was the Messiah, though he had baptized him and received the heavenly sign of which he had been forewarned.

One truth which he announced bears evident marks of supernatural origin, since it contradicted the conceptions and prejudices of the age,-that the Messiah and his kingdom were not to be national, not belonging of right and exclusively to the posterity of Abraham alone. There is a maxim, as common as the very letters of the alphabet, in the writings of the Rabbins, that "There is a part for all Israel in the world to come," that is, in the kingdom of Messiah, merely by virtue of their descent from Abraham. That it was to be a kingdom selected from Israel, and other nations, a new community by no means co-extensive with the seed of Abraham, they had not the slightest idea. That it was to be a moral and a spiritual kingdom was as far from their conceptions. "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand. Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of repentance. And say not, we have Abraham for our father, for God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” Think not that you are to belong to the kingdom of God merely because you are descended from Abraham. God is able to raise up children to Abraham from a source now as improbable to you as the stones beneath your feet, from among the Gentiles even, whom you are accustomed to call dogs, and count as

the offscouring of the earth. A discrimination is about to take place, not between the children of Abraham and other nations, but between the good and the bad even among the Jews themselves. "The axe

lieth at the root of all the trees. Every tree therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water, but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear, he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." He shall raise those who obey him to a higher degree of spiritual knowledge, perfection, and power, and punish those who disobey him with the severest suffering. "Whose winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his grain, and gather the wheat into his garner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." This is the same idea expressed in stronger language, the meaning of which is this, The Messiah's kingdom is not as you Jews expect, to comprehend the good and the bad, merely because they are the descendants of Abraham, but is to embrace the good only, who are to be gathered into a separate community, while the bad are to be abandoned to the destruction which their own wicked courses will inevitably bring upon them.

He not only preached the kingdom of God, as a separate society, distinct from the Jewish nation, but he actually began to set it up. The baptism, which

he instituted, was no idle, unmeaning form, nor did it signify simply a profession of repentance, but it began and founded a new community. Those who received it professed not only repentance as necessary to prepare them for the kingdom of the Messiah, now shortly expected to appear, but a readiness to believe on and obey him whenever he should evidently make himself known. "The law and the prophets," says Christ, (6 were until John. Since that the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it." The baptism of John and that of Jesus were essentially the same, one into a profession of belief in the Messiah yet to come, and the other into a profession of belief in the Messiah already come.

Thus John's baptism began to do, what his words began to predict, to separate the righteous from the wicked, to prepare the righteous for eternal life, and leave' the wicked to the consequences of their sins; began to establish the kingdom of God, whose initiatory rite was baptism, just as circumcision was the initiatory rite of God's ancient church. Thus the kingdom of God came not with observation. While men were saying, "Lo here, and lo there," the kingdom of God was in the midst of them. But after all this knowledge of the nature of the kingdom, or Christianity, which was possessed by John the Baptist, and after baptizing Jesus with his own hands, and receiving the Divine testimony of which he had

been forewarned, so possessed was he with Jewish prejudices, of the temporal splendor and power of the Messiah, and so discouraged by his long imprisonment, that he sent two of his disciples to enquire if he were actually the Messiah. Jesus sent them back to tell all they saw and heard, and to leave him to form his own judgment, adding what throws light on the reasons of John's doubts: "Blessed is he whosoever is not offended in me ;" who does not consider the lowliness of my appearance incompatible with the loftiness of my pretensions.

This good and holy man, having lived just long enough to see the rising twilight of the new dispensation for which he was sent to prepare the way, fell a victim to the intrigues and revenge of a wicked woman. Herodias, the wife of one of the sons of Herod the Great, accompanying her husband to Rome, there became acquainted with Herod the tetrarch of Perea, and after her return to Judea she abandoned her husband, and with her daughter Salome went to live with him, in open defiance of the laws of God and man. John, the intrepid prophet of righteousness, reproved such flagrant iniquity in high places, and said to the royal transgressor; "It is not lawful for thee to have her." For this bold testimony for righteousness he was sent to the castle Macharus, on the confines of Palestine and Arabia. But the sleepless revenge of

Herodias followed him even there, and he died, as is well known, a martyr to the truth.

Thus perished John the Baptist, the morning star of Christianity, and his dying eyes caught scarcely a glimpse of the glory that was to be revealed. His fate but prefigured that of the noble army of martyrs, by whose blood the foundations of the Christian church were cemented, that lofty edifice into which have gathered a countless multitude of the good and the great of all succeeding times.