forerunner of Messiah was not to be Elijah descended from heaven, nor was he, at his manifestation, to be called by that name; but was to be like him in his office and character. Such a messenger, saith God, "I will send, before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord," that is, the day that should "burn like an oven,” the day of Jerusalem's destruction, mentioned in the first verse. "And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to the fathers, lest I come and smite the earth," or the land, "with a curse." In the citation of this passage by the angel, one part of it is paraphrased-" To turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just *." The meaning of the whole seems to be, either that men of every age and every disposition should be united in truth and charity; or, as some learned expositors understand the passage, that St. John should bring many of the Jews to have the same heart and mind which their fathers and progenitors had, who feared God, and believed his promises; that so their fathers might, as it were, rejoice in them, and own them again for their children: in other words, that he should convert them to the faith of that Christ whom their fathers hoped in, and looked for; as it was said by the angel, "Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God;" lest, all continuing obstinate in their unbelief, till the day when a rejected Saviour should visit an apostate people, the curse should be universal. Beside these notices afforded us by Malachi, there is a prophecy on the same subject in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah, to which St. John referred the priests and Levites, when they pressed him, saying, "Who art thou, that we may give an answer to them that sent us? What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as saith the prophet Esaias +." But let us take a view of the whole context, as far as it concerns our present purpose. ISA. XL. 1. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. The future manifestation of Christ's kingdom is repre * Luke i. 17. ↑ Luke i. 16. ‡ John i. 23. sented to the prophet in spirit, with the concomitant signs and circumstances of it. He hears the voice of God directing his servants to comfort his people, by proclaiming certain glad tidings which had been communicated to them. These glad tidings were the tidings of the Gospel. The persons to whom they first came were Zacharias, the blessed Virgin, Simeon, and Anna, who composed sacred songs upon the occasion, and spake of Messiah's advent "to all such as looked for redemption in Jerusalem *." The same tidings were afterwards published by the Baptist, then by Christ himself and his apostles, and have been ever since preached by their successors, whose 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 hand double for all her sins. 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," or 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 from all things from which they could not be justified By the law of Moses," although Luke ii. 38. 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 had deserved punishments; mercy hath rejoiced against judgment; where sin abounded, grace hath superabounded. 3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 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 listened, and perceived it to be the sound 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; 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. 4. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain. 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. 66 Every valley shall be exalted;" to the poor in spirit, the lowly and contrite souls, the Gospel shall be "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 of which it is the sign, dies into air and is known no more." FENELON. 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. 5. 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, publicans and sinners. The accomplishment of this part of Isaiah's prophecy is exactly related by St. John the Evangelist, in the following terms; "The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his GLORY, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth *" Thus we have seen under what character the Baptist is held forth to us in the predictions of the prophets concerning him, as one who should go before Messiah in the spirit and power of Elias, to proclaim and prepare the way for the advent of God incarnate. How perfectly, during the course of his ministry, he filled up this character, will appear in the subsequent sections. * John i. 14. SECTION V. CONSIDERATIONS ON THE APPEARANCE, DOCTRINE, AND BAPTISM OF ST. JOHN. THE days of St. John's retirement were now ended, and he was to exchange the pleasures of contemplation for the far different scenes of an active life; to behold with grief and indignation the sins and follies of mankind, the sight of which must needs be more grating and afflicting to his righteous soul, than a garment of camel's hair could be to his body; to encounter the opposition of a world that would be sure to take arms against him, from the moment in which he stood forth a preacher of repentance and reformation. But no good could 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. Yet let it be observed, that St. John was thirty years of age, when" the word of God came to him in the wilderness," and commissioned him to enter upon his ministry; and the holy Jesus likewise was of the same age, when inaugurated to his office by the visible descent of the Spirit upon him at his baptism: to intimate, perhaps, that neither the exigencies of mankind, nor a consciousness of abilities for the work, can be pleaded as a sufficient warrant for a man to run before he is sent, and take the sacred office upon himself, without a regular and lawful call. The institutions of God are not without a reason; and he will not be served by the breach of his commandments. The place to which the Baptist first repaired is styled "the wilderness of Judea †," a country not like the vast and uninhabited deserts in which he was educated, but one thinly peopled, a comparative wilderness, chosen by him on account of its bordering on the river. Hither the inhabitants of the neighbouring cities and villages presently flocked in great numbers, attracted by the uncommon sanc *Luke iii. 2. Matt. iii. 1. Luke iii. 3. |