upon this, that when the day shall at length break, and the oft-told tokens shall at length be seen, we, both preachers and people, may lift up our heads with joy, knowing that our redemption draweth nigh.

SERMON XII.

THE CRY IN THE WILDERNESS.

ST. JOHN i. 23.

"He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord."

THE workings of God's providence in the advent of the Gospel were not unlike the ordinances of His wisdom in the kingdom of nature. For For many a dismal hour before the day-spring from on high visited the world, a darkness that might be felt ruled paramount. Uncertain rays of solitary stars shed now and then a trembling light, almost confusing rather than clearly revealing that on which they fell. By-and-by faint kindlings of the coming day were seen; blushes of light appeared, brighter and brighter; the morning star shone brilliantly out, and sang his song of triumph; and the Sun of righteousness arose "to give light to them that sat in darkness, and in the shadow of death, and to guide their feet into the way of peace." But before this happy consummation, age after age saw little apparent progress light was the exception, darkness was the rule. Moses, David, Isaiah, and Malachi "spake as they

were moved;" but few understood them, and walked in their light. Then, widely differing from them, appeared the holy Baptist, the herald of the day, catching from the Luminary about to rise some bright beams of light, proclaiming what was at hand, and exalted higher than the rest, in being given to see and bear witness to what his predecessors had but anticipated from a distance.

And not only were the person and office of the Baptist greater than that of any of the prophets who had gone before him, but the message with which he was entrusted was greater and more important. One, indeed, was the natural result of the other. The message and the messenger were so intimately connected, that the one reflected on the other its peculiar excellence. As for the messenger, of all who were born of woman none up to the time of his appearing was greater than he; and as for the message, no announcement was more momentous, or claimed more entirely the attention of mankind. And a reason of this was, that in the one case he was himself more than a prophet by being the very subject of prophecy, and the appointed forerunner of the Son of God; and in the other, the message which he was sent to declare was itself also the subject of prophetical announcement, and immediately introductory to the kingdom of God.

The office of St. John was so far similar to that of our Lord's apostles, and by consequence to that of their successors, ordained in regular order from their day to this, that the Church has thought proper to make him a special subject of her children's contemplation during these two last weeks of Ad

vent.
His character and his message has each a
voice for us, and to each some few words shall now
be devoted.

But, before I proceed to this examination, let me
anticipate an error into which some of you might fall
without such a caution. The ministry of St. John,
though more great and glorious than that of the
prophets who went before him, did not rival, much
less exceed in glory, the office of our Lord's apostles
and their successors. Our Lord, indeed, said of him:

Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist;" because St. John was His messenger-because, as it were, he completed the old dispensation by ushering in Him who was the beginning of the new. Others saw Him dimly, through a long and obscure vista— he beheld Him face to face; others sat in comparative darkness-to him it was given to see the "true Light;" "the Light of light," as the Creed speaks. This made him greater than the earlier sons of men. But, immediately afterwards, our Lord decided upon, and expressly affirmed, his true position: "notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he!" The lowest in the Church of Christ is greater than the highest elsewhere. When Christ had founded His Church once for all, there could be no standing-place, no real goodness, or greatness, or safety external to it; for the very fact of its establishment annihilated all other religious societies. St. John and his disciples must conform to higher teachers, and a more imperative command. They did but introduce, and when that was done, their office was at an end. As long, indeed, as there was no Church, to be St. John's disciple was an ad

vance in faith and practice, and an approach to the Gospel; but afterwards the apostles were the channels of divine gifts, and a rejection of them was a rejection of Christ. After the Church's establishment, the disciples of the Baptist, and of all other teachers, must fall down and worship her Lord in her. There was no place without her, neither is there now, but the place of those, who, by being not with her, are against her, and by not gathering with her, scatter abroad. Thus it was, that though St. John the Baptist was greater than the prophets who went before him, as approaching nearer to his Lord, yet, as that Lord Himself declared, he that was least in the Church, the kingdom of God, was greater than he.

This, then, was St. John's position; and when I take his teaching as similar in measure to the teaching of the apostles and their successors, I limit his resemblance to them to his teaching. Because, as

we have seen, the resemblance fails in other respects. In other respects he was unlike them, as being inferior to them; in this he resembled them, as enunciating a message, similar, so far as it goes, to that which they are commissioned to deliver.

And now let me proceed to speak first of his teaching, and then of his character.

I. We are told that St. John first began his declaration by a confession-" he confessed and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ." Like all the saints of God, he was humble and reverent; and his fear was, lest the servant should be mistaken for the Lord, the disciple for the Master. Accordingly, he first removes any doubt which the ques