yet
does nothing, grows tired or afraid, and relapses (Mark 4:17).

Again, in John's teaching, as far as we have it, there is a striking
absence of any clear word about any relation to God, beyond that of
debtor and creditor, judge and prisoner on trial, king and subject.
God may forgive and God will judge; but so far as our knowledge of
John's teaching goes, these are the only two points at which man and
God will touch each other; and these are not intimate relations.
There is no promise and no gladness in them; no "good news." John
taught prayer--all sorts of people teach prayer; but what sort of
prayer? It has been remarked of the Greek poet, Apollonius Rhodius,
that his heroes used prayers, but their prayers were like official
documents. Of what character were the prayers that John taught his
disciples? None of them survive; but there is perhaps a tacit
criticism of them in the request made to the New Teacher: "Teach us
to pray, as John taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1). One feels that
the men wanted something different from John's prayers. Great and
strenuous prayers they may have been, but in marked contrast to the
prayers of Jesus and his followers, because of the absence in John's
message of any strong note of the love and tenderness of God.

Finally, the very righteousness that John preaches with such fire
and energy is open to criticism. Far more serious than the
righteousness of the Pharisees, stronger in insight and more
generous in its scope, it fails in the same way; it is
self-directed. It aims at a man's own salvation, and it is to be
achieved by a man's own strength in self-discipline, with what
little help John's system of prayer and fasting may win for a man
from God. John fails precisely where his strength is greatest and
most conspicuous. His theme is sin; his emphasis all falls on sin;
but his psychology of sin is insufficient, it is not deep enough.
The simple, strenuous ascetic did not realize the seriousness of sin
after all--its deep roots, its haunting power, its insidious charm.
St. Paul saw far deeper into it "I am carnal, sold under sin. What I
hate that do I. The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which
I would not, that I do. I see a law in my members bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin. O wretched man that I am! Who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?" (Rom. 7:14-24). Sin, in
John's thought, is contumacy or rebellion against the law of God; he
does not look