of truth "whether men will
hear or whether they will forbear." "All was sharp and cutting, imperious
earnestness about final questions, unsparing overthrow of all fictitious
shams in individual as in national life. There are no theories of the law,
no new good works, no belief in the old, but simply and solely a prophetic
clutch at men's consciences, a mighty accusation, a crushing summons to
contrite repentance and speedy sanctification" (KeimJN. II. 228). We look
in vain for a parallel in any of John's contemporaries, except in that one
before whom he bowed, saying, "I have need to be baptized of thee."

79. John had, however, predecessors whose work he revived. In Isaiah's
words, "Wash you, make you clean" (Isa. i 16), one recognizes the type
which reappeared in John. The great prophetic conception of the Day of the
Lord--the day of wrath and salvation (Joel ii. 1-14)--is revived in John,
free from all the fantastic accompaniments which his contemporaries loved.
The invitations to repentance and new fidelity which abound in Isaiah,
Ezekiel, Hosea, and Joel; the summons to simple righteousness, which rang
from the lips of Micah (vi. 8), and of the great prophet of the exile
(Isa. lviii.), these tell us where John went to school and how well he
learned his lesson. It is hard for us to realize how great a novelty such
simplicity was in John's day, or how much originality it required to
attain to this discipleship of the prophets. From the time when the
curtain rises on the later history of Israel in the days of the Maccabean
struggle to the coming of that "voice crying in the wilderness," Israel
had listened in vain for a prophet who could speak God's will with
authority. The last thing that people expected when John came was such a
simple message. He was not the creature of his time, but a revival of the
older type; yet, as in the days of Elijah God had kept him seven thousand
in Israel that had not bowed the knee to Baal, so, in the later time, not
all were bereft of living faith. These devout souls furnished the soil
which could produce a life like John's, gifted and chosen by God to
restore and advance the older and more genuine religion.

80. If John was thus a revival of the older prophetic order, a second
question arises: Whence came his baptism, and what did it signify? The
gospels describe it as a "baptism of repentance for the remission of sins"
(Mark i. 4). John's declaration that his greater successor should