eat harm will be done," they say.

I wish all these croakers had died out with that generation in
Judea; but we have plenty of their descendants still. I venture to
say you have met with them. Why, my dear friends, there is more
excitement in your whisky shops and beer saloons in one night than
in all the churches put together in twelve months. What a stir there
must have been in Palestine under the preaching of John the Baptist,
and of Christ! The whole country reeled and rocked with intense
excitement. Don't be afraid of a little excitement in religious
matters; it won't hurt.

One might hear those old Pharisees and Scribes grumbling about John
being such a sensational preacher. "It won't last." And when Herod
had John the Baptist beheaded, they would say, "Didn't I tell you
so?"

Do not let us be in a hurry in passing judgment. John the Baptist
lives to-day more than ever he did; his voice goes ringing through
the world yet. He only preached a few months, but for more than
eighteen hundred years his sermons have been repeated and
multiplied, and the power of his words will never die as long as the
world lasts.

I can imagine that just when John was at the height of his
popularity, as Herod sat in his palace in Jerusalem looking out
towards the valley of the Jordan, he could see great crowds of
people passing day by day. He began to make inquiries as to what it
meant, and the news came to him about this strange and powerful
preacher. Some one, perhaps, reported that John was preaching
treason. He was telling of a king who was at hand, and who was going
to set up his kingdom.

"A king at hand! If Caesar were coming, I should have heard of it.
There is no king but Caesar. I must look into the matter. I will go
down to the Jordan, and hear this man for myself."

So one day, as John stood preaching, with the eyes of the whole
audience upon him, the people being swayed by his eloquence like
tree-tops when the wind passes over them, all at once he lost their
attention. All eyes were suddenly turned in the direction of the
city. One cries:

"Look, look! Herod is coming!"

Soon the whole congregation knows it, and there is great excitement.

"I believe he will stop this preaching," says one.

And if they had in those days some of the compromising weak-kneed
Christians we sometimes meet, they would have said to John:

"Don't talk about a coming King; Herod won't stand it. Talk about
repentance, but any talk abo