work nothing need here be said save what serves to
throw light on his witness to Christ. Going from the comfortable home
and well-provided life and fair prospects of a priest's family, he went
to the houseless wilderness, and adopted the meagre, comfortless life of
an ascetic; not from any necessity, but because he felt that to entangle
himself with the affairs of the world would be to blind him to its
vices, and to silence his remonstrance, if not to implicate him in its
guilt. Like thousands besides in all ages of the world's history, he
felt compelled to seek solitude, to subdue the flesh, to meditate
undisturbed on things Divine, and discover for himself and for others
some better way than religious routine and the "good wine of Mosaic
morality turned to the vinegar of Pharisaism." Like the Nazarites of the
earlier times of his country, like the old prophets, with whose
indignation and deep regret at the national vices he was in perfect
sympathy, he left the world, gave up all the usual prospects and ways of
life, and betook himself to a life of prayer, and thought, and
self-discipline in the wilderness. When first he went there, he could
only dimly know what lay before him; but he gathered a few friends of
like disposition around him, and, as we learn, "taught them to pray." He
formed in the wilderness a new Israel, a little company of praying
souls, who spent their time in considering the needs of their
fellow-countrymen, and in interceding with God for them, and who were
content to let the pleasures and excitements of the world pass by while
they longed for and prepared themselves to meet the great Deliverer.

This adoption of the _role_ of the ancient prophets, this resuscitation
of their long-forgotten function of mourning before God for the people's
sin, and addressing the nation authoritatively as God's voice, was
outwardly shown by his assumption of the prophet's dress. The rough skin
for a cloak; the long, uncared-for hair; the wiry, weather-beaten frame;
the lofty, calm, penetrating eye, were all eloquent as his lips. His
whole appearance and habits certified his claim to be the "voice" of one
crying in the wilderness, and gave him authority with the people.
Slightly altering what has been said of a great modern, we may much
more truly say of the Baptist,--

"He took the suffering human race,
He read each wound, each weakness clear:
He struck his finger on the place,
And said, 'Thou a