nowing the wheat from the chaff, the destroying
fire. That wrath was inseparable from the coming of the King; for His
righteous reign necessarily meant punishment of unrighteousness. So all
the older prophets had said, and John was but carrying on their
testimony. So Christ has said. No more terrible warnings of the certain
judgment of evil which is involved in His merciful work, have ever been
given, than fell from the lips into which grace was poured. We need
to-day a clearer discernment of the truth which flamed before John's
eyes, that the full proclamation of the kingdom of heaven must include
the plain teaching of 'the wrath to come.'

Next comes the urgent demand for reformation of life as the sign of real
repentance. John's exhortation does not touch the deepest ground for
repentance which is laid in the heart-softening love of God manifested
in the sacrifice of His Son, but is based wholly on the certainty of
judgment. So far, it is incomplete; but the demand for righteous living
as the only test of religious emotion is fully Christian, and needed in
this generation as much as it ever was. All preachers and others
concerned in 'revivals' may well learn a lesson, and while they follow
John in seeking to arouse torpid consciences by the terrors which are a
part of the gospel, should not forget to demand, not merely an emotional
repentance, but the solid fruits which alone guarantee the worth of the
emotion.

The next flash strikes the lofty structure of confidence in their
descent. John knows that every man in that listening crowd believes that
his birth secured him joy and dominion when Messiah came. So he wrenches
away this shield against which his sharpest arrows were blunted. What a
murmur of angry denial must have met his contemptuous, audacious denial
of their trusted privilege! The pebbles on the Jordan beach, or the
loose rocks scattered so plentifully over the desert, could be made as
good sons of Abraham as they. A glimpse of the transference of the
kingdom to the despised Gentiles passed across his vision. And in these
far-reaching words lay the anticipation, not only of the destruction of
all Jewish exclusiveness, but of the miracles of quickening to be
wrought on the stony hearts of those beyond its pale.

Once more with a new emblem the immediate beginning of the judgment is
proclaimed, and its principles and issues are declared. The sharp axe
lies at the roots of the tree, ready to be lifted and