tory of
questions. Their mission threatened to become abortive, unless they
could extract some positive admission. They must put a leading
question; and their spokesman, for the fourth time, challenged the
strange being, whom they found it so hard to label and place on any
shelf of their ecclesiastical museum. "They said therefore unto him,
'Who art thou?--that we may give an answer to them that sent us.' What
sayest thou of thyself?" "He said, 'I am the voice of one crying in
the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the
prophet.'"

How infinitely noble! How characteristic of strength! A weak man
would have launched himself on the flowing tide of enthusiasm, and
allowed himself to be swept away by its impetuous rush. What a
mingling of strength and humility! When men suggested that he was the
Christ, he insisted that he was only a voice--the voice of the herald,
whom men hardly notice, because they strain their eyes in the direction
from which he has come, to behold the King Himself. When they
complimented him on his teaching, he told them that He who would winnow
the wheat from the chaff was yet to appear. And when they crowded to
his baptism, he reiterated that it was only the baptism of negation,
_of water_, but the Christ would baptize with the Holy Ghost and with
fire.

Why was this? Ah, he knew his limitations! He was the greatest-born
of woman, yet he knew that his bosom was not broad enough, nor his
heart tender enough, to justify him in bidding all weary and
heavy-laden ones to come to him for rest; he could not say that he and
God were one, and include himself with the Deity, in the majestic
pronoun, we; he never dared to ask men to believe in himself as they
believed in the Father: but there came after him One who dared to say
all these things; and this is the inevitable conclusion, that either
Jesus was inferior to John in all that goes to make a strong and noble
character, or that Jesus was all that John said He was, "The Son of
God, and King of Israel." There is no third suggestion possible. We
must either estimate Jesus as immeasurably inferior, or incomparably
superior, to the strong, sane, Spirit-filled prophet, who never wearied
in declaring the impassable chasm that yawned between them.

Such humility always accompanies a true vision of Christ. If we view
it from the low ground, the mountain may appear to reach into the sky;
but when we reach the mountain-t