uce the prophet to take back his
ruthless sentence? "Come," he might say, "you remember what you said.
If you unsay that sentence, I will set you free. I cannot, out of
respect for my consort, allow such words to remain unretracted. There,
you have your freedom in your own hands. One word of apology, and you
may go your way; and my solemn bond is yours, that you shall be kept
free from molestation."

If such an offer were made, it must have presented a strong temptation
to the emaciated captive, whose physique had already lost the
elasticity and vigour of his early manhood, and was showing signs of
his grievous privation. But he had no alternative; and, however often
the ordeal was repeated, he met the royal solicitation with the same
unwavering reply: "I have no alternative. It is not lawful for thee to
have thy brother's wife. I should betray my God, and act treacherously
to thyself, if I were to take back one word which I have spoken; and
thou knowest that it is so." And as he reasoned of righteousness,
temperance, and a judgment to come, the royal culprit trembled.

John could do no other; but it was a sublime act of devotion to God and
Truth. He had no thought for himself at all, and thought only of the
choice and destiny of that guilty pair, from which he would warn and
save them, if he might. Well might the Lord ask, in after days, if
John were a reed shaken with the wind. Rather he resembled a forest
tree, whose deeply-struck and far-spreading roots secure it against the
attack of the hurricane; or a mighty Alp, which defies the tremor of
the earthquake, and rears its head above the thunder-storms, which
break upon its slopes, to hold fellowship with the skies.

How many men are like Herod! They resemble the superficial ground, on
which the seed springs into rapid and unnatural growth; but the rock
lies close beneath the surface. Now they are swayed by the voice of
the preacher, and moved by the pleadings of conscience, allowed for one
brief moment to utter its protests and remonstrances; and then they
feel the fascination of their sin, that unholy passion, that sinful
habit, that ill-gotten gain--and are sucked back from the beach, on
which they were almost free, into the sea of ink and death.

You may be trying, my reader, to steer a middle course between John the
Baptist and Herodias. Now you resolve to get free of her guilty
charms, and break the spell that fascinates you. Merlin will
eman