groom of the soul. How great the contrast between
that and this sorrowful cry, "Art Thou He?"

Some commentators, to save his credit, have supposed that the embassy
was sent to the Lord for the sake of the disciples, that their hearts
might be opened, their faith confirmed--and that they might have a head
and leader when he was gone. But the narrative has to be greatly
strained and dragged out of its obvious course to make it cover the
necessities of such an hypothesis. It is more natural to think that
John the Baptist was for a brief spell under a cloud, involved in
doubt, tempted to let go the confidence that had brought him such
ecstatic joy when he first saw the Dove descending and abiding.

The Bible does not scruple to tell us of the failures of its noblest
children: of Abram, thinking that the Egyptians would take his life; of
Elijah, stretching himself beneath the shadow of the desert bush, and
asking that he might die; of Thomas, who had been prepared to die with
his Lord, but could not believe that He was risen. And in this the
Spirit of God has rendered us untold service, because we learn that the
material out of which He made the greatest saints was flesh and blood
like ourselves; and that it was by Divine grace, manifested very
conspicuously towards them, that they became what they were. If only
the ladder rests on the low earth, where we live and move and have our
being, there is some hope of our climbing to stand with others who have
ascended its successive rungs and reached the starry heights. Yes, let
us believe that, for some days at least, John's mind was overcast, his
faith lost its foothold, and he seemed to be falling into bottomless
depths. _He sent them to Jesus, saying, Art Thou He that should come_?
We can easily trace this lapse of faith to three sources.

(1) _Depression_. He was the child of the desert. The winds that
swept across the waste were not freer. The boundless spaces of the
Infinite had stretched above him, in vaulted immensity, when he slept
at night or wrought through the busy days; and as he found himself
cribbed, cabined, and confined in the narrow limits of his cell, his
spirits sank. He pined with the hunger of a wild thing for liberty--to
move without the clanking fetters; to drink of the fresh water of the
Jordan, to breathe the morning air; to look on the expanse of nature.
Is it hard to understand how his deprivations reacted on his mental and
spiritual organ