er, and in
the ministry of the Word."

It is specially the temptation of Eastern life, where the climate is
enervating and service is cheap and plentiful, to seek the soft raiment
and the large assistance of attendants, and it is almost impossible to
yield to one or the other without relaxing the fibre of the soul. The
temptation is always around us; and it is well to look carefully into
our life from time to time, to be quite sure, lest almost insensibly
its strong energetic spirit may not be in process of deterioration--as
the soldiers of Hannibal in the plains of Capua. If so, resolve to do
without, not for merit's sake, but to conserve the strength and
simplicity of your soul.

(3) _His noble office_. "But wherefore went ye out?--to see a prophet?
Yea, I say unto you, and much more than a prophet." Nothing is more
difficult than to measure men while they are living. Whilst the
fascination of their presence and the music of their voice are in the
air, we are apt to exaggerate their worth. The mountain towers so far
above us that we are apt, in the absence of other mountains, or in our
too great proximity to it, to think of it as the greatest of all the
mountain-range. But it is not so, as we discover when we remove
further. But subsequent ages, so far from correcting, have only
confirmed our Saviour's estimate of his Forerunner. We are able to
locate him in the Divine economy. He was a prophet, yes, and much
more. To employ the predictive words of Malachi, he was Jehovah's
messenger, the courier who announced the advent of the King, the last
of the prophets--for all the prophets and the law prophesied until
John--and the herald of that new and greater era, whose gates he
opened, but into which he was not permitted to enter.

But our Lord went further, and did not hesitate to class John with the
greatest of those born of woman. He was absolutely in the front rank.
He may have had peers, but no superiors; equals, but no over-lords.
Who may be classed with him, we cannot, dare not, say. But probably
Abraham, Moses, Paul. "There hath not arisen a greater than John the
Baptist." No brighter star shines in the celestial firmament than that
of this brief young life, which had only time enough to proclaim the
advent of the Lord, and after some brief six months of ministry by the
Jordan, followed by twelve months in the gaol, waned here to shine in
undimming brilliancy yonder.

There was a further tribute