that
He was the Bridegroom of Israel; _and it was true_. He did no miracle,
but he spoke strong, true words of Jesus, and they have been abundantly
verified. And these simple-hearted people of Perea did what the
Pharisees and scribes, with all their fancied wisdom, had failed to do:
they put the words of the Baptist and the life of Jesus together, and
reasoned that since this had fitted those, as a key fits the lock,
therefore Jesus was indeed the Son of God and the King of Israel; and
"many believed on Him there."

I. LIFE WITHOUT MIRACLES.--The people were inclined to disparage the
life of John because there was no miracle in it. But surely his whole
life was a miracle; from first to last it vibrated with Divine power.
And did he work no miracle? If he did not open the eyes of the blind,
did not multitudes, beneath his words, come to see themselves sinners,
and the world a passing show, and the Eternal as alone enduring and
desirable? If he did not lay his priestly hand on leprous flesh, as
Jesus did, did not many a moral leper go from the waters of his
baptism, with new resolves and purposes, to sin no more? If he did not
raise dead bodies, did not many, who were immured in the graves of
pride, and lust, and worldliness, hear his voice, and come forth to the
life--which is life indeed? No miracles! Surely his life was one long
pathway of miracle, from the time of his birth of aged parents, to the
last moment of his protest against the crimes of Herod!

This is still the mistake of men. They allege that the age of miracles
has passed. If they admit that such prodigies may possibly have
happened once, they insist that the world has grown out of them, and
that with its arrival at maturity the race has put them away as
childish things. God, they think, is either Absentee, or the Creature
of Laws, which He established, and which now hold Him, as the
graveclothes held Lazarus. No miracles! But last summer He made the
handfuls of grain, which the farmers cast on the fields, suffice to
feed all the population of the globe--as easily as He made five barley
loaves provide a full meal for more than ten thousand persons. No
miracles! But last autumn, in ten thousand vineyards, He turned the
dews of the night and the showers of the morning into the wine that
rejoices man's heart; as once, in Cana, He changed the water drawn from
the stone jars into the blushing wine. No miracles! Explain, then,
why it is, th