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Zacharias was a priest, “of the course of Abijah,” and twice a year he journeyed to Jerusalem to fulfil his office, for a week of six days and two Sabbaths. There were, Josephus tells us, somewhat more than 20,000 priests settled in Judæa at this time; and very many of them were like those whom Malachi denounced as degrading and depreciating the Temple services. The general character of the priesthood was deeply tainted by the corruption of the times, and as a class they were blind leaders of the blind. Not a few, however, were evidently deeply religious men, for we find that “a great number of the priests,” after the crucifixion, believed on Christ and joined His followers. In this class we must, therefore, place Zacharias, who is described as being “righteous before God.”
2. The parents were old, and had ceased to have the hope of children. In similar circumstances, the Father of the Faithful, in times remote, received the promise of a son; and the special favour of God, thus indicated, heightened his sense of gratitude and strained his anticipations to the utmost as to the issues bound up in his son's life. Zacharias and Elisabeth, in like manner, must have felt that their child was in a peculiar way a gift of God, and that a special importance was to attach to his life. When anything has been long desired, but hope of ever obtaining it has died out of the heart, and yet, after all, it is given, the gift appears infinitely greater than it would have done if received at the time when it was expected. The real reason, however, why in this case the gift was withheld so long was that the hour of Providence had not come. The fulness of time, when the Messiah should appear, and therefore when His forerunner should come into the world, was settled in the Divine plan and could not be altered by an hour. Therefore had Zacharias and his wife to wait.
One memorable autumn, when the land was full of the grapeharvest, Zacharias left his home, in the cradle of the hills, some three thousand feet above the Mediterranean, for his priestly service. Reaching the Temple, he would lodge in the cloisters and spend his days in the innermost court, which none might enter, save priests in their sacred garments. Among the various priestly duties, none was held in such high esteem as the offering of incense, which was presented morning and evening, on a special golden altar, in the Holy Place at the time of prayer. “The whole multitude of the people were praying without at the time of incense.” So honourable was this office that it was fixed by lot, and none was allowed to perform it twice. Only once in a priest's life was he permitted to sprinkle the incense on the burning coals, which an assistant had already brought from the altar of burnt-sacrifice, and spread on the altar of incense before the veil.
“And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.” How circumstantial the narrative is! There could be no mistake. He stood-and he stood on the right side. It was Gabriel, who stands in the presence of God, that had been sent to speak to the priest to declare the good tidings that his prayer was heard; that his wife should bear a son, who should be called John; that the child should be welcomed with joy, should be a Nazirite, should be filled with the Holy Spirit from his birth, should inherit the spirit and power of Elijah, and should go before the face of Christ, to prepare His way, by turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to walk in the wisdom of the just.
3. As a rule, the naming of children takes place in haphazard fashion, the child receiving a certain name simply because some relative has borne it before him, or because the sound has pleased the fancy of father or mother, or for some similar reason. But on this occasion the name was Divinely decided beforehand; and this was an indication that this child was created for a special purpose. The name “John” signifies, “The Lord is favourable,” or, put more briefly, “The Gift of God.” He was a gift to his parents, but also to far wider circles-to his country and to mankind.
Not only was this child to be a gift, he was also to be gifted; so the father was informed: “He shall be great in the sight of the Lord.” To be a great man is the ambition of every child of Adam; and the thought of having as a son one who is a great man is a suggestion which thrills every parent's heart. Greatness is, indeed, an ambiguous word. Who is great? To be notorious, to be much in the mouths of men, to have a name which is a household word-this is the superficial conception of greatness. But such greatness may be very paltry; to as much greatness as this, multitudes of the meanest and most worthless of mankind have attained. But John was to be great “in the sight of the Lord.” This is a different matter; it implies not only genuine gifts, but gifts employed for other than selfish ends.
4. It was an atmosphere of reverence, conscientiousness, and refinement that John breathed from the first. He belonged to the choicest caste of the chosen people, using the word without its stigma. The son of a priestly race, a race which held the chief and most unquestioned position in the nation, he inherited its seclusive tendencies, and to his opening mind its quiet and retirement must have been congenial. He was of the priestly race on both sides, for his mother was “of the daughters of Aaron.” Heredity and its bias count for much in the inclination of the developing life. The fineness of grain that comes from a godly and cultured ancestry, especially when there is no concern about the basal questions, “What shall we eat, what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?” constitutes a mental and spiritual capital of the golden denomination, a capital whose value can hardly be overestimated.
John's recollections in after years would be of the constant perusal by his father of the sacred books, and of his patient teaching of their contents to him. To no ordinance of the Lord was the devout Hebrew parent more faithful than to that which enjoined the careful catechizing of his children in the first principles of their faith and first records of their history: “These words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up” (Deu_6:6-7).
Family worship is also a strong and sacred power. We can almost see the small group in the eventide reverently laying aside other duties, while “the sire turns o'er wi' patriarchal grace,” or rather unrolls, some copy of the Law or of the Prophets:
The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high;
Or, Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek's ungracious progeny;
Or, how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven's avenging ire;
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.1 [Note: Burns, The Cotter's Saturday Night.]
Happy is he or she who has such a father and mother, and whose childhood is nurtured in such a home. Out of such home have come the men who have been the reformative and regenerative forces of the world. The influence of the mother is especially noteworthy; nearly all men who have been conspicuously great and good have owed much to their mothers. In this narrative the mother is less prominent than the father; but enough is told to show of what manner of spirit she was. One likes to think of the three months spent by Mary under her roof. The homage paid by Elisabeth to her on whom had been bestowed the greater honour of being the mother of the Lord was an anticipation of the humility of her son, when he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
In Phillips Brooks the power of observation, which constitutes the basis of the imaginative faculty, was fused with the vast power of feeling which came from his mother. She had the spirit of the reformer, who is born to set the world right and cannot contemplate with serenity the world as it is. She hungered and thirsted for righteousness whose coming is so slow. So strong was her will, so intense her nature, that she grew impatient with the obstacles in the way. Phillips Brooks knew the facts of life with his father's eyes, and the hopes and possibilities of life through the eyes of his mother. Had he received by transmission only the outlook of his father without the inspired heroism of his mother, he would not have risen to greatness. But, on the other hand, had he inherited from his mother alone, he might have been known as an ardent reformer, not wholly unlike his distinguished kinsman, Wendell Phillips,-a type familiar in New England; but the wonderful fascination of his power for men of every class and degree, the universal appeal to a common humanity, would have been wanting.1 [Note: A. V. G. Allen, Phillips Brooks: Memories of His Life, 344.]