1. The imprisonment was a weary time, and its protraction was due to the play of opposing influences on the mind of the vacillating tyrant. In the first flush of his resentment, Antipas would have had him executed had he dared; but, knowing how greatly the multitude revered the prophet, he dreaded an insurrection should he destroy their idol. He therefore kept John under arrest, and presently a still more powerful dread took possession of him. He had repeated interviews with the prisoner, and his guilty soul quailed before that fearless man, so helpless yet so majestic. “He was much perplexed, and gladly listened to him.” It was the supreme crisis in the tetrarch's life. His conscience was stirred, and he was disposed to obey its dictates and yield to the importunities of the Holy Spirit; but, alas, he was hampered by his evil past. Herodias held him back. For her sake he had sinned, and now that he was minded to repent, he was fast bound by the fetters which he had himself forged. She was bitter with all a bad woman's bitterness against the Baptist for his denunciation of her infamous marriage, and clamoured for his death. Torn this way and that, the tetrarch had neither executed his prisoner nor set him at liberty, but had held him in durance all that weary time. It seems that he showed him not a little indulgence and made his captivity as easy as possible, allowing his disciples free access to their master. Imprisonment was not, indeed, in the ancient world exactly the same thing as it is among us. A prisoner frequently enjoyed a great deal of freedom, and he could generally be visited by his friends, as is indicated in the parable which says, “I was in prison, and ye came unto me.” Hence the Baptist received information of what was taking place outside, and he was able to send messages to whomsoever he desired.
People were kinder in these old days, and did not throw men into the lowest dungeons of towers, as happens with us. Captives were simply guarded, in places where others could approach them. Such was the prison of Joseph in Egypt and of Paul the Apostle in Rome. Many sat with them, and conversation went on. Others stood about the doors and exchanged remarks with the prisoners. We read in Demosthenes that Æschines, when in prison, was boycotted by the remaining captives, so that no one would eat with him or light his lamp. From this we see that even prisoners had their rules of government. Briefly, then, prisons in former times were merely places of secure guardianship, as even the lawyers say: A prison should be a place of ward, and not a torture house.1 [Note: Melanchtbon, Corpus Reformatorum, vol. xxiv. col 33.]
2. It is very touching to remark the tenacity with which some few of John's disciples clung to their great leader. The majority had dispersed: some to their homes, some to follow Jesus. Only a handful lingered still, not alienated by the storm of hate which had broken on their master, but drawn nearer, with the unfaltering loyalty of unchangeable affection. They could not forget what he had been to them-that he had first called them to the reality of living; that he had taught them to pray; that he had led them to the Christ: and they dare not desert him now, in the dark sad days of his imprisonment and sorrows. These heroic souls risked all the peril that might accrue to themselves from this identification with their master; they did not hesitate to come to his cell with tidings of the great outer world, and especially of what He was doing and saying whose life was so mysteriously bound up with his own. “The disciples of John told him of all these things” (Luk_7:18, R.V.). It was to two of these choice and steadfast friends that John confided the question which had long been forming within his soul, and forcing itself to the front. “And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to the Lord, saying, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?”
From first to last I knew I must decrease:
This in the Wilderness hath been my peace.
Now in my cell He hath deserted me.…
I wonder, is He Christ-can it be He?
I have sent messengers to ask Him plain
Is He the Christ? Before they come again
I see Him on the road … I am sufficed!
He is the Lamb of God, He is the Christ.
I pointed others to Him and they went;
I was deserted, yet in heart content:
Now He deserts me, as His pleasure is-
His pleasure, stricter than His promises.
So bold I spoke to sinners of the axe,
Who am just now a bit of smoking flax-
He would but quench me if I saw Him nigh
… Far off let Him abide, and I will die!1 [Note: Michael Field, Mystic Trees, 118.]
3. Doubt was in the question; and let none wonder that this man of energy and faith should doubt. The agony of doubt is often the portion of the highest faith. Job took the honest complaint of his spirit to God, and the love of God did not refuse him. So it proved with John. In his lone hour of doubt he turned to Christ, as naturally as Job in the hour of his doubt turned to God. And he did not turn in vain.
Now here is a man pre-eminently fitted to stand alone-a man who at first might be deemed independent of the assistance of inward or spiritual strength. Yet this man leans on Christ. He recognizes Christ as his superior, not merely in the way in which a man might recognize another from a literary or intellectual point of view as his superior; he recognizes Christ as a very present help in trouble, as One from whose life he can derive life, as One who can solve his doubts, as One who is the bridegroom of the spirits of men. An ascendancy like this may rebuke the imagination of those who think that religion is all very well for the weak, but that the strong can stand alone. It is a mistake to suppose that the mighty men of the earth need no help from the power of faith. It is indeed true that for a while men may live without realizing their need, but there are times in which the strongest are weak. If a man is noble he feels it when temptation is upon him; if he is hopeful he feels it when failure is his portion; if he is loving he will feel it in the hour of sorrow; if he is hungering for righteousness he will feel it in the presence of sin. And if not at such times as these, yet afterwards, when the joys of life decrease, and our powers of enjoyment grow feeble; when success falls from our side; or when even our pleasure in success dies into nothingness; then, when we are face to face with the remediless weakness of humanity, we
Stretch lame hands of faith, and grope
And gather dust and chaff, and call
To what we feel is Lord of all,
And faintly trust the larger hope.
Something of this sort probably passed through John's mind in his prison at Machærus. He felt that the joy of life had vanished with his opportunity of activity, and, like so many from whose life sunlight has passed away, he found it hard to believe that the sun was shining anywhere.
Nothing, to my mind, in the whole history of the Baptist is half so tragical as that. And why? Because it is the man parting from his innermost self. It is as if Shakespeare had lost his passion, as if Tennyson had lost his culture, as if Keats had lost his colouring. If this man had kept his confidence undimmed we should have looked in vain for the element of tragedy; not the dungeon, not the persecution by Herod, not the axe of the headsman, could have made the final scene other than glorious. But when a cloud fell over his innermost self, when in the flood he lost sight of the bow, when his faith wavered, when his one strong and seemingly invincible possession received damage on a rock of earth-this is the crisis of the drama, this is the tragedy of the scene!1 [Note: G. Matheson.]
4. Christ's answer was one well fitted to the character and disposition and faith of John. “Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.” In other words, “Go and report to John that God is still actively working in the world, that the needs of humanity are not forgotten, that the sorrows of humanity are consoled. Tell John that though there may be darkness in Machærus, and deep darkness in the heart of the captive there, yet God's sunlight of love is still shining in the world. Tell him that the faith which can live only in the sunlight is not the faith which he himself once possessed. Tell him that the joy of souls that are noble may be found in suffering. Tell him that the delay and the seeming heedlessness of Divine power is never a loveless or unwise delay. Blessed is he whose heart does not stumble because Divine love does not act as selfishness or as despair may desire; blessed is he who in darkness can trust the Divine wisdom of the Divine love. Blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in Me.”
Such a message implied the highest trust in him to whom it was sent. It was a salutary message, for it carried comfort and invigoration. It did not merely console and soothe; it was calculated to stimulate and to inspire. It was just what the Baptist needed; it spoke to his manhood and to his faith. It was like the call of the officer on the field who bids his troops stand in the hour of danger. It was the message which, calling to courage and high trust, fell upon the captive's ear as the hour of his martyrdom drew nigh. He was to suffer as well as to serve; and his faith at the last is sustained by the message which assured him that God's love was not dead, and that patience as well as courage was needed in the discipline and education of faith. “Blessed is he who is not offended in me.”
Christianity not only lives, but it grows and holds the field. It lives, despite all the mistakes of its theology, notwithstanding all the persevering efforts of the Church to misrepresent and to falsify it. What is the meaning of all this? There seems only one explanation. Christianity came not as a theory but as a life-a new kind of life. And its fortune has been like that of a savage who is indeed alive, but whose explanation of his life, of his body and his soul, is the most grotesque misrepresentation of the reality. When he gets some anatomy and physiology he will find some better though still inadequate theories. Christianity has persisted because men, apart from their crude thinking about it, have felt the thrill of its life. It has persisted because age after age it has offered to the soul its hidden manna; has ministered as nothing else has done to its moral and spiritual hunger. Have we not here another illustration of our doctrine of loose ends? Are not the evidences left in this condition in order that we each may find our own evidences, may become men of faith by taking all the risks of it, the risk-taking being part of our spiritual education? Coleridge in his Aids to Reflection, has put it all in a nutshell: “Evidences of Christianity? I am weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it, and you may safely trust to its own evidences!”1 [Note: J. Brierley, Faith's Certainties, 44.]
5. John had often borne testimony to Jesus, and Jesus now bears glad witness to his great worth and work. In society men are commonly praised to their face, or the faces of their friends, and blamed behind their backs. Jesus does the opposite in the case of John. Gossip waits only till the door is shut behind a visitor before canvassing every defect in his appearance and ripping up the seams of his character. Jesus probably knew that the bystanders were charging the Baptist with vacillation and cowardice. His faith, once so assured, was shaken; adversity had broken his spirit. In the minds of the people, now that the messengers of John are gone, Jesus will not seem to be using words of fulsome flattery. It is clear that Jesus was not willing for the inquiry of John and his reply to have the effect on the crowd of depreciating John. Jesus was not willing for the people to draw injurious inferences from what had just occurred, so He began at once, as the messengers departed, His defence of John.
The opening words-“What went ye out into the wilderness for to see? A reed shaken with the wind? But what went ye out for to see? A man clothed in soft raiment? Behold, they which are gorgeously apparelled, and live delicately, are in kings' courts”-appear intended to protect John from the unfavourable impressions which may have been made by his own message. The question, “Art thou he that should come, or look we for another?” might have suggested in John a certain fickleness, when contrasted with the emphasis of his earlier testimony; and it suggested an impatience which might be attributed to dissatisfaction with the hardships which he was enduring. Was John, then, a changeable mortal, sighing for release and comfort? From such a caricature Jesus lifted the minds of the listeners to the image of the real John, as he appeared in the days of his prime.
How little can we realize what a tremendous force is wielded by the concentrated will of a man wholly convinced of the Supreme Reality before whom he stands, and bending all his deepest faculties in a mighty longing for an object “inwrought” within his soul by the Spirit of God! A force as real as that which bears the electric message through the ether, and far more wonderful, is in the hands of God to direct at His will. Is it strange that it should prevail? Describing the pre-eminent greatness of John the Baptist, our Lord singled out the fact that he first taught men to “force on” the Kingdom of heaven (Mat_11:12). He and those who entered into his teaching were not minded to wait passively for a heavenly inheritance that might or might not come after long ages: like bandits they would “take it by force.” The original form and meaning of this saying cannot be recovered with certainty, but the paraphrase I have given seems to present the most probable view of it.1 [Note: J. H. Moulton, Religions and Religion, 200.]
