voice of one crying in the wilderness." Far from desiring or attempting to fix the admiration of the multitude on his own person, he gave notice, from his first appearance, of another immediately to follow him, for whom he was unworthy to perform the most servile offices. He made a scruple, till expressly commanded, of baptizing one so infinitely purer than himself, as he knew the holy Jesus to be. And when his disciples complained, that all men deserted him to follow Christ (a most mortifying circumstance, had worldly applause, or interest, or power, been his point), nothing could be more ingenuously selfdenying than his answer; "Ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the Christ, but am sent before him. He, that hath the bride, is the bridegroom; but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and hear eth him, rejoiceth greatly. This my joy, therefore, is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease. He, that is of the earth, is earthly; he, that cometh from heaven, is above all*."

Of such unaffected and disinterested humility as this, where shall we find, except in Christ, another instance? Yet with this was by no means united what we are too apt to associate with our idea of humility, "" meanness

and timidity of spirit; on the contrary, the whole conduct of the Baptist was marked throughout with the most intrepid courage and magnanimity in the discharge of his duty.

Instead of paying any court, either to the great men of his nation on the one hand, or to the multitude on the other, he reproved the former for their hypocrisy in the strongest terms; "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to comet?" and he required the latter to renounce every one of those favourite sins which they had long indulged, and were most unwilling to part with. But what is still more, he reproved, without fear and without reserve, the abandoned and ferocious Herod, for injuriously taking away Herodias, his brother's wife, and afterwards incestuously marrying her, and for all the other evil that he had done. He well knew the savage and unrelenting temper of that sanguinary tyrant; he knew that this boldness of expostulation would sooner or later bring down upon him the whole weight of his resentment. + Matt. iii, 7.

* John iii, 28-31.

But knowing also, that he was sent into the world to preach repentance to all, and feeling it his duty to cry aloud and spare not, to spare not even the greatest and most exalted of sinners, he determined not to shrink from that duty, but to obey his conscience, and take the consequences.

Those consequences were exactly what he must have foreseen. He was first shut up in prison; and not long afterwards, as you all know, the life of this great and innocent man was wantonly sacrificed, in the midst of conviviality and mirth, to the rash oath of a worthless and a merciless prince, to the licentious fascinations of a young woman, and the implacable vengeance of an old one.

After this short history of the doctrines, the life, and the death of this extraordinary man, I beg leave to offer, in conclusion, a few remarks upon it to your serious consideration.

And, in the first place, in the testimony of John the Baptist, we have an additional and powerful evidence to the truth and the divine authority of Christ and his religion.

If the account given of John in the Gospels be true, the history given there of Jesus must be equally so, for they are plainly parts of one and the same plan, and are so connected and interwoven with each other, that they must either stand or fall together.

Now that in the first place there did really exist such a person as John the Baptist, at the time specified by the evangelists, there cannot be the smallest doubt; for he is mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus ; and all the circumstances he relates of him, as far as they go, perfectly correspond with the description given of him by the sacred historians. He represents him as using the ceremony of baptism. He says, that multitudes flocked to him, for they were greatly delighted with his discourses, and ready to observe all his directions. He asserts that he was a good man; and that he exhorted the Jews not to come to his baptism without first preparing themselves for it by the practice of virtue; that is, in the language of the Gospels, without repentance. He relates his being inhumanly murdered by Herod; and adds, that the Jews in general entertained so high an opinion of the innocence, virtue, and sanctity of John, as to be persuaded that the destruction of Herod's

army, which happened not long after, was a divine judgment inflicted on him for his barbarity to so excellent a man.

It appears, then, that St. John was a person, of whose virtue, integrity, and piety, we have the most ample testimony from an historian of unquestionable veracity, and we may therefore rely with perfect confidence on every thing he tells us. He was the very man foretold both by Isaiah and Malachi, as the forerunner of that Divine Personage, whom the Jews expected under the name of the Messiah. He declared, that Jesus Christ was this Divine Person, and that he himself was sent into the world on purpose to prepare the way before him, by exhorting men to repentance and reformation of life. If then this record of John (as the evangelist calls it) be true, the divine mission of Christ is at once established, because the Baptist expressly asserts that he was the Son of God, and that whoever believed on him should have everlasting lifet. Now that this record is true, we have every reason in the world to believe, not only because a man so eminently distinguished for every moral virtue, as St. John confessedly was, cannot be thought capable of publicly proclaiming a deliberate falsehood; but because, had his character been of a totally different complexion, had he for instance been influenced only by views of interest, ambition, vanity, popularity, this very falsehood must have completely counteracted and overset every project of this nature. For every thing he said of Jesus, instead of aggrandizing and exalting himself, tended to lower and to debase him in the eyes of all the world; he assured the multitude, who followed him, that there was another person much more worthy to be followed; that there was one coming after him of far greater dignity and consequence than himself; one, whose shoes' latchet he was not worthy to unloose; one so infinitely superior to him in rank, authority, and wisdom, that he was not fit to perform for him even the most servile offices. He himself was only come as a humble messenger to announce the arrival of his Lord, and smooth the way before him. But the great personage to whom they were to direct their eyes, and in whom

Joseph. Antiq. lib. xviii, cap. vi, sec. ii, ed. Huds. ↑ John iii, 6; í, 34. Mark i, 7; Luke iii, 16.

they were to centre all their hopes, was JESUS CHRIST. Is this now the language of a man, who sought only for honour, emolument, or fame, or was actuated only by the fond ambition of being at the head of a sect? No one can think so. It is not very usual, surely, for men of any character, much less for men of the best character, to invent and to utter a string of falsehoods, with the professed design of degrading themselves and exalting some other person. Yet this was the plain tendency and avowed object of John's declarations; and the effect was exactly what might be expected, and what he wished and intended, namely, that great numbers deserted him and followed Christ*.

But besides bearing this honest and disinterested testimony to Christ, the Baptist hazarded a measure, which no impostor or enthusiast ever ventured upon, without being immediately detected and exposed. He ventured to deliver two prophecies concerning Christ; prophecies, too, which were to be completed, not at some distant period, when both he and his hearers might be in their graves, and the prophecy itself forgot, but within a very short space of time, when every one who heard the prediction might be a witness to its accomplishment or its failure. He foretold, that Jesus should baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire," and that "he should be offered up as a sacrifice for the sins of mankind t." These were very singular things for a man to foretel at hazard and from conjecture, because nothing could be more remote from the ideas of a Jew, or more unlikely to happen in the common course of things. They were moreover of that peculiar nature, that it was utterly impossible for John and Jesus to concert the matter between themselves; for the completion of the prophecies did not depend solely on them, but required the concurrence of other agents; of the Holy Ghost in the first instance, and of the Jews and the Roman governor in the other; and unless these had entered into a confederacy with the Baptist and with Christ, to fulfil what John foretold, it was not in the power of either to secure the completion of it. Yet both these prophecies were, we know, actually accomplished within a very few years after they were delivered; for our Lord suffered death upon the + Matt. iii, 11; John i, 29.

John iii, 26, 30; iv, 1.

cross for the redemption of the world; and the Holy Ghost descended visibly upon the apostles in the semblance of fire on the day of Pentecost*.

It is evident, then, that the Baptist was not only a good man, but a true prophet; and, for both reasons, his testimony in favour of Christ, that he was the Son of God, affords an incontestable proof, that both he and his religion came from Heaven.

2. The history of the Baptist affords a proof also of another point of no small importance. It gives a strong confirmation to that great evangelical doctrine, the doctrine of atonement; the expiation of our sins by the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross.

We are often told, that there was no need for this expiation. That repentance and reformation are fully sufficient to restore the most abandoned sinners to the favour of a just and merciful God, and to avert the punishment due to their offences.

But what does the great herald and forerunner of Christ say to this? He came professedly as a preacher of repentance. This was his peculiar office, the great object of his mission, the constant topic of his exhortations. "Repent ye, and bring forth fruits meet for repentance t.' This was the unceasing language of "the voice crying in the wilderness."

If, then, repentance alone had sufficient efficacy for the expiation of sin, surely we should have heard of this from him who came on purpose to preach repentance. But what is the case? Does he tell us, that repentance alone will take away the guilt of our transgressions, and justify us in the eyes of our Maker? Quite the contrary. Notwithstanding the great stress he justly lays on the indispensable necessity of repentance, yet he tells his followers at the same time, that it was to Christ only, and to his death, that they were to look for the pardon of their sins. 66 Behold," says he, "the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world!" And again, "he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son hath not life, but the wrath of God abideth on him §." Since, then, the expiation of sin by the sacrifice of Christ is a doctrine not only taught