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St. John Baptist's Dog.

JUNE 24.

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T. John the Baptist was an embodiment of the highest Jewish hopes of his time, an incarnate epitome of the purest national aspirations; and

his ministry constituted the transition period between the Mosaic and Christian dispensations. The last and greatest of the Old Testament order of Prophets, one, indeed, who, as the Forerunner of the Messiah, was “much more than a prophet"; he was yet less than "the least in the kingdom of God" (Luke vii. 26-28). "He was behind Christianity, because he was yet prejudiced by his concepception of the Theocracy as external; because he did not clearly know that Messiah was to found His kingdom by sufferings, and not by miraculously triumphing over His foes; because he did not conceive that His kingdom was to show itself from the first, not in visible appearing, but as a Divine power, to develop itself spiritually from within outward, and thus gradually to overcome and take possession of the world. The least among those who understood the nature and process of development of the Divine Kingdom, in connection with Christ's redemption, is in this respect greater than the Baptist, who stood upon the dividing line of the two spiritual eras. But John was above the prophets (and Christ so declared) because he conceived of the Mes

siah and His kingdom in a higher and more spiritual sense than they had done, and because he directly pointed men to Christ, and recognised Him as the manifested Messiah."*

John the Baptist was not alone in his retirement into the desert for contemplative and didactic purposes; for many of his contemporaries, pious and earnest men among the Jews, disgusted with the corruptions of the times, retired, like the monks and hermits of Christianity at a later day, into wilderness places, and there, becoming teachers of Divine wisdom, collected disciples around them. The surpassing distinction of John above these preachers of righteousness was that he alone had been designated in Prophecy, and announced by the Angel Gabriel, as the Messenger to prepare the way before Him for whose deferred arrival the hearts of Israel were faint; and that he alone should have the honour of heralding the "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29).

His appearance, training, and manner of life in the desert are sketched in the following lines from the late Rev. Robert Montgomery's "Messiah":

The great precursor, whose proclaiming voice,
"Repent ye!" travelled on the desert wind,
Was robed in hairy sackcloth; round his loins
A leathern girdle wound; the mountain spring,
That bubbled through the vale, his drink supplied;
His meat was honey, and the locust wild.-
Alone, but angel-watched, the orphan grew
To manhood; nursed amid the elements,
A son of Nature,-where the desert waved
Her wildest bough, or flung her blackest gloom,
The caverned eremite with God communed,
In storm or stillness, when the thunder voiced
His anger, or the sunshine brought His smile!
One awful loneliness His life became,
In thought and prayer mysteriously it passed;

*Neander's Life of Jesus Christ.

And oft sublime!-as when at sunset hour
A red magnificence of dying hues
Came o'er the desert, and each rocky cres
Of mountains with volcanic lustre blazed,
While slept the sultry air,—the prophet knelt ;
And the wild glory of his dreaming eye
To heaven was turned, in meditative awe!
The hush of woods, the hymn of waters faint
nd a blue prospect of the midland sea
Beyond the desert, glimmering and vast,
And dying cadence of some distant bird,
Whose song was fading like a silver cloud,-
While thus around Creation charmed, and looked,
Earth had no grander scene, than when the hour,
Of Syrian twilight heard the Baptist pray!

As the position of John the Baptist is unique amongst the Saints of the Old Dispensation; so his honours are unique amongst the Saints of the New. Whilst all the rest are commemorated on the day on which they “migrated to their Lord"-St. Paul excepted, the anniversary of whose Conversion, rather than that of his martyrdom, is observed—it is the actual Nativity of the Baptist which is singled out for special veneration, on account not only of his peculiar character, but of the significant events which preceded his birth, and of his consecration to the Divine. service from the very womb. There was anciently another day, the 9th of August, set apart as the anniversary of his Beheading; which the Romish Church still celebrates by the title of Festum Decollationis, being a corruption, according to Durandus, of Festum Collectionis Sancti Johannis Baptista, the Feast of the Gathering-up of the Relics of St. John the Baptist.

The Martyrdom of the Baptist would not appear, however, to have been entirely omitted from consideration on the anniversary of his Nativity; and "Augusti conjectures that the Festum Decollationis, the feast of the Beheading, which occurs in the Sacramentary of Gregory

INSTITUTION OF THE FESTIVAL.

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the Great, was originally not distinct from that of the Nativity."* The words of Wheatly are to the same effect:- "Now," he says, "the Church celebrates both his Nativity and death on one and the same day; whereon, though his mysterious birth, is principally solemnized, yet the chief passages of his life and death are severally recorded in the portions of Scripture appointed for the day." +

In

The Festival of the Nativity of John the Baptist was of comparatively early introduction in the Church; and on the evidence of Homilies on the season by Maximus Taurinensis, St. Augustine, and Leo the Great, it may be concluded to have become thoroughly established by the year 400. It would appear to have been of customary celebration by the Egyptians so early as A.d. 424. the fourth Canon of the Council of Agde (A.D. 506) its claims to a distinguished position amongst the commemorative days of Saints are recognised; and after this date it makes its constant appearance in the Calendars. The eighth Canon of the Council of Oxford (A.D. 1222), decrees the solemn celebration of "each of the feasts of St. John the Baptist." The vigil of St. John the Baptist, which the same Council of Oxford makes one of obligation, was formerly kept with great solemnity and circumstance; and its observance was often associated with various customs of Pagan origin, some of which met with a formal reprobation from Ecclesiastical Councils.

The career of John the Baptist is exclusively of Evangelical narration; for while Josephus paid a handsome tribute to his character and his mission, and even referred the misfortunes of Herod to the circumstance of his murder, he yet fails, owing to his Jewish prejudices and prepossessions, to see for himself, or to help others to discern, the spiritual significance of the Baptist's mission,

*Riddle's Manual of Christian Antiquities.

+ Rational Illustration of the Book of Common Prayer.

and the place he occupies in the Divine order of successive dispensations.

The mission of the Baptist reached its highest fulfilment when he was called upon to administer the sacred rite to the Messiah; and in the following lines, published first in Lyra Apostolica, and, more recently, in a volume of Verses on Various Occasions (1869), Dr. Newman derives a practical lesson from the presumed feelings of John upon that occasion when he exclaimed, "I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comestT hou to me?"

How didst Thou start, Thou Holy Baptist, bid
To pour repentance on the Sinless Brow!
Then all thy meekness, from thy hearers hid,
Beneath the Ascetic's port and preacher's fire,
Flowed forth, and with a pang thou didst desire
He might be chief, not thou.

And so on us at whiles it falls, to claim

Powers that we dread, or dare some forward part ;
Nor must we shrink as cravens from the blame
Of pride, in common eyes, or purpose deep;
But with pure thoughts look up to God, and keep
Our secret in our heart.

It is related that after the Beheading of John the Baptist, his disciples took his body and buried it at Sebaste, a city of Palestine, anciently called Samaria. Herodias, however, was careful to have the head buried apart at Jerusalem, within the palace of Herod, fearing lest the Prophet should rise again from the dead if his head and his body were buried together. The place of the interment of the head was revealed, about A.D. 392, to two monks of the Macedonian heresy; and it was conducted, after several haltings and difficulties, to a place called Hebdoma, in the suburbs of Constantinople, where the Emperor Theodosius had a spacious and magnificent church erected to do honour to the holy relic.* At the sepulchre

* Sozomen: Ecclesiastical History; lib. vii., c. 21.