But the weeks grew to months, and still no help came. It was inexplicable to John's honest heart, and suggested the fear that he had been mistaken after all. We can sympathize in this also. Often in our lives we have counted on God's interfering to deliver us from some intolerable sorrow. With ears alert, and our heart throbbing with expectancy, we have lain in our prison-cell listening for the first faint footfall of the angel; but the weary hours have passed without bringing him, and we have questioned whether God were mindful of his own; whether prayer prevailed; whether the promises were to be literally appropriated by us?
(3) Partial views of Christ. "John heard in the prison the works of Jesus." They were wholly beneficent and gentle.
"What has He done since last you were here?"
"He has laid his hands on a few sick folk, and healed them; has gathered a number of children to his arms, and blessed them; has sat on the mountain, and spoken of rest and peace and blessedness."
"Yes; good. But what more?"
"A woman touched the hem of his garment, and trembled, and confessed, and went away healed."
"Good! But what more?"
"Well, there were some blind men, and He laid his hands on them, and they saw."
"Is that all? Has He not used the fan to winnow the wheat, and the fire to burn up the chaff? This is what I was expecting, and what I have been taught to expect by Isaiah and the rest of the prophets. I cannot understand it. This quiet, gentle life of benevolence is outside my calculations. There must be some mistake. Go and ask Him whether we should expect another, made in a different mould, and who shall be as the fire, the earthquake, the tempest, while He is as the still small voice."
John had partial views of the Christ—he thought of Him only as the Avenger of sin, the Maker of revolution, the dread Judge of all. There was apparently no room in his conception for the gentler, sweeter, tenderer aspects of his Master's nature. And for want of a clearer understanding of what God by the mouth of his holy prophets had spoken since the world began, he fell into this Slough of Despond.