John the Baptist

by F. B. Meyer

The days that preceded the celebration of Herod's birthday were probably filled with merry-making and carouse. Groups of nobles, knights, and ladies, would gather on the terraces, looking out over the Dead Sea, and away to Jerusalem, and in the far distance to the gleaming waters of the Mediterranean. Picnics and excursions would be arranged into the neighbouring country. Archery, jousts, and other sports would beguile the slowly-moving hours. Jests, light laughter, and buffoonery would fill the air. And all the while, in the dungeons beneath the castle, lay that mighty preacher, the confessor, forerunner, herald, and soon to be the martyr.

But this contrast was more than ever accentuated on the evening of Herod's birthday, when the great banqueting-chamber was specially illuminated; the tables decked with flowers and gold and silver plate; laughter and mirth echoing through the vaulted roof from the splendid company that lay, after the Eastern mode, on sumptuous couches, strewing the floor from one end to the other of the spacious hall. Servants, in costly liveries, passed to and fro, bearing the rich dainties on massive salvers, one of which was to be presently besprinkled with the martyr's blood.

In such a scene, I would have you study the genesis of a great crime, because you must remember that in respect to sin, there is very little to choose between the twentieth century and the first; between the sin of that civilization and of ours. This is why the Bible must always command the profound interest of mankind—because it does not concern itself with the outward circumstances and setting of the scenes and characters it describes, but with those great common facts of temptation, sin, and redemption, which have a meaning for us all.

This chapter is therefore written under more than usual solemnity, because one is so sure that, in dealing with that scene and the passions that met there in a foaming vortex, words may be penned that will help souls which are caught in the drift of the same black current, and are being swept down. Perhaps this page shall utter a warning voice to arrest them, ere it be too late, and be a life-buoy, or rope, or brother's hand reached out to save them as they rush past on the boiling waters. For there is help and grace in God by which a Herod and a Judas, a Jezebel and a Lady Macbeth, a royal criminal or an ordinary one, may be arrested, redeemed, and saved.

In this, as in every sin, there were three forces at work:—First, the predisposition of the soul, which the Bible calls "lust," and "the desire of the mind." "Among whom," says the apostle, "we also all once lived in the lusts of our flesh, doing the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath." Second, the suggestion of evil from without. Finally, the act of the will by which the suggestion was accepted and finally adopted.

It is, in this latter phase, that sin especially comes in. There may be sin in being able and disposed to sin. The possession of a sinful nature needs the atonement and propitiation of the precious blood. There may be sin, also, in dallying with temptation, in not anticipating its advent at a further distance. But, after all, that which is of the essence of sin is in the act of the will, which allows itself to admit and entertain some foul suggestion, and ultimately sends its executioner below to carry its sentence into effect.

I. THE PREDETERMINATION TOWARDS THIS SIN.—The word "lust" is now universally employed and understood in one direction only. It is a pity and a mistake; because we fail to appreciate many of the warning signals which the Spirit of God stations along our path. Any inordinate desire for sensual and pleasurable excitement, whether fixed on a right object, or directed towards a wrong one, comes under the denomination of "lust." Strong and ill-regulated desire or passion, in whatever direction it expresses itself, will work our ruin, and not that alone of impurity, to which this old word is now specially confined.

In dealing with temptation and sin, we must always take into account the presence in the human heart of that sad relic of the Fall, which biases men towards evil. Every one that has handled bowls on the green is familiar with the effect of the bias. The bowls are not perfect spheres, and are weighted on one side in such a way that, as they leave the hand, they will inevitably turn off from a straight course; and on this account the greater skill is required from the hands that manipulate and impel them. Such a bias has come to us all: first, from our ancestor Adam; and, secondly, by that law of heredity which has been accumulating its malign and sinister force through all the ages. God alone can compute the respective strength of these forces; but He can, and He will, as each separate soul stands before his judgment bar.

Herod was the son of the great Herod, a voluptuous, murderous tyrant; and, from some source or other, he had inherited a very weak nature. Perhaps, if he had come under strong, wholesome influences, he would have lived a passably good life; but it was his misfortune to fall under the influence of a beautiful fiend, who became his Lady Macbeth, his Jezebel, and wrought the ruin of his soul. It is a remarkable thing, how strong an influence a beautiful and unscrupulous woman may have over a weak man. And for this reason, amongst others, weakness becomes wickedness. The man who allows himself to drift weakly before the strongest influence is almost certain to discover that, in this world, the strongest influences are those which make for sin; these touch him most closely, and operate most continuously, and find in his nature the best nidus, or nest, in which to breed.

The influences that suggest and make for sin in this world are so persistent—at every street corner, in every daily newspaper, among every gathering of well-dressed people, or ill—that if my readers have no other failing than that they are weak, I am bound to warn them, in God's name, that unless they succeed in some way, directly or indirectly, in linking themselves to the strength of the Son of. God, they will inevitably become wicked. Remember that the men, and especially the women, who are filling our gaols as criminals, were, in most cases, only weak, but they therefore drifted before the strong, black current which flows through the world, and have become objects against whom all parents warn their children. With all my soul—and I have had no small experience of myself and of others—I implore that if you are conscious of your weakness, you shall do what the sea-anemone and the limpet do, which cling to the rock when the storms darken the sky. "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might."