The second period is a shorter one. It comprises the few
months of his public ministry. His difBculties were over ;
he had reached conviction enough to live and die on. He
knew not all, but he knew something. He could not
baptize with the Spirit, but he could at least baptize with
water. It was not given to him to build up, but it was given
to him to pull down all false foundations. He knew that
the highest truth of spiritual life was to be given by One
that should come after. What he had learned in the desert
was contained in a few words — Reality lies at the root of
religious life. Ye must be real, said John. " Bring forth
(hiits meet for repentance." Let each man do bis own duty ;
let the rich impart to those who are not rich ; let the publican
accuse no man falsely ; let the soldier be content with his
wages. The coming kingdom is not a mere piece of
machinery which will make you all good and happy without
effort of your own. Change yourselves, or you will have no
kingdom at all. Personal reformation, personal reality, that
was John's message to the world. An incomplete one ; but
he delivered it as his all, manfully ; and his success was
signal, astonishing even to himself. Successful it was,
because it appealed to all the deepest wants of the human
heart. It told of peace to those who had been agitated by
tempestuous passion. It protnised forgetfulness of past
transgression to those whose consciences smarted with self-
accusmg recollecrions. It spoke of refuge from the wrath
to come to those who had felt it a fearful expectation to
fall into the bands of an angry God. And the result of



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150 John's Rebuke of Herod

that message, conveyed by the symbol of baptism, was that
the desert snarmed with crowds who owned the attractive
speil of the power of a new life made possible. Warriors,
paupers, profligates — some admiring the nobleness of reli-
gious life, others needing it to fill up the empty hollow of
an unsatisfied heart; the penitent, the heart-broken, the
worldly, and the disappointed, all came. 