from Alfred Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah
We are in spirit by the mount of God, and about to witness the breaking of a terrible storm. It is one that uproots the great trees and rends the rocks; and all we shall watch it solemnly, earnestly, as with bared head – or, like Elijah, with face wrap in mantle.
Weeks had passed, and the disciples of John had come back and showed their Master of all these things. He still lay in the dungeon of Machærus; his circumstances unchanged – perhaps, more hopeless than before. For, Herod was in that spiritually most desperate state: he had heard the Baptist, and was much perplexed. And still he heard – but only heard – him gladly.
It was a case by no means singular, and of which Felix, often sending for St. Paul, at whose preaching of righteousness, temperance, and the judgement to come, he had trembled, offers only one of many parallels. That, when hearing him, Herod was ‘much perplexed,’ we can understand, since he ‘feared him, knowing that he was a righteous man and holy,’ and thus fearing ‘heard him.’ But that being ‘much perplexed,’ he still ‘heard him gladly,’ constituted the hopelessness of his case. But was the Baptist right? Did it constitute part of his Divine calling to have not only denounced, but apparently directly confronted Herod on his adulterous marriage? Had he not attempt to lift himself the axe which seemed to have slip from the grasp of Him, of Whom the Baptist had hoped and said that He would lay it to the root of the tree?
Such thoughts may have been with him, as he passed from his dungeon to the audience of Herod, and from such bootless interviews back to his deep keep. Strange as it may seem, it was, perhaps, better for the Baptist when he was alone. Much as his disciples honoured and loved him, and truly zealous and jealous for him as they were, it was best when they were absent. There are times when affection only pains, by forcing on our notice inability to understand, and adding to our sorrow that of feeling our inmost being a stranger to those nearest, and who love us must.
Then, indeed, is a man alone. It is so with the Baptist. The state of mind and experience of his disciples had already appeared, even in the slight notices of his disciples has already appeared, even in the slight notices concerning them. Indeed, had they fully understood him, and not ended where he began – which, truly, is the characteristic of all sects, in their crystallisation, or, rather, ossification of truth – they would not have remained his disciples; and this consciousness must also have brought exquisite pain. Their very affection for him, and their zeal for his credit (as shown in the almost coarse language of their inquiry: ‘John the Baptist hath sent us unto Thee, saying, Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?’), as well as their tenacity of unprogressiveness – were all, so to speak, marks of his failure. And, if he had failed with them, had he succeeded in anything?
And yet further and more terrible questions rose in that dark dungeon.
Like serpents that crept out of its walls, they would uncoil and raise their heads with horrible hissing. What if, after all, there had been some terrible mistake on his part? At any rate the logic of events was against him. He was now the fast prisoner of that Herod, to whom he had spoken with authority; in the power of that bold adulteress, Herodias.
If he were Elijah, the great Tishbite had never been in the hands of Ahab and Jezebel. And the Messiah, Whose Elijah he was, moved not; could not, or would not, move, but feasted with publicans and sinners! Was it all a reality? or – oh, thought too horrible for utterance – could it have been a dream, bright but fleeting, uncaused by any reality, only the reflection of his own imagination? It must have been a terrible hour, and the power of darkness. At the end of one’s life, and that of such self-denial and suffering, and with a conscience so alive to God, which had – when a youth – driven him burning with holy zeal into the wilderness, to have such a question meeting him as: Art Thou He, or do we wait for another? Am I right, or in error and leading others into error? must have been truly awful.
Not Paul, when forsaken of all he lay in the dungeon, the aged prisoner of Christ; not Huss, when alone at Constance he encountered the whole Catholic Council and the flames; only He, the God-Man, over Whose soul crept the death-coldness of great agony when, one by one, all light of God and man seemed to fade out, and only that one remained burning – His own faith in the Father, could have experienced bitterness like this.
Let no one dare to say that the faith of John failed, at least till the dark waters have rolled up to his own soul. For mostly all and each of us must pass through some like experience; and only our own hearts and God know, how death-bitter are the doubts, whether of head or of heart, when question after question raises, as with devilish hissing, its head, and earth and heaven seem alike silent to us.
But here we must for a moment pause to ask ourselves this, which touches the question of all questions: Surely, such a man as this Baptist, so thoroughly disillusioned in that hour, could not have been an imposter, and his testimony to Christ a falsehood? Nor yet could the record, which gives us this insight into the weakness of the strong man and the doubts of the great Testimony-bearer, be a cunningly-invented fable. We cannot imagine the record of such a failure, if the narrative were an invention. And if this record be true, it is not only of present failure, but also of the previous testimony of John.
To us, at least, the evidential force of this narrative seems irresistible. The testimony of the Baptist to Jesus offers the same kind of evidence as does that of the human soul to God: in both cases the one points to the other, and cannot be understood without it.
In that terrible conflict John overcame, as we all must overcome. His very despair opened the door of hope. The helpless doubt, which none could solve but One, he brought to Him around Whom it had gathered. Even in this there is evidence for Christ, as the unalterably True One. When John asked the question: Do we wait for another? light was already struggling through darkness.
It was incipient victory even in defeat. When he sent his disciples with this question straight to Christ, he had already conquered; for such a question addressed to a possibly false Messiah has no meaning. And so must it ever be with us. Doubt is the offspring of our disease, diseased as is its paternity. And yet it cannot be cast aside. It may be the outcome of the worst, or the problems of the best souls. The twilight may fade into outer night, or it may usher in the day. The answer lies in this: whether doubt will lead us to Christ, or from Christ.
Thus viewed, the question: ‘Art Thou the Coming One, or do we wait for another?’ indicated faith both in the great promise and in Him to Whom it was addressed. The designation ‘The Coming One’ (habba), though a most truthful expression of Jewish expectancy, was not one ordinarily used of the Messiah. But it was invariably used in reference to the Messianic age, as the Athid labho, or coming future (literally, the prepared for to come), and the Olam habba, the coming world or Æon.
But then it implied the setting right of all things by the Messiah, the assumption and vindication of His Power. In the mouth of John it might therefore mean chiefly this: Art Thou He that is to establish the Messianic Kingdom in its outward power, or have we to wait for another? In that case, the manner in which the Lord answered it would be all the more significant. The messengers came just as He was engaged in healing body and soul. Without interrupting His work, or otherwise noticing their inquiry, He bade them tell John for answer what they had seen and heard, and that ‘the poor, are evangelised.’
To this, as the inmost characteristic of the Messianic Kingdom, He only added, not by way of reproof nor even of warning, but as a fresh ‘Beatitude:’ ‘Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be scandalised in Me.’ To faith, but only to faith, this was the most satisfactory and complete answer to John’s inquiry. And such a sight of Christ’s distinctive Work and Word, with believing submission to the humbleness of the Gospel, is the only true answer to our questions, whether of head or heart.
