that trial.  Remember John was a man:  he had tasted the sweets of influence; that influence was dying away, and just in the prime of life he was to become nothing.  Who cannot conceive the keenness of that trial?  Bearing that in mind—­what is the prophet’s answer?  One of the most touching sentences in all Scripture—­calmly, meekly, the hero recognises his destiny—­“He must increase, but I must decrease.”  He does more than recognise it—­he rejoices in it, rejoices to be nothing, to be forgotten, despised, so as only Christ can be everything.  “The friend of the bridegroom rejoiceth because he heareth the bridegroom’s voice, this my joy is fulfilled.”  And it is this man, with self so thoroughly crushed—­the outward self by bodily austerities, the inward self by Christian humbleness—­it is this man who speaks so sternly to his sovereign.  “It is not lawful.”  Was there any gratification of human feeling there?  Or was not the rebuke unselfish?  Meant for God’s honour, dictated by the uncontrollable hatred of all evil, careless altogether of personal consequences?

Now it is this, my brethren, that we want.  The world-spirit can rebuke as sharply as the Spirit which was in John; the world-spirit can be severe upon the great when it is jealous.  The worldly man cannot bear to hear of another’s success, he cannot endure to hear another praised for accomplishments, or another succeeding in a profession, and the world can fasten very bitterly upon a neighbour’s faults, and say, “It is not lawful.”  We expect that in the world.  But that this should creep among religious men, that we should be bitter—­that we, Christians, should suffer jealousy to enthrone itself in our hearts—­that we should find fault from spleen, and not from love—­that we should not be able to be calm and gentle, and sweet-tempered, when we decrease, when our powers fail—­that is the shame.  The love of Christ is intended to make such men as John, such high and heavenly characters.  What is our Christianity worth if it cannot teach us a truthfulness, an unselfishness, and a generosity beyond the world’s?

 We are to say something in the second place of the apparent failure of
 Christian life.

The concluding sentence of this verse informs us that John was shut up in prison.  And the first thought which suggests itself is, that a magnificent career is cut short too soon.  At the very outset of ripe and experienced manhood the whole thing ends in failure.  John’s day of active usefulness is over; at thirty years of age his work is done; and what permanent effect have all his labours left?  The crowds that listened to his voice, awed into silence by Jordan’s side, we hear of them no more.  Herod heard John gladly, did much good by reason of his influence.  What was all that worth?  The prophet comes to himself in a dungeon, and wakes to the bitter conviction, that his influence had told