Many things doubtless there are to be given up—­amusements that are dangerous, society that is questionable.  What we give up, let us give up, not from quick feeling, but from principle.  Enthusiasm is a lovely thing, but let us be calm in what we do.  In that solemn, grand thing—­Christian life—­one step backward is religious death.

Once more we get from this subject the doctrine of a resurrection.  John’s life was hardness, his end was agony.  That is frequently Christian life.  Therefore, says the apostle, if there be no resurrection the Christian’s choice is wrong; “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then are we of all men most miserable.”  Christian life is not visible success—­very often it is the apparent opposite of success.  It is the resurrection of Christ working itself out in us; but it is very often the Cross of Christ imprinting itself on us very sharply.  The highest prize which God has to give here is martyrdom.  The highest style of life is the Baptist’s—­heroic, enduring, manly love.  The noblest coronet which any son of man can wear is a crown of thorns.  Christian, this is not your rest.  Be content to feel that this world is not your home.  Homeless upon earth, try more and more to make your home in heaven, above with Christ.

Lastly we have to learn from this, that devotedness to Christ is our only blessedness.  It is surely a strange thing to see the way in which men crowded round the austere prophet, all saying, “Guide us, we cannot guide ourselves.”  Publicans, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herod, whenever John appears, all bend before him, offering him homage and leadership.  How do we account for this?  The truth is, the spirit of man groans beneath the weight of its own freedom.  When a man has no guide, no master but himself, he is miserable; we want guidance, and if we find a man nobler, wiser than ourselves, it is almost our instinct to prostrate our affections before that man, as the crowds did by Jordan, and say, “Be my example, my guide, my soul’s sovereign.”  That passionate need of worship—­hero-worship it has been called—­is a primal, universal instinct of the heart.  Christ is the answer to it.  Men will not do; we try to find men to reverence thoroughly, and we cannot do it.  We go through life, finding guides, rejecting them one after another, expecting nobleness and finding meanness; and we turn away with a recoil of disappointment.

There is no disappointment in Christ.  Christ can be our souls’ sovereign.  Christ can be our guide.  Christ can absorb all the admiration which our hearts long to give.  We want to worship men.  These Jews wanted to worship man.  They were right—­man is the rightful object of our worship; but in the roll of ages there has been but one man whom we can adore without idolatry,—­the Man Christ Jesus.

THE END.