viour's presence.

"And it came to pass, that,

when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost." The unborn babe in his mother's womb felt, and was glad at, the presence of his yet unborn Saviour.

From this we pass on to his birth and circumcision, upon which, when he had received his name John, (i. e. the grace or gift of the Lord,) God removed the dumbness of his father Zacharias, "and his mouth was opened immediately, and his tongue was loosed, and he spake, and praised God."

And here we may note, how that two of the divine hymns which the Church uses daily at Morning and Evening Prayer, were spoken at the first on occasion of St. John Baptist. One, the hymn of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which she spake, moved thereto by the Holy Ghost, when Elisabeth, full herself also of the Holy Ghost, pronounced her blessed. "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejciced in God my Saviour." And the other, the hymn of Zacharias, when, upon the name being given to his son, St. John Baptist, he too was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for He hath visited and redeemed His people. . . . And thou,

child, (and herein he is speaking of St. John Baptist, and of his office and ministry unto Christ,) shalt be called the prophet of the Highest, for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare His ways, to give knowledge of salvation unto His people, for the remission of their sins. ...

These miracles, as we read, moved men's minds, and caused them to give greater heed to the future life of the child, who had been thus born out of the course of nature. "And fear came on all that dwelt round about them: and all these sayings were noised abroad, throughout all the hill-country of Judæa. And all they that heard them, laid them up in their hearts, saying, What manner of child shall this be?"

Of the childhood of St. John Baptist, we have few and short notices, but they are all-important; they mark God's providential care over him, and his growth in grace: "The hand of the Lord was with him," "and the child grew, and waxed strong in (the) Spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his shewing unto Israel." As he had been filled with the Holy Ghost, in and from his mother's womb, so was his early life an outward preparation for the ministry unto which God had called and set him apart. He was to

be the forerunner of Christ, a preacher of repentance unto an evil and corrupt age; he was to rebuke sin as in God's name, from the sin of the king unto the sin of the lowest of the people; the hypocrisy of the Scribes and Pharisees; the violence of the soldiers; the unjust gain and extortion of the Publicans; and so he grew up and lived apart from men in the desert, a lonely and austere life; holding, it may be, closer communion with God, and guided and brought up, it may be, more entirely by His good Spirit, than in cities and dwellings of men. His was to be a severe and awful, as well as a joyful, message. He was indeed to herald his Saviour's coming, and to proclaim that the Kingdom of God was at hand; but the other part of his charge had in it a call to a hard and painful duty; his preaching was, "Repent ye," his baptism, a "baptism of repentance." And so God brought him up in the desert, in austere and self-denying ways, that so he might not shrink from his task, either for fear of man, or for worldly pleasure. Our Lord says of him, that he came "neither eating bread nor drinking wine.”

And, when he was about thirty years old, "the word of God came unto him in the wilderness;' and he began his ministry, "preaching in the

wilderness of Judæa, and saying, Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." "And the same John had his raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and his meat was locusts and wild honey." So that, even outwardly, his dress and manner was that of Elijah, of whom also we read, that "he was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins.'

And here we may observe, that, although St. John Baptist was, as we have read, "filled with the Holy Ghost even from his mother's womb," and even before his birth marked out for his high office by the angel Gabriel, yet many years, as many as thirty, passed away before the time of his ministry was fully come. He both waited

patiently until the word of God came to him in some divine way, and passed the time in a severe and retired life. Would we, when called by God to bear witness for Him by word or in life, do so faithfully and earnestly, as did St. John Baptist, we must be content, with him, to bide God's time, and day by day, and year by year, through His grace, to form within ourselves true and right tempers and dispositions; to exercise ourselves in acts of obedience, self-denial, and retirement; that so, unto whatever task God may call us by

His providence, we may be found ready and faithful. True-hearted obedience, such as God requires, uniform and consistent conduct, especially under trials such as our relations and circumstances bring with them, is not of to-day or yesterday's growth, is not the result of strong and passing feelings, but is the slow but certain fruit of patient continuance in well-doing, the growth of many years, the result, it may be, of many struggles; even the very chiefest of God's saints, (St. John Baptist, the forerunner of His Son; St. Paul, His chosen vessel to bear His name to the Gentiles,) even they, upon whom rested the very chiefest gifts of God's Holy Spirit, required time, and discipline, and retirement, before they were fully meet for the work unto which God purposed them.

It now remains to speak of his ministry and of his death.

Thus, then, we read in St. Luke's Gospel: "The word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness, and he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. As it is written in the book of the words of Esaias the prophet, saying, The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord,