The advent of our Lord differed from that of other enlighteners of mankind in one very striking way. He had, in the Baptist, a special forerunner, who gave out, on all occasions, that the final cause of his own preaching was to prepare the way for one greater than himself. Events of national history, themselves part of that wide-spreading “Preparatio Evangelica” which, to my mind, underlies the history of the world, had raised a ferment in the minds of the inhabitants of Palestine. To this movement the Baptist gave a particular turn. He brought men to desire that the world should become better, and taught them that they must begin by becoming better themselves. Without this preparation, the germs of truth which our Lord scattered would more largely have failed to quicken: the Baptist had broken up the soil to receive the seed; his preaching put the people in an attitude of expectancy, and an expectant condition is a receptive one. The Old Testament prophecies had worked to this same end; they had made expectancy congenial to the nation’s mind. The Israelites were like spectators waiting to see a great king come with a procession: the sight of a forerunner sets the crowd astir, and such a forerunner John was. I have observed before, that in carrying out His own work our Lord is careful to use _preparation_. The disciples are sent “to every place where He Himself would come.” Men were not to be repelled from the new movement by reason of its being strange to them. What this preparation did for the villages of Galilee the Baptist did on a grander scale for all Judæa. We get but a glimpse of the nature of the relation between John and his disciples, and need only notice it briefly. Young men did not, like those who sat at the feet of a Rabbi, resort to him for definite instruction: the disciples of John did not look to be taught interpretations of the Law or of the Prophets, but they looked for a rule of life for themselves and a brighter future for their country or their race—they were ill-satisfied with the present and eagerly turned to one who represented both in aspect and in utterance the prophets of old. There was one feature in John’s ministry, so distinctive that he drew his appellation from it.—He caused his disciples to be baptised. The doctrines implied in the rite do not now concern me; to some it symbolised the cleansing from sin, to others the rising into a new life; but the practical effect of it was to make those who received it feel that they had, in a way, pledged their allegiance to John by receiving baptism at his hands: they had assumed a badge, and were bound by ties of personal loyalty to their master and to one another.(81)