These disciples who took up the Baptist's disfigured body after spite and contempt and hate had done their worst on it, who paid their last tribute of reverence and respect amid the scoffs of a jeering world, were men--men of deep emotions and keen feelings; and probably at that moment every capability of feeling they had was fully aroused. It appears from the first chapter of John, that he and others were originally the disciples of the Baptist during the days of his first powerful ministry, and had been by him pointed to Jesus. We see in other places that the Apostle John had an intense power of indignation, and was of that nature that longed to grasp the thunderbolts when he saw injustice. It was John that wanted to bring down fire from heaven on the village that refused to shelter Christ, and can we doubt that his whole soul was moved with the most fiery indignation at wrong and cruelty like this? For Christ himself had said of the martyr thus sacrificed: "Among those that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist." He had done a great work; he had swayed the hearts of all his countrymen; he had been the instrument of the most powerful revival of religion known in his times. There had been a time when his name was in every mouth; when all Jerusalem and Judæa, and beyond Jordan, thronged to his ministry--even the Scribes and Pharisees joining the multitude. And now what an end of so noble a man! Seized and imprisoned at the behest of an adulterous woman whose sin he had rebuked, shut up in prison, his ministry ended, all his power for good taken away, and finally finishing his life under circumstances which mark more than any other could the contempt and indifference which the great gay world of his day had for goodness and greatness! The head of a national benefactor, of a man who had lived for God and man wholly and devotedly from his birth, was used as a football, made the subject of a court jest between the courtesan and the prince. Oh that it had pleased God to give us the particulars of that interview when the disciples, burning, struggling under pressure of that cruel indignity, came and told Jesus! Can we imagine with what burning words John told of the scorn, the contempt, the barbarity with which the greatest man of his time had been hurried to a bloody grave? Were there not doubts--wonderings? Why did God permit it? Why was not a miracle wrought, if need were, to save him? And what did Jesus say to them? Oh that we knew! We would lay it up in our hearts, to be used when in our lesser sphere we see things going in the course of this world as if God were not heeding. Of one thing we may be sure. Jesus made them quiet; he calmed and rested them.