So far we have the testimony of John, originally addressed, it would appear, to his own disciples--now illustrated and expounded by the matured wisdom of one of them. Next we have the record of John, '_when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask Him, Who art thou_?' They had a right to know. A new pretender had started up. Slight as his credentials seemed to be, the people were crowding about him. He was baptizing, not Gentiles, but Jews; he was treating the most religious and exalted as if they were impure, as if they needed the same cleansing as those needed who had not been born in the covenant. What did it all mean? The messengers must get some clear distinct satisfaction on this point before they returned to their masters. '_And he confessed, and denied not, but confessed, I am not the Christ._' The questioners must have been surprised. If he did not actually claim a title which so many had claimed, they might have expected a little hesitation. He might have left the point open; he might have allowed his scholars to assert the dignity for him. There was another possibility. Malachi had said that an Elijah would come. John certainly had few marks of grandeur about him; but he dwelt in a desert; he did not fear the face of kings; he could have denounced Ahab and Jezebel, as he afterwards denounced Herod and Herodias. He evidently understood the question literally, for the messengers intended it literally. They supposed that Elijah had been carried away into some invisible region, and that from thence he himself would descend. Seeing, therefore, that John was not one who trafficked with words in a double sense, or who would convey a falsehood in the terms of truth, he answered to this demand also, '_I am not_.' But Isaiah, Jeremiah, all the Jewish seers, had not only spoken of a great Conqueror,--they had spoken also of a Sufferer. A few might try to identify the characters. The prevailing opinion among the Jews was of course then, as it is now, that they were separated,--one description denoted a King, the other a Prophet. If he was not a King, was he that Prophet? And again he answered, '_No_.'