The messengers have exhausted their guesses; they begin to be provoked. It will not do to go back merely with a set of negatives. '_Then said they, Who art thou? that we may give an answer to them that sent us: What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Esaias._' You see how carefully he associates his message with that of the old prophets; how confident he is that he is preparing a way just as they were; how sure he is that it is the way of the Lord--that wonderful road between the unseen Being and the heart of His creatures, of which they had one and all spoken. So far he was using language which belongs to every psalmist and every prophet. In adopting the words in the 40th chapter of Isaiah, as the description of his calling and his work, he proved more distinctly that he was '_sent to bear_ _witness of the Light, that all men through Him might believe_.' For the burden of that chapter is, that Jerusalem should lift up her voice, and say to the cities of Judah, '_Behold your God_;' and it is the beginning of a series of prophetical inspirations, in which the Jew is represented as holding up the true image of God to all nations, that the images which they had made of Him might be confounded. John was preparing the way, then, for a declaration or manifestation of God; he was clearing away the thorns and briers which blocked up the path between the Word of God and the conscience of man.