St. John significantly intimates how little language of this kind could be intelligible to the Jewish emissaries, for he adds, '_They that were sent were of the Pharisees_.' Very characteristically they relieved themselves of the embarrassment which the Scripture always caused them, when it could not be measured by lines and rules, when it appealed to the hearts of living men, by asking, '_Why baptizest thou, then, if thou art not the Christ, neither Elias, neither that Prophet_?' They had an excuse for urging that demand. It was an audacious thing for a man to practise such a rite, to press it upon all, to speak of it as a baptism for repentance and the sending away of sins, if he had not some divine authority for what he was doing. Yet he had produced none. And now he refused all the titles which would seem to have been the warrants for such an innovation. Nor does he tell the Pharisees when or how he received his commission. His answer is, '_I baptize with water: but in the midst of you there standeth One whom ye know not; He it is who, coming after me, was preferred before me, whose shoe's latchet I am not worthy that I should unloose_.' More is not said here. The messengers are not told what this Person who is in the midst of them would do, which John could not do; that announcement is reserved for another occasion. The thought which he still dwells upon is, that there is a mysterious Being in the midst of them, their Lord and his; One who has power to command, One whom he is bound to obey. By speaking of the latchet of the sandal, he clearly intimates that this Person is among them in a visible form. But neither in that form, nor in His own proper nature, do they know Him. They would know Him as little if they were told His name, if He stood out before them, even if He exhibited His power to them, as they did then. I am warranted in believing that _this_ is the sense of the words; for we shall find how continually our Lord resorts to the same phrase in His conversations with the Jews, and assures them that though they saw Him, they _knew_ Him not. We have now reached the words of the text. They are carefully separated by the Evangelist from the discourse with the Pharisees. '_These things_,' he says, '_were done, in Bethabara, beyond Jordan, where John was baptizing_. _The next day John seeth Jesus coming to him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world._' But though the sentence formed no part of that discourse, it is immediately joined to the words which have recurred so often: '_This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a Man which is preferred before me; for He was before me._'