them, not into an uninhabited land, but into the very presence of God? For was not this burden, after all, a sense of separation from a Being to whom they ought to be united, apart from whom they could not live? Had not the light which had come from Him into their hearts brought this discovery with it? The scapegoat contained, no doubt, a deep lesson to those who pondered it well; but it was not _this_ lesson--it was not one which those could take in who were feeling sin as an inward torment pressing upon their hearts. The Paschal _Lamb_ spoke of a deliverance from bondage; it spoke of a deliverance as coming from God; it spoke of an offering to God. The thoughts which the name suggested might not be distinct; they might be hard to reconcile with each other. But the cravings which it met, though importunate, were also apparently contradictory. It awakened hopes; the satisfaction of them might come hereafter. But if John had merely spoken of an animal, let it have what associations with Jewish or with human feeling it might--let it be the aptest symbol in the world--the impression upon disciples who had been stirred in the inmost depths of their souls as his had been, would have been a very faint one. It was because he pointed to an actual Man, and said of Him, '_Behold the Lamb of God_,' that he spoke with power. Those who were suffering from a burden might desire to cast it upon God, might doubt if any one but He could sustain it. But who could understand their grief, who could feel its pressure, except a Man? All their sympathies and wishes pointed to a Man. Yet hitherto John had discoursed of a Light and of a Word. To that message their hearts had replied. It was that which had effected all the change within them. Was he now altering the tone of his preaching? Was he beginning to tell them of some one of whom they had not heard before? He removes that suspicion at once. The old sentence recurs again, but with a variation: '_This is He of whom I said, After me cometh a_ MAN _which is preferred before me; for He was before me_.' He goes on: '_And I knew Him not_.' This assurance jars with some of the thoughts which pictures that are dear to us have awakened in our minds. We can hardly separate the infant Christ from the infant Baptist. We feel as if the reverence expressed in the words, '_His shoe's latchet I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose_,' had begun in the earliest years of their sojourn upon earth, and had been maturing ever since. I rather fancy we weaken the effect which we might derive from the artist's symbols, by endeavouring to give them an historical value to which they can certainly make no pretension. It is not that these pictorial traditions are based upon passages in the other Evangelists, and that they are only at variance with St. John. St. Luke speaks of Jesus as being taken by His parents into Galilee after His circumcision. He speaks of John being in the deserts until the day of his showing to Israel. St.