Matthew interposes the flight into Egypt between our Lord's nativity and His dwelling at Nazareth. Both surely favour, rather than contradict, the strictest interpretation of the saying, '_I knew Him not_.' I do not say that we are absolutely obliged to adopt that strictest interpretation. But we are, I conceive, obliged to conclude that no external acquaintance or relationship had the least effect upon John's knowledge of Jesus, in that character in which He was revealed to him at His baptism. The Apostle is evidently very anxious to impress us with _this_ conviction. Few as are the words of his old Master which he reports, these are emphatically repeated. It belongs, I think, to the very design of this Gospel, to show us that John came to testify, first, of the Light of the world, then of that Light as manifested. '_That He should be manifested to Israel_,' he says in the next verse, '_therefore am I come baptizing with water_.' That He might be revealed as what He is; that through His flesh the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father might shine forth; that the inward eye of men might be purged to behold Him in His true character and in His true relation to them,--this has been the end of my preaching, and of the outward rite that accompanied it. '_And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon Him. And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on Him, the same is He which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God._' That there should be an outward sign visible to the eye, a Dove lighting upon the head of a Man,--that there should be a Voice speaking to Him,--this is a great scandal to many readers and critics in our day. 'Are not these,' they say, 'the ordinary tokens of mythical narratives? Are they not what always awaken our suspicion in the records of the Old World or of the Middle Ages?' Yes, brethren, in the Old World and in the Middle Ages, men alike felt the need of outward signs to testify of inward realities. They felt it because they _were_ men, separated from each other by place, by customs, by language, by religion,--but alike in being men; alike in their conviction that there must be an outward world which they could see, and an inward world which they could not see. It is equally true that in the Old World and in the Middle Ages, the sensible thing was confounded with the spiritual, the sign was substituted for the thing signified; and that hence arose all kinds of superstition and idolatry. It is true, also, that in those days and in later days--in _these_ days most especially--people create for themselves a middle world, neither sensible nor spiritual, in which there are no signs, because there is nothing to be signified; in which there are only forms and abstractions of the intellect, some of which