He awed men by the fire when He made flame to burst from the pillar of cloud--a token at once of grace and fear: if you obey, there is the light; if you disobey, there is the fire; but, since humanity is nobler than the pillar or the bush, after them the prophets uttered their voice,--the Lord Himself speaking in Isaiah, in Elias,--speaking Himself by the mouth of the prophets. But if thou dost not believe the prophets, but supposest both the men and the fire a myth, the Lord Himself shall speak to thee, “who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but humbled Himself,”[19]--He, the merciful God, exerting Himself to save man. And now the Word Himself clearly speaks to thee, shaming thy unbelief; yea, I say, the Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God. Is it not then monstrous, my friends, that while God is ceaselessly exhorting us to virtue, we should spurn His kindness and reject salvation? Does not John also invite to salvation, and is he not entirely a voice of exhortation? Let us then ask him, “Who of men art thou, and whence?” He will not say Elias. He will deny that he is Christ, but will profess himself to be “a voice crying in the wilderness.” Who, then, is John?[20] In a word, we may say, “The beseeching voice of the Word crying in the wilderness.” What criest thou, O voice? Tell us also. “Make straight the paths of the Lord.”[21] John is the forerunner, and that voice the precursor of the Word; an inviting voice, preparing for salvation,--a voice urging men on to the inheritance of the heavens, and through which the barren and the desolate is childless no more. This fecundity the angel’s voice foretold; and this voice was also the precursor of the Lord preaching glad tidings to the barren woman, as John did to the wilderness. By reason of this voice of the Word, therefore, the barren woman bears children, and the desert becomes fruitful. The two voices which heralded the Lord’s--that of the angel and that of John--intimate, as I think, the salvation in store for us to be, that on the appearance of this Word we should reap, as the fruit of this productiveness, eternal life. The Scripture makes all this clear, by referring both the voices to the same thing: “Let her hear who has not brought forth, and let her who has not had the pangs of childbirth utter her voice: for more are the children of the desolate, than of her who hath an husband.”[22]