THE TWELVE EPHESIANS.

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own as the only Christian 'sacrament.' With this in view, the Council of Trent decreed: If any one shall say that the baptism of John had the same efficacy as the baptism of Christ, let him be anathema.' On the other hand, Protestants generally, at the Reformation, held that they were essentially the same, for the Apostle does not raise the question concerning the baptism of these twelve' with reference to their admission into Christianity; like Apollos, they were Christians already. Paul addresses them as having believed,' and Luke calls them 'disciples; nor were they seeking fellowship with Christians when the Apostle met them; they were already numbered amongst Christians. Liddon says: They must have acknowledged a certain relation to Jesus Christ as their Master, or the name disciple" would not have been given them, Jesus was in some sense their Master; they were his disciples.' Paul's question related to their reception of the miraculous gifts of the Spirit when they exercised faith on Christ, and they limited their answer accordingly: We did not so much as hear whether the Holy Spirit was.' Not that they were ignorant of the Spirit's existence. This cannot be the meaning, since the personality and office of the Holy Spirit, in connection with Christ, formed an essential subject of the Baptist's teachings. Literally: 'We did not even hear whether the Holy Spirit was' [given], that is, at the time of their baptism. Calvin says:

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'It is not probable that Jews, though they had never been baptized at all, would have been destitute of all knowledge of the Holy Spirit, who is celebrated in so many testimonies of Scripture. . . . I grant that the baptism they had received. was the true baptism of John, and the very same with the baptism of Christ, but I deny that they were baptized again. . . . If ignorance vitiate a first baptism, so that it requires to be corrected by a second, the first persons who ought to have been rebaptized were the Apostles themselves, who, for three years after their baptism, had scarcely any knowledge of the least particle of pure doctrine; and among us, what views would be sufficient for the repetition of ablutions as numerous as the errors which are daily corrected in us by the mercy of the Lord.''

This great divine presses his point more strongly still in his Commentary on Acts xix:

'Paul doth not speak in this place of the Spirit of regeneration, but of the special gifts which God gave to others at the beginning of the Gospel. Because the men of old had conceived an opinion that the baptisin of John and of Christ were diverse, it was no inconvenient thing for them to be baptized again, who were only prepared with the baptism of John. But that diversity was falsely and wickedly believed, it appeareth by this, in that it was a pledge and token of the same adoption, and of the same newness of life which we have at this day in our baptism, and therefore we do not read that Christ did baptize those again who came from John unto him. Moreover, Christ received baptism in his own flesh, that he might couple himself with us, by that visible sign (Matt. iii, 15). But if that feigned diversity be admitted, this singular benefit shall fall away and perish, that baptism is common to the Son of God and to us, or that we have all one baptism with him. But this opinion needeth no long confutation; because to the end they may parade that these two baptisms be diverse, they must needs show first wherein the one differeth from the other; but the most excellent likelihood answer

eth to both parts, and also the agreement and conformity of the parts, which causeth us to confess that it is all one baptism. . . . Now the question is, whether it were lawful to repeat the same, and furious men in this our age trusting to this testimony, went about to bring in baptizing again. I deny that the baptism of water was repeated, because the words of Luke import no such thing, save only that they were baptized with the Spirit. ... And whereas it followeth immediately that when he had laid his hands upon them, the Spirit came, I take it to be added by way of interpretation.'

Then, as in all other cases where baptism in the Spirit occurred, 'they spoke with tongues,' a 'sign' which few believers received; it does not appear that even Apollos possessed this distinction. The same free Spirit which had converted and kept them now bestowed miraculous gifts upon them.

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In this transaction Paul did not raise the question of the validity of John's baptism; why should he, more than with his fellow-Apostles themselves? With him the vital point covered only the endowment of the Ephesian believers with miraculous gifts. The question of conversion to Christ is not raised in the narrative; but as these gifts sometimes preceded baptism and sometimes followed it, Paul simply asked whether or not they received them when they believed.' Dr. Brown sums up the cases of Apollos and these twelve thus: 'There is no evidence to show that our Lord caused those disciples of John, who came over to him, to be rebaptized; and from John iv, 1, 2, we naturally conclude that they were not. Indeed, had those who first followed Jesus from among the Baptist's disciples required to be rebaptized, the Saviour must have performed the ceremony himself, and such a thing could not fail to be recorded; whereas the reverse is intimated in the passage just quoted.' Hence, it follows that these Ephesians needed not a new water baptisin any more than the twelve Apostles. And it is remarkable that in Peter's statement of qualifications needed in the candidate who should fill the place of Judas, was this, namely, that he should have companied with them from the time of John's baptism to Christ's ascension. His intimacy with John and Jesus from the 'beginning' made him eligible. They then made prayer to Jesus the great Heart-Knower to determine who it should be, and he appointed Matthias. But not a word is said about his need of rebaptism either before or after Pentecost, in order to a valid filling of the Apostleship with the eleven. Matthias, Apollos, and the twelve at Ephesus, seem to have held much the same relation both to John and Christ. It seems impossible to determine whether these 'twelve' were rebaptized Calvin best expresses the writer's idea, but such high Baptist authority as Drs. Hackett and Hovey take the opposite view. If they were rebaptized, the reason is not found in any defect in John's baptism as Christian, but in their personal want of the full qualifications for receiving baptism. Dr. Hackett puts this view of the case in these strong words: "Their prompt reception of the truth would tend to show that the defect in their former baptism related not so much to their positive error as to their ignorance in regard to the proper object of faith.' Such igno

or not.

JOHN THE TYPICAL BAPTIST.

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rance, however, did not obtain in the cases of the Apostles chosen by Christ, of Matthias (Acts i, 22), nor of Apollos, who received baptism from the same source, and were not rebaptized, their examples showing that baptism before and after Pentecost differs only as noon differs from morning.

In this sketch of John, harbinger, preacher, theologian and martyr, next to his Master, we find the great typical Baptist of all ages. It is more than a blunder to place him on the banks of the Jordan, with his face toward Sinai and Egypt, as a perfect personification of the Mosaic age. His face was turned toward Tabor, Calvary, Olivet, and the New Jerusalem, as, next to his Master, the embodiment of the New Testament. John and Jesus looked only forward, eye to eye. His ministry glided into that of Christ, as a mountain tarn soon loses itself in the deep sea. Frederick Robertson, with his usual scope and beauty, says:

'He left behind him no sect to which he had given his name, but his disciples passed into the service of Christ, and were absorbed in the Christian Church. Words from John had made impressions, and men forgot in after years where the impression first came from; but the day of judgment will not forget. John laid the foundations of a temple and others built upon it. He laid it in a struggle, in martyrdom. It was covered up with the rough masonry below ground; but when we look round on the vast Christian Church, we are looking at the superstructure of John's toil.' 8

never.

That is narrow and pitiable cant which makes him the mere incarnation of his age. Was he such an embodiment of surface life? The New Testament says that he resisted his age, reformed his age, and overturned its old things that all things might become new. Could the worst age of Judaism produce the holiest man in the Gospels? Yes, as much as the densest darkness can create a quenchless light. The later Judaism produced scribes, Pharisees, hypocrites, but John the Baptist He was sent of God to his age, and gave it much, but borrowed nothing. He interpreted it, and tried to save it, and it slaughtered him in recompense. No man in the Bible brought so many new truths from God, truths virgin to the soul of man, and which still stir the best spirits on earth with their freshness. The sure and certain sound which echoes through all lands to-day, as loudly as ever, was his first trumpet-call. His personal piety opens to us his inner life. Tertullian thinks that he brought in a new method of prayer, which led the Apostles to say: 'Lord, teach us to pray, as also John taught his disciples.' Whence came that model prayer: 'Our Father,' etc. Far from being the nondescript which narrow modern interpretation makes him, he was the leader in the great moral upheaval which first demanded personal loyalty to Christ. Pointing out salvation, not by hereditary institutions, or by birds and beasts, he demanded a radical revolution, by the establishment of a new kingdom: 'Not of birth, or of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.'

The Baptist was not a book, but a voice; not a functionary of the old age, nor yet a representative of the Law and the Prophets. They represented themselves.

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'A BURNING AND SHINING LAMP.

As a voice, he was living, strong, clear; and 'Jesus' was the 'Word' that he spoke with all his might. So well did he preach Jesus, that his Lord's lips pronounced him 'A burning and shining lamp,' words which he uttered of none other. So luminously did he preach Christ, that, like a lamp, he threw light on his theme. So fervently did he preach him that his ministry burnt with the pungency of a flame. Repent, obey the living King,' he cried, and when God gave his hearers repentance unto life, he immersed their bodies in the Jordan. He focused sin as it appears in the New Testament, in all its odiousness; and in this respect, Jesus had closer affinity with him than with any of his Apostles. And that embassador of Christ in our times, who has the most of John's courage, love for Christ and zeal in pushing the great truths which he preached, does the best service in his Master's work. Such a man is a 'scribe, well instructed in the kingdom of God,' a true antitype of Christ's greatest witness.

Like John, Baptists have found through long centuries, that when they have dared to enforce the whole truth as it is in Jesus, they have commonly sealed their own death-warrants. The first Baptist of his race is not the only man of that race whose fidelity has invoked murder in cold blood. More heads of that household than his have gasped on a lordly dish, things of beauty for crowned heads and delicate princesses to gloat their eyes upon. Standing at the head of the noble army of Baptist martyrs, his tragic fidelity to God has been the standing sign of their own end. No story in history is so sad as his, and none so paints criminal splendor and saered bravery in their true colors. John sets forth the sterling mission of true Baptists in sterling ideal. He was Jehovah's royal minister and man's hated culprit. Needed not the world a 'kind of first-fruits' in God's messengers for its ferocity, and who could meet the need so well as John? In ante-Gospel times the Lord enrolled a long array of brilliant names in his book of remembrance, and these were his jewels. But in the Lamb's book of life, John heads his list of martyr names. Did the Lamb himself refer to this record, and couple these names with his own slaughter, when he said of John: They knew him not, but did to him whatever they would. So also is the Son of Man about to suffer.' John's sun has long since set in Palestine, but his glory lays upon the world from its Dan to its Beersheba. The people could not forget him when his frame moldered under the turf, Jesus could not forget him, his Apostles could not forget him; he lived in their thoughts, a palpable entity. Jesus asked the twelve: 'Whom do men say that I am?' They answered: John the Baptist.' No apostle of Christ ever met with a eulogy like that. So Christlike was he as to be taken for the Son of God himself, by the very people who knew them both. And all this was when the God-man addressed them daily, and the headless body of the Baptist rested in the soil which they trod. Such honor have not all his saints.'

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CHAPTER V.

THE KING IN ZION.-LAWS OF THE NEW KINGDOM.

ENEVA, like Jerusalem, is encircled with mountains, Alp rising on Alp.

There is the stretch of the mighty Jura, and towering above all, solemn Mont Blanc. He looks down from azure heights in a purity of awe which breathes the spirit of eternity on all below. Yet his summits and battlements of alabaster are so dwarfed by distance, that several princes of his court are easily mistaken for the king himself. Still the practiced eye cannot be misled. When once the sun kisses his brow and steals down his visage, a pink tint warms him into the radiance of life; then, like an archangel asleep, a smile plays on his face, and each courtier around his chair of state catches the glow of his beatitude. So, when we look back to the blue sky on which the Rock of Ages outlined himself, encompassed with Evangelists and Apostles, we may readily rob Jesus of his majesty and put the Baptist, or Peter, or Paul on the monarch's throne. But when the sunlight of God's glory floods the Sacred Head, at once the man of Tabor looms up, the Sovereign of the group. Then, once more, Joseph's eleven' sheaves and 'thirteen' celestial orbs arise and bow to him who is King of kings.

The Baptist put the diadem on the rightful brow, for when the people saw Christ's glory they said: All things that John spake of this man were true.' His career glided into the public ministry of Jesus, not making the one the fortuitous after-execution of the other, but as a part of one grand design—a far-sighted method of God's eternal love, for a strange unity covers their history. Their ministries are two voices attuned to one strain, and their key-note is 'the kingdom of God.' Jesus took up the theme where John dropped it, and in a more joyful key. He gave the exact burden of John to his Apostles in their Judean mission: As ye go preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Here is a progressive and Godlike unfolding of the same doctrine, the good news of Christ's reign upon the earth. Kingship here is not a celestial institution, but a moral sovereignty over all earthly institutions, the establishment of a spiritual empire on the earth. Bengel forcibly groups the events from Christ's Baptism to his Ascension, in his treatment of the favorite word Gospel in Mark: The beginning of the Gospel is in the Baptist, the Gospel in the whole book,' to the Great Commission. The Apostles passed the mutilated body of John stretched on the threshold of Christianity, when sent on their errand of struggle and victory; and they were inspired to endurance by the fall of the strong, pure, young martyr. Jesus lifted up the standard of Jehovah.