BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 1. SERMONS on the Relative Duties of the Poor. 12mo. 4s. in boards. 2. THE LAYMAN'S TEST of the True Minister of the Church of England. 2s. 6d. in boards. 3. PRESENT NATIONAL DELUSIONS, upon Wisdom, Power, and Riches; considered in a Sermon, preached before the Sparkenhoe District Committees of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, &c. &c. Price 1s. Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist; notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. THE character of John the Baptist is at once striking and instructive. In contemplating it we seem to be regarding a person, elevated very far above the race of beings that surround us. And that not without reason; for he was sent expressly on one of the most important emergencies, in which Heaven has employed the agency of man. There is in him a wonderful mixture of truth, purity, and grandeur, which excites in us a corresponding degree of awful veneration. We appear to behold him fresh, as B it were, from the desert, and unpractised in the arts and dissembling of the world his passions and appetites mortified and subdued; his features and expression of countenance serious and dignified, from long years of solitude in the wilderness, and of undisturbed spiritual commerce with Heaven; his sense of the corruption and depravity, by which he was surrounded, painfully acute; and his holy zeal and earnestness giving peculiar energy to every word that fell from his lips. To such a man, the pride of dress, or of any adventitious pomp, was utterly unsuited, if not contemptible. His sanctity, his authoritative and solemn manner, his unearthly looks and injunctions, threw a mysterious kind of majesty over his " rough cloak of camel's hair, bound round with a leathern girdle." The mission upon which he was sent, the prophetic office, and the baptism of his Saviour, required, indeed, extraordinary holiness, and a thoroughly disciplined heart and affections, while they must have raised his demeanour above that of any common mortal. Accordingly we find the whole early history of this man distinguished by very peculiar, and even miraculous circumstances. His mother's conception was a miracle; and even before his birth, he gave a supernatural attestation of the presence of his yet unborn |