5. Then went out to him Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, 6. And were baptized of him in Jordan, confessing their sins. Summer of A.D. 26. WILDERNESS Honey in Palestine. AND WILD HONEY; 'For honey, so far I know, no country in the world, unless it be Greece, can rival the hilly parts of Syria; and the wild bees, of the same species as those which are hived, find secure shelter for any number of swarms in the innumerable fissures and clefts of the limestone rock which everywhere flank the valley. The flora of Palestine is preeminently rich in honey-producing plants. The crocuses, which in January carpet the ground, are followed by an uninterrupted succession of anemones, ranunculuses, thymes, salvias, borages, and other bee-feeding blossoms throughout the greater part of the year. Many Arabs, particularly in the wilderness of Judea, obtain their subsistence by bee-hunting, bringing into Jerusalem jars of that wild honey on which John the Baptist fed in the wilderness, and which Jonathan had, long before, unwillingly tasted when the honeycomb had dropped on the ground from the hollow tree in which it was suspended. As one sees the busy multitudes of bees on the rocky hillsides, even to-day, we recall the promise, 'With honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee.' Besides these wild bees, every house in the village possesses its piled beehives, very different from our own. They are simply large tubes of sun-dried mud, about nine inches in diameter and four feet long, closed with mud at each end, with a small aperture in the centre, too small to admit mice or lizards or any other enemies to the inhabitants. These tubes are laid in rows horizontally and piled in a pyramid. I counted one of these colonies, consisting of seventy-eight tubes, each a distinct hive." -Geikie, in Sunday-School Times. 6. BAPTIZED OF HIM.-On every great question the influential workers take an open and decisive stand. Everybody knows on which side they stand. Men do not enlist in a war secretly, as if ashamed of their colors. Their banners, their uniform, their associations, all declare where they stand. None are so weak and useless as those who sit on the fence. Those on the border between two warring countries suffer most of all. 7. ¶ But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? CONFESSING THEIR SINS.-One day during the war, a soldier in one of the forts around Washington was singing that sweet hymn: “I was a wandering sheep, I was a Wandering Sheep. I did not love the fold, I did not love my Father's voice, I would not be controlled." Sergeant Langdale (of whom an officer bore this testimony to me, that he was the best Christian in the army), hearing him, said, "Friend, sing it in the present tense." And he sang : "I am a wandering sheep, I do not love the fold, I do not love my Father's voice, I will not be controlled." It was the truth, and it made a deep impression. SIN MORE THAN A LOSING GAME.-" Confession of sin is not a mere abandonment of sin as a losing game. That was a shrewd, but not very flattering estimate, found on record in the private thoughts of an old divine: 'I believe,' he says, 'that it will be shown that the repentance of most men is not so much sorrow for sin as sin, or real hatred of it, as sullen sorrow that they are not allowed to sin.'” -C. S. Robinson. 7. GENERATION OF VIPERS.-Progeny, brood of vipers. "The most venomous and dangerous of the many poisonous snakes of Syria. It is of small size, gives no warning rattle, and closely resembles the gray rocks where it lives. It darts upon its victim unwares. This treacherous habit of the viper, and the deadly poison of its bite gave point to the comparison."-Dr. E. W. Rice. "In all the waste places of the East, among the jagged rocks, on the sands, and especially among the ruins of old inhabited places, among the thorns that grow over the stones, the asp and the adder are to be looked out for. A place infested with adders is as deadly and dangerous as can be, and as Serpents in the East. much shunned by the Orientals as any place can be. Many a ruin has to lie unexplored because the native workmen are afraid-and justly so-of the asps."-Prof. Isaac H. Hall, in Sunday-School Times. AFRICANS AND THE MIRROR. This was not denunciation, but warning. It was the cry of A.D. 26. WORK OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. JESUS AT NAZARETH. love. Its object was to keep them from suffering the wrath. The "vipers" were a mirror held up before them that they might realize what they really were. I once saw a father take his little boy, who was in a passion, and hold him up before a mirror so that he might see how distorted his face was. Dr. Livingstone came across tribes in the interior of Africa who had never seen a looking-glass, or any of its substitutes. One time, when some of them were looking at their own faces in his mirror, and seeing for the first time how they looked, he heard them exclaiming about themselves, “How ugly I look!" What a queer fellow!" "What a homely nose!" So we are astonished when we see our hearts for the first time in the mirror of God's law, and in the light of his Holy Spirit. REFERENCE. See under xxvi. 75. 66 FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME.-The first need of a soul and of the nation is a deep sense of sin and guilt, and of danger flowing from them, with also a way and a hope of a better life. A Study of Fear, not terror, or acute fright, is essential to every soul, and is universal. It may be in its subtle forms, as fear of God, fear of failure, of dishonor, but every one does fear, and should fear. "We fear God better because we have feared thunder." "Aristotle's conception of education as learning to fear in due Fears. proportion those things worthy of being feared, would not serve badly as a definition also of courage." Fear is the rudimentary organ on the full development and subsequent reduction of which many of the best things in the soul are dependent." "A childhood too happy and careless and fearless is a calamity so great that prayer against it might stand in the old English service book beside the petition that our children be not poltroons." Bad, and even dangerous as its grosser forms are, there is no possible way 8. Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: 9. And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. 10. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees; therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. of developing the higher without them."-Pres. G. Stanley Hall, in A Study of Fears, pp. 242–244. WARNING.It is love that warns, and cruelty that fails to warn, and cries Peace, Peace, when there is no peace. It is said that when the great dam was breaking which brought such terrible disaster to Johnstown, Pa., a messenger was sent in great haste to warn the city of their danger, but that entering a saloon he became drunk, and failed to give the warning. And the disaster came. 8. REPENTANCE. See on iii. 2 and iv. 17. 9. ABRAHAM TO OUR FATHER. See on i. 7-17. OF THESE STONES TO RAISE UP CHILDREN.-Compare Mark Antony's speech in Julius Cæsar, "There were an Antony Would ruffle up your spirits, and put a tongue In the IO. THE AXE IS LAID UNTO THE ROOT OF THE TREES East with a significance which we hardly understand in the West. It is not merely because the tree cumbers the ground in a physical sense; for even shade-trees-trees of any sort-are greatly to be desired throughout the Holy Land. But the fruit-trees are all taxed; and if unfruitful they are a heavy incumbrance. If a tree bears no fruit, it brings its proprietor in debt, and that to the most merciless of creditors, a tax-farmer. Some four years ago, when the taxes were heavy and the olive product light, multitudes of olive-trees were cut down on the spurs of Lebanon. It was cutting off the owners' means of support in the Axe at Root of Trees. II. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. A.D. 26. WORK OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. JESUS AT NAZARETH. future; but that was still in the future, and uncertain. In the immediate present, all the proprietor could see was cruelty, oppression, and taxes. Future starvation was not a heavier burden than present hunger with debt as a load above it."-Sunday-School Times. The Jewish church was this tree. The axe was laid at its root The forces were already in operation which led to the destruction of the Jewish nation forty-four years later. LIBRARY.-Josephus' "Jewish Wars," and Charlotte Elizabeth's "Judea Capta," give vivid pictures of these times, and show how their own bad life was ruining the nation, and repentance would have saved it. It was equally true of the individual. BRINGETH Not forth GOOD FRUIT IS HEWN Down. THE GRAFTED APPLE-TREE.-"Some years ago, an apple-tree growing quite near my door produced such small, mean fruit, that my wife, one day, declared it utterly worthless, and advised me to cut it down. So, getting my axe, I prepared to strike a heavy blow, when swift as lightning through my brain came this thought, 'Let it stand, and graft into its worthless trunk a scion from some tree which bears good fruit.' 'I will,' I said, and carrying back my axe, returned with grafting-wax and a shoot, which I soon had firmly grafted into the useless tree. And, my friends, after a few seasons, that same tree bears the largest, fairest fruit that grows upon my farm to-day; and all because of that little shoot from the better tree, which, infusing its life and qualities into the old trunk, brought its fruit up to a higher standard.”—Anon. The Jews, as a nation, were not willing to receive the scion that would have saved them. II. BAPTIZE YOU WITH THE HOLY GHOST.-The Holy Spirit had been working in the hearts of men before this time. The chief difference between then and now lay in the abundance and power |