: were white like wool, as white as snow," (Rev. i. 14,) he singularly enough sees in this whiteness of Christ's hair, the hoary head of old age; an outward expression of the inward fact, that He whom the seer beheld was the Ancient of Days."* This every one, I think, at once feels cannot have been the meaning of St. John; and a little reflection justifies the instinctive dissent from such an explanation for the blanching of the hair being one of the signs and consequences of life receding before death, of commencing weakness and decay, it is impossible that the hair "white as snow" could in this sense have been attributed to the ever-living and ever-strong. Rather the "white" here is to be explained, as in all the divine apparitions in which it is mentioned,† by the fact that all brightness in its utmost excess attains to be absolutely white: iron ends with being white hot. The hair "white like wool, as white as snow," is here another trait of the intolerable brightness, which from head to foot was the Lord's. Even in little details in which one might suppose his exegetical tact would certainly have way, he sometimes misses his point. shown him the right Thus, in one place, he suggests a reason why the Lord should have promised * Exp. in Gal. 4. 21: Dominus non nisi ob antiquitatem Veritatis in Apocalypsi albo capite apparuit. Matt. xvii. 2; xxviii. 3; Mark ix. 3; xvi. 5; Luke ix. 29; cf. Luke xxiv. 4 with John xx. 12. The Opóvos λevróg, Rev. xx. 11, is= θρόνος δόξης, Matt. xxv. 31 ; the νεφέλη λευκή, Rev. xiv. 14 = νεφέλη pwrɛivý, Matt. xvii. 5. And the connexion between Xɛukóg and luceo, nix and niteo, (contracted from niviteo,) is undoubted. a reward to one who should give even a cup of cold water to a disciple of his, (Matt. x. 42,) namely, that thus not even the poorest, not one so poor as to be unable to heat it, should be excluded from the power of showing this mercy, and inheriting this reward.* Writing under an African sky, he should have better interpreted these words; the "cold" is added to imply a certain zeal on the part of the offerer of this cup, which makes him careful to offer one of real refreshment; and this only the cold water, that which therefore had been freshly drawn, would be to the weary traveller. (Prov. xxv. 25; Jer. xviii. 14.) *Enarr. in Ps. cxxv. 5: Calicem aquæ frigidæ addidit, ne quis vel inde caussaretur, quod lignum non habuerit unde calefaceret aquam. CHAPTER VI. T would not be difficult, I think, to compose a com IT mentary, which should be both interesting and instructive, on the whole life of John the Baptist as recorded in Scripture, drawing the materials exclusively from the writings of St. Augustine, so abundant and so excellent would those materials be found. Such here, however, I cannot attempt, but must satisfy myself with rapidly touching on a few points in his life which Augustine has dwelt on with a peculiar love, or expounded with more than ordinary success; not forbearing, at the same time, to express my sense of one or two erroneous explanations into which I am persuaded he has fallen. Indeed, that which I first would note is an inaccuracy in respect of Zacharias, the father of the Baptist, of which, indeed, he is not the author, for we find it already in St. Ambrose, even as it maintained its ground during all the middle ages—I mean the making Zacharias to have been High Priest, which of course he was not, but only one of the ordinary priests. This error had its root in a misapprehension of Luke i. 9, where Zacharias is described as going in to burn incense in the temple of the Lord.* This was *In Ev. Joh. Tract. 49. § 27: Nam incensum non licebat ponere nisi summo sacerdoti. Cf. De Perfect. Just. c. 17; Serm. 291. § 3; For understood as though it was the entrance once a year into the Holy of Holies, which being only permitted to the High Priest, he who performed this function must needs have been clothed with this office. The Evangelist alludes, in fact, to the daily burning of incense, morning and evening, which was not his exclusive prerogative, but was permitted to the ordinary priests as well. Augustine brings out in respect of such births as the Baptist's, in which the parents are stricken in years, and according to the usual order of things have overlived the hope and expectation of children, that, however remotely, they are yet approximations to the one central Virgin birth. The relation is not merely that these as well as that are out of the usual order; it lies not in the wonder that belongs, though of course in very different proportions, to both; but also in the fact that in these also that which is born, is born manifestly not of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man. In these births according to promise and by the special gift of God, that disturbing element which mingles with the very foundations of our natural life as they are first laid, was not indeed altogether wanting, as in his birth who was virgin-born, yet has it fallen very far into the background; therefore it became well that He who should be born of a pure Virgin should have as his herald one born in virtue of a promise, and of those that, like Abraham and Sarah, had overpassed the expectation of children; and in this birth we may behold a certain an ample refutation of an error so patent as not to need one, see WITSIUS, Vita Joh. Bapt. p. 475. approximation, however distant, to the mystery of that.* The distinction between John's baptism and Christ's, and the immeasurable superiority of the last over the first, Augustine everywhere asserts or assumes.† I have not any passage at hand in which he draws out what the essential prerogatives of the baptism of the Master, as compared with that of the servant, were. He probably considered, though in this he was mistaken, that no one could confound that preparatory washing with the Christian sacrament of baptism, and that the difference was expressed with sufficient clearness in the words of the Baptist himself: "I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire;" (Matt. iii. 11;) John's the baptismus fluminis, the Lord's not fluminis alone, but flaminis as well. The attempt to identify the *Serm. 290. c. 1: Ambo mirabiliter nati, præco et Judex, lucerna et Dies, vox et Verbum, servus et Dominus. De sterili servus, de Virgine Dominus. Serm. 291. § 1: Quia enim venturus erat per Virginem Deus homo, præcessit eum de sterili mirabilis homo. + Serm. 210. c. 2: Baptismus Johannis a baptismo Christi discernendus est. In Ev. Joh. Tract. 5. § 5: Qui baptizati sunt a Johanne non eis suffecit; baptizati sunt enim baptismo Christi: Augustine has probably especially in his thought the disciples of John baptized by Paul at Ephesus; (Acts xix. 1—5;) cf. Con. Litt. Petil. 1. 2. c. 37. For the humiliating evasions by which the maintainers of the identity of the two baptisms seek to get rid of this decisive statement, see GERHARD'S Loc. Theoll. loc. 21. c. 4. § 63. They are best stated by Tertullian in a remarkable passage, De Baptismo, c. 10. |