While Jesus, in the poor little work-shop at Nazareth, was handling the ax and the square, a voice was raised in the desert towards Jordan and the Dead Sea. Last of the Prophets, John the Baptist called the Jews to repent, announced the approach of the Kingdom of Heaven, predicted the coming of the Messiah, reproved the sinners who came to him, and plunged them into the water of the river, that this outer washing might be the beginning of an inner purification.
In that dark age of the Herods, old Judea profaned by the Idumean usurpers, contaminated by Greek infiltration, scorned by the Roman soldiery; without King, without unity, without glory; already half dispersed throughout the world; betrayed by their own priests; always remembering the grandeur of their earthly kingdom of a thousand years ago; always obstinately hoping for a great vengeance, for a miraculous resurrection, for a return of victory in a triumph of its God, in the coming of a Saviour, of a liberator, of an anointed one who should reign in a new Jerusalem stronger and more beautiful than that of Solomon, and from Jerusalem dominate all the peoples, overcome all other monarchs, conquer all empires and bring happiness to its nation and to all men,—old Judea hating its masters, robbed by the publicans, plagued by the mercenary scribes and by the hypocritical Pharisees, old Judea divided, humiliated, plundered and yet in spite of all its shame full of faith for the future, willingly lent an ear to the voice of the desert, and hastened to the banks of the Jordan.
John’s figure was one to conquer the imagination. A child sprung by a miracle from parents of great age, he was set apart from his birth to be Nazir—pure. He had never cut his hair, had never tasted wine or cider, had never touched a woman nor known any love except that for God. While he was still young, he had left his parents’ home and buried himself in the desert. There he lived for many years alone, without a house, without a tent, without servants, with nothing of his own except what he had on his back. Wrapped in his camel’s skin, his flanks girt by a leather belt, tall, bony, baked by the sun, his chest hairy, his hair hanging long on his shoulders, his long beard almost covering his face, his piercing eyes flashed like lightning from under his busy eyebrows when from his mouth hidden by his beard burst out the tremendous words of his maledictions.
This hypnotic wild man, solitary as a Yogi, despising pleasure like a stoic, seemed to those whom he baptized the last hope of a despairing people.
Jesus heard the people talk of those “washed ones” who returned from Jordan and took up their former lives, as in the morning a garment is resumed which was thrown away with relief the evening before; and He understood that His day grew near. He was now in His thirtieth year, the right and destined age. Before he is thirty, a man is only a sketch, an approximation, dominated by the common sentiments and common loves of all. He does not know men well, and hence cannot love them with that love, sweet with compassion, with which they should be loved. And without knowing them or knowing how to love them, he cannot speak with authority, cannot make himself heard, has not the power of saving them.