LIFE OF JESUS. PART SECOND. N the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cesar, -Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod Antipas tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and the country of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, while Annas and Caiaphas were high priests, the word of God came to John, the son of Zechariah in the Desert; and he went through all the country about the Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins; and saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven Desert. This was a rough, mountainous, and sparsely settled region, lying along the western margin of the Dead Sea and the river Jordan. It contained some villages, and also many scattered inhabitants; but a considerable portion of it would properly be called a wilderness. (1 Sam. xxv. 1. 2.) Josephus relates that about this time many devout men among the Jews, disgusted with the wickedness of the age, retired to desert places, and there, becoming teachers of a purer morality, gathered disciples about them: he, however, mentions none by name but the Baptist. The phrase, kingdom of heaven, — might be as literally rendered, "The reign of God." is at hand:" This was in fulfilment of what had been written by Isaiah the prophet, "The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley must be filled, and every mountain and hill be levelled down; the crooked ways be made straight, and the rough places smooth; that all men may see the salvation from God." And John wore raiment of camel's hair, and had a leathern girdle about his loins; and his food was locusts and wild honey. And vast multitudes from Prepare ye the way of the Lord. It was the custom of Eastern monarchs, when setting out on an expedition, or undertaking a journey through a desert country, to send messengers before them, to open the passes, level the ways, and prepare all things for their passage. The roads in Palestine are wretched at their best estate; but the custom of the farmers to gather up the stones from the fields and cast them into the highways, renders them dangerous, and, at times, almost impassable. Dr. Thomson relates that when Ibrahim Pasha some years ago, proposed to visit the Lebanon, the emeers and sheikhs sent forth a general proclamation, somewhat in the style of this passage, directing all the inhabitants to assemble along the proposed route, and prepare the way before him. The same was done in 1845, on a grander scale, when the Sultan visited Brusa. The stones were gathered out of the roads, "the crooked ways were made straight, and the rough places smooth." Camel's hair.—A coarse, cheap cloth is still made in the East, from the long, shaggy hair of the camel, and is extensively worn by the poorer classes. It was the common dress of the Jewish prophets. Locusts and wild honey. - Burckhardt says, "All the Bedawins of Arabia are accustomed to eat locusts. At Medina and Tayf are locust shops where these animals are sold by meas THE MINISTRY OF JOHN. 49 Jerusalem, and Judea, and from all the region round about, went out to him and were baptized in the Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw that many of the Pharisees and Sadducees had come to his baptism, he said to ure. In Egypt and Nubia they are eaten by only the poorest beggars." "The Arabs in preparing them as food, throw them alive into boiling water with which a good deal of salt is mixed. After a few minutes they are taken out, and dried in the sun; the head, feet and wings are torn off, and the bodies are cleansed from salt, and perfectly dried." Locusts are not now eaten in Syria, except by the lowest of the Bedawins, and are generally regarded with disgust and loathing. When eaten, they are sometimes fried in butter, and mixed with wild honey, and this honey is still plentifully gathered from the trees and rocks of the desert in which the Baptist sojourned. Baptized. Baptism was in use among the Jews before the time of John, as the rite of initiation to Gentile proselytes. It was regarded as a typical washing away of the defilements of heathenism. Pharisees and Sadducees. - The Pharisees were the most numerous and influential sect among the Jews. They are supposed to have originated about three centuries before Christ, when the national institutions of Judea were threatened with destruction from the influx of Greek manners and opinions; and their object was to keep the Jews a separate people. Hence their name, which denotes separated. Their intense patriotism made them at once popular, and they soon acquired a controlling influence in the nation. They formed a sort of society, whose members were held to a strict observance of certain rules; and they looked with contempt on the middle and lower classes who did not belong to their order. These rules were mainly drawn from the numberless "traditions of the elders," which had accumulated about the law of Moses, and some of them were of the most trivial and ridicu |