of the Old Law, John, though last, is still the first and greatest. The noblest member is nearest the head, the purest water nighest its source, and John was own cousin to the Lord. That bread wherewith Christ fed the multitudes, that miraculous wine of Cana — God's immediate productions — must have been of the rarest quality; and so apparent, in the Baptist's birth and life and death, is the hand of God, that he must have been, among men, the noblest and the best.
Brethren, John the Baptist is the horizon where earth meets heaven; the link connecting the Old Law with the New; the last of the prophets and the first of the Apostles, and consequently styled by Our Lord more than a prophet. To be the subject of prophecy is a higher dignity than to be a prophet one's self, and, of them all, John alone enjoyed this dual honor — a prophet himself, he was foretold by Isaias and Malachias. The Angel Gabriel announced his advent to his parents, and his presence in her womb imparted to Elizabeth the prophetic spirit, and loosened Zachary's palsied tongue to foretell that he should be called the prophet of the Most High, and be the herald of the coming Saviour. More than a prophet; for while yet in his mother's womb, he leaped for joy at the approach of the unborn Saviour; the highest dignitary of them all, for, in the solemn regal procession, he walks immediately before the face of the King. More than a prophet; for to the supereminent gifts with which God had, by infusion, endowed him, he, by the purity, the
