God! why hast thou forsaken me?” and gave up the ghost, John's weak heart failed in him and he fainted, and women assisted him.
But presently he fled into Galilee, and there his townsmen mocked him: “Ha! ha! thou that wouldst sit at the right hand of the Messiah!” The magistrates set their eyes on him—"This fellow was also with Jesus! a pestilent man, like his master; but we will bring him to his senses!”—and they cast him into prison. Death looked through the bars of his grate, and his shadow fell thick and ugly on the prison floor, and John was ready to perish. Then he tasted the cup of his Master.
Escaping from the gaol, he was driven from city to city, and then he was also baptized with the baptism of Christ. But that great Angel who had been with the Hebrew children in the Babylonian furnace, and brought them out unharmed, no smell of fire on their garments' hem, who had been also with Jesus alike in his temptation and his agony, came likewise to John and touched his eyes, speaking in the still small voice to his innermost, and the “son of thunder” declared, “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” When an old man, his companions took him, at his request, on his couch, and carried him to the assembly of Christians at Ephesus, that he might bid them a last farewell; and he said, “Little children, love one another!” and passed on.
