given him by his parents was John, and he came to be known as the Baptist or Baptizer, because he introduced the rite of baptism for a different purpose from what had been known before. So far as any one-man can be called the herald of the Christian era, John the Baptist was that man. During the very period when Jesus was meditating up in Nazareth upon what he had read and what he had seen—turning over in his mind the strenuous ideals of the old prophets, whose words in his day had gone somewhat out of fashion—and responding to the spirit of unrest and longing which just then permeated the whole human world like yeast—during that same period this man John, of almost the same age as Jesus, was doing the same thing. And this leaven of study and reflection took effect and ripened into action in John somewhat earlier than it did in Jesus.
Suddenly, about twenty-five years from what we call the beginning of our era, this man John appeared at the Jordan side preaching a message that stirred men as nothing had done since the days of the older prophets. Great crowds of people began to flock to the Jordan valley. This preacher did not have to find his congregation—they found him. The whole country was moved from center to circumference. All sorts and conditions of men came to John and he was for the
