| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 8 |
Page 2 |
Then John was disappointed in the trend and course of the Messiahship of Jesus. When he spoke so confidently a little while ago, proclaiming that Jesus was the one who was to come, he was thinking of a Messiah who should carry the axe and go out with fire and fan. The Messiah he was expecting was to be a great conqueror. Instead of this, what he heard in his prison was of a most gentle and kindly man, who was everybody’s friend, who would not set his foot even upon a worm, who allowed himself to be wronged and never resented nor retaliated. “Can this really be the Messiah?” he began to ask.
There probably was a personal element also in John’s questioning. He had been the devoted friend of Jesus. Now John was lying in a dungeon, wearing chains, suffering unjustly, and Jesus outside was enjoying great popularity, and seemed to have utterly forgotten his old friend. Why did he not do something for John? Why did he not even come to see him in his prison, to give him cheer? “An Arctic explorer was once asked,” says Dr. George Adam Smith, “whether, during the eight months of slow starvation which he and his comrades endured, they suffered much from the pangs of hunger. ‘No,’ he answered, ‘we lost them in the sense of abandonment, in the feeling that our countrymen had forgotten us and were not coming to our relief!’” May there not have been some feeling like this in John’s mind?
Page 2