The interesting question as to a possible connection between John the Baptist and the sect of the Essenes does not here concern us. It is, however, essential to recognise that he set in motion a "revival" or wave of religious movement of great importance. This is attested not only by the considerable emphasis laid on him and his relations with our Lord in all our Gospels, and by the hesitation of the authorities even to seem to speak against one whom "all held to be a prophet" (Mark xi. 32), but also by the fact that his influence had reached as far as Ephesus (cf. Acts xix. 3) ahead of Christianity; while Josephus, if the passage is authentic, speaks of him and of our Lord as if they were popular prophets of equal importance. That our Lord felt much in sympathy with the Baptist's message,-direct, intelligible to all, at once prophetic and apocalyptic,-is shown by His coming Himself to be baptized by him, as well as by His emphatic reference to him as one than whom none greater has been born of woman.

THE CALL OF OUR LORD AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE PROPHETIC MIND

Like John our Lord appeared to His contemporaries pre-eminently as a Prophet' (Mark viii. 28)-that He claimed to be Christ was not suspected at first even by the Twelve. And if our speculations as to His inner mind are to avoid the anachronism of being merely modern ideas read back into the past, we may only penetrate the mind of the last and greatest of the Hebrew prophets by studying the psychology of the other prophets of His race.

The most striking difference between the Hebrew prophet and the religious and social reformer of modern times is the sense of complete possession by the Spirit of

1 Cf. also Mark vi. 4, Luke vii. 16, 39, xxiv. 19, etc.

God, the feeling of being a mere instrument, a mere voice, by means of which the Divine message is to be given. The modern reformer speaks of his own convictions, he backs them up by proof and argument. The Hebrew prophet says simply, "Thus saith the Lord." The modern speaks of his enthusiasm for the cause, of his duty to advocate it. Contrast the words of Amos, "The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?" Differences of national temperament and the tendency to depend on argument rather than on intuitionlargely the result of centuries of education, first in the analytic rationalistic categories of Greek philosophy, subsequently in those of modern science-have made it impossible nowadays for any but a half-mad impostor to speak like this. But the great Hebrew prophets were the antithesis of that.

Similar

Such a conviction of possession and message seems normally to date from some great moment in the prophet's life-his Call. "The Lord took me from following the flock," says Amos. "I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne," begins the famous vision of Isaiah. experiences are recorded by Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The visions and the voices they speak of are no mere pieces of conscious symbolism or imaginative fine writing, any more than was the rapture into the third heaven which St. Paul records in 2 Corinthians.

To certain types of mind, especially at certain stages of culture, the voice of conscience or the conviction of vocation at the supreme crises of a life become translated into what the subject can only regard as visible or audible experiences. In old days anything that came by way of a vision came with an added authority. Nowadays the prejudice is the other way. A vision is commonly regarded as evidence for an unsound mind, and as even discrediting the thing "revealed" in it. A sounder psychology would seem to indicate that both prejudices are equally irrelevant. The value of an idea,

or the inspiration of its propounder, is to be judged by intrinsic quality, not by the manner of realisation. Men do not gather figs of thistles, or creative thought from lunatics. Kubla Khan, one of its author's finest poems, came to him in a vision-part of which he could never recall. The difference between such an experience and that sudden flash of insight which more usually accompanies all special moral, artistic, or intellectual apprehension in modern times, is very largely due to differences in temperament, education, and environment. All great ideas, all new solutions, whether in science, ethics, art or practical life arise, apparently unbidden, to the mind.

Considerable light is thrown on the nature of the Prophetic Call if it be studied in connection with the wider phenomenon known as Conversion-conversion, that is, of the sudden and immediate type-a phenomenon to which psychologists have of late given special attention. It would appear that such a conversion differs from the more gradual awakening of the conscience to the claims of a higher life, which is in modern times the more familiar experience, at any rate in Anglican circles, chiefly in the fact that influences which have been all along actually at work, have, in the case of a gradual awakening, been more or less consciously recognised and even welcomed, whereas, in the case of a sudden conversion, their operation has been unknown to the subject or, if known, has been consciously and strongly resisted.2

The difference between the Hebrew prophet, to whom his message comes in a sudden unexpected intuition so strong as to be externally visualised or made audible, and the modern reformer, to whom his convictions have come by a more gradual awakening of interest and a consciously inductive study of facts and conditions, seems to present a close psychological analogy

1 Cf. esp. the description of his own experience in Poincaré, Science et Méthode, ch. iii. 2 Cf. James, Varieties of Religious Experiences, lectures VIII.-X.

to that between the suddenly converted and the gradually illuminated type of Christian experience.

This does not mean that before his Call the prophet was in the moral state of the "unconverted sinner." A call is not the same thing as a conversion. The one is a summons to a new work, the other to a new ideal; the one is merely a change of activity, the other a change of heart. Doubtless the two often go together, as for instance in the case of St. Francis of Assisi, but they are separable both in thought and experience. They are, however, alike in that they both involve an added stimulus, a changed "focus of interest," to use Professor James' phrase, a concentration, and as it were a crystallisation, of tendencies hitherto more or less latent. Such a change of focus, such a reconstruction and rearrangement of the balance of interest, is very commonly (though by no means exclusively) brought about under the influence of the psychological ferment caused by a religious revival, and even in modern times is sometimes accompanied by voice or vision.

"Conversion," as James points out, is only for the "twice-born," that is, for those who before the crisis. through which they attain inward peace and conviction have passed through a period more or less clearly realised of struggle, stress, and doubt. Similarly we may suppose that a call, even in the cases where it is not the accompaniment of a conversion, presupposes a period of intense but baffled interest in some spiritual or moral problem leading up to the moment of illumination which provides the prophet with his message.1 Thus the difference between ancient prophet and modern reformer is more psychological than material. Yet the man to whom at the last all comes in a flash, seems to apprehend with a clearness, and to be fired with a passion unknown to him whose eyes have been gradually opened. And when a call comes in a voice or vision

1 So Poincaré, loc. cit., emphasises concentrated interest as pre-requisite to the flash of scientific discovery.

H

which he who sees or hears cannot but regard as the act of God external to himself, it produces a tempest of

conviction not otherwise attained.

It was a celestial vision on the road to Damascus. that made of Saul the persecutor, the Apostle who "laboured more abundantly than they all." It was a celestial vision-the vault of heaven rent asunder, the Spirit descending as a dove, a voice, "Thou art My beloved Son "-that certified a greater than St. Paul of His supreme vocation.1

In a psychological crisis like this dim premonitions and unseen potentialities are brought to a climax; the personality, so to speak, comes into its inheritance and at a bound attains maturity. But the meaning of the crisis is determined by the quality of the personality itself, and by the sum of all the influences which it has assimilated to itself from its environment during a long course of years. The external stimulus which precipitates the crisis may be the least important factor in the final result. In the present instance the external stimulus is not far to seek. The wave of religious expectancy stirred up by the preaching of the Baptist would naturally induce a special susceptibility to a religious call. The moment of Baptism, the rite of mystic initiation into the Kingdom proclaimed so near at hand, would not unnaturally be to our Lord the moment of illumination as to His own position in that kingdom.2

But though this may explain the moment and manner of the Call it throws no light on the growth of a Personality which could be responsive

1 In St. Mark's version (Mark i. 10) the Call is clearly a vision personal to our Lord. "He saw the heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending upon Him." In St. Luke's version (Luke iii. 22) it is said that "The heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove "-a materialised interpretation, though probably unconsciously so, of the original tradition. It is probable that the stories of the Baptism and Temptation are ultimately derived from an account given to the disciples by our Lord Himself.

2 It will be remembered that later on our Lord expressly (Matt. xvii. 12-13) identifies John with the Elijah who, as Malachi had foretold (Mal. iv. 5), was to appear immediately before "the great and terrible day of the Lord." For the original significance of the rite of Baptism cf. Essay IV. p. 162.