Bible Biographies
117
turned the captivity of Job: ... also the Lord gave Job twice as much as
he had before.... So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than
his beginning.”
Job 42:10-12
.
On the record of those who through self-abnegation have entered
into the fellowship of Christ’s sufferings, stand—one in the Old Tes-
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tament and one in the New—the names of Jonathan and of John the
Baptist.
Jonathan, by birth heir to the throne, yet knowing himself set aside
by the divine decree; to his rival the most tender and faithful of friends,
shielding David’s life at the peril of his own; steadfast at his father’s
side through the dark days of his declining power, and at his side
falling at the last—the name of Jonathan is treasured in heaven, and it
stands on earth a witness to the existence and the power of unselfish
love.
John the Baptist, at his appearance as the Messiah’s herald, stirred
the nation. From place to place his steps were followed by vast throngs
of people of every rank and station. But when the One came to whom
he had borne witness, all was changed. The crowds followed Jesus,
and John’s work seemed fast closing. Yet there was no wavering of his
faith. “He must increase,” he said, “but I must decrease.”
John 3:30
.
Time passed, and the kingdom which John had confidently ex-
pected was not established. In Herod’s dungeon, cut off from the
life-giving air and the desert freedom, he waited and watched.
There was no display of arms, no rending of prison doors; but the
healing of the sick, the preaching of the gospel, the uplifting of men’s
souls, testified to Christ’s mission.
Alone in the dungeon, seeing whither his path, like his Master’s,
tended, John accepted the trust—fellowship with Christ in sacrifice.
Heaven’s messengers attended him to the grave. The intelligences of
the universe, fallen and unfallen, witnessed his vindication of unselfish
service.
And in all the generations that have passed since then, suffering
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souls have been sustained by the testimony of John’s life. In the
dungeon, on the scaffold, in the flames, men and women through
centuries of darkness have been strengthened by the memory of him
of whom Christ declared, “Among them that are born of women there
hath not risen a greater.”
Matthew 11:11
.