In Mark’s narrative (2:18) a very significant episode is recorded.  John inculcated fasting, and his disciples fasted a great deal ("pykna”, Luke 5:33); and once, Mark tells us, when they were actually fasting, they asked Jesus why his disciples did not do the same?  Jesus’ answer is a little cryptic at first sight.  “Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them?” Who fasts at the wedding feast, in the hour of gladness?  And then he passes on to speak about the new patch on the old garment, the new wine in the old wine skins; and it looks as if it were not merely a criticism of John’s disciples but of John himself.  John, indeed, brings home with terrific force and conviction that truth of God which the prophets had preached before; but he leaves it there.  He emphasizes once more the old laws of God, the judgements of God, but he brings no transforming power into men’s lives.  The old characters, the old motives more or less, are to be patched by a new fear.

“Repent, repent,” John cries, “the judgement is coming.”  And men do repent, and John baptises them as a symbol that God has forgiven them.  But how are they to go on?  What is the power that is to carry John’s disciples through the rest of their lives?  We are not in possession of everything that John says, but there is no indication that John had very much to say about any force or power that should keep men on the plane of repentance.  It is our experience that we repent and fall again; what else was the experience of the people whom John baptised?  What was to keep them on the new level—­not only in the isolation of the desert, but in the ordinary routine of town and village?  In John’s teaching there is not a word about that; and this is a weakness of double import.  For, as Jesus puts it, the new patch on the old garment makes the rent worse; it does not leave it merely as it was.  If the “unclean spirit” regain its footing in a man, it does not come alone—­“the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24-26).  Jesus is very familiar with the type that welcomes new ideas and new impulses in religion and yet does nothing, grows tired or afraid, and relapses (Mark 4:17).

Again, in John’s teaching, as far as we have it, there is a striking absence of any clear word about any relation to God, beyond that of debtor and creditor, judge and prisoner on trial, king and subject.  God may forgive and God will judge; but so far as our knowledge of John’s teaching goes, these are the only two points at which man and God will touch each other; and these are not intimate relations.  There is no promise and no gladness in them; no “good news.”  John taught prayer—­all sorts of people teach prayer; but what sort of prayer?  It has been remarked of the Greek poet, Apollonius Rhodius, that his heroes used prayers, but their prayers were like official documents.  Of what character were the prayers that John taught his disciples?