Our evangelist gives a vivid picture of the asceticism of John, which was one secret, as our Lord pointed out, of his hold on the people.  The more luxuriously self-indulgent men are, the more are they fascinated by religious self-denial.  A man ‘clothed in soft raiment’ would have drawn no crowds.  A religious teacher must be clearly free from sensual appetites and love of ease, if he is to stir the multitude.  John’s rough garb and coarse food were not assumed by him to create an impression.  He was no mere imitator of the old prophets, though he wore a robe like Elijah’s.  His asceticism was the expression of his severe, solitary spirit, detached from the delights of sense, and even from the softer play of loves, because the coming kingdom flamed ever before him, and the age seemed to him to be rotting and ready for the fire.  There is no need to bring in irrelevant learning about Essenes to account for his mode of life.  The thoughts which burned in him drove him into the wilderness.  He who was possessed with them could not ’come eating and drinking,’ and might well seem to sense-bound wonderers as if some demonic force, other than ordinary motives, tyrannised over him.

The last point in this brief resume of John’s work is the universal excitement which it produced.  He did not come out of the desert with his message.  If men would hear it, they must go to him.  And they went.  All the southern portion of the country seemed to empty itself into the wilderness.  Sleeping national hopes revived, the awe of the coming judgment seized all classes.  It was so long since a fiery soul had scattered flaming words, and religious teachers had for so many centuries been mumbling the old well-worn formulas, and splitting hairs, that it was an apocalypse to hear once more the accent of conviction from a man who really believed every word he said, and himself thrilled with the solemn truths which he thundered.  Wherever a religious teacher shows that he has John’s qualities, as our Lord in His eulogium analysed them—­namely, unalterable resolution, like an iron pillar, and not like a reed shaken with the wind, conspicuous superiority to considerations of ease and comfort, a direct vision of the unseen, and a message from God, the crowds will go out to see him; and even if the enthusiasm be shallow and transient, some spasm of conviction will pass across many a conscience, and some will be pointed by him to the King.

II.  The second portion of this section is a more detailed account of John’s preaching, which Matthew gives as addressed to the Pharisees and Sadducees.  We are not to suppose that at any time John had a congregation exclusively made up of such; nor that these words were addressed to them only.  What is emphasised is the fact that among the crowds were many of both these parties, the religious aristocrats who represented two tendencies of mind bitterly antagonistic, and each unlikely to be drawn to the prophet.