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simplicity, the austerity and self-denial of his life, superadded such acquired virtues as to merit from the lips of his Saviour the title of angel. In his early boyhood, in his childhood almost, leaving home and parents he fled into the desert alone, and there for thirty years he communed with God — a true child of Nature, the wild beasts for his only companions, clothed in a garment of camel's hair with a leathern girdle, and locusts and wild honey for his food. For thirty long years, until the very recollection of him had passed from the popular mind, so that when, like the morning star, he reappeared to usher in the Sun of Justice, the people hailed him enthusiastically as the promised Messias. That was the crucial moment of John's life, and, as is usual with heroes, it developed his true greatness. " And he confessed and did not deny, and he confessed, I am not the Christ." The whirlwind of popular adulation would have turned any head less steady. He knew that, like the morning star, the most brilliant of all, he shone with a borrowed light, destined to diminish and fade away before the arisen sun. He was a burning and a shining light, indeed, but he shone not for himself but to reveal the Saviour. His mission was to cast upon the earth the first sparks of the love of Christ. No hollow reed he, to be shaken by the winds of flattery; no courtier he, craving for the ease and homage of royalty. Though a word would have deified him, though he disappointed his disciples and the whole people, he still persisted : " I am not the Christ."