A very beautiful characterization of the mission of John the Baptist was given by his father, Zacharias, who is recorded in Luke's Gospel as prophesying, "And thou, child, shalt be called the prophet of the Highest: for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways: to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins. ... To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."
When it is remembered that John's ministry was a continual outcry for repentance, and that repentance for wrong-doing is the assured harbinger of better things, the conclusion is evident that repentant thought is the one open gateway through which our feet may be guided "into the way of peace." Pain-stricken humanity is reluctant to yield this point, seeking the way of peace, as it does, through many avenues other than the one declared by this prophet to be available. Searching far and wide in the realm of self-gratification, turning into every by-way of ease, hiding behind the temporary shelter of self-justification, believing that repentance is necessary for the neighbor but not for one's self, mortal man stumbles on in the wrong direction, and knows no peace until he yields to the compelling hand of that "celestial surgeon" who, sometime, somewhere, pierces the covering of self-righteousness and awakens in each human heart the humble cry. "God be merciful to me a sinner." However far individual thought may wander in its search for peace, it must needs return to this little gateway of repentant surrender, ere it can enter into any knowledge of the sinless state of man's real spiritual being. Through the mazes of that wilderness wherein the voice of the prophet cries continually, "Repent ye," human thought roams unsatisfied until obedience to this insistent urging leads the weary feet to the place of sincere repentance which lies beyond the tangle, and does indeed give entrance to the "way of peace."
In mathematics, in music, in mechanics, the mistakes of ignorance must be discerned before they can be rectified. Can it with any reason be supposed that the Science of Life, of Christianity can be applied to the cleansing of a human nature unless mental and moral deformities are, in the same intelligent way, detected and abandoned? He who for any personal motive fails to give up his belief in a mathematical error, is in no mental position to receive any benefit from the true statement. In like manner, the patient or student who justifies or cherishes old habits and conditions which may be inconsistent with the highest Christliness, excludes himself from the blessed ministrations of Christian Science. Every investigator of Christian Science is willing to be relieved of his trouble, his pain, his perplexity. Every man wants peace, but not always does he bend willingly to the honest conviction of sin which alone discovers the gateway to peace. When all men are as ready to say "I have grievously sinned," as they are to ask for the joys of heaven, the highway of peace will in very truth be established among men. For who can say, in his human strength alone, that the weaknesses of his nature and the idiosyncrasies of his disposition do not trap him, daily, into petty offences against the ideal Christ? And who can say that he does not need redemption, in some measure, from the sins, the excesses, the follies of mortal experience? An honest admission of sin or mistake is the only possible beginning of redemption. This humility is indeed of the kind which goes "before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto his people by the remission of their sins;" and "to guide our feet into the way of peace."
