The Ministry of Saint John Baptist

THIRTY years form a long space in the ordinary life of a man, and to many of us what is separated from us by so great an interval seems hardly to belong to our present existence. We usually reckon such a period as the life of a generation, because, within such a space of time, almost the whole outward aspect of the human world changes, as far as those elements of it are concerned which are variable. New men are in power or in vigour, or in possession of influence, wealth, estates, and other things which pass from hand to hand because they survive the frail strength of the children of Adam. The thirty years that intervened between the Birth and the Baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ had not been less fruitful of change and succession than any others.