St John tells us in his gospel that St John the Baptist, when he saw our Lord coming to him, cried out: ‘Behold the Lamb of God. Behold him who taketh away the sin of the world’ (John i, 29). The voice of the Baptist has from that moment challenged the world, for though John the Baptist died his martyr's death, the living voice of the Church still proclaims his message. To the world, to all mankind, she says: ‘Behold the Lamb of God'; and in saying this she forces the human race to make some answer to the question: ‘Whom do men say that I am?’ (Mark 8, 27.)

Habit, or ignorance springing from indifference, seems to have made the question almost meaningless; or—and here, I think, we get a little nearer to the bone—it is half listened to, its implications half grasped, and then half uneasily, by a secret act of will, which is almost masked, even from ourselves; we avert our attention onto some less disturbing subject.