orded utterance of Christ, after a silence of more
than twenty years; the first also of his public ministry: it demands
our passing notice. He does not say, "I have need to be baptized of
thee"; nor does He say, "Thou hast no need to be baptized of Me." He
does not stay to explain why the greater should be baptized by the
less: or why a rite which confessed sin was required for one who was
absolutely sinless. It is enough to appeal to the Baptist as his
associate in a joint necessary act, becoming to them both as part of
the Divine procedure, and therefore claiming their common obedience.
"Thus it becometh us (you and me) to fulfil all righteousness."

In his baptism, our Lord acknowledged the divine authority of the
Forerunner. As the last and greatest of the prophets, who was to close
the Old Testament era, for "the law and the prophets prophesied until
John"; as the representative of Elijah the prophet, before the great
and notable day of the Lord could come; as the porter of the Jewish
fold--John occupied a unique position, and it was out of deference to
his appointment by the Father, and as an acknowledgment of his office,
that Jesus sought baptism at his hands.

John's baptism, moreover, was the inauguration of the Kingdom of
Heaven. In it the material made way for the spiritual. The old
system, which gave special privileges to the children of Abraham, was
in the act of passing away, confessing that God could raise up children
to Abraham from the stones at the water's edge; and demanding that
those who would enter the Kingdom must be born from above, of water and
of the Spirit. It was the outward and visible sign that Judaism was
unavailing for the deepest needs of the spirit of man, and that a new
and more spiritual system was about to take its place, and Christ said,
in effect, "I, too, though King, obey the law of the Kingdom, and bow
my head, that, by the same sign as the smallest of my subjects, I may
pass forward to my throne."

There was probably a deeper reason still. That Jordan water, flowing
downwards to the Dead Sea, was symbolical. In the purity of its
origin, amid the snows of Hermon, and in the beauty of its earlier
course, it was an emblem of man's original constitution, when the
Creator made him in His own image and pronounced him very good; but in
these sullied and troubled waters hurrying on to the Sea of
Death--waters in which thousands of sinners had confessed their sins,
with tear