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The duality remains without wrench or flaw. There is an upward, there is also a downward side. There had been, to us suddenly and most inexplicably, a brief dispensation interposed between Christ and his work a dispensation embodied in one man, and that man as little like Christ as the thunder-storm is like the calm which it precedes. Other dispensations had l'cen long, this was brief; other prophets spake, but saw not; this prophet baptized the very man of whom he prophesied. Never did divine processes seem to hurry upon one another so urgently as about this time, for from the Inauguration to the Ascension but three summers shone! The movement of events never faltered for a moment. Jesus Christ, as he had been the burden of other dispensations, was to be the burden of this. He was to find his name on all other pages, and now it was to be written on this rugged leaf which tells the story of the "voice crying in the wilderness." Men are valuable to us as teachers in proportion as they represent a great compass of history. When the aroma of all lands float from their robes, and the accents of all languages blend in their speech, they have a right to speak with authority. The world's Saviour must have come through the world's great throng of hearts; he had come through Moses, the minstrels, the prophets, and on His way he now takes up this transient dispensation of the "voice." Thus Christ publicly identified himself with the current of divine purposes as shown in human history. He worked with man as well as for man, and was thus the contemporary of all ages. Men should study the divine idea of each age, and

become intelligent co-workers with God. Christ's example shows that obedience to the divine spirit of the time ever brings fuller disclosures and attestations of the divine blessing. The heavens are opened to every obedient man, and the Spirit of God descends on the last as on the first. John's baptism had gone no farther than repentance, but Christ, standing with the dove resting upon him, showed that there was a baptism unto holiness. By John's baptism men were put into a right relation to the past, but as they followed Christ they were put into a right relation to the future; from the negative condition of repentance they passed to the affirmative attitude of holiness. This is the culmination of human history. We have come through man, servant, prophet, messenger, up to Son. The very nomenclature is pregnant with sublime moral significance; we pass from "made" to "begotten," from "upright" to "beloved," from the "us" of the creating Trinity to the "my" of the benignant Father, from the " very good" of the first Adam to the "well-pleased" of the second. « Οὗτος ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός ἐν ᾧ εὐδόκησα.”

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John's baptism looked towards repentance: why then should Jesus Christ undergo it? To prove his human nature, his vital connection on his mother's side with the whole human state, and to supersede it by fulfilment. The world could be taught only gradually; it needed "water" before "fire," the bodily lustration before the spiritual fervor. The dispensations have all worked from the outward to the inward, from the body to the soul; but Christ inverted this method, and established the only really spiritual dis

pensation. Did Christ, then, need to repent? No more than he needed to pray, or to do any religious exercise that men do. In so far as he was human, it became him to adopt the duties of each dispensation.

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The place of baptism in the Christian system is one of great simplicity. Men like indeed requiresomething objective. They cannot at one bound attain that which is purely spiritual. Ceremonies, and all ordinances, great or small, are only accommodations to human weakness. Men require something to fall back upon. Even a recollection may come up in the soul with all the gracious power of inspiration: the simple fact that we have done something, or that something has been done for us, may save us from despair and incite us to do more. Many a soul that has sunk from God in higher things has been stayed in its sinking by coming against the fact of its baptism in its downward course. It was well, therefore, as an accommodation to human weakness, to conjoin baptism with faith in framing the evangelical commission. If any man wishes to undergo the "baptism unto repentance," it may be a question how far he is at liberty to take a backward step in the dispensations; but to baptize children (who do not need repentance) unto holiness is an act infinitely beautiful in simplicity and infinitely charming in pathos Baptism provides for the lower and coarser part of human nature. It associates in a very natural way fact with faith, something done with something yet to be done, and thus it is made a help to us. To make anything more important of it would be to abet the theological charlatanry which has kept back many souls from the kingdom of God.

53

CHAPTER V.

THE INAUGURATION: THE DIABOLIC PHASE.

ΤΗ

HERE was another dispensation to pass through the dispensation of the devil. Human history would not have been what it was but for the diabolic element; it was impossible, consequently, for Jesus Christ to enter upon his work without a very demonstrative antagonism at the very beginning. With infinite propriety does the temptation follow immediately upon the baptism. The devil had been at work before, in persecution by means of Herod, obliquely, so as to suit the less pronounced periods of the new life; but as soon as the Baptism had brought Christ the seal from heaven, and proclaimed his true relation to God and man, a more formal and critical contest became a necessity. Christ could not have passed to his work with a merely indirect recognition of the devil's existence; the recognition must be full, emphatic, solemn. Any man who proposed to himself the fabrication of the story of the wilderness, entered upon a most perilous task. It must be difficult for human genius to contrive a consistent devil, or to maintain in dialogue the conscious power of God. On the other hand, who could historically write the account of the temptation? No one was present with pen and ink. No one overheard the interlocution. How, then, does it find a

place in history? It must have been outlined by Christ himself in conversation with his disciples. Many a time the conversation would turn upon the devil and his kingdom, for the Christian monarchy was set up to put the diabolic monarchy down. When the conversation so turned, nothing would be more natural than that Christ should relate his experience in the wilderness, and found upon it many of his most practical directions. The account is obviously fragmentary, and in one or two points must be read figuratively, not literally. Temptations cannot be written. The process is not conducted with all the precision of a Socratic dialogue. The heart can give but a meagre account of its spiritual conflicts; its wounds cannot be translated; its triumphs are too subtle for words. At the same time all Christian hearts have, according to their capacity and susceptibility, gone through the very course of temptation given in the New Testament narrative. All such hearts have been tempted to make bread in an illegitimate and forbidden manner; have been tempted to risk their lives and their destinies presumptuously; and also tempted to offer the homage of the soul as the price of secular aggrandizement. Upon such points as these the whole world has become a wilderness of temptation or a wilderness of discipline. Today the great strife of the world is proceeding upon these very issues, Bread, Desperation, Sovereignty. Man has been victimized by the sophism that it is necessary for him to live, and therefore necessary that he should make bread, either legitimately or dishonestly; but Christ alone broke through this sophism

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