d of Him, "Behold, the Lamb of God that beareth the
sin of the world." Then as he baptised him, he saw the heavens opened
and the Spirit of God descending like a Dove and lighting upon Him.

The Humility of God.

What a suggestive picture we have here--the Dove descending upon the
Lamb and resting herself upon Him! The Lamb and the Dove are surely
the gentlest of all God's creatures. The Lamb speaks of meekness and
submissiveness and the Dove speaks of peace (what more peaceful sound
than the cooing of a dove on a summer day). Surely this shows us that
the heart of Deity is humility. When the eternal God chose to reveal
Himself in His Son, He gave Him the name of the Lamb; and when it was
necessary for the Holy Spirit to come into the world, He was revealed
under the emblem of the Dove. Is it not obvious, then, that the
reason why we have to be humble in order to walk with God is not
merely because God is so big and we so little, that humility befits
such little creatures--but because God is so humble?

The main lesson of this incident is that the Holy Spirit, as the
Dove, could only come upon and remain upon the Lord Jesus because He
was the Lamb. Had the Lord Jesus had any other disposition than that
of the Lamb--humility, submissiveness and self-surrender--the Dove
could never have rested on Him. Being herself so gentle, she would
have been frightened away had not Jesus been meek and lowly in heart.

Here, then, we have pictured for us the condition upon which the same
Holy Spirit can come upon us and abide upon us. The Dove can only
abide upon us as we are willing to be as the Lamb. How impossible
that He should rest upon us while self is unbroken! The
manifestations of the unbroken self are the direct opposite of the
gentleness of the Dove. Read again in Galatians 5 the ninefold fruit
of the Spirit ("love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,
goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control") with which the Dove
longs to fill us! Then contrast it with the ugly works of the flesh
(the N.T. name for the unbroken self) in the same chapter. It is the
contrast of the snarling wolf with the gentle dove!

The Disposition of the Lamb.

How clear, then, that the Holy Spirit will only come upon us and
remain upon us as we are willing to be as the Lamb on each point on
which He will convict us! And nothing is so searching and humbling as
to look at the Lamb on His way to Calvary for us and to be shown in
how many