m of the Father.

So we see here, I think, if we follow the lead of the Scriptural
teaching, not the beginning of powers or communications, but an advance
in these. Christ's baptism was an epoch in His human development,
inasmuch as it was the public official assumption of His Messianic
office. He came from out of the sheltering obscurity of the Galilean
village nestling among its hills. He had now put His foot upon the path,
set with knives and hot ploughshares, along which He had to walk to the
Cross. Inasmuch as it was an epoch in His development (for His manhood
was capable of growth and maturing), and inasmuch as new tasks needed
increase of gifts, and inasmuch as His man's nature was subject to the
conditions of time, and capable of expansion and increase of capacity,
therefore, I believe that when Christ rose from the waters of baptism,
no new gift indeed was His, but such an advance in the communication to
His manhood of the sustaining Spirit, as fully equipped Him for the new
calls of His Messianic work.

His manhood needed, as ours does, the continual communication of the
divine Spirit, and His manhood, because it was sinless, was capable of a
complete reception of that Spirit. Sinless though He knew Himself to be,
as His own words declare, He yet bowed His head to the baptism of
repentance, which He needed not for Himself, just as He afterwards bowed
His head to a darker, a sadder baptism, which He had to be baptized
with, though it likewise He needed not for Himself, because in both the
one and the other He would make Himself one with His brethren. The
Spirit of God had shaped His manhood ere His birth. The Spirit of God
had been abiding in His holy infancy and growing youth, but now it came
in larger measure for new needs and His Messiah's work.

So, dear friends, we see in Christ, baptized with the Spirit of God, the
realised ideal of manhood, ever dependent, ever needing for its purity
that holy influence, and receiving at every pore that divine gift. What
a contrast to our limited partial reception, broken and interrupted so
often! All the doors that are barred in our hearts by sin, all the
windows that are darkened in our souls by vice and self, in Him stood
open to the day, and brilliantly receptive of the illumination. And so
'the Father giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him.'

Notice, too, the meaning of the symbol. Think of what John, with his
incomplete though not inaccurate conceptions, exp