with the scent of
spring. Our land, long bereaved and desolate, is to be married. Joy,
joy to her! The Bridegroom is here. He that hath the bride is the
Bridegroom. As for me, I am the Bridegroom's friend, sent to negotiate
the match, privileged to know and bring together the two parties in the
blessed nuptials--blessed with the unspeakable gladness of hearing the
Bridegroom's manly speech. Do you tell me that He is preaching, and
that all come to Him? That is what I have wanted most of all. This my
joy, therefore, is fulfilled. 'He must increase, but I must decrease.'"

III. JOHN HAD ENLARGED PERCEPTION OF THE TRUE NATURE OF CHRIST.--It
has been questioned whether the paragraph which follows (John iii.
31-36) was spoken by the Baptist, or is the comment of the Evangelist.
With many eminent commentators, I incline strongly to the former view.
The phraseology employed in this paragraph is closely similar to the
words addressed by Christ to Nicodemus, and often used by Himself, as
in John v.; and they may well have filtered through to the Baptist, by
the lips of Andrew, Peter, and John, who would often retail to their
venerated earliest teacher what they heard from Jesus.

Consider, then, the Baptist's creed at this point of his career. He
_believed_ in the heavenly origin and divinity of the Son of Man--that
He was from heaven and above all. He _believed_ in the unique and
divine source of his teaching--that He did not communicate what He had
learnt at second-hand, but stood forth as one speaking what He knows,
and testifying what He has seen--"For He whom God has sent, speaketh
the words of God." He _believed_ in his copious enduement with the
Holy Spirit. Knowing that human teachers, at the best, could only
receive the Spirit in a limited degree, he recognised that when God
anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit there was no limit, no
measuring metre, no stint. It was copious, rich, unmeasured--so much
so that it ran down from his head, as Hermon's dews descend to the
lonely heights of Zion. He _believed_ in his near relationship to God,
using the well-known Jewish phrase of sonship to describe his
possession of the Divine nature in a unique sense, and recalling the
utterance of the hour of baptism, to give weight to his assurance that
the Father loved Him as Son. Lastly, He _believed_ in the mediatorial
function of the Man of Nazareth--that the Father had already given all
things into his