wed is our qualification for the highest and most effective
service in the church of Christ. Other effects will certainly attend
the blessing, a fixed assurance of our acceptance in Christ, and a holy
separateness from the world; but these results will be conducive to the
greatest and supreme end, our consecrated usefulness.

{75}

Let us observe that Christ, who is our example in this as in all
things, did not enter upon his ministry till he had received the Holy
Ghost. Not only so, but we see that all his service from his baptism
to his ascension was wrought in the Spirit. Ask concerning his
miracles, and we hear him saying: "I by the Spirit of God cast out
devils" (Matt. 12: 28). Ask concerning that decease which he
accomplished at Jerusalem, and we read "that he through the eternal
Spirit offered himself without spot unto God" (Heb. 9: 14). Ask
concerning the giving of the great commission, and we read that he was
received up "after that he through the Holy Ghost had given
commandments unto the apostles" (Acts 1: 2). Thus, though he was the
Son of God, he acted ever in supreme reliance upon him who has been
called the "Executive of the Godhead."

Plainly we see how Christ was our pattern and exemplar in his relation
to the Holy Spirit. He had been begotten of the Holy Ghost in the womb
of the virgin, and had lived that holy and obedient life which this
divine nativity would imply. But when he would enter upon his public
ministry, he waited for the Spirit to come upon him, as he had hitherto
been in him. For this anointing we find him praying: "Jesus also being
baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost
descended in a bodily shape like a {76} dove upon him" (Luke 3: 22).
Had he any "promise of the Father" to plead, as he now asked the
anointing of the Spirit, if as we may believe this was the subject of
his prayer? Yes; it had been written in the prophets concerning the
rod out of the stem of Jesse: "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest
upon him; the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel
and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord" (Isa.
11: 2). "The promise of the seven-fold Spirit," the Jewish
commentators call it. Certainly it was literally fulfilled upon the
Son of God at the Jordan, when God gave him the Spirit without measure.
For he who was now baptized was in turn to be baptizer. "Upon whom
thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and r