All tremulous with love.
And, as entranced I gaze, Sweet music floats to me from distant lyres: I see a temple, round whose golden spires
Unearthly glory plays!
Beyond those azure deeps I fix thy home, — a mansion kept for thee Within the Father's house, whose noiseless key
Kind Death, the warder, keeps ! 2
1 A. C. Benson, Thy Rod and Thy Staffs 72. ■ Albert Laighton.
The Baptism of Jesus.
MS
Literature.
Brooke (S. A.), The Early Life of Jesus, 142.
Burrell (D. J.), The Morning Cometh, 164.
Cockin (G. S.), Some Dilfkidties in the Life of our Lord, 13.
Davies (J. LI.), The Work of Christ, 122.
„ (T.), Sermons, 460. Dick (G. H.), The Yoke and the Anointing, 133. Edsall (E. W.), Revealed by Friendship, 39. Gibbons (J.), Discourses and Sermons, 233. Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, ii. 1. Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year : Ascension Day to Trinity
Sunday, 176. Lewis (F. W.), Jesus, Son of God, 1. Luckock (H. M.), Footprints of the Son of Man, 16. McGarvey (J. W.), Sermons Delivered in Louisville,,297, Mackenzie (R.), The Loom of Providence, 28. Maclaren (A.), Expositions : Luke i.-xii., 77. Matheson (G.), Voices of the Spirit, 91. Moore (E. W.), The Christ-Controlled Life, 183.
„ „ The Spirit's Seal, 30.
Morgan (G. C), The Hidden Years at Nazareth, 1.
„ „ The Crises of the Christ, 83.
Norton (J. N.), Every Sunday, 288. Raleigh (A.), Rest from Care and Sorrow, 197. Robertson (A. T.), Epochs in the Life of Jesus, 1.
„ „ The Teaching of Jesus concerning God the Father, 43.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xvi. (1870), No. 909 ;
Ivi. (1910), No. 3178. Stalker (J.), The Two St. Johns, 217. Tipple (S. A ), The Admiring Guest, 60. Whyte (A.), The Walk, Conversation, and Character of Jesus Christ our
Lord, 181. Wilson (J. M.), Via Crucis, 29. Woodward (H.), Sermon^s, 472.
British Congregationalist, April 16, 1908 (J. H. Jowett). Christian World Pulpit, Ixviii. 149 (T. V. Tymms) ; Ixxiii. 72 (H. S.
Holland) ; Ixxxi. 372 (C. R. Williams). Churchman's Pulpit : Trinity Sunday, ix. 288 (F. Field) ; Epiphany, iii. 199 (S. Carolin).
The Baptism of Jesus.
Now it came to pass, when all the people were baptized, that, Jesus also having been baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him, and a voice came out of heaven, Thou art my beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased. — Luke iii.
21, 22.
1. The Baptism of our Lord was the first event of His public life as the Christ ; and on this account alone it would have a peculiar significance and importance. Previously to this time He had lain hid in Galilee, in silent and secret preparation for His public work, dwelling beneath the roof of His earthly parents, and subject to them, growing year by year in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man. What were His occupations and pursuits ; how His soul within Him was exercised and dis- ciplined in the prospect of the public duties assigned to Him as Mediator ; in what way the one thought of glorifying His Father by " obedience unto death " for His people was ever before His mind, waxing in greatness and awfulness as it was longer and more fully contemplated ; how the coming events of His tempta- tion and agony and Cross filled His holy human heart with longing and wonder and fear as the time drew on and they looked the nearer, we have not anywhere in Scripture been clearly informed. The thirty years that elapsed between His birth and His " showing unto Israel " are for us little else than a mysterious blank. We can do no more than conjecture how His human understanding, by the aid of the Old Testament Scriptures, which spoke of Him in type and prophecy and promise, grew in the knowledge of the great work given Him to do; and how His human feelings of faith and love, and submission to His Father, by acts of converse with God in private, were disciplined and strengthened to enter upon it. It is but a glimpse that we get of the extent to which the Child Jesus had, during His early years, perfected Himself in the Word of His God, when we see
ST. LUKE — lO
146 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS
Him, at twelve years of age, sitting among the Jewish Doctors in the Temple, the Teacher rather than the taught ; and we can only guess by way of inference how large a portion of His private hours in youth was spent in secret communion with His Father, when we read of how the habit had grown in mature age into the spending of whole nights alone in prayer to God.
But although comparative darkness has been allowed to settle down upon the history of the earthly life of Christ before He grew to manhood, yet we can hardly err in believing that by means of these two things — namely, God speaking to His human soul in the written Word, and His human soul holding converse with God in prayer — He was educated for the work in public which lay before Him ; and that, although we may know but little of the character or the successive steps of it, yet there was a great work of preparation going on in those early years, of which no record is found in Scripture. And when this mysterious prepara- tion was at an end — when the hidden discipline of His early years had made perfect the Son of God for His destined enterprise — what was the event which terminated His secret and inaugurated His public career; which closed up the history of Jesus as a private man, and proclaimed the opening of His official life as the Messiah, the sent of God ? We have the narrative of that ^vent in the passage before us.