2. The first meeting of Jesus and John is a unique scene. They were of nearly the same age ; they were related according to the flesh ; they were both men of prophetic endowment, sent to produce in their native country a religious reformation. Yet, in spite of these and other points of resemblance, there could not have been two characters more absolutely contrasted. Jesus marked the contrast in the broadest way when He subsequently said, " John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine ; and ye say. He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking ; and ye say, Behold, a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners ! " John was the child of the desert, courting solitude and avoiding human society ; Jesus followed a homely trade, appeared at marriages and feasts, was a friend of women and children, and was as much at home in the busy city as on the mountain top. John called the
ST. LUKE III. 2 1, 22 147
multitude out to the desert to hear him and did not condescend to visit the haunts of men ; Jesus went to sinners where He could find them, considering it His duty to seek as well as to save that which was lost. John had a seared look ; he was a man who, after severe struggles, had obtained the mastery of himself and was holding down a coarse nature by main force ; Jesus, on the con- trary, was always innocent and spontaneous, genial and serene. John, in short, was the Old Testament personified, Jesus the embodiment of the New ; and in John's shrinking from baptizing Jesus, the spirit of the Old Testament — the spirit of law, wrath and austerity — was doing homage to the spirit of the New Testament — the spirit of freedom and of love.
A voice by Jordan's shore !
A summons stern and clear; — Eeform ! be just ! and sin no more !
God's judgment draweth near !
A voice by Galilee,
A holier voice I hear; — Love God ! thy neighbour love ! for see,
God's mercy draweth near !
0 voice of Duty ! still
Speak forth ; I hear with awe ; In thee I own the sovereign will,
Obey the sovereign law.
Thou higher voice of Love,
Yet speak Thy word in me; Through duty let me upward move
To Thy pure liberty I^
3. The application by Jesus for baptism perplexed John ; and it is a perplexity even to this day. It is not, indeed, entirely without parallel in the life of Christ ; for His circumcision, which took place when He was eight days old, raises the same difficulty. The difficulty is tliat He should have participated in an ordinance which symbolized the removal of sin. But in this case it is more urgent, because He made the application Himself.
Only two explanations seem really to touch the quick. The * Samuel Longfellow.
148 THE BAPTISM OF JESUS
one is that John's baptism had a positive as well as a negative side. It was not only the baptism of repentance, but a rite of dedication. It was a renewal of the national covenant, the inauguration of a new era, the gateway of the Kingdom of God. Now, although Jesus had no part in the sin from which baptism cleansed, He had part in this positive enthusiasm ; He was the very Person to lead the way into the new era. The other explanation, which may very easily be combined with this one, is that He received baptism as a representative Person. Although sinless Himself, He was a member of a sinful nation, of whose sin He was keenly conscious — more so than any other whom John baptized — and He went along with the rest of the nation in making confession. In short, He was in this act rehearsing beforehand the great act of His death, when He bore in His own body on the tree the sins of the world.
^ Tintoret has thrown into his picture of the Baptism of Christ his utmost strength; and it becomes noble in his hands by his most singularly imaginative expression, not only of the immediate fact, but of the whole train of thought of which it is suggestive ; and by his considering the Baptism not only as the submission of Christ to the fulfilment of all righteousness, but as the opening of the earthly struggle with the prince of the powers of the air, which instantly beginning in the temptation, ended only on the Cross. The river flows fiercely under the shadow of a great rock. From its opposite shore, thickets of close gloomy foliage rise against the rolling chasm of heaven, through which breaks the brightness of the descending Spirit. Across these, dividing them asunder, is stretched a horizontal floor of flaky cloud, on which stand the hosts of heaven. Christ kneels upon the water, and does not sink; the figure of St. John is indistinct, but close beside his raised right arm there is a spectre in the black shade ; the Fiend, harpy-shaped, hardly seen, glares down upon Christ with eyes of fire, waiting his time. Beneath this figure there comes out of the mist a dark hand, the arm unseen, extended to a net in the river, the spars of which are in the shape of a cross. Behind this the roots and under stems of the trees are cut away by the cloud, and beneath it, and through them, is seen a vision of wild, melancholy, boundless light, the sweep of the desert ; and the figure of Christ is seen therein alone, with His arms lifted as in supplication or ecstasy, borne of the Spirit into the Wilderness to be tempted of the Devil.^