Jesus stepped out of the baptismal waters praying.' [1417] One prayer, the only one which He taught His disciples, recurs to our minds. [1418] We must here individualise and emphasise in their special application its opening sentences: Our Father Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name! Thy Kingdom come! They will be done in earth, as it is in heaven!' The first thought and the first petition had been the conscious outcome of the Temple-visit, ripened during the long years at Nazareth. The others were now the full expression of His submission to Baptism. He knew His Mission; He had consecrated Himself to it in His Baptism; Father Which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name.' The unlimited petition for the doing of God's Will on earth with the same absoluteness as in heaven, was His self-consecration: the prayer of His Baptism, as the other was its confession. And the hallowed be Thy Name' was the eulogy, because the ripened and experimental principle of His Life. How this Will, connected with the Kingdom,' was to be done by Him, and when, He was to learn after His Baptism. But strange, that the petition which followed those which must have been on the lips of Jesus in that hour should have been the subject of the first temptation or assault by the Enemy; strange also, that the other two temptations should have rolled back the force of the assault upon the two great experiences He had gained, and which formed the burden of the petitions, Thy Kingdom come; Hallowed be Thy Name.' Was it then so, that all the assaults which Jesus bore only concerned and tested the reality of a past and already attained experience, save those last in the Garden and on the Cross, which were sufferigs' by which He was made perfect?'
But, as we have already seen, such inward forth-bursting of Messianic consciousness could not be separated from objective qualification for, and testimony to it. As the prayer of Jesus winged heavenwards, His solemn response to the call of the Kingdom - Here am I;' Lo, I come to do Thy Will' - the answer came, which at the same time was also the predicted sign to the Baptist. Heaven seemed cleft, and in bodily shape like a dove, the Holy Ghost descended on [1419] Jesus, remaining on him. It was as if, symbolically, in the words of St. Peter, [1420] that Baptism had been a new flood, and He Who now emerged from it, the Noah - or rest, and comfort-bringer - Who took into His Ark the dove bearing the olive-branch, indicative of a new life. Here, at these waters, was the Kingdom, into which Jesus had entered in the fulfilment of all righteousness; and from them he emerged as its Heaven-designated, Heaven-qualified, and Heaven-proclaimed King. As such he had received the fulness of the Spirit for His Messianic Work - a fulness abiding in Him - that out of it we might receive, and grace for grace. As such also the voice from Heaven proclaimed it, to Him and to John: Thou art (this is') My Beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased.' The ratification of the great Davidic promise, the announcement of the fulfilment of its predictive import in Psalm ii. [1421] was God's solemn declaration of Jesus as the Messiah, His public proclamation of it, and the beginning of Jesus' Messianic work. And so the Baptist understood it, when he bare record' that He was the Son of God.' [1422]
Quite intelligible as all this is, it is certainly miraculous; not, indeed, in the sense of contravention of the Laws of Nature (illogical as that phrase is), but in that of having nothing analogous in our present knowledge and experience. But would we not have expected the supra-empirical, the directly heavenly, to attend such an event - that is, if the narrative itself be true, and Jesus what the Gospels represent Him? To reject, therefore, the narrative because of its supra-empirical accompaniment seems, after all, a sad inversion of reasoning, and begging the question. But, to go a step further: if there be no reality in the narrative, whence the invention of the legend? It certainly had no basis in contemporary Jewish teaching; and, equally certainly, it would not have spontaneously occurred to Jewish minds. Nowhere in Rabbinic writings do we find any hint of a Baptism of the Messiah, nor of a descent upon Him of the Spirit in the form of a dove. Rather would such views seem, à priori, repugnant to Jewish thinking. An attempt has, however, been made in the direction of identifying two traits in this narrative with Rabbinic notices. The Voice from heaven' has been represented as the Bath-Qol,' or Daughter-Voice,' of which we read in Rabbinic writings, as bringing heaven's testimony or decision to perplexed or hardly bestead Rabbis. And it has been further asserted, that among the Jews the dove' was regarded as the emblem of the Spirit. In taking notice of these assertions some warmth of language may be forgiven.