So, dear friends, we see in Christ, baptized with the Spirit of God, the realised ideal of manhood, ever dependent, ever needing for its purity that holy influence, and receiving at every pore that divine gift.  What a contrast to our limited partial reception, broken and interrupted so often!  All the doors that are barred in our hearts by sin, all the windows that are darkened in our souls by vice and self, in Him stood open to the day, and brilliantly receptive of the illumination.  And so ‘the Father giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him.’

Notice, too, the meaning of the symbol.  Think of what John, with his incomplete though not inaccurate conceptions, expected in the Messiah whom he proclaimed.  To him the coming of the King was first and chiefly a coming to judgment.  There is nothing more remarkable than the aspect of terror which drapes the old hope of Israel as it comes from John’s lips.  He believes that the King is coming, that His coming is to be an awful thing.  Judgment is to go before Him, He bears ’His fan in His hand,’ and kindles ‘unquenchable fire,’ into which the leafy trees that have no fruit upon them are to be flung, there to shrivel and crackle and disappear.  This is what he expects at the worst, and at the best a baptism in the Holy Ghost, from Messiah’s hands, which, however, is likewise to be fiery even whilst it quickens, and searching and destructive even whilst it gladdens.  When, then, his carpenter cousin is designated as Messiah, John sees two wonders:  that this is the Christ, and that the Spirit which he had thought of as searching and consuming, should come fluttering down upon His head in the likeness of a dove.  Old Testament symbols and natural poetry unite in giving felicity to that emblem.  ‘The Spirit of God brooded on the face of the deep,’ says Genesis; and the word employed describes accurately the action of the mother-bird, with her soft breast and outstretched wings quickening the life that lies beneath.  The dove was pure and allowed for sacrifice.  All nations have made it the symbol of meekness, gentleness, faithfulness.  All these associations determined the form which the descending Benediction took.

What then does it proclaim as to the character of the King?  Purity is the very foundation of His royalty.  Meekness and gentleness are the very weapons of His conquest and the sceptre of His rule.  The dove will outfly all Rome’s eagles and all rapacious, unclean feeders, with their strong wings, and curved talons, and sharp beaks.  The lesson as to the true nature of the true Kingdom, which was taught of old when the prophet said ’Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, riding on an ass,’ and not upon the warhorse of secular force; the lesson which was taught unwittingly, as to the true nature of the true Kingdom, when the scoffers, speaking a deeper truth than they understood, put upon His brow the crown of thorns, and forced into His hand the sceptre of reed, was