life. Our difficulty here lies - if we are unbelievers, in thinking simply of the Humanity of

the Man of Nazareth; if we are believers, in making abstraction of his Divinity. But thus

much, at least, all must concede, that the Gospels always present Him as the God-Man, in

an inseparable mystical union of the two natures, and that they present to us the even

more mysterious idea of His Self-examination, of the voluntary obscuration of His

Divinity, as part of His Humiliation. Placing ourselves on this standpoint - which is, at

any rate, that of the Evangelic narrative - we may arrive at a more correct view of this

great event. It seems as if, in the Divine Self-examination, apparently necessarily

connected with the perfect human development of Jesus, some corresponding outward

event were ever the occasion of a fresh advance in the Messianic consciousness and

work. The first event of that kind had been his appearance in the Temple. These two

things then stood out vividly before Him - not in the ordinary human, but in the

Messianic sense: that the Temple was the House of His Father, and that to be busy about

it was His Life-work. With this He returned to Nazareth, and in willing subjection to His

Parents fulfilled all righteousness. And st ill, as He grew in years, in wisdom, and in

favour with God and Man, this thought - rather this burning consciousness, was the

inmost spring of His Life. What this business specially was, He knew not yet, and waited

to learn; the how and the when of His life-consecration, He left unasked and unanswered

in the still waiting for Him. And in this also we see the Sinless, the Perfect One.

When tidings of John's Baptism reached His home, there could be no haste on His part.

Even with knowledge of all that conce rned John's relation to Him, there was in the

'fulfilment of all righteousness' quiet waiting. The one question with Him was, as He

afterwards put it: 'The Baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men?' (St.

Matt. xxi. 25). That question once ans wered, there could be no longer doubt nor

hesitation. He went - not for any ulterior purpose, nor from any other motive than that it

was of God. He went voluntarily, because it was such - and because 'it became Him' in so

doing 'to fulfill all righteousness.' There is this great difference between His going to that

Baptism, and afterwards into the wilderness: in the former case, His act was of

preconceived purpose; in the latter it was not so, but 'He was driven' - without previous

purpose to that effect - under the constraining power 'of the Spirit,' without premeditation

and resolve of it; without even knowledge of its object. In the one case He was active, in

the other passive; in the one case He fulfilled righteousness, in the other His

righteousness was tried. But as, on His first visit to the Temple, this consciousness about

His Life-business came to Him in His Father's House, ripening slowly and fully those

long years of quiet submission and growing wisdom and grace at Nazareth, so at His

Baptism, with the accompanying descent of the Holy Ghost, His abiding in Him, and the

heard testimony from His Father, the knowledge came to Him, and, in and with18 that

knowledge, the qualification for the business of His Father's House. In that hour He

learned the when, and in part the how, of His Life-business; the latter to be still farther,

and from another aspect, seen in the wilderness, then in His life, in His suffering, and,

finally, in His death. In man the subjective and the objective, alike intellectually and

morally, are ever separate; in God they are one. What He is, that He wills. And in the

God-Man also we must not separate the subjective and the objective. The consciousness

of the when and the how of His Life-business was necessarily accompanied, while He