28

2

WHY HE SOUGHT BAPTISM.

what profit was there that he received the baptism of a servant? That thou mightest not disdain to receive the baptism of the Lord. Give heed, beloved brethren.' He clearly intended to render obedience to some law of his Father. What law? He had honored every requisition of the Old Covenant by circumcision, obedience to parents, hallowing the Sabbath, temple worship, observance of the feasts, all except in bringing the sin-offerings. For a full generation he had submitted to every claim of Jehovah's law upon him, in every institution and ordinance. But now his Father had established the last test of obedience in the baptism of John, and Jesus, born under God's law, must honor the new divine precept. Jesus himself gave this reason when he accused the Pharisees and lawyers with rejecting 'The counsel of God toward themselves' in not having been baptized by John. The will of God was his only reason for obeying any law; he held it an act of obedience to keep all the Divine appointments. Although not a sinner himself, he impleaded to be treated as a sinner; therefore he humbled himself to receive a sinner's baptism, as well as to submit to a sinner's death. This deep mark of mediatorial sympathy and mystery must have entered largely into his plea, Suffer it now.' With great clearness Geikie puts this point: Baptism was an ordinance of God required by his prophet as the introduction of the new dispensation. It was a part of "righteousness," that is, it was a part of God's commandments which Jesus came into the world to show us the example of fulfilling, both in the letter and in the spirit.' 4 His baptism was the channel through which the Divine attestation could best be given to his Messianic dignity; and when we consider that he had reached the full maturity of all his human powers of mind and body, this manner of entering upon his public work gave a mutual and public sanction to the mission both of John and Jesus.

Yet, with our Lord's interpretation of his own words before their eyes, men will insist upon it that he was initiated into his sacrificial work by baptism, in imitation of the mere ceremonial ablutions of the Aaronical priesthood. Jesus was not even of Aaron's line as was John, much less of his office, but sprang of the tribe of Judah, of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood.' Did Jesus receive the vestments, the consecrating oil, or any other priestly insignia? Even when he made his sin-offering, and assumed the Christian High-priesthood, three years after his baptism, he neither assumed the vesture nor breastplate, the censer nor miter of Aaron. Because he was not made a High-priest after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedec, who knew nothing of sacred oils,, ablutions, or vestments. How much better is it than a solemn caricature to set forth the baptism of Jesus as an idle, empty, ritualistic pageant? He came to abolish and cast aside forever the Aaronical priesthood with the economy that it served, and how could he do this by submission to any ceremonial act which they observed? John felt the binding force of Christ's words, when he appealed to the obligations of spotless holiness, and he threw aside his objections in a moment.

With gratitude and grace he yielded and obeyed. He found that his Master was under the same law of obedience as himself, and with holy promptitude he honored the sacred trust which God had put into his own hands, but which no other man had ever yet held. Then he suffered him.' O! sublime grandeur- awful honor! And when the great Baptist bowed the immaculate soul and body of Jesus beneath the parting wave, all the useless ceremonies of past ages sank together like lead, to find a grave in the opening waters of the Jordan, and no place has since been found for them.

This traditional spot is fixed in human memory as are points on the Tiber, the Thames, and the Delaware, where great armies have crossed. It is a little east of Jericho, near by the conquest of Joshua, also where David crossed in his flight. Christian pilgrims and scholars have visited it for centuries, Origen in the third, Eusebius in the fourth, Jerome in the fifth, and millions of others down to our day. Its thick willow groves are used as robing rooms, whence Copts and Syrians, Armenians and Greeks, go down into the Jordan and immerse themselves three times in the name of the Trinity. The place so fascinates and subdues the spirit that the visitors of every land and creed, reverently descend into the stream once a year. Having been baptized, Jesus went up immediately out of the water; and lo, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending, as a dove, and coming upon him. And lo, a voice out of heaven, saying: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' To this account taken from Matthew, Luke adds: That the heavens were opened while Jesus was 'praying,' that the Spirit took the bodily shape' of a dove, and the Baptist says, that he saw the Spirit abiding on him.'

6

The time of our Lord's baptism may here be examined with profit. Luke says: That in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, the word of God came to John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness;' at which time he entered. on his public ministry. And, again, that Jesus began his ministry when he was about thirty years of age. This last statement has the value of a date in a letter. The fifteenth year of Tiberius dates from the time that he commenced his joint reign with Augustus. Reckoning thus, the year 765, from January to January, as the first of Tiberius, the fifteenth is the year 779, from the founding of Rome. Some

time, then, in 779, is the beginning of John's ministry to be placed. Allowing that his labors had continued six months before the Lord was baptized, we reach in this way, also, the month of January, 780. There is good reason to believe that in December or January, Jesus was baptized, yet the day of the month is very uncertain.' As John and Jesus were born within six months of each other, in the year 749, Christ's baptism must have occurred somewhere near the above date, as he was then about thirty years of age.'

What act performed by John is called baptism? John was his proper name, and the term 'Baptist' added by the inspired writers, is a title of office, as Bloomfield thinks, 'To distinguish him from John the Evangelist.' By this name he was known pre-eminently as the administrator of the religious rite called baptism. That is, according to Liddell and Scott, 'one that dips;' or Donegan, 'one who immerses or submerges.' Dean Stanley says: On philological grounds, it is quite correct to translate John the Baptist, by John the Immerser.' (Nineteenth Century.) Baptism is a fundamental practice in Christianity, which has run through all its ages. Of baptism, in association with John, Edward Irving says: This is the first baptismal service upon record. The new rite of baptism, unknown under the Mosaic dispensation.' Much has been said on the subject of Proselyte Baptism, whereby heathen converts were inducted into the Jewish faith, and so, many have depreciated John's baptism as a mere imitation of an existing rite. But modern scholarship has shown conclusively that the reverse of this is true, and that Proselyte Baptism is, in fact, an imitation of the Christian rite, incorporated into Judaism after the Destruction of Jerusalem, A. D. 70. It is true, that the Jews from early times used various symbolical lustrations as well as the Gentiles, but these were always purely ceremonial, and were never used as a rite by which others were inducted into their faith. Josephus says, that many of these washings amongst the Jews were purely of their own will, without direction from the Lord,s and Von Rohden denies that they were 'performed by immersion.' He also points out these fundamental differences: The washings enjoined by the Law had for their object purification from ceremonial defilement; but the baptism of John did not: the one rite was performed by the candidates themselves upon their own persons the other was administered to its recipient by the Baptist himself, or by one of his disciples properly authorized: the former was repeated upon every occasion of renewed defilement; the latter was performed upon the candidate only once for all. The two ceremonies, therefore, were essentially different in their nature and object.' The first witness in favor of Proselyte Baptism is found in the Commentary of the Talmud, which was composed in the fifth century after Christ, and it represents the rite as existing in the first century.10 But this Commentary is not valid history, it is mere tradition at the most, and does not carry the ceremony back so far as John; nor could it have been known at that time, for had it been, the Jews would have scouted John's baptism, instead of submitting

9

DID THE JEWS IMMERSE?

31

to it, because it would have placed them on a level with the heathen as converts to the new faith. Proselytes to Judaism were divided into proselytes of the gate, and proselytes of righteousness. The first class had renounced idolatry, and bound themselves to keep the seven Noachic precepts, against idolatry, profanity, incest, murder, theft, eating blood and things strangled, and permitting a murderer to live. The second class not only renounced heathenism, but became Israelites in every respect excepting birth. Males were admitted into Judaism by circumcision, females by a free-will offering: after Christ, the Jews added baptism for both sexes admitted into their faith.

Dr. Lightfoot thus describes this baptism, as the Jews practiced it in after Christian times: As soon as he grew whole of the wound of circumcision, they bring him to baptism, and being placed in the water, they again instruct him in some weightier and in some lighter commands of the law'-then, he plunges himself, and comes up, and behold, he is an Israelite in all things. The women place a woman in the waters up to the neck, and two disciples of the wise men standing without, instruct her about some lighter precepts of the law, and some weightier, while she, in the meantime, stands in the waters. And then she plungeth, and they, turning away their faces, go out while she comes up out of the water. Maimonides gives this circumstantial account also: Every person baptized (or dipped, whether he were washed from pollution, or baptized into proselytism) must dip his whole body, now stripped and made naked, at one dipping. And wheresoever in the Law, washing of the body or garments is mentioned, it means nothing else than the washing of the whole body. For if any wash himself all over except the very tip of his little finger, he is still in his uncleanness.' 13 On the same subject, Geikie well says: Bathing in Jordan had been a sacred symbol, at least, since the days of Naaman, but immersion by one like John, with strict and humbling confession of sin, sacred vows of amendment, and hope of forgiveness, if they proved lasting, and all this in preparation for the Messiah, was something wholly new in Israel.'14 In this case, circumcision availed nothing, nor did uncircumcision, but a new creature. Jew and heathen must alike be immersed into the new faith, or they could not be numbered amongst its votaries. This view is presented also by Godet. He says: The rite of baptism, which consisted in the plunging of the body more or less completely into water, was not at this period in use among the Jews, neither for the Jews themselves, for whom the law only prescribed lustrations, nor for proselytes from paganism, to whom, according to the testimony of history, baptism was not applied until after the fall of Jerusalem. The very title, Baptist, given to John, sufficiently proves that it was he who introduced this rite. This follows, also, from John i, 25, where the deputation from the Sanhedrin asks him by what right he baptizes, if he is neither the Messiah nor one of the prophets, which implies that this rite was introduced by him; and further, from John iii, 26, where the disciples of John make it a charge against Jesus, that he adopted a ceremony of which

32

LINDSAY ON JEWISH BAPTISM.

the institution, and consequently, according to them, the monopoly, belonged to their master.'1

It is clear enough, that John did not pick up and use an old, effete institution, and adopt it as the door into the New Age of the great salvation, but that his 'baptism was from heaven,' as directly from God as his commission to preach. The preaching, the baptism, and the man, were all newly sent from God to usher in the Gospel Day.

6

Prof. Lindsay, of Glasgow, says: The connection between the baptism of John and the Jewish baptism of proselytes, of which a great deal has been made, is also founded on assumptions which cannot be proved. This very plausible theory first assumes that proselytes were baptized from the early time of the Jewish Church, although the Old Testament tells us nothing about it, and then supposes that John simply made use of this ordinary rite for the purpose of declaring symbolically that the whole Jewish nation were disfranchised, and had to be readmitted into the spiritual Israel, by means of the same ceremony which gave entrance to members of heathen nations. But the subject of the baptism of proselytes is one of the most hopelessly obscure in the whole round of Jewish antiquities, and can never be safely assumed in any argument, and the general results of investigation seem to prove that

FELTER

the baptism of proselytes was not one of the Jewish ceremonies until long after the coming of Christ, while there is much to suggest that this Jewish rite owes its origin to Christian baptism.'16 And Herzog writes The later origin of proselyte baptism is to be accepted.'17

The place where he administered the ordinance demands our attention, namely: the great river of Palestine, the Jordan. Some of the most interesting associations of sacred story cluster around this stream. Israel first knew it when they crossed its channel dry-shod, in their flight from bondage. From that moment it was the silver thread on which the historic memories of the nation were strung, as pearls on a necklace; John and Jesus being the brightest gems that ever shone in the line. It takes its source in about 33° 25' of north latitude in a fountain near Hâsbeiya, west of Mount Hermon, although Josephus locates its rise in the larger fountains near Cæsarea-Philippi; and then it passes through the lake, or what is called in Josh. xi, 5-7, the waters of Merom.' Emerging thence, it flows rapidly through a narrow and rocky ravine, till it empties into the lake of Galilee, and from the southern end