2. John was the herald and champion of the covenant, and the messenger of the Lord Jesus as its surety and king. His commission, as announced by Malachi, was, in God’s name, to admonish Israel to “Remember the law of Moses, my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments;”—Mal. iv, 4.—“The law of Moses,”—that covenant law by the acceptance of which Israel became the people of God. His ministry derived all its significance from the terms of that covenant, and from the office of its Surety, in purging his floor with the baptisms of the Holy Ghost and of fire. This was the whole theme of his ministry, as it was the whole substance of the prophetic terms of his commission. To seal such a testimony, no rite could have been so appropriate as the perpetuated and familiar form of the Sinai baptism, the original seal of the same covenant, by which its scope and intent were so luminously set forth. 3. John preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, in the name of Him whom God was about to exalt “to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.”—Acts v, 31. In the Levitical baptism the administrator represented the Lord Jesus in this very function of his grace, and the sprinkled water represented the Holy Spirit shed by him upon his people, by whom that repentance is wrought, and remission conveyed. It was the “purification for sin,” the symbol of remission. It was thus a visible representation to his hearers of the very things which John was commissioned to utter in their ears. 4. At the time of John’s coming, all the thoughts and conceptions of Israel on the subjects involved in his ministry, except as perverted by the traditions of the scribes, had been molded by the Mosaic ritual respecting the purifying of the unclean, and by the testimonies of the prophets, uttered in the language of that ritual. John was sent, not to ignore or obliterate the impress thus made by the instructions and discipline of fifteen centuries, but to confirm and build upon it, to reiterate and seal the same testimonies. To this end, no other rite was appropriate or congruous, but the old familiar baptism by sprinkling, the interpretation of which was so abundant in the prophets, and the meaning of which was known to all Israel. 5. The baptism administered by the Lord Jesus is never known nor alluded to in the Scriptures under any other form than that of affusion. It is the antitype of the ritual sprinklings of the Old Testament, the fulfillment of all the prophecies of the sprinkling of Israel and the nations, the outpouring of the Spirit upon them; and its fulfillment is in the New Testament invariably spoken of in the same style. To symbolize this, John’s baptism must have been by affusion.