That such was the meaning of our Savior would seem to be certain. This is confirmed by the words already cited from Luke xii, 49-53. “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.” The matter present to the mind of Jesus, as the occasion of this utterance, was that discrimination which he was to exercise and separation which he was to make, in purging his floor and dividing between the wheat and the chaff, bringing division into families and dissolving the closest and tenderest ties. It is of this that he says, “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled?” That is, Why should I wish to restrain it? “But I have a baptism; ... and how am I straitened!” He thus indicates a straitening of the full exercise of that function which he has just described. The cause of it is an unaccomplished baptism. What then were the facts out of which this language is to be explained? (1.) Christ was under judicial condemnation for us from his birth, under the curse and sentence of death. (2.) While in that condition, a servant to the law and the curse, he could not fully exercise the prerogatives proper to his royalty. (3.) Especially must his office as personally the Baptizer with the Holy Ghost and with fire,—as the dispenser of grace to his people and wrath to his enemies,—be in abeyance, till his resurrection and assumption of the throne. Thus, he was from the beginning straitened and looking forward to his resurrection as the time and means of his enlargement. And, hence his saying,—“I have a baptism.” That baptism was the bestowal upon him, by the Father, of the Spirit of life, raising him from the dead to the throne, whence he now dispenses grace and judgment to the world. PART XI. CHRIST THE GREAT BAPTIZER. SECTION LXI.—_The Kingdom of the Son of Man._