John's baptism, moreover, was the inauguration of the Kingdom of Heaven. In it the material made way for the spiritual. The old system, which gave special privileges to the children of Abraham, was in the act of passing away, confessing that God could raise up children to Abraham from the stones at the water's edge; and demanding that those who would enter the Kingdom must be born from above, of water and of the Spirit. It was the outward and visible sign that Judaism was unavailing for the deepest needs of the spirit of man, and that a new and more spiritual system was about to take its place, and Christ said, in effect, "I, too, though King, obey the law of the Kingdom, and bow my head, that, by the same sign as the smallest of my subjects, I may pass forward to my throne." There was probably a deeper reason still. That Jordan water, flowing downwards to the Dead Sea, was symbolical. In the purity of its origin, amid the snows of Hermon, and in the beauty of its earlier course, it was an emblem of man's original constitution, when the Creator made him in His own image and pronounced him very good; but in these sullied and troubled waters hurrying on to the Sea of Death--waters in which thousands of sinners had confessed their sins, with tears and sighs--how apt an emblem was there of the history of our race, contaminated by the evil that is in the world through lust, and meriting the wages of sin--death! With that race, in its sin and degradation, our Lord now formally identified Himself. His baptism was his formal identification with our fallen and sinful race, though He knew no sin for Himself, and could challenge the minutest inspection of his enemies: "Which of you convinceth Me of sin?" Was He baptized because He needed to repent, or to confess his sins? Nay, verily! He was as pure as the bosom of God, from which He came; as pure as the fire that shone above them in the orb of day; as pure as the snows on Mount Hermon, rearing itself like a vision of clouds on the horizon: but He needed to be made sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. When the paschal lamb had been chosen by the head of a Jewish household, it was customary to take it, three days before it would be offered, to the priest, to have it sealed with the Temple seal; so our Lord, three years before his death, must be set apart and sealed by the direct act of the Holy Spirit, through the mediation of John the Baptist. "Him hath God the Father sealed."