Jehovah would send salvation and prosperity, and had shaken their Lulabh towards the

altar, thus praising 'with heart, and mouth, and hands,' and then silence had fallen upon

them - that there rose, so loud as to be heard throughout the Temple, the Voice of

Jesus. He i nterrupted not the services, for they had for the moment ceased: He

interpreted, and He fulfilled them.

Whether we realise it in connection with the deeply-stirring rites just concluded, and the

song of praise that had scarcely died out of the air; or think of it as a vast step in

advance in the history of Christ's Manifestation, the scene is equally wondrous. But

yesterday they had been divided about Him, and the authorities had given directions to

take Him; to -day He is not only in the Temple, but, at the close of the most solemn rites

of the Feast, asserting, within the hearing of all, His claim to be regarded as the

fulfilment of all, and the true Messiah! And yet there is neither harshness of command

nor violence of threat in His proclamation. It is the King, meek, gentle , and loving; the

Messiah, Who will not break the bruised reed, Who will not lift up His Voice in tone of

anger, but speak in accents of loving, condescending compassion, Who now bids,

whosoever thirsteth, come unto Him and drink. And so the words have to all time

remained the call of Christ to all that thirst, whence- or what-soever their need and

longing of soul may be. But, as we listen to these words as originally spoken, we feel

how they mark that Christ's hour was indeed coming: the preparation past; the

manifestation in the present, unmistakable, urgent, and loving; and the final conflict at

Of those who had heard Him, none but must have understood that, if the invitation were

indeed real, and Christ the fulfilment of all, then the promise als o had its deepest

meaning, that he who believed on Him would not only receive the promised fulness of

the Spirit, but give it forth to the fertilising of the barren waste around. It was, truly, the

fulfilment of the Scripture-promise, not of one but of all : that in Messianic times the

Nabhi, 'prophet,' literally the weller forth, viz., of the Divine, should not be one or another

select individual, but that He would pour out on all His handmaidens and servants of His

Holy Spirit, and thus the moral wilderness of this world be changed into a fruitful garden.

Indeed, this is expressly stated in the Targum which thus paraphrases Is. xliv. 3:

'Behold, as the waters are poured on arid ground and spread over the dry soil, so will I

give the Spirit of My Holiness on they sons, and My blessing on thy children's children.'

What was new to them was, that all this was treasured up in the Christ, that out of His

fulness men might receive, and grace for grace. And yet even this was not quite new.

For, was it not the fulfilment of that old prophetic cry: 'The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah is

upon Me: therefore has He Messiahed (anointed) Me to preach good tidings unto the

poor'? So then, it was nothing new, only the happy fulfilment of the old, when He thus

'spake of the Holy S pirit, which they who believed on Him should receive,' not then, but

upon His Messianic exaltation.