CHAPTER V.

THE LORD JESUS CHRIST.

LET us briefly review the position which we have reached. There are two kinds of Divine operation -the secret and the open. Of the latter, there are two subdivisions, namely, Divine Speech, and open Divine action, including Miracle. Divine Speech is recognised as such by the man who hears it. It reveals the moral perfection of the Speaker. Divine action, including Miracle, does the same. But Miracle does more, it reveals the Omnipotence also of the Agent.

Now Moral Perfection and Omnipotence are two attributes which we name Divine, and which claim the last homage of man. Either puts forth this claim, and either is instinctively obeyed. We also naturally associate them in our minds, and when we see one we expect the other. Thus their manifestations corroborate each other.

We believe that

to the Omnipotent belong veracity and every other

moral perfection; and on the other hand, we enjoy a calm satisfaction in the knowledge that the Person who has called forth our deepest moral reverence is in possession of Omnipotence.

It is remarkable that the Being whose earthly history is narrated in the Gospels, reveals these two attributes, not only as unmistakeably belonging to a Person, but in a much higher degree than nature. The perfection of Christ not only realises, but far surpasses our idea; so that the Gospel history is a brighter manifestation of morality than nature or conscience. And on the other hand, whereas in nature there is no return from death, no manifestation of power which reaches to the unseen world of departed souls, the resurrections wrought by Christ, and most of all His own resurrection, exhibit Him as Lord of the unseen world as well as of the seen. Thus the Gospel history manifests Power as well as Moral Excellence better than nature.

Now men, when they behold that stately spectacle of sky and earth, do acknowledge the Author as God; and when they converse with conscience they listen to her voice as speaking of eternal law, as the echo of God within them. If, then, when they see in Christ raising the dead Power vaster and more awful than any heretofore shown in creation; and when they see the beauty and venerableness of His action and speech, surpassing the justice and the utmost kindness of nature and conscience—if they refuse to fall down and worship, has the word

God henceforth any meaning among the sons of men?

Yet it is a sad truth that many who heard His words and beheld His mighty works did not acknowledge Him as God. How does this agree with the principle maintained in the second chapter, that those who received Revelations knew by whom they were made?

To answer this, it must be observed, that the Son of God, in coming into our world, underwent a voluntary humiliation. He "emptied Himself" of the majesty which could be separated from Him, and appeared amongst men, in all respects save character, as one of themselves. When He spake, there was not, in the case of every hearer, an overmastering influence put forth to make known the Speaker. When He wrought miracles, it was as a prophet in the name of God. To discern His absolute moral excellence and infer therefrom His proper Deity, spiritual perception was necessary. The Pharisees resisted the evidence of His "mighty works," and when Simon Peter confessed Him to be "the Son of the living God," it was owing to the Divine energy which had made him receive the Revelation.

To such as were enabled to perceive Christ's absolute moral supremacy, His life became a positive Revelation, a grand addition to the old one recorded in the Law and the Prophets, which it completed and surpast.

Christ always said that His coming was in organic

unity with the Mosaic and prophetic system, that He was the fulfilment and crown of previous Revelation. Indeed, the more carefully we study the Old Testament, the more fully we perceive that all of it has a prospective reference to Christ; that it is one grand prediction of, and preparation for Him. For the Moral Perfection of Christ to have been displayed in human nature is the great wonder of history; and next to this, perhaps, is the foresight and foresketch of His character by the prophets many centuries before His appearing.

Questions concerning the authorship or precise age of particular documents are not relevant to our present purpose. None of these compositions are referred by respectable scholars to a period more recent than several centuries before the Christian era. If the last twenty-seven chapters of Isaiah were not written by the author of the first thirty-nine, but two hundred years later-what then? There are still about five centuries between them and the birth of Jesus. In this collection of highly ancient writings we find an accurate general foresketch of the figure of Him who is the subject of the Gospel narrative, and who, in the particulars wherein the prediction and the narrative correspond, stands prominently alone in the history of the world. From what model did the Prophet sketch? Whence fetch his conception? There seems but one reasonable answer: the Prophet described a miraculous vision of the future.

Some of these prophetic descriptions were un

doubtedly occasioned by contemporary persons, as David, or Solomon, or Isaiah, to whom they in some small measure apply. The objection, however, that there is therefore no reference to the distant future, that the earlier descriptions were fulfilled in David or Solomon, and that the Servant of the Lord delineated by Isaiah is either Isaiah himself, or Jeremiah, or the nation of Israel, seems hardly worthy of mention, far less of serious refutation.*

The Old Testament, in predicting the appearing of Christ, describes His piety and intimate relation with God. 1 Chron. xvii. 13; Ps. xxii. 22, xl. 8, lxix. 9, lxxxix. 26; Is. xlii. 1, xlix. 2.

His kingly justice. Is. xi. 5; Jer. xxiii. 5, 6; Zech. xix. 9.

His energy in the cause of truth. Ps. xvi. 8, xlv. 3, 4; Is. xl. 10.

His humanity and tenderness, especially for the weak, the poor, and the despised. Ps. lxxii. 2, 4, 13, 14; Is. xl. 11, xlii. 3, 1. 4, liii. 4, lxi. 1—3. His lowly unobtrusiveness. Is. xlii. 2; Zech.

ix. 9.

It calls Him Son of God. Ps. ii. 7. The Mighty God. Is. ix. 6, xl. 10. Jehovah. Jer. xxiii. 6. He is sometimes identified by implication with God. Ps. cx. 1; Is. xl. 3; Dan. vii, 13. The most striking implication is when God's intervention on His people's behalf is intermingled in the context with

* Appendix C.