Such is the image which the Gospel narrative presents to us, and of which we are constrained to say, such was He, such must He have been. And in such an image is reflected the moral harmony of His nature. It was because there was in Him nothing of that moral discord which pervades the inner world of all other men, that His mental and spiritual life were so harmonious, so peaceful. Jesus was in perfect harmony with Himself, because He was in perfect harmony with God. Such was His ever present consciousness. He knew Himself to be in absolute communion with the Father.

In all of us, even in the most pious and most holy, the consciousness of communion with God is ever accompanied by that consciousness of sin, atoned for, indeed, and forgiven, yet still a consciousness of sin which forms its background and postulate. With Jesus it was otherwise. His was a pure and absolute consciousness of communion with God.

Jesus lived in continual, prayerful intercourse with His Father, His whole life was a life of prayer, but He never prayed for forgiveness. He taught us to pray, Forgive us our trespasses; but He never prayed thus Himself. He alone of woman borne needed not to do so. He knew nothing of this wall of partition between Himself and His Father. His soul, His reason and will, were ever and completely in His "Father's business."

How then was it possible that a man descended from sinful man should be thus exempt from the universal moral law of all other mortals? He could not have been circumstanced as other men. His origin must have been other than that of all the sons of man beside. His nature must have surpassed the limits of the merely human. This much is surely required by the moral phenomenon He presents to us.

Such is also the teaching of His miracles…. His life is full of marvelous deeds, entirely surpassing the utmost measure of that power and command which the human mind is wont to exercise over nature… .Yet Jesus performed these miracles as though they were natural to Him. They were not works effected by exertion, but deeds of free power.

The attempt has been made to withdraw them from His life, to get rid of them by artificial, or so-called natural explanations. But in vain!.. .What would then be left? His miracles form far too essential a part of His life and ministry to be removed therefrom. His history would then indeed be utterly incomprehensible. What was it but His miracles which attracted the people in such multitudes that the envy of His adversaries was continually and increasingly excited?.. .In short, it is undeniable that the miracles of Jesus are historical facts.

Yet we feel that, after all, it is with the Lord Jesus Himself and not with His miracles that we are concerned. He did not perform them for the sake of being a worker of miracles. It was His heart impelled, His pity urged Him to receive the wretched, and to aid them. But it was not merely temporal misery which He had in view. No one can for a moment imagine that He intended to be a mere healer. His aim was far higher. The object of His actions was the salvation of the soul. It was weakness of faith which He desired to heal by His miracles …. He was ever conscious of possessing miraculous powers;… .but He made His power subservient to His office-His office as the Saviour of men… [His miracles] were not arbitrary acts, but had each a moral motive and moral conditions, not acts of power merely, but of saving love…They show that He must Himself be a miracle-must far surpass all ordinary human beings.

His teaching accompanies His miracles.. .Not without it have His miracles a religious significance.. .We believe His miracles for the sake of His teaching, and for His own sake. … .If He were not what He is, and if His teaching did not approve itself to our hearts as it does, His miracles would not make upon us the impression they do… His teaching presupposes such miracles, and such miracles presuppose such teaching.

Once, when the Sanhedrin commissioned its officers to seize Jesus, and bring Him before them, they returned with their mission unperformed, and with the confession, "Never man spake like this Man" (John 7:46)-a confession in which we cannot but unite, in which all ages cannot but unite. Eighteen centuries have passed since Jesus taught, and during their course the opinions of men have undergone many changes, but His Word has preserved its old, yet ever fresh power over their minds. It is equally comprehensible by all, it exerts an equal power upon all, without distinction…..

Wherein then does the peculiar power of His teaching consist?… It is not the charm of poetry which attracts us, not the ingenious application which surprises us, not flights of eloquence which carry us away, not bold speculation which evokes our astonishment; it is none of these. No one could speak with more simplicity than Jesus speaks… .We cannot fail to see that the world of eternal truth is His home, and that His thoughts have constant intercourse therewith….

We see that the sublimest truths are His nature. He is not merely a teacher of truth, but is Himself its source. Truth is a part of His very being. He can say, I am the Truth. And the feeling with which we listen to His words is, that we are listening to the voice of Truth itself. Hence the power which these have at all times exercised over the minds of men.

But…. He also makes His person the central point of all His teaching.. .To believe in Him, and by virtue of such faith to love God, this was His doctrine… He founds all upon His person. The cause He advocates, the salvation He brings, the demands He makes, the future He announces-all depend upon His person. "It is I," is the great text of all His teaching. "If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins" (John 8:24), is in fact a saying in which His whole doctrine may be summed up… .Not one of the greater instructors of mankind ever dared to say anything of the kind. Nor could we have tolerated such words from any other. "Never man spake like this Man." God alone had thus spoken in the Old Testament. Jesus spoke as if divine authority became Him. And yet He was the meekest of all men.

What then is He?

He has summed up what He tells us of Himself in the two titles which He appropriated, and which have ever since been His current designations. He called Himself the Son of Man, and the Son of God.

By this title [Son of Man] He, on the one side, includes Himself amongst other men-He is one of our race; while on the other He thereby exalts Himself above the whole race besides; as in a truly exclusive sense, the Son of Mankind.. .the Man, properly so called.. .In His presence all thought of national peculiarity, distance of time, variety of mental cultivation vanishes…

He designates Himself as the Lord of the world. He connects the fate of the whole world and of individuals with His person-makes it dependent on faith in Himself. … But He is Lord of the world only to be its Redeemer. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. It is redemption from sin, the true relation to God, peace, salvation, that He would give to the world.. .It was just while He was being condemned as a criminal, and saw the shameful death of the cross before Him, that He repeated to His judges the saying which He had already uttered to His disciples, that He should be raised to the right hand of the divine Majesty-would appear in divine glory, surrounded by the angels of God who stand at His service, and fulfil His commands-would summon all nations before His judgment-seat, and judge them according to their conduct towards Himself… it is at such a moment that He designates Himself as the divine Ruler and Judge of the world!

Such an assertion must be truth; for in this case there is no medium between truth and madness.. .we are constrained to quit the limits of humanity, and to look for the root of His being, the home of His nature and life, in God Himself, to explain the possibility of such a saying, which would be but an unsolvable psychologic enigma if Jesus were nothing more than man… Only because Jesus is to God what He is, can He be to us what He says. He is the Son of Man, the Lord of the world, its Judge, only because He is the Son of God.

It is thus He ever designates Himself.. .The first Gospels contain it, as well as the fourth… ."All things are delivered unto Me of my Father:and no man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and He to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him" (Matt. 11:27)….He severs Himself from men, and includes Himself in the Godhead as one who is more really and more strictly a component part of Divinity than He is even of humanity, to which, nevertheless, He appears chiefly to appertain…

Jesus calls Himself the Son of God in an absolute sense, and not in the sense in which men may be called sons of God-by virtue, for instance, of creation, or of moral likeness to Him. In the case of Jesus, this title denotes a relation of essence and nature. By it He makes a distinction between Himself and man, which is not one of degree, but of kind… .He bids us say Our Father; He never calls God so Himself [but "My Father"] ; His relation to God is unique. His fellowship with God is absolute (John 10:33, 38);.. .He has divine life in Himself (S:26); in short, He includes Himself in the Godhead, and thus appears before the world and the whole human race as One forming a component part of Deity.

But how could a human being stand so related to God that the strictest fellowship should exist between the two without any interposing limit, whether of sin or of creaturehood, unless He formed an essential, and therefore eternal, part of the divine nature? And thus these considerations force us of necessity to demand His eternal existence-a fact which Jesus in the fourth Gospel so frequently affirms, when He says of Himself that He came forth from the Father, and is come into the world … ."Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am" (John 8:58)….In this highest sense does He call Himself the Son of God.
-From a "Lecture on the Person of Christ," by Chr. Ernst Luthardt, delivered in Leipsic, 1864.

[The truths contained in this volume-"The Fundamental Truths of Christianity,"-carry with them their own evidence and meet the prevailing Modernism in a way which must close the mouth of any honest objector to the great facts herein set forth.-S. R.].