disguise the more than human personality that was his. He simply spoke in character. The divine beauty and power of his personality manifest themselves in the native dignity and greatness of his words. When he pronounced the forgiveness of sins, men recognized instinctively that he was exercising a divine prerogative, though he ascribed the authority to do so to the Son of Man (Mark ii, 7, 10). When he spoke habitually of his relations with his Father, the Jews were incensed against him because in their idea such intimacy as he professed to have with God could only be between equals (John v, 18). His whole teaching and intercourse are pitched, so to speak, in this divine key. One of the most striking examples of this may be felt in the passage wherein he bids men come to him for comfort and rest and take his yoke upon them (Matt. xi, 25–30). Another example occurs in his lament over Jerusalem in Matthew xxiii, 37. How truly divine is the whole presupposition of these utterances we can realize when we reflect how inappropriate, not to say impossible, they would be in any other man's mouth. Yet in him they sound perfectly congruous and fitting; his personality so fully bears them out. What would be insane assump-. tion in an ordinary man is in him felt to be native and normal. NOTE. On this characteristic of Jesus' teaching and personality William E. Channing says: "We feel that a new being, of a new order of mind, is taking a part in human affairs. There is a native tone of grandeur and authority in his teaching... He speaks in a natural, spontaneous style of accomplishing the most arduous and important change in human affairs. This unlabored manner of expressing great thoughts is particularly worthy of attention. You never hear from Jesus that swelling, pompous, ostentatious language which almost necessarily springs from an attempt to sustain a character above our powers. He talks of his glories as one to whom they were familiar, and of his inti ́macy and oneness with God, as simply as a child speaks of his connection with his parents. He speaks of saving and judging the world, of drawing all men to himself, and of giving everlasting life, as we speak of the ordinary powers which we exert. He makes no set harangues about the grandeur of his office and character. His consciousness of it gives a hue to his whole language, breaks out in indirect, undesigned expressions, showing that it was the deepest and most familiar of his convictions." The examples given above (and others might be named) are taken from one of the synoptic gospels; and in genWith whom eral the assumptions of divinity in those gosMost Overt pels are indirect, not plainly assertive. This is quite consistent with Jesus' ordinary purpose to leave his divinity of nature to men's recognition and personal discovery. It is in the fourth gospel, however, that most of his utterances in divine character are to be found and that these are most overt. Many of them are so directly selfassertive that they give his words, as therein reported, an essentially different style from that of the other gospels. This has roused much question whether in this gospel we have an authentic report of his actual words or an invention, the result of later reflection and meditation. And doubtless a very individual style, the style of a peculiarly endowed writer, has been imparted to them. But to deny them, or some authentic nucleus of them, to Jesus is to go beyond the warrant. Jesus, as we know, was aware of his divine distinction; so, indeed, were the evil spirits (cf. Mark i, 24). For the proper human audience and occasion it is altogether probable that he would give open expression to the holy working-consciousness which so naturally shaped his thoughts and actuated his deeds of power. To two classes of people Jesus' revelation of the divinity of his person was explicit, in terms of the Messiah or of the Son of God. 1. One class was of those who were susceptible to such a spiritual recognition of him, and who could receive his claims with sympathy, loyalty, humility. Among such, outside the circle of the disciples, were the woman of Samaria, to whom he explicitly announced himself as the Messiah 1 Channing, Works (one-volume ed.), p. 305. To the Open- (John iv, 26); and the man born blind, to whom he revealed himself as the Son of God (John ix, 35-37). These, however, were casual instances, though we may be sure not so accidental as they would seem. Among Humble the more intimate disciples also it is natural to suppose that some had more penetrative and intuitive minds to realize his divine nature than others; and of these "the disciple whom Jesus loved," to whom is attributed the authorship of the fourth gospel (John xxi, 24), was preeminent. The words of deeper and more mystic import, in which Jesus speaks openly in the divine character, would find a special lodgment in his mind, and after due ripening of meditation would be brought forth from memory and reproduced. This is what appears from the discourses of Jesus reported in the gospel of John. 2. The other class was of those who, while by no means unsusceptible, were antagonistic to any claim to divinity on his part, or on the part of any man. Such were Self-Blinded most of the Jewish leaders; whom the writer of Leaders of the fourth gospel represents as bitterly unwilling To the Opinion to respond to the divine when they saw it (John v, 18; x, 33-38; xix, 7). To such, as responsible teachers of the people, Jesus would have a motive, if only to bear true witness, for declaring in clear and emphatic terms the deep significance of his personality. It was something essential for them to know, whether they would receive it or not (cf. Ezek. iii, 11). This is how the gospel of John represents him in his discourses given in Jerusalem; for it is especially these which this gospel, differing thus from the others, reports (see John v; vii-x; xii, 12-50). Here at the capital he came into collision with the leaders of opinion and sentiment, whose duty it was to know and propagate the truth. He meets them as they are ready to stone him for what they deem blasphemy (John x, 30, 31) and, as it were, hurls at them in most positive terms his divine relations and nature. If this is different from his manner in the synoptic gospels, we must note also the difference of audience, occasion, and motive. He did not choose, amid such self-blinded opponents, to leave his divine personality uncertain or ambiguous. That belonged to his witness to the truth; the rest lay with them. V His Acts in Divine Character. The scientific temper of our age, with its disposition to reduce all things to the plane of ascertainable natural law, has made the question of the miracles of Jesus a very vexed and burning one. There is a widespread tendency, which even loyal Christians cannot well suppress, to adopt some explanation of them which will bring them to our natural unit of measure. This tendency takes mainly two forms: either to think that the miraculous element of Jesus' ministry came into the record as the result of childish wonder and credulity, which by the time the gospels were written had developed into an accepted tradition, or to limit his mighty works to such cases of suggestion and faith-healing as can be paralleled in modern times and to leave the rest to superstitious exaggeration. Neither explanation does justice to the account. As to authenticity, the miracles are as well attested as any part of Jesus' ministry; are narrated in just as temperate and matterof-fact style as the rest; and are so intimately interwoven with his teaching and ordinary acts that the two elements, natural and supernatural, must stand or fall together. If the record of the miracles must go, there is no valid reason for calling anything historic. A like thing may be said about attempts to limit their kind or range. They cannot be confined to cases in which we can trace the working of natural law, without losing their spiritual value. A larger and transcendent element escapes and baffles us; a divine dignity and depth which will not consent to be so limited. We are not concerned here to call in question either the record or the reality of the miracles of Jesus. We take the record as it stands. Our approach to it is literary; and our consideration of the miracles deals with their essentially literary value. What do the miracles say, beyond what could be said otherwise? As a Means of SelfExpression In other words, we have to consider the miracles of Jesus as a means of self-expression. Given the character that he manifests himself to be, undeniably a character of majestic type; given the plane of being on which he moves, undeniably higher than that of ordinary affairs; are the miracles consistent and harmonious with these elements? They are, so to say, his means of personation, by which acts speak instead of words. Do they represent the person as he is? Has their supernatural character the verisimilitude which makes for self-evidencing value? It is a question not of literary transmission or historicity but of literary consistency and truth to nature. And to answer it we must deal fairly with the personality of the Being who works them. If he is divine as well as human his manner of self-expression, act as well as word, will correspond. Considering the miracles in this light we may summarize the matter in two remarks. 1. The miracles of Jesus, while får transcending the ordinary range of human experience, contain nothing of the magical or monstrous, and they are never without a justifying and illuminating motive. They are in idea the polar opposite to the works of occult art or vulgar marvel which with raw and materialistic minds pass for miracle. And they always contain an idea worthy of their power. They are works of beneficence and mercy and sympathy; never wrought for display or self-glorification; always embodying the double truth, of divine love and good-will on the one side, of the possibilities that inhere in human faith on the other. They tell a truth which men need to know, and |