He declares to be unpardonable, we see how seriously He regarded it, and how singularly therefore He thought of Himself. In its combination of self-abnegation and self-assertion, the passage is exactly parallel to that in which Jesus disclaims knowledge of 'that day or that hour,' while at the same time He assumes a place higher than men or angels, the place of One who is 'the Son' in the unqualified sense in which God is 'the Father' (Mark 13 32). Schmiedel is probably right in holding that this saying about the pardonableness of speaking a word against the Son of Man is a genuine word of Jesus: it is certainly not likely to have been invented by people who worshipped Him. But even if he were wrong, and Wellhausen were right in his belief that the true form of Jesus' words is preserved in Mark, the result, so far as our argument is concerned, would hardly be affected. In Mark (3 28 ff.), there is no mention of the Son of Man, but all sins are said to be pardonable to the sons of men except that of blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Now the sin of blaspheming the Spirit, as the context shows, is the sin of those who look at the works of redeeming love wrought by the Spirit of God in Jesus-for it is by the Spirit of God he casts out demons-and ascribe them to Beelzebub. In other words, it is by a sin committed against the person and work of Jesus that men involve themselves in unpardonable guilt. This puts Him even more unequivocally than the form of words common to Matthew and Luke into a place of peculiar greatness. It identifies Him with the cause of God in that absolute fashion of which we have already had illustrations, and it makes the destiny of men depend for ever on their attitude to Himself and His work.1

In the passages which have just been reviewed what is uppermost in the title Son of Man is the suggestion of On this paragraph, see the author's article in The Expositor, Dec. 1907.

humanity-the lowliness of Jesus, His kinship with men, that in His aspect and circumstances which exposes Him to depreciation and misunderstanding. The other side of the meaning-that in which the glorious destiny of the Son of Man is involved-can never have been absent, though in these cases it is more or less latent. Matthew and Luke have, however, in common another series of passages in which the glorious destiny of the Son of Man is the very thing which is affirmed. They are to be found in Matt. 24 27. 37. 39. 44; Luke 17 24, 26, 30 12 40. To these we should perhaps add Luke 123, though in the parallel in Matt. 10 32 the Son of Man is wanting, and is represented by 'I.' In all these passages the eschatological meaning is undoubted: Jesus speaks of Himself definitely as the person in whom the glorious prophecy of Dan. 7 13 ff. is to be suddenly and finally fulfilled. Hence there can be no question that Jesus Himself inspired the hope of His Return which fills the New Testament. If He renounced Messiahship in the political sense in which it was popular with the Jews, He claimed it in the supernatural sense which had gathered around it since Daniel. He identified Himself with the human form to which 'the kingdom' was to be given. Nothing isolates more conspicuously Jesus' sense of what He was in relation to God and to man. Nothing marks off His consciousness of Himself more distinctly from every form of prophetic consciousness than this, that whereas the prophets looked forward to the coming of another, what Jesus saw as the final and glorious consummation of God's purposes was His own coming again. It is not to the purpose to raise here the question how far the words of Jesus are to be taken literally, or how far they are merely symbolical-how far they have proved substantially true, or how far we must acknowledge in them that illusive element which is inseparable from predictive prophecy. When we consider

that everything else in the seventh chapter of Daniel is symbolic-the sea, for example, and the brutal monsters which arise out of it-it is at least plausible to argue that much of what is spectacular in Jesus' words about the sudden and glorious advent of the Son of Man is symbolical also. We are as likely to misunderstand Him if we read in a legal or prosaic spirit, pressing the literal meaning of every term, as if we exaggerate the symbol till no palpable fact remains. But whatever the true method of interpretation may be, it cannot be questioned that in His own mind Jesus was identified with that mysterious and transcendent Person through whom the kingdom of God at last comes in glory. If we knew nothing of Jesus but this, it might well seem disconcerting: He could be represented with much plausibility as the victim of a fanatical delusion. But the mind of Jesus about Himself, in relation to God and to the establishment of His kingdom, has already come before us in a great variety of aspects, and forbids any such conclusion. That mind, it is not too much to say, is throughout consistent with itself, and in harmony with the place claimed by Jesus in the prophecies of His glorious Coming. It is not fanatical, and there is no shadow of unreality about it; the unique place He assumes, the unique authority He claims to exercise, vindicate themselves in the mind and conscience of man. It is not only in its glorious consummation that the kingdom is identified with Him; it is identified with Him all through His career. The attitude which He requires of men is involved in this fact, and it is always the same. When He speaks of His Advent in glory and of the manner in which the destiny of men is then decided for ever by their relation to Himself, He only concentrates into one tremendous expression what is the burden of His self-revelation from beginning to end.

So far as it has been carried, the results of our investi

gation are, we venture to assert, entirely favourable to the catholic Christian attitude to Jesus. The investigation has been strictly limited to the oldest accessible authorities -the source common to Matthew and Luke, with one or two references at the outset to Mark; and the conclusion is all the more important. We do not say that it vindicates any particular Christology-Arian, Athanasian, or Kenotic; or even any of the Christological types represented in the apostolic writings. But it does what is infinitely more important. It demonstrates the word is not too strong— that Jesus was not, in His own consciousness of Himself, merely one man more in the world, though one who (as it happened) knew God better than others; He was not simply a prophet like those who had gone before; He was not a Jew who like all other Jews saw the will of God in the Old Testament, but believed Himself to possess a better way of doing it than the other teachers of the time; He was not 'the ideal religious subject,' the inspiring pattern of man's true attitude to God. He was more than all this, and in some respects very different from all this. "The whole literature,' we may say-borrowing for application to the earliest evangelic records what Professor Cairns has observed of the New Testament in general'the whole literature is inspired by the conviction, not simply that something new has been discovered, but that something new has happened." When Christ is in the world it is another world; there is a Person in it to whom our attitude must be other than it is to men in general, just because He is and reveals Himself to be other. 'Men there have been who felt themselves able to say "I know," and who died like Him for their convictions. But He was able to say "I am." I am that to which prophecy has pointed, and was able to feel Himself worthy to be that.'" 'Christianity in the Modern World, p. 147. 2 G. A. Smith, Jerusalem, ii. p. 548.

1

This is indeed the vital point of difference between the Old Testament and the New, the foundation on which alone. Christianity can rest as a faith specifically distinct from that of the Old Testament. It is so far from being the truth that the Son has no place in the gospel as it was preached by Jesus, that the gospel, even as preached by Jesus, is constituted by the presence of the Son in the world, and the place given to Him in religion. There is no Christianity except through a particular attitude of the soul to Jesus, and that attitude of the soul to Jesus is demanded at every point, in every relation, and in every mode, tacit and explicit, by Jesus Himself. Christianity is what it is through the presence in it of the Mediator, and it is not only in the faith of Christians but in the mind of Jesus Himself that the character of Mediator is claimed. It is a character, happily, which can be recognised without raising either physical questions, or metaphysical-without asking, not to speak of answering, the questions to which the creed makers and the authors. of Christologies have devoted their powers; but to recognise it means that Jesus becomes the object of our faith. We trust in Him, commit ourselves to Him, believe in God through Him, and are conscious when we do so that we have reached the final truth of things.

Up to this point, we have examined mainly discourses of Jesus as recorded in Q, and have based our argument on the words of Jesus Himself. But while speech is in some ways the most adequate expression of mind, a man. may reveal what he is, and what he conceives himself to be, by action, which is more speaking even than words. It has already been noticed that the second of the early witnesses to Jesus-the Gospel according to Mark-contains few discourses of Jesus: it is a picture of His life rather than a record of His words. It is, however, a very early picture, and there can be no doubt that it circulated