from the remarks Christ had been making respecting the intimate relation He sustained to the Father.

"He did not preach His opinions, He preached Himself," remarks Renan. But passing over the obvious fact that in preaching "Himself," He must necessarily have preached "His opinions," or, in other words, Scripture or New Testament doctrine-in what sense, we ask, did He preach Himself? "To be the Son of God," Renan replies. And in what sense was such preaching understood, first, by His enemies? Why, that He preached Himself "God;" and hence the accusation of blasphemy, to which we have just alluded" because Thou being a man, makest Thyself God." His enemies brought the same charge against Him in accusing Him before Pilate-(John xix. 7). Secondly, in what sense did His friends and disciples understand the expression, "Son of God?" Without a single recorded exception, we answer, in the sense conveyed by the terms,

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My Lord and my God,"1 of Thomas; "the true God and eternal life," of John; "the only wise God," of Jude; and the “ of Whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, Who is over all, God blessed for ever," of Paul. These and many other similar passages show conclusively that they understood the title "Son of God" by which Christ designated Himself, to be expressive of His Divinity, and that, therefore, it was no robbery" in Him to claim "to be equal

with God."

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We have thus the concurrence of both friends and foes, inspired and uninspired men, without a single recorded dissentient, that by His own teaching Christ claimed to be God, equal with the Father. And does not His language, properly understood, as recorded in many parts of the New Testament, truly convey this idea. If Christ did not preach 1 John xx. 28.

21 John v. 20.

3 Rom. ix. 5.

His Divinity, if He did not mean to convey the idea that He was God in the highest sense of the term, possessing all the essential attributes of Deity, what are we to understand by such passages as the following. Not only did He in the style of the sovereign utterances of the Deity, assert that He was greater than John, than Solomon, than Jonas, than the temple, than the greatest of the prophets; that He was the Lord of the Sabbath; that He was before Abraham ; that He had glory with the Father before the world was; that He "came down from heaven, and forth from God; but He also asserted that He was One with the Father"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.1 I and My Father are One. 2 As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father. " No man knoweth the Son but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal Him. As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father."" And to the Jews who required a sign as to His Messiahship, He said " Destroy this temple [meaning His body], and in three days I will raise it up.' that I might take it again. I lay it down of Myself.

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Also, "I lay down My life No man taketh it from Me, but I have power to lay it down, and

I have power to take it again."

In perfect consistency with St. Paul's account of Him "in whom we have redemption," as being "before all things, and by whom all things consist," Christ claims unlimited possession and equal proprietorship with the Father: All Mine are Thine, and Thine are Mine." "All that

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1 John v. 17.

8

4 Matt. xi. 27.

2 John x. 30.

5 John v. 21, 23.

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7 John ii. 19.

3 John x. 15.
John x. 17, 18.

8 John xvii. 10.

the Father hath are Mine: therefore said I, that He shall take of Mine, and shall show it unto you."1

Jesus also asserts His Omnipresence: "Lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” 2 "Whereso

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ever two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." That is, actually, personally in their midst; for He says again: "He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me: and he that loveth Me shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him, and will manifest Myself to him. And we will come unto him, and make our abode with him."4

On page 181 Renan confounds the terms, "a son of God" with "the Son of God," as though they were synonymous; instead of which the distinction between them is clearly represented in Scripture as being infinite, the latter which in contradistinction from "a son," or "sons of God,” is the only begotten of the Father-being made synonymous with the name of God Himself. Luke intimates that Christ was called "the Son of God" simply in reference to His having been begotten of the Holy Ghost, and to His being therefore God incarnate. 5 Christ who, as we have seen, not only calls Himself "the Son of God," but claims oneness and equal honour with God, says as to His pre-existence in the bosom of the Father: "I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again I leave the world, and

go to the Father." And John says of Him: "He came

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unto His own, and His own received Him not."7 came unto his own? A being that had no previous existence, according to Renan's assumption that He was merely human; but ownership could not have preceded existence, and yet they were His own. The Jewish nation had been

1 John xvi. 15. 4John xiv. 21, 23.

Matt. xxviii 20.

3 Matt. xviii. 20.
7 John i. II.

5 Luke i. 35. 6 John xvi. 28.

God's own people as the chosen depositors of the revelations He had made to man for generations past; and of Him therefore it is said, "He came unto His own." Of God, and God alone, such language could have been written; and as Christ is the Person to whom it refers, as having come, Jesus Christ is therefore God.

As the book of Revelation is canonical, we are, of course, at liberty to quote from it; and as a believer in the supernatural on the authority of ample testimony, we are at liberty to quote Christ's words uttered after His resurrection. In the last chapter of this book, the Lord God and the Lamb in unity are said to be the Temple and the Light of Heaven; and v. 6, in connection with v. 16, proves Jesus to have been the Lord God of the holy prophets. In chapter ii. 8, Jesus connects His Divinity with His humanity by asserting that He "which was dead and is alive," is "the first and the last." And in chapter i. v. 8, in connection with verses 11, 17, 18, this same Jesus declares Himself to be "Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty." The Apostle Paul, in like manner, connects His Divinity with His humanity in the passage-" Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of God, which he hath purchased with His own blood."

The worship of angels is forbidden (Col. ii. 18); but Christ allowed, and required, His disciples to pay Him Divine homage and worship. They "honoured Him even as they honoured the Father, as they had been taught by Himself to do :-"Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped Him, saying, of a truth Thou art the Son

1 Acts xx. 28.

of God."1 After His resurrection also, we find them still worshipping Him :-"Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed to meet them. And when they saw Him they worshipped Him." 2 And hence it is, that being encouraged by Christ, and therefore right, they continued to worship Him after His ascension :-" And it came to pass, while He blessed them, He was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. And they worshipped Him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” "3 Hence also it is that we read of His being worshipped by the angels, and the twenty-four elders who fell down before "the Lamb," and worshipped Him as the supreme God "that liveth for ever and ever." Now in Christ's rebuke to the Tempter in the wilderness, He teaches us that God alone is to be worshipped; and by sanctioning and encouraging the worship of Himself, therefore, He clearly teaches that He is Himself God-" the great, the only wise, and true God," as Jude, Paul, and John, declare Him to be.

The Glorious Personage whom Paul in his Epistle to Titus styles" the great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ," and whose "glorious appearing," he says, we are to look for, Christ Himself, assuming the lowlier title of "Son of Man," represents as the sovereign Ruler of angels and supreme Judge of men :-"When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory; and before Him shall be gathered all nations; and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats.' And in Rev. ii. 18, 23, under the title of "Son of God," as an essential qualification for the Supreme Judge1 Matt. xiv. 33. 2 Matt. xxviii. 16, 17. 3 Luke xxiv. 51, 52. 4 Titus ii. 10, 13. 5 Matt. xxv. 31, 32.