[Footnote 10:  Comp. Acts xvii. 28.]

[Footnote 11:  Matt. xviii. 20, xxviii. 20.]

[Footnote 12:  John x. 30, xvii. 21.  See in general the later discourses of John, especially chap. xvii., which express one side of the psychological state of Jesus, though we cannot regard them as true historical documents.]

The title “Son of God,” or simply “Son,"[1] thus became for Jesus a title analogous to “Son of man,” and, like that, synonymous with the “Messiah,” with the sole difference that he called himself “Son of man,” and does not seem to have made the same use of the phrase, “Son of God."[2] The title, Son of man, expressed his character as judge; that of Son of God his power and his participation in the supreme designs.  This power had no limits.  His Father had given him all power.  He had the power to alter even the Sabbath.[3] No one could know the Father except through him.[4] The Father had delegated to him exclusively the right of judging.[5] Nature obeyed him; but she obeys also all who believe and pray, for faith can do everything.[6] We must remember that no idea of the laws of Nature marked the limit of the impossible, either in his own mind, or in that of his hearers.  The witnesses of his miracles thanked God “for having given such power unto men."[7] He pardoned sins;[8] he was superior to David, to Abraham, to Solomon, and to the prophets.[9] We do not know in what form, nor to what extent, these affirmations of himself were made.  Jesus ought not to be judged by the law of our petty conventionalities.  The admiration of his disciples overwhelmed him and carried him away.  It is evident that the title of Rabbi, with which he was at first contented, no longer sufficed him; even the title of prophet or messenger of God responded no longer to his ideas.  The position which he attributed to himself was that of a superhuman being, and he wished to be regarded as sustaining a higher relationship to God than other men.  But it must be remarked that these words, “superhuman” and “supernatural,” borrowed from our petty theology, had no meaning in the exalted religious consciousness of Jesus.  To him Nature and the development of humanity were not limited kingdoms apart from God—­paltry realities subjected to the laws of a hopeless empiricism.  There was no supernatural for him, because there was no Nature.  Intoxicated with infinite love, he forgot the heavy chain which holds the spirit captive; he cleared at one bound the abyss, impossible to most, which the weakness of the human faculties has created between God and man.

[Footnote 1:  The passages in support of this are too numerous to be referred to here.]

[Footnote 2:  It is only in the Gospel of John that Jesus uses the expression “Son of God,” or “Son,” in speaking of himself.]

[Footnote 3:  Matt. xii. 8; Luke vi. 5.]

[Footnote 4:  Matt. xi. 27.]

[Footnote 5:  John v. 22.]