- sage to his nation, was evidently the mainspring of his life. It
was under this conviction that he worked his cures and preached his sermons. Probably it strengthened as he continued in his career, though of this there is no possible evidence. Possibly, however, the instructions he gave on several occasions to those whom he had healed, and once to his disciples, to tell no man about him, arose from a certain diffidence about the power by which his miracles were effected (E.g., Mk. i. 44; Mt. ix. 30), and a reluctance to accept the honor which the populace would have conferred upon him. However this may be, he certainly put forward his belief on this subject plainly enough, and its acceptance by his disciples no doubt confirmed it in his own mind, while its rejection by the nation at large, especially the more learned portion of it, gave a flavor of bitterness to the tone in which he insisted upon it. The title by which he habitually designates himself is the Son of man. This was, no doubt, selected as a more modest name than "Son of God." The latter was never (if we exclude the fourth Gospel) applied by Jesus to himself, but when applied to him by others, he made no objection to it, but accepted it as his due. The inference from his behavior is, that he liked to be thought the Son of God (as indeed is shown by his eulogy of Peter when that apostle had so described him) (Mt. xvi. 17; vers. 18 and 19 are probably interpolations), but that he did not quite venture to claim the title for himself. That he was ever imagined, either by himself or others, to be the Son of God in the literal, materialistic sense in which the term was afterwards understood, it would be an entire mistake to suppose. No such notion had ever been formulated by the Jewish mind, and it would, no doubt, have filled his earliest disciples with horror. As Mr. Westcott truly observes, "Years must elapse before we can feel that the words of one who talked with men were indeed the words of God" (Canon of New Testament, p. 64). Nor was the Hebrew Jehovah the sort of divinity who would have had a son by a young village maiden. Proceedings of that kind were left to the heathen deities. Nor did Christ, in claiming a filial relationship to God, ever intend to claim unity with the divine essence, still less to assert that he actually was God himself. This notion of identity would receive no sanction even from the fourth Gospel, which
