such as superhuman, transcendent, supreme, infinite, eternal, final, and universal. I am now convinced that, while God must be infinitely more than a personality, he cannot be anything less. I am satisfied to end the argument and to accept Jesus as the personal revelation of the Father and the satisfaction of all unsatisfied factors in logic, reason, and philosophy."
Since Nathaniel and Thomas had so fully approved Rodan's views of the gospel of the kingdom, there remained only one more point to consider, the teaching dealing with the divine nature of Jesus, a doctrine only so recently publicly announced. Nathaniel and Thomas jointly presented their views of the divine nature of the Master, and the following narrative is a condensed, rearranged, and restated presentation of their teaching:
1. Jesus has admitted his divinity, and we believe him. Many remarkable
things have happened in connection with his ministry which we can understand
only by believing that he is the Son of God as well as the Son of Man.
2. His life association with us exemplifies the ideal of human friendship;
only a divine being could possibly be such a human friend. He is the most
truly unselfish person we have ever known. He is the friend even of sinners; he
dares to love his enemies. He is very loyal to us. While he does not hesitate to
reprove us, it is plain to all that he truly loves us. The better you know him,
the more you will love him. You will be charmed by his unswerving devotion.
Through all these years of our failure to comprehend his mission, he has been a
faithful friend. While he makes no use of flattery, he does treat us all with
equal kindness; he is invariably tender and compassionate. He has shared his
life and everything else with us. We are a happy community; we share all things
in common. We do not believe that a mere human could live such a blameless
life under such trying circumstances.
3. We think Jesus is divine because he never does wrong; he makes no
mistakes. His wisdom is extraordinary; his piety superb. He lives day by day
in perfect accord with the Father's will. He never repents of misdeeds because
he transgresses none of the Father's laws. He prays for us and with us, but he
never asks us to pray for him. We believe that he is consistently sinless. We do
not think that one who is only human ever professed to live such a life. He
claims to live a perfect life, and we acknowledge that he does. Our piety springs
from repentance, but his piety springs from righteousness. He even professes to
forgive sins and does heal diseases. No mere man would sanely profess to forgive sin; that is a divine prerogative. And he has seemed to be thus perfect in his
righteousness from the times of our first contact with him. We grow in grace
and in the knowledge of the truth, but our Master exhibits maturity of righteousness to start with. All men, good and evil, recognize these elements of goodness in Jesus. And yet never is his piety obtrusive or ostentatious. He is both
meek and fearless. He seems to approve of our belief in his divinity. He is either
what he professes to be, or else he is the greatest hypocrite and fraud the world
has ever known. We are persuaded that he is just what he claims to be.
4. The uniqueness of his character and the perfection of his emotional
control convince us that he is a combination of humanity and divinity. He un-
