in supposing him to have applied to himself each and all of the terms which the Jews in any way used to describe the Messiah,—Messiah or Christ, God's Chosen or Beloved or Consecrated or Glorified One, the Son of God, the Son of Man; because his concern, as we have said, was with his countrymen's idea of salvation, not with their terms for designating the bringer of it. But the simplest term, the term which gives least opening into theosophy,—Son of Man,—he certainly preferred. So, too, he loved the simple expres- sions, 'God sent me,' 'The Father hath sent me;' and he chose so often to say, in a general manner, 'I am He,'[1] rather than to say positively, 'I am the Christ.'
And evidently this mode of speaking struck his hearers. We find the Jews saying: 'How long dost thou make us to doubt? if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly.'[2] And even then Jesus does not answer point-blank, but prefers to say: 'I have told you, and ye believe not.' Yet this does not imply that he had the least doubt or hesitation in naming himself the Messiah, the Son of God; but only that his concern was, as we have said, with God's righteousness and Christ's salvation, and that he avoided all use of the names God, and Christ, which might give an opening into mere theosophical speculation. And this is shown, moreover, by the largeness and freedom,—almost, one may say, indifference,—of his treatment of both names; as names, in using which, his hearers were always in danger of going off into a theosophy that did them no good and had better occupy them as little
