y itself, signifies no more than
perfect spiritual and ethical harmony with God. Yet when the words are
considered in their connection, and more particularly when the two supreme
self-declarations in the synoptic gospels are associated with them, they
express a sense of relation to God so utterly unique, so strongly
contrasting the Father and the Son with all others, that we cannot
conceive of any other man, even the saintliest, taking like words upon his
lips.

271. These titles in which Jesus gave expression to his official and his
personal consciousness present clearly the problem which he offers to
human thought. Jesus stands before us in the gospels as a man aware of
completest kinship with his brethren, yet conscious at the same time of
standing nearer to God than he does to men.

272. It is highly significant that the gospel which records most fully the
claim of Jesus to be more closely related to God than he was to men, most
fully records also his definite acknowledgment of dependence on his
Father, and of that Father's supremacy over him and all others. "The Son
can do nothing of himself" (John v. 19), "I speak not from myself" (xiv.
10), "my Father is greater than all" (x. 29), "the Father is greater than
I" (xiv. 28),--these confessions join with the common reference to God as
"him that sent me" (v. 30 and often) in giving voice to his own spirit of
reverence. It appears as clearly in his habitual submission to his
Father's will,--"My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to
accomplish his work" (John iv. 34); "I am come down from heaven, not to do
mine own will, but the will of him that sent me" (John vi. 38). This
submission reached its fulness in the prayer of Gethsemane, recorded in
the earlier gospels,--"Father, all things are possible unto thee; remove
this cup from me: howbeit not what I will, but what thou wilt" (Mark xiv.
36). Jesus was a man of prayer; not only in Gethsemane, but also
throughout his ministry he habitually sought his Father in that communion
in which the soul of man finds its light and strength for life's duty.
When he was baptized (Luke iii. 21), after the first flush of success in
Capernaum (Mark i. 35), before choosing the twelve (Luke vi. 12), before
the question at Caesarea Philippi (Luke ix. 18), at the transfiguration
(Luke ix. 29), on the cross (Luke xxiii. 46),--at all the crises of his
life he turned to God in prayer. Moreover, prayer was his habit, for it
was af