*

III

CONCERNING HIMSELF

"_Who say ye that I am_?"--MATT. xvi. 15.

I

This was our Lord's question to His first disciples; and this, by the
mouth of Simon Peter, was their answer: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of
the living God." And in all ages this has been the answer of the Holy
Catholic Church throughout all the world. In the days of New Testament
Christianity no other answer was known or heard. The Church of the
apostles had its controversies, as we know, controversies in which the
very life of the Church was at stake. Division crept in even among the
apostles themselves. But concerning Christ they spoke with one voice,
they proclaimed one faith. The early centuries of the Christian era were
centuries of keen discussion concerning the Person of our Lord; but the
discussions sprang for the most part from the difficulty of rightly
defining the true relations of the Divine and the human in the one
Person, rather than from the denial of His Divinity; and, as Mr.
Gladstone once pointed out, since the fourth century the Christian
conception of Christ has remained practically unchanged. Amid the fierce
and almost ceaseless controversies which have divided and sometimes
desolated Christendom, and which, alas! still continue to divide it, the
Church's testimony concerning Christ has never wavered. The Greek
Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the various Protestant Churches,
Lutherans, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Methodists,
Christian men and women out of every tribe and tongue and people and
nation,--all unite to confess the glory of Christ in the words of the
ancient Creed: "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light
of Light, Very God of very God."

This, beyond all doubt, has been and is the Christian way of thinking
about Christ. But now the question arises, Was this Christ's way of
thinking about Himself? Did He Himself claim to be one with God? or, is
it only we, His adoring disciples, who have crowned Him with glory and
honour, and given Him a name that is above every name? To those of us
who have been familiar with the New Testament ever since we could read,
the question may appear so simple as to be almost superfluous.
Half-a-dozen texts leap to our lips in a moment by way of answer. Did He
not claim to be the Messiah in whom Old Testament history and prophecy
found their fulfilment and c