y."[15] And when at
last the truth was clear, and they knew that it was the incarnate Son of
God who had companied with them, their faith was the result not of this
or that high claim which He had made for Himself, but rather of "the
sum-total of all His words and works, the united and accumulated
impression of all He was and did" upon their sincere and receptive
souls.[16]

Are there not many of us to-day who would do well to seek the same goal
by the same path? We have listened, perhaps, to other men's arguments
concerning the Divinity of our Lord, conscious the while how little they
were doing for us. Let us listen to Christ Himself. Let us put ourselves
to school with Him, as these first disciples did, and suffer Him to make
His own impression upon us. And if ours be sincere and receptive souls
as were theirs, from us also He shall win the adoring cry, "My Lord and
my God." Let us note, then, some of the many ways in which Christ bears
witness concerning Himself. In a very true sense all His sayings are
"self-portraitures." Be the subject of His teaching what it may, He
cannot speak of it without, in some measure at least, revealing His
thoughts concerning Himself; and it is this indirect testimony whose
significance I wish now carefully to consider.

II

Observe, in the first place, how Christ speaks of God and of His own
relation to Him. He called Himself, as we have already noted, "the Son
of God." Now, there is a sense in which all men are the sons of God, for
it is to God that all men owe their life. And there is, further, as the
New Testament has taught us, another and deeper sense in which men who
are not may "become" the sons of God, through faith in Christ. But
Christ's consciousness of Sonship is distinct from both of these, and
cannot be explained in terms of either. He is not "_a_ son of God"--one
among many---He is "_the_ son of God," standing to God in a relationship
which is His alone. Hence we find--and we shall do well to mark the
marvellous accuracy and self-consistency of the Gospels in this
matter--that while Jesus sometimes speaks of "_the_ Father," and
sometimes of "_My_ Father," and sometimes, again, in addressing His
disciples, of "_your_ Father," never does He link Himself with them so
as to call God "_our_ Father." Nowhere does the distinction, always
present to the mind of Christ, find more striking expression than in
that touching scene in the garden in which the Risen Lord bids Ma