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Our Lord and Master 
 
 A BRIEF STUDY OF THE 
 CLAIMS OF JESUS CHRIST 
 
 BY J 
 
 REV. JESSE BOWMAN YOUNG, D. D. 
 
 CINCINNATI: JENNINGS & PYE 
 NEW YORK: EATON & MAINS 
 
 c c C <* o S ^ 
 
THE LiBRARY OF 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 JAN 28 1903 
 
 Copyright Entry 
 ClASS ^ XXc. No. 
 
 CO'PYB, 
 
 a Co? 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1903, 
 JENNINGS & PYK. 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 Some of the reasons wh# the Lord Jesus 
 is regarded as worthy of the highest honor 
 on earth and in heaven are herewith sug- 
 gested, with brevity, and from a standpoint 
 which needs to be freshly occupied. In mak- 
 ing this presentation we hold in abeyance, 
 of choice, many of the stock arguments 
 which have been in vogue as upholding the 
 doctrine of the Divinity of our Lord, and 
 we emphasize others which, in view of our 
 own age and in connection with the needs 
 of the younger generation of inquirers into 
 Biblical truth, may wisely be brought into 
 bolder relief. It has not been forgotten in 
 dealing with this lofty theme that the most 
 convincing proofs of the superhuman rela- 
 tions and gracious power of Jesus Christ are 
 3 
 
4 Foreword. 
 
 available only to those who love and obey 
 him. While this argument from human ex- 
 perience is most comforting and satisfying, 
 yet in an age of doubt and in a time when 
 assaults are being made upon the Master's 
 claims from many sides, even the devoutest 
 Christian believer may need to be reassured 
 by a consideration of some of the facts and 
 proofs which will re-enforce, supplement, 
 and give new buttresses to, his faith. Some 
 of these other proofs are herein restated, 
 with the hope and prayer that they may 
 glorify and honor the King. 
 
 Jesse Bowman Young. 
 Walnut Hills, Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAG-E 
 
 Foreword, -- 3 
 
 If 1. A Vital Question, - 7 
 
 If 2. Modern Methods Needed, - - - 10 
 
 If 3. God's Unity Fundamental, 13 
 
 It 4. Christ's Matchless Character, - - 16 
 
 IT 5. Supreme Teacher, Perfect Example, - 19 
 
 1T 6. What Did He Claim? - 24 
 
 1. The Eight to Pardon Sin, - - - 24 
 
 2. " I Will Give You Eest " 25 
 
 3. Judge op All Men, - - - - 26 
 
 4. Son op God, 27 
 
 5. Jurisdiction over the Holy Spirit, - 28 
 If 7. The Fourth Gospel, - 32 
 If 8. Is He to be Worshiped? - - - - 37 
 IF 9. The Penitent Malefactor, 41 
 
 5 
 
6 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 If 10. Never Disclaimed Worship, - - 45 
 
 If 11. A Seeming Exception, 48 
 
 If 12. Example of Apostolic Church, - - 50 
 
 If 13. New Testament Term " Worship, " - 56 
 
 If 14. The Primitive Christians, - - - 59 
 
 If 15. Early Christian Hymns, 66 
 
 If 16. Witness of Modern Poets, - - - 74 
 
 If 17. Witness of the Prayer-Book, 80 
 
 If 18. The Facts Focused, - 83 
 
 Tf 19. The Testimony of Experience, 85 
 
 If 20. Conclusion, 91 
 
 If 21. Appendix, - 94 
 
 1. The Apostles' Creed, - - - 95 
 
 2. The Nicene Creed, 95 
 
 3. First and Second Articles of Ke- 
 
 ligion, - - - - - 97 
 
OUR LORD AND MASTER. 
 
 ffl, A Vital Question. 
 
 One question, asked from time to time 
 through the centuries, and uppermost in 
 theological inquiry to-day, goes to the very 
 heart of the Christian faith, "Is Jesus 
 Christ Divine?" The relation of this ques- 
 tion to other central teachings of the gospel, 
 such as atonement, forgiveness, worship, and 
 world-wide evangelization; its direct and in- 
 evitable bearing upon human belief, experi- 
 ence, character, and conduct; and the fore- 
 most place which it has occupied in the 
 thought and researches and deliberations of 
 the Church in every age, indicate the scope 
 and significance of the subject thus brought 
 to view. If the Christ of the Gospels is in 
 7 
 
8 Ouk Lord and Master. 
 
 any full and proper sense divine, possessing 
 jurisdiction over the human race, and en- 
 titled not only to our gratitude and love, 
 but to our worship, then it would seem to be 
 of inestimable importance that we should 
 secure a clear apprehension of the facts in 
 the case, and act in accord with them; not 
 merely in order to cherish an intelligent 
 belief, but that we may be able to state 
 lucidly and convincingly the reasons on 
 which our faith is erected. Even a well in- 
 structed child in a Christian household ought 
 to be able to give, off-hand, the reasons why 
 our Lord is adored, obeyed, and enthroned 
 in human hearts as the One who is mighty 
 to save. 
 
 The subject thus brought to view, it may 
 be frankly acknowledged, is vast and mani- 
 fold in its range and relations. The divinity 
 of Christ is a theme which has occupied the 
 minds and subsidized the pens of the great- 
 est theologians of the ages; hundreds of vol- 
 umes have been written upon it; every com- 
 
Our Lord and Master. 9 
 
 plete work on Christian theology has given 
 ample space to its consideration; it is recog- 
 nized by friend and foe alike as having a 
 fundamental relation to the whole system 
 of Christianity; belief in it divides off the 
 orthodox world from those who may— with- 
 out offense and for the lack of a more con- 
 venient term — be styled heterodox, who ac- 
 cept Jesus as a religious genius, as perhaps 
 the greatest of teachers, but who regard him 
 as simply and only a man. The vital char- 
 acter of the discussion may therefore be 
 taken for granted. 
 
 This thesis may be presented and argued 
 from many standpoints; in a brief, modern, 
 and suggestive presentation of the ease we 
 need to single out from the variety of facts 
 and arguments which support the doctrine a 
 few which by their timeliness, their connec- 
 tion with the intellectual temper of our age, 
 their simplicity and directness, can not be 
 evaded or reasonably denied. Such a state- 
 ment, indeed, is required by the widespread 
 
10 Ouk Lord and Master. 
 
 conviction which is evident in our day that 
 to each generation of Christian believers 
 there is due a fresh putting of its beliefs, 
 set forth in its own language, and couched 
 as far as possible in untechnical terms. 
 While this principle is particularly true of 
 the arguments in support of the evidences 
 of Christianity, it has its application also 
 to the cardinal doctrines of the Bible, and 
 when rightly applied it will often demon- 
 strate the fact that objections and difficul- 
 ties which appear in our time as affecting 
 these doctrines are in large measure relieved, 
 and sometimes entirely obviated, by a mod- 
 ern statement of the truth in the case. The 
 difficulties may be found to inhere, not in 
 the substance of the doctrines, but in the 
 form in which these elements of theology 
 have sometimes been enshrined. 
 
 f 2. Modern Methods Needed. 
 
 We need not take it for granted, in such 
 a discussion as this, that the old arguments 
 
Ouk Lord and Master. 11 
 
 are obsolete. The old phraseology is not 
 necessarily untrue; it is simply archaic; in 
 its method, spirit, and form it belongs to 
 another time. The old-fashioned lines of 
 proof in regard, for instance, to this doc- 
 trine under discussion, placed great stress 
 upon alleged Trinitarian distinctions in the 
 Deity to be found in the Old Testament, — 
 such as the utterance of the Creator, "Let 
 us make man in our image" (Gen. i, 26), 
 and the supposed appearances of our Lord 
 as the "Angel of the Covenant" to the patri- 
 archs and prophets, in anticipation of his 
 final incarnation; the types and ceremonies 
 of the Jewish law as foreshadowing his com- 
 ing; the literal application of scores of 
 "proof-texts," taken from various parts of 
 the Old Testament, to the life and ministry 
 of our Lord; the miracles which he wrought, 
 the prophecies which he exemplified, the 
 titles which he bore, the Divine attributes 
 which he exercised, and the Divine actions 
 which he performed. Upon these chiefly, 
 
12 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 and somewhat in the order thus outlined, 
 the argument for our Lord's supreme Di- 
 vinity was grounded. 
 
 We need not attempt in this connection 
 to define the intrinsic or relative importance 
 of these arguments as they may be reviewed 
 in the light of the new knowledge which now 
 floods the world and as judged by the crit- 
 ical methods which have won for themselves 
 an assured standing in Bible-studying circles 
 everywhere. The question is rather one of 
 emphasis; of the relative place to be given 
 this argument or that ; of the order in which 
 the different truths shall be marshaled in 
 order to be most convincing. And yet it may 
 be honestly acknowledged that certain meth- 
 ods and arguments which were convincing 
 and satisfactory in other ages are hardly 
 cogent to-day. It does not, however, follow 
 that the truths themselves have been under- 
 mined; they may simply need to be restated 
 and to be enforced and substantiated by 
 better processes of reasoning and more mod- 
 
Our Lord and Master. 13 
 
 era proofs. We believe that this line of dis- 
 cussion finds a particularly impressive illus- 
 tration in the doctrine now in view. In 
 studying it we begin at a different place from 
 that at which the fathers began; we put the 
 stress on other phases of the truth than 
 those which they emphasized; we have a very 
 different perspective, personal, historical, 
 and theological, from theirs; and we see the 
 facts illuminated with greater light than 
 did they. Hence, without ignoring the old 
 arguments, we may rejoice in the new visions 
 of truth granted to us to-day. 
 
 fl 3. God's Unity Fundamental. 
 
 Further, we may escape much perplexity 
 if we cease to puzzle ourselves with certain 
 insoluble problems connected with the Di- 
 vine Being, such as theologians have tried 
 in vain to make clear by the terms "hypo- 
 static union," "person," "eternal gener- 
 ation," and other words of that sort. At the 
 very start we may guard ourselves against 
 
14 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 error by reflecting on the unmistakable fact 
 that one of the fundamental truths of the 
 Bible is the unity of God. We can afford to 
 put the emphasis in this connection just 
 where the Savior himself placed it when he 
 cited the passage (Deut. vi, 4; Mark xii, 29), 
 "The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou 
 shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 
 strength." The same truth was taught by 
 St. Paul, as evidenced by his words (1 Tim. 
 i, 17), "Now unto the King eternal, in- 
 corruptible, invisible, the only God, be honor 
 and glory for ever and ever;" and (1 Tim. 
 vi, 15) where he portrays the Almighty as 
 "the blessed and only Potentate, the King 
 of kings and Lord of lords." In view of the 
 clear teachings of Scripture on this subject, 
 no man should allow himself to be diverted 
 by doctrinal complexities, or speculative am- 
 biguities, or mediaeval definitions from the 
 fundamental fact of the Divine Unity. 
 It is a foolish and an inexcusable thing for 
 
Our Lord and Master. 15 
 
 Christians to become so confused in their 
 conceptions of the Deity as to fancy for a 
 moment that there are three Gods, instead 
 of One ; and yet we venture to intimate that- 
 many have grown up in orthodox Churches 
 with that pagan idea taking full possession 
 of their minds, largely in consequence of a 
 misapprehension and a mistaken use of the 
 term Person, as employed by theologians to 
 define the distinction between the "Father, 
 the Son, and the Holy Spirit;" and further- 
 more, in view of a vain attempt to formu- 
 late, speculatively, this distinction into a 
 satisfying doctrine of the Trinity. For our 
 present purposes there is little need of any 
 such attempt. It will more nearly meet our 
 current needs if we may clearly set forth the 
 unmistakable judgment of our Lord him- 
 self, of his disciples, and of the Church 
 since his day, pertaining to his authority, 
 rank, and place in the scale of being, with- 
 out befogging our minds with the technical 
 phases of theological speculation or attempt- 
 
16 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 ing to unfold the inner life of Deity by a 
 system of metaphysical guesswork. The 
 Gospel question is not, "What think ye of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity ?" but rather, "What 
 think ye of Christ?" 
 
 ft 4. Christ's Matchless Character. 
 
 In aiming at an honest and assured answer 
 to the question, Is Christ Divine? we may 
 wisely begin by a consideration of himself, 
 as he stands before the centuries, the most 
 commanding figure in all history, the type 
 and the embodiment of the moral ideals that 
 have given character to Christendom, a 
 matchless personality. We need not for the 
 purposes of the moment stop to discuss ques- 
 tions pertaining to prophecy, or miracles, or 
 inspiration; we are face to face with One 
 who is fairer than the children of men and 
 altogether lovely, and in his presence these 
 questions drop into abeyance as though con- 
 scious of their ineptitude. Here is One who, 
 born in obscurity, and reared in toil and 
 
Our Lord and Master. 17 
 
 poverty, and executed as a criminal early 
 in his thirties, is to-day the moral Master of 
 the modern world, dominating our civiliza- 
 tion, deciding ethical standards, exerting 
 even in pagan lands a vivifying and trans- 
 forming influence upon human character, 
 standing at the head of a great army en- 
 listed for the conquest of the globe in his 
 name, and everywhere renewing by his Word 
 and example the higher life of mankind. 
 Who in all the ages is worthy to take place 
 by his side ? 
 
 The sinlessness of his life gives him abso- 
 lute uniqueness, while the virtues and graces 
 which he embodied make him a pattern for 
 the race. Some of his qualities — humility, 
 meekness, forgiving love, compassion for the 
 outcast and the lost — were hardly known 
 until he revealed them by his example; and 
 they were never known at all in union with 
 courage, heroic fortitude, commanding lead- 
 ership, world-wide enterprise, and supreme 
 wisdom, such as he manifested. His perfect 
 
18 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 life contains in it all possible human per- 
 fections blended and correlated, the courage 
 of the soldier, the fortitude of the martyr, 
 the dignity of the commander, the simplicity 
 of the child, the tenderness of womanhood, 
 the majesty of the King. In his thirty years 
 of obscurity and labor at Nazareth, and in 
 the three years of his public ministry, he 
 illustrated all the virtues that can adorn 
 human character, in their fullness and fru- 
 ition. 
 
 As a teacher he dealt with the greatest 
 of questions, — the nature of God, the doc- 
 trine of prayer, the problems of sin, forgive- 
 ness, death, immortality, — problems which 
 still stagger and baffle men, even the wisest 
 of our race ; but he did not once falter or 
 show sign of hesitation or doubt. Only once 
 he said, "I do not know," — when talking of 
 the time when he himself was to come in 
 judgment. As to all other matters in the 
 moral and religious world he spoke and acted 
 as though he had absolute command of all 
 
Our Lord and Master. 19 
 
 truth, as though all the wisdom of time and 
 of eternity were in his reach. And to-day, 
 although nearly nineteen centuries have 
 elapsed since he walked the earth, no man 
 has gone beyond what he taught in regard to 
 these critical problems of human duty and 
 destiny. Indeed, if we turn away from what 
 he said concerning these topics we are left 
 to grope in darkness, without help and with- 
 out hope. Taken all in all, he stands before 
 us as the sanest, most harmonious, discern- 
 ing, wise, and courageous human soul ever 
 known, the greatest of teachers and reform- 
 ers, the gentlest, most considerate, and lov- 
 ing of friends, and the flower of mankind! 
 
 fl5. Supreme Teacher, Perfect Ex- 
 ample. 
 
 At the very outset of our inquiry we may 
 pertinently ask what Jesus believed and 
 taught concerning himself. What claims did 
 he make in his own behalf? Did this Man 
 know who he was ? Were his own character 
 
20 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 and consciousness and mission clear to him- 
 self ? Did he speak assuredly concerning his 
 own nature ? Is his testimony in his own 
 behalf compatible with the notion that he 
 was a man like other men, only with an in- 
 tenser religious consciousness? Did he as- 
 sume an attitude with regard to both man 
 and God that no mere man would dare to 
 take? Can his own words with regard to his 
 authority and mission be rationally con- 
 strued except on the hypothesis that he was 
 of another order of Being? What attitude 
 did he take in relation to the race? What 
 authority did he assume over men? Did he 
 exhibit characteristics which — notwithstand- 
 ing his genuine manhood — place him in a 
 category by himself alone, apart from all 
 other men in any age or land? These are 
 some of the questions which must be faced 
 and answered in the task before us. And all 
 who recognize the perfect poise of his na- 
 ture, and who appreciate his unparalleled 
 insight into human motives and his mastery 
 
Ouk Lord and Master. 21 
 
 of all moral and religious questions, ought 
 to be willing candidly to weigh his judg- 
 ments, his testimonies, and his claims as em- 
 bodied in his own words, assuredly reckon- 
 ing that what he said was true. 
 
 There are two facts to be borne in mind 
 in advance of the consideration of our Lord's 
 declarations about himself. The first is this : 
 He is recognized on all sides as the supreme 
 ethical teacher of the ages. More and more 
 the moralities, the laws, and the institutions 
 of the world are being built upon the foun- 
 dation which he laid. The moral and re- 
 ligious ideals which are now regarded by the 
 best judges as the noblest that have ever 
 been cherished, are, it is conceded on all 
 sides, the fruit of his character and his 
 teachings. It would be easy to show that 
 many skeptics, who deny his Divinity, are 
 quick to acknowledge this fact. Two or three 
 citations may serve to justify this statement. 
 Lecky, the rationalistic historian, concedes 
 that "in the character and example of Christ 
 
22 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 is an enduring principle of regeneration." 
 John Stuart Mill, philosopher, critic, agnos- 
 tic, testifies : "Everything which is excellent 
 in ethics may be brought within the sayings 
 of Christ without doing violence to the lan- 
 guage. He is . . . the ideal representa- 
 tive and guide of humanity." And, not to 
 multiply witnesses, Eenan declares that "the 
 person of Jesus is at the highest summit of 
 human greatness." 
 
 The second point to be noted in this prelim- 
 inary statement is this: Jesus Christ stands 
 before the world as its only perfect model 
 of character. In this respect he has no 
 parallel. The saints and heroes who have 
 lived since his day confess that their excel- 
 lencies were due to his influence, example, 
 and grace. He is taken by all critics and 
 students, of all shades of belief and unbelief, 
 as the perfect Man, the exemplar of all hu- 
 man graces and perfections. The child, the 
 youth, the man, the laborer, the teacher, the 
 preacher, the sufferer, the tempted, the ruler, 
 
Ouk Lord and Master. 23 
 
 and the subject, all find in his life and teach- 
 ings their highest models. 
 
 It is in view of these two almost univer- 
 sally acknowledged truths — his supreme sta- 
 tion as a moral Teacher and Guide, and his 
 matchless perfection as a Man — that we pro- 
 pose to examine his claims as embodied in 
 his own words. What did this Teacher, on 
 whose utterances the best ideals and the 
 wisest institutions are now builded, whose 
 moral teachings are the basis of ethics 
 throughout Christendom, teach concerning 
 himself? Further, what did this perfect 
 Man, who claimed that none of his enemies 
 could convict him of sin, and that he always 
 did the things which were pleasing to his 
 Father, testify concerning his own Being, 
 relationship, authority, and power? If he 
 is the greatest of all teachers, then his teach- 
 ings about himself ought at least to be 
 placed on the same platform with his other 
 utterances. If he was the perfect Man, in- 
 tellectually, morally, religiously, then he told 
 
24 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 the truth about himself, as well as about 
 other things. With this prefatory state- 
 ment before us we are ready now to con- 
 sider his claims as embodied in his own 
 words. 
 
 ft 6. What did He Claim? 
 
 There are five of these claims which will 
 for our purposes here suffice, as they involve 
 all others that he made. 
 
 1. He assumed the right to pardon sin- 
 ners. When he healed the man sick of the 
 palsy, as recorded in the ninth of Matthew, 
 he told the people that one aim of his mir- 
 acle was that they might "know that the 
 Son of man hath power on earth to forgive 
 sins." Is not the act of pardoning a Divine 
 prerogative? Has any one less than the 
 Divine Being been endowed with this royal 
 privilege? In all human governments the 
 pardoning prerogative belongs to the su- 
 preme ruler, the chief executive ; no one else 
 dares for a moment to assume it. Did Paul 
 
Our Lord and Master. 25 
 
 ever pretend to pardon a sinner ? The right 
 to proclaim absolution, claimed by priestly 
 authority, is not by any means this supreme 
 function of which we are writing, which is 
 claimed by our Lord alone. Let this fact, 
 then, come clearly before the mind, that 
 Jesus of Nazareth claimed to exercise this 
 Divine prerogative, the pardoning power in 
 the government of the universe. That 
 claim, standing alone, would mean a great 
 deal, but it does not stand by itself. It is 
 supplemented and enlarged by other claims. 
 2. One of these is involved in his great 
 invitation (Matt, xi, 28, 29), wherein he 
 offers soul-rest to all laboring and heavy- 
 laden ones who will come unto him. That 
 he daily justifies this promise is proof of his 
 superhuman authority and power. Of all 
 those who have ever spoken as messengers 
 of heaven he is the only one who has made 
 such an offer. His invitation in any other 
 mouth but his own would be but mockery; 
 coming from him, and backed by the testi- 
 
26 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 mony of countless myriads, who declare that 
 they have come to him, and that they have 
 found him as good as his word, the claim 
 forms another link in the chain of Divine 
 logic which proclaims him to the world as 
 the Omnipotent Savior. If he can and does 
 give rest to the soul of the penitent, the 
 tempted, the sorrowing, the forlorn, the 
 poverty-stricken, must he not be more than 
 a mere man? 
 
 3. A further claim that he makes sets 
 him forth as the supreme Judge. In the 
 twenty-fifth of Matthew he pictures himself 
 on "the throne of his glory," deciding the 
 final destiny of all men. In St. John's Gos- 
 pel (v, 29) he says, "The Father hath com- 
 mitted all judgment unto the Son." In as- 
 suming this title of Judge, and in picturing 
 himself as performing the functions of that 
 office on the throne of the universe, he puts 
 a vast distance between himself and even the 
 greatest of his followers. He assumes that 
 he possesses a degree of knowledge, of jus- 
 
Our Lord and Master. 27 
 
 tice, and of authority which, taken alone, in- 
 volves the use of the adjectives Infinite and 
 Divine. Who can judge the motives, the 
 hearts, the lives of all men, and fairly assign 
 to them their destiny in the eternal world, 
 unless he possesses omniscience, perfect 
 goodness, unerring justice, and almighty 
 power ? When, therefore, our Lord assumes 
 to be the Judge of the human race he claims 
 a Divine office and rank which forbid his 
 classification with even the greatest of men. 
 4. Still another fact remains for us to 
 note here: He declared himself to be the 
 Son of God. He was, it is to be acknowl- 
 edged, chary of assuming this title during 
 his ministry, although several times he dis- 
 tinctly did so. But at his trial before the 
 Jewish Sanhedrin (Matt, xxvi, 63, 64; Mark 
 xiv, 61, 62; Luke xxii, 67-71), when the high 
 priest said, "I adjure thee by the living God, 
 art thou the Christ, the Son of God?" the 
 reply came without hesitation, "I am." Our 
 Lord must have known that this claim would 
 
28 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 be understood as blasphemy, and that it 
 would lead to the cross. Under these cir- 
 cumstances, then, under the sanction of an 
 oath, and in the face of death, he said, "I 
 am the Son of God/' It would be idle 
 for any one to allege that this expression 
 meant no more than simply the declaration 
 that He was, like any devout, believing man, 
 "a son of God." If he did not mean to 
 assume the very highest relations to the 
 Supreme Being and make himself appear in 
 a unique sense the representation and em- 
 bodiment of Deity to men, then his words 
 mean nothing at all. To the Jewish Sanhe- 
 drin, to his disciples afterward, and to the 
 Church in all ages, this final testimony 
 which he made in his own behalf meant that 
 he was asserting a Divine relationship, au- 
 thority, and jurisdiction. 
 
 5. A final claim, made by Jesus Christ in 
 his farewell utterances to his disciples, may 
 be indicated as transcending even the tre- 
 mendous ones which have already been briefly 
 
Our Lord and Master. 29 
 
 outlined. It is found in the Gospel of John, 
 chapters xiv-xvi, in connection with the pro- 
 visions which the Master is there announcing 
 for the support of his Church after his de- 
 parture from the earth. In several passages 
 he emphasizes his promise that the Holy 
 Spirit, in new power and with larger gifts 
 than were ever known by human beings in 
 former times, shall be bestowed upon his fol- 
 lowers. When these various covenants are 
 brought together they give us a fresh im- 
 pression of the regal prerogatives which our 
 Lord assumes in declaring them. Look at 
 them: 
 
 "I will pray the Father, and he shall give 
 you another Comforter, that he may be with 
 you forever, even the Spirit of truth. . . . 
 The Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom 
 the Father will send in my name, he shall 
 teach you all things and bring to your re- 
 membrance all that I said unto you. . . . 
 When the Comforter is come, whom I will 
 send unto you from the Father, even the 
 
30 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 Spirit of truth that proceedeth from the 
 Father, he shall bear witness of me. . . . 
 It is expedient for yon that I go away: for 
 if I go not away, the Comforter will not come 
 unto you; but if I go, I will send him unto 
 you." (John xiv, 16, 26; xv, 26; xvi, 7.) 
 
 At a glance one notes here that our Lord 
 associates himself with the Father in the 
 promise to bestow the Spirit of truth upon 
 his disciples, and in convicting power upon 
 the world. This utterance goes so far in its 
 assumptions of heavenly authority beyond any 
 which mortals might dream of asserting that 
 we marvel how it can be fairly faced by any 
 honest denier of the doctrine now under con- 
 sideration. Jesus of Nazareth, after all other 
 declarations of his ministry involving his su- 
 preme rank, now in so many words arrogates 
 to himself the right to give the Holy Spirit 
 in answer to prayer; he plainly asserts that 
 his jurisdiction includes the ministry of the 
 Comforter. What angel, patriarch, prophet, 
 or apostle ever, in his most daring and tran- 
 
Our Lord and Master. 31 
 
 scendent hours, even for a moment ventured 
 to think of making such a claim? Were any 
 other man who ever lived to make a promise 
 like that which Jesus uttered in the above 
 passages we would decide at once, and 
 rightly too, that he was out of his senses, or 
 else that he was a blasphemous pretender. 
 The authority to impart the highest spiritual 
 blessings; to send forth the Comforter from 
 the skies on his mission of awakening, 
 quickening, tuition and consolation into hu- 
 man hearts ; to administer, as from the throne 
 of the universe, the vast resources of grace, 
 and literally to pour them out upon needy 
 men and nations, — who possesses this su- 
 preme right ? To whom alone does it belong ? 
 Who owns and orders the administration of 
 the Divine Spirit ? Who has authority to hear 
 and answer prayer for his descent? When 
 we consider with candor these questions and 
 what they involve, and then reflect upon the 
 unqualified promise which our Lord makes 
 in the case, we stand face to face with one 
 
32 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 of the unique prerogatives which he assumed, 
 and which no other mortal ever dared lay 
 claim to. 
 
 ft 7. The Fourth Gospel. 
 
 The only way by which this argument may 
 be evaded is to deny the authority of the 
 Fourth Gospel, from which the words just 
 cited are taken. There is no rational escape, 
 however, in that direction. Those who are 
 determined to break the force of the claim 
 urged above can not escape from the dilemma 
 in which the facts involve them by rejecting 
 this Gospel as not written by John or dis- 
 crediting it as an anonymous production of 
 the second century. It may hardly be wise 
 to spend any time just here with such ob- 
 jectors, but it is worth while to assure those 
 who are not familiar with the "Johannine" 
 discussion that the great Biblical scholars of 
 to-day, the men who have devoted years to 
 the unraveling of the subtle and difficult 
 problems connected with the Fourth Gospel, 
 
Ottk Lord and Master. 33 
 
 are more and more convinced that it was 
 written by St. John. For more than half a 
 century a fierce battle has been waged in re- 
 gard to this Gospel, but for the past fifteen 
 or twenty years the gains of the conservatives 
 have been vast ; most of the recent works bear- 
 ing on the case, written by Beyschlag, Sanday, 
 Westcott, Ezra Abbot, George P. Fisher, H. 
 R. Reynolds, Godet, Weiss, Lightfoot, Bwald, 
 and Luthardt — have fully traversed every ob- 
 jection that has been made to the belief of 
 the ages that St. John, the beloved disciple, 
 wrote this Gospel; not a fact, argument, or 
 assertion bearing on the problem has been 
 neglected, with this assured result in the out- 
 come of the investigation, that year by year, 
 as more light has been directed toward that 
 Gospel, as additional scholars have grappled 
 with its problems, as the external and internal 
 evidences have been freshly examined and 
 tested by all the critical methods of our time, 
 the conviction has become more clear and pro- 
 found that this age-long faith in the Johan- 
 3 
 
34 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 nine authorship of that Book is based on 
 facts which can not be shaken. Indeed, Dr. 
 Charles A. Briggs, a leader in the ranks of 
 modern Biblical criticism, says that the vin- 
 dication of the Johannic authorship is "the 
 grandest critical achievement of our cen- 
 tury;" Matthew Arnold suggests that the 
 man who follows the thesis of Baur and others 
 that this Gospel is "entirely unhistorical" 
 evinces thereby a conclusive sign that he lacks 
 "real critical insight;"* and the verdict of 
 the great German professor, Heinrich Ewald, 
 written after he had given the whole ques- 
 tion a careful and complete investigation, 
 has become the conviction of multitudes who 
 have, with more or less care, studied the 
 Johannine problems: "That John is really 
 the author of this Gospel, and that no other 
 planned or interpreted it, than he who at 
 all times is named as its author, can not be 
 doubted or denied; . . . every argument 
 from every quarter to which we can look, 
 
 * Literature and Dogma, p. 152. 
 
Our Lord and Master. 35 
 
 every trace and record, combine together to 
 render any serious doubt upon the question 
 absolutely impossible." We are not, there- 
 fore, evading any issue which needs to be 
 candidly faced when we place before the 
 reader these claims of the Master cited from 
 the Fourth Gospel. The Christian believer 
 has as sure a warranty for his faith in the 
 validity and historicity of this Gospel as for 
 his faith in the three Synoptic Gospels, so 
 called, which precede it. 
 
 Now the case is before us so far as his own 
 witness-bearing is concerned; it speaks for 
 itself, and needs no advocate or interpreter. 
 Jesus of Nazareth — the sinless Man, and the 
 wisest of moral teachers — claimed that he 
 could forgive sins and give rest to all per- 
 turbed and needy souls; he declared himself 
 to be the Supreme Judge of men, and in a 
 unique sense the Son of God ; and he crowned 
 these revelations of his supremacy in the uni- 
 verse by pledging to his disciples the bestow- 
 ment of the Holy Spirit in response to their 
 
36 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 supplications ? We submit that these asserted 
 prerogatives of Jesus Christ, which are in- 
 finitely beyond the reach of man, must be 
 fairly considered by those who in any fashion 
 profess to call him Master. They are declara- 
 tions which can not with candor be evaded; 
 they look us in the eye as we open the 
 Gospels. What shall be done with the testi- 
 mony of this Man, spoken at various times 
 during his ministry, with the avowecL purpose 
 of giving his disciples a true conception of 
 his rightful rank and his jurisdiction over 
 them? With what sort of consistency can 
 an honest man to-day call Jesus the greatest 
 of teachers, the most remarkable of all re- 
 ligious geniuses, the one Man who, beyond all 
 his fellows, was most closely allied to God, 
 without at the same time accepting the tes- 
 timony which this Teacher gives as to his 
 own place and power in the moral universe? 
 He had matchless insight into other hearts — ■ 
 did he not know his own? He knew how to 
 estimate the real and relative rank of all 
 
Our Lord and Master. 37 
 
 around him; the believing and the doubting, 
 the humble and the proud, the royal and the 
 beggarly souls were all open to his scrutiny. 
 Did he not know, without question, where he 
 himself belonged ? Is not his testimony about 
 his own character and his relation to men 
 as clear as the sunshine? This testimony, 
 illuminated by the light which nearly nine- 
 teen Christian centuries have thrown upon it, 
 can it be reasonably interpreted otherwise 
 than in accord with the words of that ancient 
 chant, sung in many ages and lands from 
 time immemorial, "Thou art the King of 
 glory, Christ ?" 
 
 |[ 8. Is He to be Worshiped? 
 
 A further truth to be considered may be 
 fitly mated with those which have just passed 
 in review before us, namely: Our Lord has 
 been worshiped as Divine ever since he left 
 the earth. Even while he was here below 
 there was paid to him occasionally a kind of 
 homage which was at least akin to that which 
 
36 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 is due to Almighty God. The New Testa- 
 ment is full of illustrations of this truth. 
 Some of them may be noted. We have 
 hardly space to comment upon them. 
 
 In Matt, ii, 11, we read that the Wise 
 Men, when they saw the child Jesus, "fell 
 down and worshiped him." Were this the 
 only instance of such honor accorded to 
 Jesus Christ we might hesitate about build- 
 ing any doctrine upon it, for we do not know 
 how much these Magi knew about Jesus, or 
 what facilities they had for obtaining the 
 truth. It is worth while, however, to con- 
 sider this first instance of worship paid to 
 our Lord, while yet "an infant of days," as 
 a prelude of other ascriptions of Divine 
 homage which he received. 
 
 Near the opening of his ministry (as re- 
 corded in Matt, viii, 2) we find a leper cast- 
 
Our Lord and Master. 39 
 
 ing himself at the feet of Jesus: "There 
 came a certain leper, and worshiped him." 
 The man was not rebuked, nor was his touch 
 disdained. The Master recognized and hon- 
 ored his faith by healing the leprosy, with 
 which he was dying. In the next chapter, 
 Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue, "came and 
 worshiped him, and said, My daughter is even 
 now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon 
 her and she shall live." Once more the act 
 of worship was requited by an act of healing, 
 in which the dead girl was brought to 
 life again. In the same Gospel (xiv, 33) 
 we find this record in connection with the 
 miracle whereby the Savior walked upon the 
 waters, and rescued sinking Peter from 
 drowning, "And they that were in the boat 
 worshiped him, saying, Of a truth thou 
 art the Son of God." Later in the same 
 record (Matt, xv, 21-28; Mark vii, 24-30), the 
 Syrophenician woman approached the Sa- 
 vior in behalf of her demoniac daughter, 
 pursued him into the house, "fell at his 
 
40 OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 
 
 feet, and worshiped him, saying, Lord, help 
 me!" Instead of disclaiming her worship, 
 the Lord honored her confidence, cured her 
 daughter, and said, a O woman, great is thy 
 faith!" 
 
 Another typical instance is in association 
 with the cure of the man born blind. After 
 the healed man had been cast out of the 
 synagogue by the Jews, we read (John ix, 
 35-38) : 
 
 "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and find- 
 ing him, he said, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? 
 He answered and said, And who is he, Lord, that I may 
 believe on him? Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both 
 seen him, and he it is that speaketh with thee. And 
 he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshiped him." 
 
 Again, there seems to have been in the 
 heart of the demoniac of Gadara some subtle 
 instinct, even in his demented condition, 
 suggesting to him that Jesus was an object 
 of worship, for Mark (v, 6) tells us that 
 "seeing Jesus afar off he ran and worshiped 
 him." In this case before any word of 
 homage could be uttered he was over- 
 
Ottr Lord and Master. 41 
 
 powered by the demoniacal influence, and 
 he jeered and blasphemed instead of wor- 
 shiping. 
 
 ,fl 9. The Penitent Malefactor. 
 
 There is a final instance of this sort which 
 occurred when our Lord was dying, and 
 which is worthy of enlargement and com- 
 ment in this connection — the prayer of the 
 penitent transgressor (Luke xxiii, 39-43). 
 That incident alone, taking it in all its sug- 
 gestions and lessons, and weighing it fairly, 
 contains abundant proof that the dying man 
 believed that Jesus Christ was in some 
 unique sense a Divine King who had an un- 
 disputed dominion somewhere beyond the 
 grave; and that furthermore the Lord un- 
 derstood this to be the meaning of the 
 prayer, and in that sense answered the pe- 
 tition, assuming a jurisdiction over "the 
 world to come" which can not be defined by 
 any other term except the word divine. Let 
 us consider the scene. 
 
42 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 The Master is dying on the cross, with 
 two other condemned men suffering a similar 
 penalty, one on either hand. 
 
 "A crown of thorns on that dishonored head! 
 Those hands that healed the sick now pierced 
 
 with nails ! 
 Those feet that wandered homeless through the 
 
 world 
 Now crossed, and bleeding, and at rest forever !" 
 
 As Jesus hung there in humiliation and pain 
 there came to his ears a single melodious 
 note to vary the unceasing babble of jeers 
 and curses which smote his burdened heart — 
 a strain of prayer from the parched lips of 
 one of the dying malefactors. This penitent 
 robber saw over the cross the inscription, 
 " Jesus the King;" he heard the scribes 
 crying out, "He saved others, himself he 
 can not save;" he listened to the prayer 
 which the Master had uttered in behalf of 
 his murderers, "Father, forgive them, they 
 know not what they do;" and out of these 
 scattered fragments of truth he built up a 
 
Ouk Lord and Master. 43 
 
 structure of faith that will be beautiful for- 
 ever. He got hold of the idea that Jesus 
 was a King, — he inferred that his empire 
 must be beyond death, somewhere in eter- 
 nity, and with that faith he cried, "Lord, 
 remember me when thou comest into thy 
 kingdom." 
 
 Under these circumstances, had Jesus 
 Christ been a mere man, or simply a super- 
 human creature, endowed with angelic pre- 
 rogatives, common honesty would have re- 
 quired him to say, "I have no kingdom be- 
 yond the grave, I am a mortal like thyself;" 
 or, "I am limited in my administration; I 
 have no authority after death." But not in 
 this way does he answer the malefactor. He 
 gives instant and unhesitating response to 
 the dying man; he answers as one ought to 
 answer who is superior to pain, and disease, 
 and time, and death, and all things mortal 
 and human. His words are the words of a 
 Divine King— worthy of the Lord of lords 
 and the King of kings: "Verily I say unto 
 
44 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 thee : To-day shalt thou be with me in Para- 
 dise." And then, as Mrs. Browning has 
 quaintly said: 
 
 " Death upon his face 
 Is rather shine than shade, 
 A tender shine by looks beloved made. 
 He seemeth dying in a quiet place, 
 And less by iron wounds in hands and feet 
 Than heartbroke by new joy too sudden and 
 sweet.' ' 
 
 We can not understand how any fair- 
 minded student can fail to see in the prayer 
 of this crucified robber unmistakable proof 
 of his faith in the Divine authority of Jesus 
 of Nazareth; or fail to find in the answer 
 which the Savior gave to the prayer an un- 
 questionable token of the prerogatives of 
 Deity which it implies. 
 
 After the resurrection the women to 
 whom he revealed himself (Matt, xxviii, 
 9) "came and took hold of his feet and wor- 
 shiped him." Soon afterwards in the same 
 
Our Lord and Master. 45 
 
 chapter we read of the eleven disciples on 
 the mountain in Galilee, that "when they 
 saw Jesus they worshiped him." In imme- 
 diate connection with this exhibition of 
 their faith, adoration, and loyalty ; he ut- 
 tered his commission, in which he said, "All 
 power is given unto me in heaven and on 
 earth. Lo, I am with you alway, even unto 
 the end of the world." In the closing verses 
 of St. Luke's Gospel we find the record made, 
 that immediately after the ascension his 
 disciples "worshiped him, and returned to 
 Jerusalem with great joy; and were contin- 
 ually in the temple, blessing God." 
 
 Jf 10. Never Disclaimed Worship. 
 
 It ought to be said, as to these incidents 
 quoted, that in no case did Jesus disclaim 
 any of the honors accorded him. Very dif- 
 ferent from the attitude of the Savior was 
 the manner of Peter when (Acts x, 25) 
 Cornelius the centurion "fell down and 
 worshiped him" as though he were a god 
 
46 Our Lokd and Master. 
 
 or a supernatural being of some higher 
 order than man. Peter instantly "raised 
 him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also 
 am a man." A similar instance occurred in 
 the life of the Apostle to the Gentiles, as re- 
 corded in Acts xiv, 11-18. The mercurial 
 people at Lystra, in view of a healing wrought 
 by the two missionaries, cried out, "The gods 
 are come down to us in the likeness of men. 
 And they called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul 
 Mercury." Then, when the priest of Jupiter 
 and the people would have offered sacrifices 
 to them as unto the gods, "Barnabas and 
 Paul rent their garments, and cried out : Sirs, 
 why do ye these things ? We also are men of 
 like passions with you; . . . turn from 
 these vain things unto the living God !" 
 
 Furthermore, John, on Patmos, amazed 
 and awe-stricken with the things that had 
 been revealed to him, sets forth the same 
 lesson. Hear his own words, Eev. xix, 9, 10: 
 
 "And he saith unto me, These are true words of God. 
 And I fell down before his feet to worship him. And he 
 saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am a fellow-servant 
 
Our Lord and* Master. 47 
 
 with thee, and with thy brethren that hold the testi- 
 mony of Jesus : worship God: for the testimony of Jesus 
 is the word of prophecy." 
 
 And again, Kev. xxii, 8 : 
 
 "And I, John, am he that heard and saw these 
 things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to wor- 
 ship before the feet of the angel which showed me these 
 things. And he saith unto me, See thou do it not: I am 
 a fellow-servant with thee and with thy brethren the 
 prophets, and with them which keep the words of this 
 Book: worship God." 
 
 Now, is it not clear that if Jesus Christ 
 had been merely man he ought in all candor 
 and honesty to have done just as this angel 
 did, and just as Peter did, and just as 
 Paul and Barnabas did, when Divine honors 
 were rendered to them? He ought instantly 
 to have disclaimed them, and instructed 
 men to render these supreme honors to 
 God only. Instead of making the slightest 
 disclaimer, however, he accepted worship 
 as his due; he acted as though he was re- 
 ceiving only what it was the bounden duty 
 of man to give, — such manifestations of 
 
48 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 gratitude, trust, loyalty, homage, and adora- 
 tion as belong to the supreme God. In this 
 policy he was consistent with his own ut- 
 terance, that "men ought to honor the Son 
 even as they honor the Father." Surely 
 these instances of worship paid to the Savior 
 ought to help to substantiate his claims to 
 supreme Divinity. 
 
 These multiplied instances show us that 
 our Lord, even during his career of pov- 
 erty and humiliation, was accustomed to 
 accept acts of homage and worship without 
 in any manner disclaiming them. 
 
 fl 11. A Seeming Exception. 
 
 Possibly some may judge that the case of 
 the rich young ruler affords an exception. 
 As this is absolutely the only disclaimer of 
 any sort which is credited to the Master dur- 
 ing his whole ministry it deserves careful 
 attention. We believe that a close examina- 
 tion will show that the disclaimer is only an 
 apparent one. The young man came run- 
 
OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 49 
 
 ning, knelt at the feet of Christ (Matt, 
 xix, 16-29; Mark x, 17-30; Luke xviii, 18-23) 
 and cried out, "Good Master, what good thing 
 shall I do that I may have eternal life ?" The 
 Lord discerned the secrets of this yearning but 
 wealth-loving heart, and strove first to bring 
 him to scrutinize his own motives and take 
 a look inward, by asking, "Why callest thou 
 me good? None is good save one, even 
 God." That is: "What reason have you 
 for this epithet? Do you know what it in- 
 volves? Are you ready in fact to acknowl- 
 edge me as Lord ? Do you really believe what 
 you say ? Are you prepared to obey my word, 
 and do my will, and accept my law as the 
 expression of the Supreme Good? What 
 standard of goodness have you in your mind ?" 
 The words of the Savior seem to have been 
 intended to lead the inquirer to consider what 
 his own language really involved, and to help 
 him to a perception of what is really good. 
 It may be also suggested that this young man 
 was not ready at that moment for the higher 
 4 
 
50 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 instruction which Christ gave to others in re- 
 gard to his prerogatives and rank. At any 
 rate, it is well to recollect that this is the 
 only place in the whole Gospel history where 
 anything like a disclaimer of highest honors 
 can be found in the words of our Lord. This 
 one difficult passage, therefore, is not to be 
 taken as counteracting and contradicting the 
 scores of passages in which he makes de- 
 mands and utters claims which involve the 
 consciousness on his part of possessing su- 
 preme authority over all men; especially as 
 the Master by his command, immediately 
 following the seeming disclaimer, assumed 
 regal supremacy over the inquiring man, and 
 took the attitude of One who is without ques- 
 tion the Arbiter of human destiny. 
 
 fl 12. Example of Apostolic Church. 
 
 A further question arises, however: Was 
 Christ also worshiped by the apostolic 
 Church? After he was taken out of sight 
 and touch, did his followers continue to honor 
 
Our Lord and Master. 51 
 
 him with that full measure of reverence, serv- 
 ice, and worship which is due to Deity? It 
 will be easy to answer this question briefly 
 but conclusively. 
 
 After the ascension of the Savior, we find 
 recorded early in the Book of Acts an in- 
 stance of worship offered to him. The 
 eleven disciples, in the meeting which they 
 held, sought his guidance and decision in 
 their work of filling up their number to 
 twelve. Who can reasonably doubt that the 
 prayer contained in Acts i, 24, 25, was of- 
 fered to the glorified Savior? Bead the 
 passage, and judge: 
 
 "And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which 
 knowest the hearts of all men, show of these two the 
 one whom thou hast chosen, to take the place in this 
 ministry and apostleship, from which Judas fell away, 
 that he might go to his own place." 
 
 Dr. Whedon's comment on this prayer is 
 so terse and suggestive as to demand quota- 
 tion: 
 
 "Was this prayer offered to Christ? He claims the 
 prerogative of searching hearts. (Rev. ii, 23.) He was 
 the true chooser of apostles. And he was customarily 
 
52 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 addressed, especially in Luke's Gospel, by the title 
 Lord; and is styled Lord Jesus in verse 21. The prob- 
 abilities, then, are that the ascended Jesus was here 
 invoked." 
 
 The dying words of Stephen involve the 
 same truth. When about to depart, he 
 prayed to the Savior not to lay the sins of 
 his enemies "to their charge/' and then 
 commended his soul to the care of the Son 
 of man. The record represents him (Acts 
 vii, 59) in the midst of the stoning, as 
 "calling upon the Lord, and saying, Lord 
 Jesus, receive my spirit." This appeal, 
 made by a dying man, in the extremity of 
 danger and need, sinking in the midst of 
 a persecuting crowd of foes, who were 
 stoning him to death, indicates the invin- 
 cible faith of the man who made it. Such 
 a prayer could not have been spoken under 
 such circumstances unless the man who ut- 
 tered it had been a believer in the Divinity 
 of the Savior. His act was an act of worship, 
 if there is one upon record. 
 
Our Lord and Master. 53 
 
 Not to multiply instances, we turn to 
 an incident in the life of St. Paul, recorded 
 by himself in one of his undisputed epistles, 
 2 Cor. xii, 7-9 : 
 
 "And lest I should be exalted above measure through 
 the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me 
 a thorn In the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet 
 me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this 
 thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart 
 from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient 
 for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. 
 Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my in- 
 firmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me," 
 
 Can there be a reasonable doubt in a 
 candid mind concerning the facts in this 
 bit of history? Did not the apostle take 
 his greatest trials in prayer to the Lord 
 Jesus ? Did he not regard the Savior, there- 
 fore, as a proper object of worship? 
 
 Closely accordant with the doctrine of 
 this passage is his teaching in Phil, ii, 9-11, 
 where Paul, after dwelling upon the hu- 
 miliation of Christ, "even unto death," says : 
 
 " Wherefore, God also hath highly exalted him, and 
 given him a name which is above every name : that at 
 the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
 
54 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth ; 
 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ 
 is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." 
 
 If these utterances do not indicate the 
 conviction and belief of Paul that Jesus was 
 in such sense divine as to be properly an 
 object of worship — then what do they mean? 
 The truth is that the assumption of the Di- 
 vinity of the Savior underlies the whole struc- 
 ture of PauPs work as an apostle, and. is un- 
 derneath all his writings. This pivotal truth 
 is not only clearly asserted, but taken for 
 granted; and, interwoven with argument, 
 allegory, illustration, quotation, appeal, and 
 exhortation, we find everywhere his funda- 
 mental belief in Jesus Christ as the Son of 
 God and as the Divine Savior. 
 
 The Book of Eevelation abounds with 
 instances of Divine worship paid to the 
 glorified Lord. St. John tells us (Eev. v, 
 12, 13) that he heard "the voice of thou- 
 sands of thousands" round about the throne, 
 
Our Lord and Master. 55 
 
 "Saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb 
 that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, 
 and wisdom, and might, and honor and glory, and bless- 
 ing. And every created thing which is in the heaven 
 and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, 
 and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto 
 him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be 
 the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the 
 dominion, for ever and ever." 
 
 Again (Eev. vii, 9, 10), St. John gives us 
 another vision embodying the same doctrine : 
 
 "After these things I saw, and behold, a great mul- 
 titude, which no man could number, out of every na- 
 tion, and of all tribes and peoples and tongues, stand- 
 ing before the throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in 
 white robes, and palms in their hands; and they cry 
 with a great voice, saying, Salvation unto our God who 
 sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb." 
 
 In a later passage he declares (Kev. xi, 15) 
 that he heard great voices in heaven, which 
 said, "The kingdom of the world is become 
 the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ; 
 and he shall reign for ever and ever." Near 
 the close of the book (Eev. xxii, 1, 3), he 
 speaks again, and again, concerning the 
 "throne of God, and of the Lamb," in a 
 way which indicates beyond question his con- 
 
56 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 eeption of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, 
 as One whose rightful place in the universe 
 is on the throne, crowned and sceptered 
 with the supreme honors of the Godhead, 
 and accepting as his rightful due the praises 
 and worship of the heavenly hosts. 
 
 ,fl; 13. New Testament Term, "Worship/' 
 
 The question might arise in some minds, 
 however, whether the term worship, as used 
 in the Gospels and in other books in the 
 New Testament in connection with acts of 
 homage paid to Jesus Christ, is the same 
 word which is used in describing the Divine 
 honors ascribed in other places as due to 
 God as our Father. This is very easily an- 
 swered. 
 
 We have already cited a dozen instances 
 in which it is recorded in the Gospels that 
 Jesus was "worshiped" at various times 
 during his ministry on earth. The original 
 term in each of these cases is the chief word 
 translated worship in the New Testament, — 
 
Our Lord and Master. 57 
 
 proshuneo (irpoo-Kwio)); it is used more 
 than sixty times. It is the term used by 
 Satan in his temptation of Christ, "If thou 
 wilt worship me, all shall be thine." It is 
 the term found in the command, quoted by 
 the Savior, "Thou shalt worship the Lord 
 thy God." The Master also uses this word, 
 and its derivatives, in his conversation with 
 the Samaritan woman at JacoVs well, re- 
 corded in John iv, 20-24. Mne times in 
 the space of these four verses the word 
 worship,, or worshiper, occurs in this con- 
 versation, and each time this term is the 
 one which is used. Literally meaning the 
 act of kneeling or outward obeisance, it was 
 used in the classics, and it came to be used 
 in the New Testament, to express the 
 highest adoration which the human soul can 
 pay to the Divine Being. Out of all instances 
 of its employment in the entire New Testa- 
 ment there can not be found more than 
 two or three in which the term is obviously 
 used in an accommodated sense to express 
 
58 Our Lokd and Master. 
 
 profound respect such as might be due from 
 a subject to a king, or from a slave to his 
 master. 
 
 This is the term which is employed to 
 define the acts of veneration, the appeals, 
 the homage, the prayers, the praises of- 
 fered to the Savior, alike while he was on 
 earth, by those who came seeking help at 
 his hand, by his disciples in view of his 
 marvelous works, on land and sea, by his 
 endangered followers, in critical periods of 
 distress and danger, and by the heavenly 
 hosts, as witnessed by St. John and set forth 
 in the Book of Eevelation. There is no 
 stronger term whereby the sacred writers 
 can define the act and express the obliga- 
 tion of worship. 
 
 There are many other passages in the New 
 Testament fraught with the truth under 
 consideration, and we have had to pass by 
 for the* time the wonderfully rich and fruit- 
 ful teachings to be found in Hebrews, ex- 
 cept that we recall the fact that it is ex- 
 
Our Lord and Master. 59 
 
 pressly taught in the first chapter of that 
 Epistle, that the heavenly proclamation 
 which ushered the "Firstborn" into the world 
 was this command, "Let all the angels of 
 God worship him!" 
 
 If 14. The Primitive Christians. 
 
 Another pertinent question may arise here 
 in some minds: What impression did the 
 early Christian believers, the immediate suc- 
 cessors to the apostolic Church, and those who 
 came after them, form concerning the char- 
 acter and claims of our Lord? They were 
 in touch with men who by one or two re- 
 moves had seen and heard the personal fol- 
 lowers of the Master; an uninterrupted cur- 
 rent of apostolic testimony and instruction, 
 custom and example, flowed all about them; 
 what did they think of, how did they feel 
 toward, Him who had founded the new faith ? 
 Rescued, many of them, from the worship of 
 idols, saved from the vices and degradations 
 of paganism — what convictions did they 
 
60 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 cherish in regard to the authority of the 
 great Teacher? If the worship of Jesus 
 Christ is idolatry, if it is but one way out of 
 many whereby honors due only to the Deity 
 are paid to a creature, these converts were in 
 a condition to recognize that fact at once. 
 Were they taught simply to revere him as 
 an example, to follow him as a Teacher, and 
 to love him as a Friend, but not to render 
 him any higher honors ? This would seem to 
 be the conclusion of those who claim that 
 what they call the "simplicity of the early 
 Gospel" was soon perverted by teachers who 
 imported into it the Jewish doctrine of the 
 Logos, and certain philosophic teachings from 
 Greece, out of which grew the present ortho- 
 dox doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. 
 It is impossible to determine how any 
 candid student of ecclesiastical history can 
 manufacture such a conclusion out of the 
 unquestionable facts in the case. That there 
 was a mutual effect wrought — a play and 
 counter-play of forces, convictions, beliefs, 
 
Our Lord and Master. 61 
 
 and customs/ a common clash of ideas — when 
 the two civilizations (the new one originat- 
 ing in the Gospel, and the old one long iden- 
 tified with the life of the Eoman Empire) 
 came together, and that each set of opposing 
 forces modified and affected the other to a 
 greater or less degree, no one can doubt ; but 
 that the pivotal teachings of the apostles as 
 to the authority and Divine rank of the 
 Master, and his rightful title to supreme 
 homage, suffered any material change in 
 transmissal, no one has any historical ground 
 for believing. 
 
 The truth is that teachings and faith 
 of the second and third centuries do not vary 
 in this regard from those which were in vogue 
 during the lifetime of Paul, and which are 
 embodied in his unquestioned Epistles. It 
 would be easy to justify this statement by 
 elaborate citations, had we the space. One 
 or two must suffice. One proof of the belief 
 and practice of the post-apostolic Church, 
 familiar to all students of Church history, 
 
62 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 comes to light in the correspondence of a 
 celebrated Eoman official, a friend of the 
 Emperor Trajan, Pliny the Younger, whose 
 Epistles constitute one of the most interest- 
 ing and significant relics of ancient Eoman 
 literature. Some of these letters, written to 
 Trajan by Pliny while serving as propraetor 
 in Bithynia, in Asia Minor, A. D. 112, are 
 devoted to his report of certain investigations 
 which he had been carrying on in regard to 
 the Christians in that province. He tells 
 the emperor that these people are accustomed, 
 according to their own confessions, to as- 
 semble before daybreak on a certain day, and 
 to sing, alternately or responsively, among 
 themselves "hymns to Christ as G-od." This 
 testimony, coming from a man who was try- 
 ing to suppress the new faith, is irrefragable. 
 About twenty years later the Emperor 
 Hadrian in a letter records among his im- 
 pressions gained during a visit to Egypt that 
 the people of Alexandria were divided in their 
 worship — "by many Serapis is worshiped, by 
 
Ouk Lord and Master. 63 
 
 multitudes Christ is adored." Thirty years 
 after this the Greek satirist, Lueian, ridicules 
 the new faith in this manner: "The Chris- 
 tians are still worshiping that great man who 
 was gibbeted in Palestine." About the same 
 time the ablest opponent of Christianity in 
 that old world, Celsus, assails the followers 
 of Christ on the ground of their idolatry. He 
 castigates them with his lampooning wit be- 
 cause, as he suggests, they are worshiping a 
 corpse, the body of a crucified man. Similar 
 charges were brought against the early Chris- 
 tians on every side, year after year, and they 
 found record even in the rough cartoons of 
 that age. Some of our readers have seen, 
 perhaps, a reproduction of the rude carving 
 found in 1857 among the ruins of the Pala- 
 tine Palace in Eome. The sketch represents 
 a human body, surmounted by an ass's head, 
 and nailed to a cross, before which a man 
 bows with a gesture of adoration. Under- 
 neath is the inscription in Greek : Alexamenos 
 adores his God. 
 
64 OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 
 
 These testimonies from the enemies of 
 the Christian religion, based on the evident 
 belief and invincible customs of the early 
 Church, are of the most valuable kind, as in- 
 dicating to us the truth that the faith of 
 the apostles in the Deity of our Lord was 
 not changed as it was handed down from one 
 generation to another. This witness borne by 
 the foes of the faith is made all the more 
 impressive when we consider that the Chris- 
 tian writers of that early age do not deny 
 the accusation that Christians worship Jesus 
 Christ; they accept the charge as true, and 
 proceed to justify their custom as the highest 
 of obligations. Indeed, it would seem that 
 the one single item in the Christian's creed 
 in those primitive days embodied his faith in 
 the Lord Jesus as in the highest sense the 
 Divine Savior. 
 
 This faith is pathetically involved in the 
 prayers of the martyrs, age after age. Pages 
 of their testimony might be transcribed to 
 show that in the hour of their examination 
 
Our Lord and Master. 65 
 
 by torture, and when they were torn with 
 wild beasts, given into the hands of the exe- 
 cutioners, and devoted to indescribable death- 
 agonies, their dying cries were appeals to 
 their Lord as One who was mighty to save. 
 Eead their utterances, and decide from these 
 whether or not the martyrs believed with all 
 their hearts that Jesus Christ is entitled to 
 worship: "Deliver me, Christ; I suffer in 
 thy name;" "0 Christ, thou Son of God, de- 
 liver thy servants;" "Thanks to thee, 
 Christ ; for thee do I suffer thus ;" "Preserve 
 my soul, guard my spirit, that I be not 
 ashamed; Christ, I pray thee, grant me 
 power of endurance." These are some of the 
 expiring utterances of the men who loved the 
 Master more than they loved life, and who 
 were willing to die rather than recant their 
 faith or deny their Lord. Surely no exposi- 
 tion of their testimony is needed in order 
 to assure us that they believed absolutely in 
 the supreme dignity and power of their Ee- 
 deemer. 
 5 
 
66 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 In view, then, of the data which the early 
 centuries afford, can there be any possible 
 question as to the place which Jesus Christ 
 held in the thoughts and beliefs, hearts and 
 lives of his followers? 
 
 ft 15. Early Christian Hymns. 
 
 From still another field abundant proofs 
 can be cited to establish the place which the 
 Eedeemer has occupied in human thought 
 throughout the ages — the realm of poetry and 
 hymnody. The poets are rightly called seers ; 
 their province is vision; they are gifted with 
 the power to see, and are endowed with the 
 faculty to unfold, truths which are invisible 
 to ordinary eyes. Their ministry in our own 
 time as interpreters of the significance of 
 nature has been revolutionary in its influ- 
 ence on English literature and on our views 
 of the material world. After scientists have 
 unfolded the structure and functions of bird 
 and bee and blossom and sea and mountain, 
 it yet remains for the poet to go forth by the 
 
Our Lord and Master. 67 
 
 shore and through the woods and over the 
 hills, and tell his story in verse, in order 
 that men may know the real significance of 
 these things and man's relation to them. The 
 mission of the poet as a seer of religious 
 truth, as a discerner of the real meaning of 
 Scripture, as an unfolder of human faith, 
 duty, and destiny, has not yet been fully real- 
 ized. 
 
 Perhaps it may be sufficient here on this 
 point to say that the hymn-books of the Chris- 
 tian centuries, taken en masse, may be a bet- 
 ter index of the theology of the Church than 
 technical works of the theologians. At any 
 rate, who can really know the truths of the 
 Bible until he has studied them in song? 
 Who can understand the New Testament 
 until he has read what the poets have done 
 in interpreting its characters and picturing 
 its incidents? We are warranted, therefore, 
 in asking what the great singers have thought 
 of Jesus Christ? What have they seen in 
 him? What are their teachings concerning 
 
68 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 his title and place ? Of course, the answer to 
 these questions, fully given, would require 
 volumes, instead of a few pages. Our treat- 
 ment of this phase of the question must be 
 brief and suggestive, and must deal with but 
 one single section of the vast field opened 
 to view; namely, that which contains tributes 
 which without any question are directed to 
 our Lord as possessing the attributes and 
 jurisdiction of Deity. Multitudes of other 
 hymns and poems glorifying him as Teacher 
 and Friend abound, but they lie just now 
 beyond our scope. 
 
 But little material is found to illustrate 
 this thesis in the very early Christian cen- 
 turies, except the historical testimony, found 
 in various places, that the Christians were 
 accustomed to praise the Savior in their serv- 
 ices as Divine. Caius, a Greek author, writ- 
 ing early in the third century, speaks of the 
 psalms and odes then in vogue, "written by 
 the faithful, hymns to the Christ, the Word 
 of God, calling him God." One of these, by 
 
OUK LOKD AND MASTER. 69 
 
 Clement of Alexandria, who died in A. D. 
 220, has been preserved, and translated into 
 various tongues, and is still in use. Two 
 stanzas from a familiar version may illustrate 
 its tone and teaching: 
 
 Shepherd of tender youth, 
 Guiding in love and truth 
 
 Through devious ways ; 
 Christ, our triumphant King, 
 We come thy name to sing, 
 Hither our children bring 
 
 To shout thy praise. 
 
 Ever be thou our Guide, 
 Our Shepherd and our Pride, 
 
 Our Staff and Song: 
 Jesus, thou Christ of God, 
 By thy perennial Word 
 Lead us where thou has trod, 
 
 Make our faith strong. 
 
 This beautiful hymn may serve to em- 
 phasize the testimony of a writer, quoted by 
 the Church historian, Eusebius, who declared 
 that "the psalms and hymns of the brethren, 
 from the earliest days of Christianity which 
 
70 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 had been written by the faithful, all cele- 
 brate Christ, the Word of God, proclaiming 
 his Divinity." 
 
 From St. Ambrose, born A. D. 340, came 
 scores of blessed hymns, all of them saturated 
 with vital Christian truths. From one of 
 them — that which is known in the Latin 
 tongue by its first line, Splendor Paternce 
 gloria, we take a single stanza, which evinces 
 the faith which he cherished in the Lord of 
 glory : 
 
 Thou brightness of the Father's ray, 
 True Light of light, and Day of day, 
 Light's fountain and eternal spring, 
 Thou Morn the morn illumining ! 
 Glide in, thou very Sun divine ; 
 With everlasting brightness shine ; 
 And shed abroad on every sense 
 The Spirit's light and influence. 
 
 There was in use in Spain in the fifth cen- 
 tury a collection of vespers, prayers, and 
 hymns, known as the Mozarabic Breviary, 
 from which we cite a stanza which closes one 
 
Our Loed and Master. 71 
 
 of its most characteristic chants. As trans- 
 lated by Ellerton the lines are as follows: 
 
 Almighty Christ, to thee our voices sing ; 
 Glory for evermore to thee we bring 
 An endless Hallelujah. 
 
 Perhaps there can not be found a more 
 typical instance of the truth which we are 
 exemplifying than one that is furnished in a 
 hjrmn written by the Venerable Bede, who 
 lived A. D. 672-735. It will be remembered 
 that his glorious death occured in his mo- 
 nastic cell just as he had finished his transla- 
 tion of the Gospel of John into Anglo-Saxon. 
 Then he uttered the ancient phrase, "Glory be 
 unto the Father, and unto the Son, and unto 
 the Holy Ghost," and with the last word his 
 tongue faltered, his breath failed, and his 
 spirit was with God. From his Hymn on 
 the Ascension these lines will help us deter- 
 mine what his inmost belief was as to the 
 jurisdiction and heavenly station of Jesus : 
 
 A hymn of glory let us sing : 
 New hymns throughout the world shall 
 ring; 
 
72 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 By a new way none ever trod, 
 
 Christ mounteth to the throne of God. 
 
 May our affections thither tend, 
 And thither constantly ascend, 
 Where seated on the Father's throne, 
 Thee, reigning in the heavens, we own ! 
 
 A single additional citation from mediaeval 
 hymnody must suffice. It comes from the 
 masterpiece of Latin religious poetry, "Dies 
 Irae," written by Thomas of Celano, a saintly 
 monk, about A. D. 1250. Its awful majesty 
 has won for it a matchless place among the 
 poems of mediaeval times. Taken through- 
 out, it is a description of the final judgment, 
 and a plea for mercy addressed to the Judge. 
 Even to those who are not familiar with the 
 language in which it is written, the poem 
 in the original has a wonderful solemnity, 
 grandeur, and moving power. We venture 
 to cite one of the Latin stanzas: 
 
 Bex tremendx majestatis, 
 Qui salvandos salvas gratis, 
 Salva me, fons pietatis! 
 
OUK LOED AND MASTEK. 73 
 
 From Dean Alford's translation we quote 
 the above stanza and two additional ones done 
 into English, as suggesting the spirit and 
 character of the whole : 
 
 King of awful majesty, 
 Saving sinners graciously, 
 Fount of mercy, save thou me ! 
 
 Thou just Judge of wrath severe, 
 Grant my sins remission here, 
 Ere thy reckoning day appear. 
 
 Lord, thine ear in mercy bow, 
 Broken is my heart and low : 
 Guard of my last end be thou ! 
 
 In that day, that mournful day, 
 When to judgment wakes our clay, 
 Show me mercy, Lord, I pray ! 
 
 Who can doubt, with these citations before 
 him, that this belief in the Deity of our Lord 
 had its origin, not in post-apostolic ages, 
 foisted in by perverted teachers, by means of 
 Church councils and philosophic speculations, 
 but in the first preaching of the Gospel by our 
 Lord and his immediate followers, and that 
 
74 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 it has always had the foremost place in the 
 hymns, prayers, devotions, creeds, and inner 
 life of Christian believers? 
 
 ft 16. Witness of Modern Poets. 
 
 Were we to begin to cite from the treas- 
 ures of modern hymnology the songs which 
 are in form as well as spirit hymns of praise 
 to our Lord, and which are unquestionable 
 recognitions of his Divinity, we would not 
 know where to stop. Great volumes are 
 packed with glorious hymns of this character. 
 Poets, even, who are not considered to be fully 
 orthodox in this regard, when they sing of 
 him utter words of sublimest adoration; as, 
 for example, Whittier: 
 
 Lord and Master of us all, 
 
 Whatever our name or sign, 
 We own thy sway, we hear thy call, 
 
 We test our lives by thine ! 
 
 Three citations, from hymns but little 
 known in our ordinary hymn-books, may serve 
 
Our Lord and Master. 75 
 
 as types of many hundreds. Take this, for 
 instance, from Frances Kidley Havergal : 
 
 In thee all fullness dwelleth, 
 
 All grace and power divine ; 
 The glory that excelleth, 
 
 O Son of God, is thine. 
 We worship thee, we bless thee, 
 
 To thee, O Christ, we sing ; 
 We praise thee and confess thee 
 
 Our holy Lord and King. 
 
 William Morley Punshon is widely known 
 because of his eloquent sermons and lectures, 
 but his poetry is not often read. Some of 
 his religious poems, however, are full of mel- 
 ody and fervor. These lines from "A Hymn 
 for Sunday Evening" afford another illustra- 
 tion of what we have been urging — the pre- 
 dominance in modern hymnology of appeals 
 and songs directed immediately to Christ as 
 to One who hears and answers prayer: 
 
 When sinks the sun behind the hill, 
 When all the weary wheels stand still ; 
 
76 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 When by our bed the loved ones weep, 
 And death-dews o'er the forehead creep, 
 And vain is help or hope from men ; 
 Jesus, our Lord, receive us then! 
 
 Taking still a further specimen, we find 
 in it the very essence of the truth we are con- 
 sidering. William Pennefather, an English- 
 man, is the author of this utterance of prayer 
 and praise : 
 
 Jesus, stand among us in thy risen power! 
 Let this time of worship be a hallowed hour. 
 Breathe the Holy Spirit into every heart : 
 Bid the fears and sorrows from each soul depart. 
 Thus, with quickened footsteps, we'll pursue the 
 
 way, 
 Watching for the dawning of th' Eternal Day ! 
 
 F. W. Faber shall be our last witness from 
 the world of hymnology. We cite from his 
 hymn beginning "Jesus is God," the closing 
 stanza, which is a didactic setting forth of 
 the doctrine in question: 
 
 Jesus is God ! let sorrow come, 
 
 And pain, and every ill ; 
 All are worth while, for all are means 
 
 His glory to fulfill ; 
 
OUE LOKD AND MASTER. 77 
 
 Worth while a thousand years of life, 
 
 To speak one little word, 
 If only by our faith we own 
 
 The Godhead of our Lord ! 
 
 Had we space to cite from some of the lead- 
 ing poets, aside from those who have written 
 hymns, it would not be difficult to show their 
 view of Jesus Christ. Tennyson, for instance, 
 opens his greatest poem with the apostrophe : 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 Whom we, that have not seen thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 
 Believing where we can not prove ; — 
 
 Thou seemest human and Divine, 
 The highest, holiest manhood, thou ; 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how ; 
 
 Our wills are ours, to make them thine. 
 
 Our little systems have their day ; 
 
 They have their day and cease to be ; 
 
 They are but broken lights of thee. 
 And thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
 
 By the side of this citation "could be placed 
 many scores of passages replete with the un- 
 
78 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 questioning Christian faith of the poet. Who 
 that studies his writings can doubt the sin- 
 cerity and the depth of his attachment to 
 the Master and the Word ? And who has any 
 doubt what Vision it was which inspired his 
 soul at the last when, almost with expiring 
 breath, he sang his swan-song, "Crossing the 
 Bar," closing with the lines : 
 
 " I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 When I have crossed the bar." 
 
 Browning, too, is another witness to the 
 Divine Christ. No student of his works can 
 ignore the spiritual elements in them, his 
 positive and constructive and far-reaching 
 faith. As W. J. Dawson, in his "Quest and 
 Vision," remarks, "It is not too much to say 
 that the greatness of Eobert Browning as a 
 poet is in no small measure due to his great- 
 ness as a believer." In his "Death in the 
 Desert" these lines are as strenuous and ample 
 in their orthodox convictions as any to be 
 found in the creeds of Christendom : 
 
Our Loed and Master. 79 
 
 I say, the acknowledgment of God in Christ 
 Accepted by thy reason, solves for thee 
 All questions in the earth and out of it. 
 
 If Christ, as thou affirmest, be of men 
 Mere man, the first and best, but nothing more, 
 Account him, for reward of what he was, 
 Now and forever, wretchedest of all. 
 
 Call Christ, then, the illimitable God, 
 Or lost ! 
 
 In these profound words the poet has 
 packed the gist of a great Christological dis- 
 cussion now going on in the world. The di- 
 lemma thus suggested every agnostic, every 
 denier of the real Divinity of Christ, must 
 face. If Jesus Christ, with his declaration 
 of his own faultlessness, with his boundless 
 assumptions, his claims on the heart and life 
 of all men and of all ages, was not "God 
 manifest in the flesh" — then what and who 
 was he? That question demands a satisfac- 
 tory answer from the lips of those who pro- 
 fess to honor him as the greatest of teachers 
 
80 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 and the best of human kind. Could he be 
 what they claim, and nothing more ? We have 
 cited generously from the hymn-writers and 
 poets to show their answer to such an in- 
 quiry. Their vision and voice declare him to 
 be Divine! 
 
 U 17. The Witness of the Prayer-Book. 
 
 A glance at the Book of Common Prayer, 
 or any modification of it as used in Churches 
 which maintain some sort of a ritualistic 
 service, will serve to emphasize still further 
 the truth which we have been unfolding. 
 While the most of the prayers therein found 
 are directed in form to Almighty God, or 
 to God as our Father, yet in all cases they 
 are offered "through Jesus Christ our Lord;" 
 while again and again, in the Litany and 
 elsewhere, supplications are offered directly 
 to the Eedeemer. In the Te J) turn laud- 
 amus, for instance, these words are used: 
 
 " Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. . . . Thou 
 sittest at the right hand of God in the glory of the 
 Father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our 
 
Our Lord and Master. 81 
 
 Judge. We therefore pray thee, help thy servants whom 
 thou hast redeemed with thy precious blood. Make 
 them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlast- 
 ing. O Lord, save thy people and bless thy heritage." 
 
 In the solemn strains of the Gloria in ex- 
 celsis this pleading occurs: 
 
 "O Lord, the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ; O 
 Lord God, Lamb of God, Son of the Father, that takest 
 away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us." 
 
 In the Litany, believers are taught to 
 pray: 
 
 " O God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy 
 upon us miserable sinners. . . . By the mystery of 
 thy holy Incarnation ; by thy holy Nativity and Cir- 
 cumcision; by thy Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation; 
 by thine Agony and bloody Sweat; by thy Cross and 
 Passion; by thy precious Death and Burial; by thy 
 glorious Resurrection and Ascension, and by the Com- 
 ing of the Holy Ghost, Good Lord, deliver us." 
 
 The set prayer for the Increase of the 
 Ministry is thus phrased: 
 
 " O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst command thy dis- 
 ciples to pray the Lord of the harvest that he would 
 send forth laborers into his harvest; we beseech thee 
 graciously to increase the number of faithful ministers 
 of thy Word and Sacraments, and to send them forth 
 among all nations of men; that perishing souls may be 
 saved, and the bounds of thy blessed kingdom be en- 
 larged." 
 
 6 
 
82 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 We have not room for all the Collects 
 which are addressed directly to Christ as 
 the Hearer of prayer. This one, assigned 
 for use on Monday in Whitsun Week, may 
 be taken as an apt instance — one out of 
 many: 
 
 "O Lord Jesus Christ, who didst send from the Father 
 the Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth ; grant that he 
 may enlighten our minds with the teaching of thy 
 truth, and sanctify our hearts with the power of thy 
 grace, so that evermore abiding in thee we may be 
 found steadfast in faith and holy in life, being con- 
 formed unto thine image, who art with the Father and 
 the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. 
 Amen." 
 
 It needs to be kept in mind that many 
 of these utterances from the English Prayer- 
 book are centuries old; that they antedate 
 our English speech, and appear in the oldest 
 versions as translations from the Greek and 
 the Latin tongues, in which ascriptions of 
 praise and worship by the ancient Church 
 in many lands were offered to the ascended 
 Christ. When we repeat these prayers and 
 collects, therefore, to-day, we are in touch 
 
Our Lord and Master. 83 
 
 with apostles, martyrs, and witnesses of 
 other times and lands who adored and wor- 
 shiped our Savior. The example of the 
 Church in all ages is thus to be cited in 
 support of this belief and habit. 
 
 fl 18. The Facts Focused. 
 
 While this phase of the doctrine of the Di- 
 vinity of the Lord is familiar to theologians, 
 yet, doubtless, there are many who have simply 
 taken it for granted, and have never come 
 to realize how complete the demonstration 
 is made when all the facts and teaching of 
 the Word are brought to a focus in the case. 
 With these data in view, no one can doubt 
 that immediately after he left the earth 
 men began to worship him as divine. The 
 dying Stephen, the Apostle Paul, the Apostle 
 John, and those whom they instructed, 
 seem to have had no question as to the 
 proper rank which the Savior occupied in 
 heaven, or the share of reverence and homage 
 which was due to him on earth. From the 
 
84 Ouk Lord and Master. 
 
 time of the apostles till this day of grace 
 in which we live he has been unceasingly 
 adored by an increasing number of believers. 
 Those who, while accepting the Lord Jesus 
 as a Guide and Teacher, have yet refused to 
 honor him as in any proper sense Divine, have 
 always made up an inconsiderable proportion 
 of the Christian brotherhood. Only a few, 
 comparatively, among all those who have 
 accepted the Bible as containing a revela- 
 tion of God's grace to the world, have ever 
 doubted the Divinity of the Savior, who was 
 followed to the skies by growing acclamations 
 of praise and homage and worship. 
 
 Moreover, no forms of Christian belief 
 have amounted to much except those phases 
 which have been built upon the fundamental 
 doctrine of his Divinity. Divided as the de- 
 nominations are in some respects, separated 
 far apart as are the Protestant from the 
 Eoman Catholic and the Greek Churches, 
 this central and essential truth, among others, 
 they hold in common, that the Lord Jesus 
 
Oue Lord and Master. 85 
 
 Christ was not only "truly man/' but that 
 he was also "truly God," and that as God 
 he is entitled to the worship, service, loyalty, 
 and honor that are due from man to God. 
 All these Churches, whatever may divide 
 them asunder, are one when they look to- 
 wards the Sun of righteousness, the Lamb 
 of God, who taketh away the sin of the 
 world; and all of them may aptly join in 
 singing Isaac Watts's wonderful hymn: 
 
 "Jesus is worthy to receive 
 
 Honor and power Divine ; 
 And blessings more than we can give 
 
 Be, Lord, forever thine ! 
 
 The whole creation join in one 
 
 To bless the sacred name 
 Of him who sits upon the throne, 
 
 And to adore the Lamb." 
 
 fl 19. The Testimony of Experience. 
 
 As we hinted in the preface, there are 
 invincible proofs of the divine care, love, 
 and power of Jesus Christ which are put 
 within the reach of those who trust him. 
 
86 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 Countless myriads have, since the days of 
 St. Paul, been able to accord with his testi- 
 mony, and declare — some of them in the 
 face of martyr fires and other forms of tor- 
 ture inflicted upon them because of their 
 fealty to their Kedeemer, — "I know whom 
 I have believed, and I am persuaded that 
 he is able to keep that which I have com- 
 mitted to him against that day." Such wit- 
 nesses are found to-day in every land under 
 the skies. They know by personal experi- 
 ence the resources, the tenderness, the au- 
 thority, the love, the mercy, and the omnip- 
 otent power of Jesus. Substantially their 
 creed is a very simple one — about what that 
 of the Eoman centurion of Capernaum was: 
 "I believe in the almighty power of Jesus 
 of Nazareth!" They have poured into his 
 listening ear their confession of sin; they 
 have found, at his feet, guidance in per- 
 plexity and light in time of impenetrable 
 darkness; they have gone to him with the 
 daily story of their weakness, their trials, 
 
Our Lord and Master. 87 
 
 their perils, their temptations; and they 
 have been made conscious of his presence, 
 his help, his sympathy, and his care. 
 
 Their knowledge of him as a present, Di- 
 vine Savior, with whom they hold daily fel- 
 lowship, is inwrought into their very life; 
 it has become a part of their souls. They 
 know him by a direct act of cognition, and 
 by virtue of a life of communion which has 
 stood the test of all the vicissitudes, dangers, 
 temptations, and sorrows through which 
 they have come. Whatever else they may 
 doubt, of this one truth they have no ques- 
 tion, — Jesus Christ is an Almighty Savior. 
 The declaration of the mountaineer, "I know 
 that Jesus Christ is Divine, because he for- 
 gave my sins; he saved my soul!" was not 
 only good theology, but good logic. 
 
 This Man is the Creator of the new 
 moral life which throbs through the modern 
 world; he is the Maker of saints, ancient 
 and modern, on earth and in heaven. Liv- 
 ing witnesses by the million can be found 
 
88 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 to testify that he found them in their sins — 
 perhaps living in gross and brutal wicked- 
 ness or steeped in the savageries of heathen 
 lands; that he forgave them, revealed to 
 them a new life of peace and joy and hope; 
 that he cleansed and renewed them, and 
 built them up into sainthood. Myriads can 
 testify after this fashion: "In ocean storms 
 and on the field of battle ; in tropical jungles, 
 with wild beasts on every side; face to face 
 with mobs; in the midst of cannibals; when 
 carrying burdens of responsibility and toil 
 and care which seemed intolerable; when 
 heartbroken with bereavement; when strug- 
 gling with secret sins and with temptations 
 which took hold on the very foundations 
 of our life, and in manifold other vicissi- 
 tudes and adventures we have called on the 
 Lord Jesus in prayer for help. While we 
 prayed, we found a strange and blessed calm 
 administered to our quaking hearts. We 
 have realized his presence as surely as though 
 he had appeared visibly to our eyes. Hia 
 
Our Lord and Master. 89 
 
 responses to our cries, his anointing touch, 
 his immediate help, his gracious deliverances 
 wrought in our behalf, and, more than all, 
 the constant supply of grace and peace which 
 he has administered to us in our daily 
 needs, have made him the most real and 
 blessed of friends and comforters. What- 
 ever may be the limitations of our vision and 
 our knowledge, this one thing we know: 
 Jesus Christ is a Friend who sticketh closer 
 than a brother; he is a Counselor of the 
 ignorant and a Helper of the dependent 
 and the needy. We have trusted him and 
 have not been confounded." 
 
 These testimonies come from all quarters, 
 all lands, all classes. From the store and 
 the farm, the office and the shop, the street 
 and the home, the prison and the palace, 
 from kings and from peasants, from cabinet 
 officers and from workers in mines, issues 
 the stream of testimony, bearing its tribute 
 to the existence, the care, the blessed power of 
 the Master. Those who have submitted their 
 
90 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 lives to the authority of Christ, who have 
 trusted in him, who have given their serv- 
 ices, their adoring love, their deepest loy- 
 alty, their highest homage to him, year after 
 year, and are able to testify that they have 
 found his grace sufficient to their utmost 
 needs, are literally representative of all sorts 
 and conditions of men. Typically, there- 
 fore, it is the whole human race which cries 
 out in view of the divine character and 
 jurisdiction of Jesus Christ, the Lord from 
 heaven, our Eedeemer and King — 
 
 " Worship, honor, power and blessing 
 
 Thou art worthy to receive ; 
 Loudest praises, without ceasing, 
 
 Meet it is for us to give ! 
 Help, ye bright angelic spirits, 
 
 Bring your sweetest, noblest lays ; 
 Help to sing our Savior's merits, 
 
 Help to chant ImmanuePs praise !" 
 
 If, then, the apostles taught the Divinity 
 of Jesus Christ; and if the vast majority of 
 Christians who have lived in the world since 
 
Ouk Lokd and Master. 91 
 
 their day have, without any hesitation or 
 question, accepted from the heart that truth 
 as a fundamental part of Christian doc- 
 trine, who can reasonably reject it? The 
 theory that all these teachers and believers, 
 beginning with those who knew him when 
 on the earth, and reaching through the ages 
 down to our time, could have been mistaken; 
 that the Greek Church, the Eoman Catholic 
 Church, the Protestant Churches — almost 
 the whole body of believers, ancient, medi- 
 aeval, and modern — could have misconceived, 
 misconstrued, and misrepresented the char- 
 acter and authority of the Savior, worshiping 
 him without warrant, putting him in their 
 thoughts and by their teaching where he had 
 no right to be, — namely, on the throne of the 
 universe, — who can rationally support such a 
 preposterous supposition? 
 
 If 20. Conclusion - . 
 
 A single further suggestion must here 
 suffice: There is no discrepancy between the 
 
92 Ouk Lord and Master. 
 
 doctrine of the Unity of God, and the 
 Divinity of Christ. We are not taught that 
 there are two or three objects of worship; 
 there are not three Divine Beings set forth 
 as worthy of adoration — "The Lord our God 
 is one Lord." We are not bound here to 
 formulate a doctrine of the Trinity which 
 will correlate the truths which we have been 
 studying and make them logically and theo- 
 logically one. That task we leave for the 
 theological seminary and for teachers of 
 Divinity. It will suit our aim for the time 
 if we agree upon this brief statement of 
 the truth in the case: We worship only one 
 God; he has revealed himself as our Father, 
 yearning over us, providing for us, protect- 
 ing us with Fatherly care and love; he has 
 revealed his power, grace, wisdom, and for- 
 giving and renewing mercy in the life, the 
 ministry, the character and the divine- 
 human Person of Jesus Christ, His only 
 Son, our Lord; and also in the ministrations 
 
Our Lord and Master. 93 
 
 of his Holy Spirit, the Comforter, so fully, 
 absolutely, and clearly, that in all these 
 revelations, manifestations, relations, and un- 
 foldings of himself to man, he is to be adored 
 and worshiped. It is not incumbent upon us 
 to solve, or even to formulate our notions 
 of, the mystery of these relations. It may 
 suffice for us to realize that we may sing: 
 
 Father ! beneath thy sheltering wing 
 
 In sweet security we rest, 
 And fear no evil earth can bring; 
 
 In life, in death, supremely blest. 
 
 And while we worship God as our Father, 
 we do not deprive him of any glory when 
 from the depths of our souls we also sing: 
 
 Hosanna to the living Lord ! 
 Hosanna to the incarnate Word ! 
 To Christ, Creator, Savior, King, 
 Let earth, let heaven, Hosanna sing ! 
 
 And at the same time we are not doing 
 despite to Him who is great and greatly 
 
94 Our Lord and Master. 
 
 to be praised, and whose "greatness is un- 
 searchable/' when in the same breath we cry 
 out in adoration and prayer: 
 
 Holy Ghost, with light divine, 
 Shine upon this heart of mine ; 
 Chase the shades of night away, 
 Turn my darkness into day ! 
 
 Thus, as Christian hymnology has so 
 abundantly shown in every century, we may 
 not only offer homage to God as our Father, 
 directly, but we may also sing with heart 
 and voice: 
 
 Jesus, thou everlasting King, 
 Accept the tribute which we bring ; 
 Accept thy well-deserved renown, 
 And wear our praises as thy crown. 
 
 fl 21. Appendix. 
 
 For many readers the following supple- 
 mentary matter, setting forth various forms 
 of the orthodox doctrine of the Divinity of 
 our Lord, may be deemed helpful and sug- 
 gestive, as evidencing the doctrinal mold into 
 
Our Lord and Master. 95 
 
 which the truth under consideration fixed 
 itself from ancient times : 
 
 1. The Apostles' Ckeed. 
 
 I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 heaven and earth: 
 
 And in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord; who 
 was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin 
 Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, 
 dead, and buried; he descended into hell; the third 
 day he rose from the dead ; he ascended into heaven, 
 and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Al- 
 mighty; from thence he shall come to judge the quick 
 and the dead. 
 
 I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic 
 Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of 
 sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlast- 
 ing. Amen. 
 
 2. The Nicene Creed. 
 
 The first Ecumenical Council of the 
 Church, held at Mcaea, in Bithynia, Asia 
 Minor, in the year 325 A. D., formed the first 
 great organized expression of Christian be- 
 lief as to the central truths of Christianity. 
 Particular attention was paid to the doctrine 
 of the Divinity of the Savior, and the dis- 
 cussions took a wide range; but the unified 
 
96 Otjk Lord and Master. 
 
 judgment of nearly all the members of the 
 Council found record at last in what became 
 known as the Mcene Creed. This Creed, with 
 some additions to the last article, made in 
 A. D. 381 by the Council of Constantinople, 
 and slightly modified for use by the Western 
 Church, ran substantially as follows, omitting 
 the anathemas which in that far-off age were 
 denounced against those who rejected the 
 orthodox faith : 
 
 I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker 
 of heaven and earth, and of all things, visible and in- 
 visible : 
 
 And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son 
 of God, Begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of 
 God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, 
 not made, Being of one substance with the Father; by 
 Whom all things were made ; Who for us men and for 
 our salvation came down from heaven, and was in- 
 carnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was 
 made Man, and was crucified for us under Pontius 
 Pilate ; He suffered and was buried, and the third day 
 He rose again according to the Scriptures, and as- 
 cended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of 
 the Father; from thence He shall come to judge the 
 quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. 
 
 I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of 
 life; who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who 
 
Our Lord and Master. 97 
 
 with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified; 
 who spake by the prophets : 
 
 And 1 believe in one Catholic and Apostolic Church: 
 I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; 
 And I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life 
 of the world to come. Amen. 
 
 3. The First and Second Articles op Keligion. 
 
 The Thirty-nine Articles of Keligion of the 
 Anglican Church were adopted by that body 
 in 1571. With some modification adapting 
 certain Articles to the use of believers in this 
 country, the Articles were adopted by the 
 Protestant Episcopal Church in 1801. From 
 these Thirty-nine Articles John Wesley se- 
 lected twenty-four for use by his Methodist 
 Societies in 1784, when they were about to 
 organize themselves into the Methodist Epis- 
 copal Church. That body added, in 1804, an 
 additional Article, and these twenty-five Ar- 
 ticles constitute a part of the doctrinal basis 
 of that denomination. The Articles which 
 bear upon the theme discussed in the present 
 volume are as follows, cited from the original 
 7 
 
98 Oue Lord and Master. 
 
 form in the Prayer-book of the Church of 
 England : 
 
 Article I. Of Faith in the Holy Trinity. 
 
 There is but one living and true God, everlasting, 
 without body, parts or passions ; of infinite power, wis- 
 dom, and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all 
 things, both visible and invisible. And in the unity of 
 this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, 
 power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Article II. Of the Word or Son of God, which was 
 made very Man, 
 
 The Son, which is the Word of the Father, begotten 
 from everlasting of the Father, the very and eternal 
 God, and of one substance with the Father, took Man's 
 nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her sub- 
 stance; so that two whole and perfect natures, that is 
 to say, the Godhead and Manhood, were joined together 
 in one Person, never to be divided, whereof is one 
 Christ, very God and very Man; who truly suffered, 
 was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father 
 to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, 
 but also for the actual sins of men. 
 
 Mr. Wesley, in the version of the Articles 
 which he prepared for use by his followers in 
 this country, edited and modified certain of 
 them. For instance, from the First Article, as 
 cited above in its original form, he omitted 
 the words "or passions," and also the term 
 
Our Lord and Master. 99 
 
 "both" preceding the expression "visible and 
 invisible." He used the word "are" instead of 
 the archaic form "be" in the second sentence. 
 From the Second Article he omitted the ex- 
 pression "begotten from everlasting of the 
 Father," thus at one stroke eliminating from 
 the doctrinal basis of American Methodism 
 one of the most useless and vexatious of 
 theological controversies, that pertaining to 
 what theologians have called "the eternal 
 Generation of the Son." The words "of her 
 substance" were also left out, and the third 
 word of the Article, "which," properly be- 
 came "who" in his rendering. 
 
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