would at once put him on a plane of living where humanity could not be at one with him; and his sense of divinity impelled him rather to union with all and to fellowship in good works. His answers to Satan, all quoted from Scripture and from a single book of Scripture (namely, Deuteronomy; cf. Deut. viii, 3; vi, 16; vi, 13; x, 20),1 are but a recourse to the store of literary guidance that has long been available to every man. So in all his temptations, though he is aware that unlimited power and privilege are his, he makes the use of it most godlike by most truly observing human limitations. After his return from the forty days' ordeal of the wilderness, Jesus' first visit was to the scene of his baptism, where His Ministry John was still making disciples. Here he began a of Familiar ministry, not officially, as if he would be either a Friendship rival or coadjutor to John, but in the private way of personal intercourse and conversation (John i, 19–iv, 42). The gospel of John gives this part of his history; unmentioned by the other evangelists, perhaps because it was so private and domestic, or more likely because the disciples from whom the synoptic Gospels came were not yet called. As Jesus mingled with the crowd at the Jordan, John the Baptist immediately recognized him as the one who had been supernaturally pointed out; and two of his disciples, detaching themselves from the company, followed Jesus. Three were added to their number on this and the succeeding day, as they journeyed northward toward Galilee.

So his first appeal was to young men of high and pure ideals, who obeyed the attraction of his personality and attached themselves to him as companions and learners. Some of them, it would seem, were acquaintances (cf. John i, 45, where Jesus is spoken of as well known), who first became aware of their neighbor's high distinction by the testimony of John, which they seem to have accepted as a matter of course.

1 See above, p. 227.

His fame as a teacher and worker of signs (as the author of the Fourth Gospel calls his miracles) rapidly spread both in Galilee and Jerusalem, to which latter place he went to attend a feast and meet the leaders of the nation (see John ii, 13). All this, until John's work was broken off by his imprisonment (see Matt. iv, 12); may be regarded as the private and domestic preliminary to Jesus' ministry, while he was, so to speak, broaching his ideas among those who would respond to them most simply and candidly. It is in these early months of his work that we meet with the ingenuous young men who became his most intimate companions; with his family circle of mother and kinsfolk at Cana and Capernaum (John ii, 1-12); with men of open mind and thought like Nicodemus (John iii); and with people of less cultured and sophisticated mind like the woman and people of Samaria (John iv). The prevailing note of this period of his career is familiar intercourse and companionship; as if he would first get acquainted with the various classes with whom he was to deal.

4

In course of time, after his distinctive work had revealed its character, he came to Nazareth, where his early life had

His Manifesto at Nazareth

been passed, and where his old neighbors were naturally eager to see their townsman who was becoming so famous (Luke iv, 16-30). On the Sabbath, as his custom was, he entered the synagogue and, standing up to read, selected and applied to himself the passage found in Isaiah lxi, 1-3, wherein the Servant of Jehovah, described by the Second Isaiah, is represented as taking upon himself and defining the spirit of his ministry. This reading, and the accompanying comment, may be taken as Jesus' conception of the Messiahship to which he was anointed, told to those who knew him best and had always known him...

By this manifesto, instead of connecting his work with the popular apocalyptic visions, with their ambitious notions

of a spectacular kingdom and a despotic monarch, he identified himself definitely with the meekest and most unobtrusive character portrayed in Scripture: the Servant of Jehovah, whose spirit of life was wisdom, sympathy, and silent sacrifice (cf. Isa. xlii, 1-4; Matt. xii, 18-21). He made no assumption of grandeur or dignity. He claimed only a career of good-will, good works, and universal helpfulness. To identify himself, however, with one of the most sacred prophecies seemed to his townsmen too great an effrontery. Besides, he had declined to work for mere display such miracles as he had wrought elsewhere. So they would not listen to him; and his subsequent ministry had to be carried on away from his home.

Title

Throughout his ministry, as these and many other incidents show, Jesus, though conscious all the while of his His Adopted Messianic distinction, was concerned that that fact should not be proclaimed or assumed on his part, but recognized on the part of men. He was concerned also that men should know and honor him not for his supernatural powers nor for any display of greatness but for the intrinsic truth of manhood that they saw in him. Thus, as they companied familiarly with him, they were getting something beyond personal acquaintance and intimacy. They were learning what manhood raised to its noblest powers is, and what life is under the leading of the divine Spirit, in the works and experiences of human life. It was this that he had at heart. He desired that the Christ men came to recognize in him should be the essential Christ and not depend on his fame or his profession. Only so could it be of practical and personal value to them.

So, though when required on oath to acknowledge himself he said plainly that he was Son of God and Messiah (see Matt. xxvi, 63, 64), yet the title by which he habitually called himself was Son of Man; by which he would seem to have meant the true and typical man, or, as we should

say, manhood completely realized. Even this designation he took not assertively but indirectly; speaking of the Son of Man in the third person, as if the latter were an idealized being whose character was to be manifested through discipline and experience. The question what the true man should do and be seemed to be on his mind at all stages of his career, and for other dignity apart from this he had no ambition.

In adopting this title Jesus chose a term which was comparatively unworn, though it does occur with somewhat hazy meaning in some passages of the apocalyptic literature. It was a term, too, which as used would rouse no false or premature connotations in men's minds. This was an important point gained. To have called himself the Messiah at the outset would have been to burden himself with a title which men had already filled with their own preconceived ideas, and it would have been hard if not impossible to divest it of accretions and infuse the true meaning, both human and divine, into it. To have called himself the Son of God would have been at once to separate his personality from the interests of common humanity and to have transferred himself to a sphere above them. But in calling himself Son of Man, Jesus was adopting a term by which he could make common cause with all men; and by filling the idea with the fuller meaning of his life he could raise it, and with it the whole conception of manhood worth, to its highest power, where, indeed, it would be equivalent to the other terms, "Christ" or "Messiah," and "Son of God." It was really the most modest claim that he could make, considering what he was, but as he translated it into actual life it contained the values of the highest. And he lived as if it were his one business on earth to explore and realize to the full manhood's possibilities as actuated by the Spirit of God.

NOTES. I. Conventional Use of the Term "Son of God." The term Son of God" was already much worn in the world's use, as a complimentary epithet for great rulers and leaders. It was in some such vague

sense, doubtless, that a Roman centurion was moved to call Jesus a son of God (Matt. xxvii, 54) on witnessing the portents attending his death.

2. Jesus' Use of the Term "Son of Man." "We must never forget," says Professor Sanday, "that this is the name which our Lord chose specially for Himself, and which He appears to have preferred above every other. The other names He purposely kept in the background; but this He used freely and without hesitation, though even this He employs objectively and in the third person, hinting rather than expressly claiming that in speaking of the Son of Man He is speaking of Himself.1

II. THE LITERARY ELEMENT IN JESUS' MINISTRY

Jesus himself wrote nothing. What record we have of his words and works comes from reports made in the Christian community, for teaching and catechizing purposes, and traceable to about a generation after his death. This record, which we have in the four gospels, consists of oral discourses, given mostly in a familiar and conversational way, with no apparent attempt at literary or rhetorical effect. Any thought, indeed, of self-conscious or academic art in connection with Jesus' words is almost like a profanation. As we study them more intimately, however, we become aware how exactly they are adapted to their subject, their occasion, and their audience. This is their obvious literary excellence; and this, of course, belongs to that perfection of art which conceals the processes of art and identifies it with nature.

That Jesus' discourses produced on his discriminating hearers the effect of fine and finished utterance is indicated in the question asked about him by the Jews of the capital: "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" (John vii, 15), and by the answer of certain officers sent to arrest him: "Never man so spake" (John vii, 46). The same thought was dimly in the mind of the common multitude, though they could not well define it, when they expressed their astonishment at the self-evidencing character of his words, so different from the style of the scribes 1 Sanday," Life of Christ in Recent Research," pp. 194, 195.