ness too? To the Jews, who looked upon Him as a blasphemer, it might indeed seem strange and offensive, that He should thus be always speaking of Himself in language so emphatically declaratory of that which they saw with their own eyes, and which it was impossible for them to doubt. They, in their perplexity, might well enough demand, "Who is this Son of Man ?” But to us, to whom the great truth has been revealed, that as He was really and perfectly human, so He was really and perfectly divine, God as really as He was man, nothing can be more signally consistent with the fact of his condescension, than that He should thus continually insist upon it, and identify Himself with man, by calling Himself "The Son of Man," even as He identified Himself with God, by declaring Himself “The Son of God."

It was also in perfect consistency with the motive and object of His humiliation. For it was all His own pure love for man that had brought Him down from Heaven. Fallen as we were, his "delights" had ever been "with the sons of men." It was to redeem and restore them, and to make them great, that He had become incarnate; and the love which led Him thus to humble Himself, and which spoke out in every action of His life, spoke out also in the appellation in which He spoke of Himself. It was the earnest, irrepressible utterance of the strength of that love, the depth of that compassion, which had led Him thus to humble Himself; to become "bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh."

The appellation, however, involves much more than this. It obviously contains an intimation of something extraordinary in His humanity; something singularly distinguishing Him from all the sons of men, at the same time that it identifies Him with them. For He does not style Himself a son of man, that is, a man, as all of us are men, but The Son of Man, that is, THE MAN, emphatically, peculiarly, sublimely, as none others are or can be. "Whom do men say that I, THE MAN, am?" I, THE MAN-as if He stood by Himself, alone, in wonderful and conspicuous peculiarity;

or as if He were the only real man in existence, and all others were men only in part or in appearance. Strictly speaking, indeed, such was the fact. According to the divine idea of man, they were not men, real, genuine, Godmade men, but creatures of a very different stamp. Man, as God originally created him in his own likeness, perished at the Fall, when that terrible inversion took place, by which the spiritual nature was sunk beneath the animal, and the divine image was destroyed. Our humanity is a degenerate and disordered thing, now that men are naturally "alienated from the life of God," and governed, not by reason and conscience, but by sense and passion, and the instincts and appetites of our lower nature. Our humanity is humanity marred and spoiled and brutified by sin. But in Jesus Christ there was no sin. He was 66 holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners." His humanity was without stain or flaw, pure and perfect as on the day when "God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good." In Him there were no rebellious insurgences of appetite and passion, no disorderly conflict between the lower nature and the higher, but the flesh was in absolute subjection to the spirit, and His whole mind and heart in entire and strictest harmony with the mind and heart of God. So that there He stood, the very "beauty of holiness," the living human image of God; the perfect embodiment of the divine ideal of humanity; of all mankind the only genuine man; "The Man," on whom all eyes and hearts were to rest and fasten.

The appellation also further imports our Lord's total exemption from all those constitutional and discriminating peculiarities, which are determined by the circumstances of race, or climate, place, or parentage. We speak, for instance, of the several varieties and races into which the great human family is divided: the Caucasian, the Ethiopian, the Mongolian varieties; the Saxon race, the Celtic race, and so on; and unquestionably they have each of them their own characteristic peculiarities, which, however they may have origi nated, are perpetuated and transmitted from generation to

generation with wonderful distinctness. The peculiarity of our Lord's humanity was, that it was humanity exempted from all these peculiarities, unaffected by any modifying influences of any kind. He was the impersonation of humanity in the abstract; "The Son of Man"; the Man, not of one nation, but of all nations; not of one race, but of all races; not of one age, but of all ages. True, He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, but He was not thereby constituted a Jew. He was born of a Hebrew mother in the city of David, and was brought up at Nazareth, in the midst of a Hebrew population; but neither had He any of the hereditary peculiarities of the Hebrew race, nor was His character moulded and fashioned by the manners and customs and modes of thinking of his time. He had none of the Jewish sympathies, predilections, or prejudices; nothing of the exclusive nationality of the Jew about Him. He was subject to the Mosaic Law, and observed the Mosaic ritual; but with all this, He was quite as much a Greek, a Roman, an Arab, or a Scythian, as He was a Jew. He ignored all distinctions of blood. He acknowledged no natural relationships or affinities, but such as extended universally and equally to all mankind. It was not the Jewish nature that He had assumed, but human nature; human nature in its original simplicity and wholeness, and He therefore called Himself not the son of Mary, nor the son of David, nor the son of Abraham, but The Son of Man; The Man, equally related to every age, and to all peoples; equally the brother of every individual, of every race, tribe, caste and complexion, in every region, throughout all time.

And all this was necessary in order to qualify Him for the office He sustained, and the work which was given Him to do; an office, and a work wide as the world, co-extensive with mankind; reaching back to Adam's fall, and onwards to the last of Adam's race; comprehending all in the universality of its scope. He was officially "The Man"; the Representative Man, the Substitutionary Man; the Representative of, and the Substitute for, our common humanity.

He assumed our nature for two great purposes; that to man He might be the manifestation of God, and that to God He might be the representative of man. As "the Son of God," therefore, He appeared among us, "the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person." The light of the knowledge of the glory of God, shone upon us from the face of Jesus Christ; and He that saw Him, as He declared to Philip, saw the Father. As the Son of Man, He took our place under the law, and stood representatively in our stead, that He might satisfy the law in our behalf; that He might render it perfect obedience, and offer Himself up a public substitutionary victim to its offended majesty, redeeming us from its curse by "being made a curse for us." He thus "suffered for us," "the just for the unjust "; suffered for us, not merely beneficially, as a nursing mother may suffer for her child, or a soldier for his country's good, but substitutionarily and penally, in our place and stead. His person was substituted for our persons, His sufferings for our sufferings. "He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all." He, the sinless, consented to be treated as a sinner, that we sinners might be treated as sinless. In this great, this public capacity, then, He, the Man, officially suffered and officially died. There on the cross He hung, spotlessly pure and perfect, agonizing under the imputation of the world's guilt, the sinless substitute for man's sinful race, the substitutionary man, the representative sinner! There He hung, a voluntary victim to the violated majesty of the law, and in Him mankind representatively died. "For we thus judge," says St. Paul, “that if one died for all, then all died.”*

This, we say, was the character of His death; and this too was the character of His life, as "the Son of Man." Upon this principle it was, that upon His entrance on His public!

*Not "were dead," as in our version. Aorist, απεθανον.

The verb is in the 2nd

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career, He presented Himself for baptism to John. baptism administered by John was the baptism of Repentance. "I indeed," said he to the people, "baptize you with water unto repentance.” On the part of the people it was a strictly penitential act, a solemn confession of their guilt, and a solemn renunciation of sin, from the pollution of which they were symbolically cleansed. They were baptized in Jordan, confessing their sins." But why then should Jesus be baptized? What propriety was there in His baptism? Or what object could be answered by it? Jesus was "the Holy one of God," "without blemish and without spot." He was made indeed in the likeness of sinful flesh, but in Him there was no sin. Personally, He had nothing to confess, nothing to repent of; and why, then, should He be baptized with the baptism of repentance? John himself felt this difficulty in all its force, and shrank from the thought of administering the symbol of purification to one, who, as the Messiah of God, must, he knew, be exempt from all taint of pollution. "He forbade Him, saying, I have need to be baptized of Thee, and comest thou to me?" Our Lord's reply too—“ Suffer it to be so now, for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness" is persuasive, not explanatory, and leaves the enquiry unanswered. Precisely the same difficulty attaches to other passages of His life, as well as to His baptism. Why, for instance, should He be circumcised? Why celebrate the Passover, and keep the annual feasts at Jerusalem? these were ordinances based upon the fact of human sinfulness, and the observation of them by Him "in whom was no sin," might seem therefore unnecessary, if not indeed inconsistent. Various answers have been given to this enquiry, but none of them at all satisfactory. It is said, for example, that our Lord designed to do honor to the ministry of John, and that He submitted therefore to baptism, as a strong practical attestation to the reality of John's divine commission. But this is no explanation of the apparent inconsistency of his conduct. It is also said, that He designed to sanctify the rite of baptism by his own example, and thus to

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