ome such line should be taken by
the explanation. Thus then it lies before us. It is filled in all its
parts with Jesus Christ, in His character of the true Melchizedek, our
final, everlasting, perfect, supreme, Divine High Priest.

This simple treatise is not the place for critical discussions. I do not
attempt a formal vindication of the mystical and Messianic reference of
Psalm cx. All I can do here, and perhaps all I should do, is to affirm
solemnly my belief in it, at the feet of Christ. I am perfectly aware
that now, within the Church, and by men unquestionably Christian as well
as learned, our Lord's own interpretation of that Psalm,[E] involving as
it does His assertion of its Davidic authorship, is treated as quite
open to criticism and disproof. One such scholar does not hesitate to
say that, if the majority of modern experts are right as to the
non-Davidic authorship, and he seems to think that they are, "our Lord's
argument breaks down." All I would remark upon such utterances, coming
from men who all the while sincerely adore Christ as their Lord and God,
is that they must surely open the way towards conceptions of His whole
teaching which make for the ruin of faith. For the question is not at
all whether our Redeemer consented to submit to limits in His conscious
human knowledge; I for one hold that He assuredly did so. It is whether
He consented to that sort of limitation which alone, in respect of
imperfection of knowledge, is the real peril of a teacher, and which is
his fatal peril--the ignorance of his own ignorance, and a consequent
claim to teach where he does not know. In human schools the betrayal of
_that_ sort of ignorance is a deathblow to confidence, not only in some
special utterance, but in the teacher, for it strikes at his claim not
to knowledge so much as to wisdom, to balance and insight of thought. I
venture to say that recent drifts of speculation shew how rapidly the
conception of a fallible Christ developes towards that of a wholly
imperfect and untrustworthy Christ. And, looking again at the vast
phenomenon of the Portrait in the Gospels, I hold that the line of
thought which offers by very far the least difficulty, not to faith only
but to reason, is that which relies absolutely on His affirmations
wherever He is pleased actually to affirm.

[E] Matt. xxii. 44; Luke xx. 42. Cp. Acts ii. 34.

So thinking, I take His exposition of Psalm cx. as for me final. And
that exposition guar