ng Messiah,
and since he was himself the Messiah, he refers it by implication to
himself. He does not deny, but rather grants, a primary reference of the
psalm to a son of David, for David was a king, and his son would be a
king. But he also sees in the psalm a prophecy that this son of David
would be a king whom David would call Lord. His searching examination
propounds to the unbelieving Jews the question, "What think ye of the
Christ? whose son is he?" And they say, "The Son of David." He answers
them by asking, "How then doth David, in the Spirit, call him Lord?" In
other words, inspiration declares Messiah to be a King of kings, and a
Lord of lords. Since the whole discussion is one with regard to the
nature and claims of the Messiah, and since the Messiah is not a mere
man like David, but is seated on the throne with Jehovah and is David's
Lord, Christ's answer is an assertion of his own deity. His answer
antedates, even if it did not suggest, Paul's later description of
Christ, as "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the
Spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." But the higher
critics differ in opinion from the Lord Jesus. They extricate themselves
from their difficulty by suggesting that Jesus, like other men, was
subject to the errors of his time. And so, not only Christ's knowledge
of Scripture and his authority as its interpreter are denied, but also
his knowledge of his own nature and place in the universe. If his
knowledge of things so essential be denied, what trust can we place in
any other of his utterances? To those who reason in this way, Christ
cannot possibly be divine--he is only a fallible man, self-deceived, and
so, deceiving others. The fault of the critics lies in their
presupposition. They have begun wrongly, by leaving out the primary fact
in the subject they investigate, namely, that the preincarnate Christ
was the author and inspirer of the Scripture which he afterward
interpreted. He used human agents, with their natural language and
surroundings, as his instruments, but he could, on the way to Emmaus,
"beginning from Moses and all the prophets," interpret to those humble
believers "in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself."
Scripture can have, and it does have, two authors, man and God, the
writer and Christ; and to ignore Christ in the evolution of the Bible is
to miss its chief meaning, to teach falsehood instead of truth, and,
consciously or un