transfused with Greek philosophy,
the recognition of the word (Logos) as the Son of God, who should
reconcile or unite humanity with God. The first declares itself most
clearly, though not exclusively, in the three so-called Synoptic Gospels,
the second in the so-called Gospel of John. But it is worthy of note how
often these apparently remote ideas are found combined in the Gospels. The
idea that a man can be the Son of God was blasphemy in a strict Jewish
view, and it was for this reason that the last question of the high priest
was, "I adjure thee by the living God, that thou tell us whether thou be
the Christ, the Son of God" (Matthew xxvi. 63). The Jewish Messiah could
never be the Son of God, the Word, in the Christian sense of the term, but
only in the sense in which many nations have called God the Father of men.
In this sense, also, the Jews say (John viii. 4), "We have one father,
even God," while they start back affrighted at the idea of a divine
sonship of man. The Messiah, according to Jewish doctrine, was to be the
son of David (Matthew xxii. 42), as the people appear to have called Jesus
(Mark x. 47, xv. 39), and in order to counteract this view Christ himself
said, in a passage of great historical import: "How then doth David in
spirit call the Messiah Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou
on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool? If then David
called him Lord, how is he his son?" With these words the true Messiah
publicly renounced his royal descent from David, whilst he immediately
laid claim to a much higher one. Of what use is it, then, that the author
of the Gospel takes such pains in the first chapter to trace Joseph's
descent genealogically from David, in spite of the fact that he does not
represent Joseph himself as the natural father of Jesus?

These contradictions are quite conceivable in an age strongly influenced
by different intellectual currents, but they would be intolerable in a
revealed or divinely inspired book. All becomes intelligible, clear, and
free from contradiction, if we see in the Synoptic Gospels that which they
profess to be--narratives of what had long been told and believed in
certain circles about the teaching and person of Christ. I say, what they
themselves profess to be; for can we believe, that if the authors had
really witnessed a miraculous vision, if every word and every letter had
been whispered to them, they would have made no mention o