tion of later date, and wanting in most manuscripts, and xiii. 13 a quotation from the Old Testament made. by Paul, we have left but one passage in this book, which contains the term "Son of God" (ix. 20). Here, however, it does not teach Christ's sameness of substance with the Father, since Saul, but lately converted, is preaching to the Jews of Damascus, that Jesus is the Son of God, i.e. according to the Old Testament view, the Messiah. James does not speak of the "Son of God" at all, and Peter only when he mentions the voice heard at the Transfiguration (2 Pet. i. 17). can account for this by the fact, that the term "Son of God" was in the Old Testament, and remained in the vocabulary of the church of Jerusalem, identical with the "servant of God"; the Jewish Christians expressed as we have seen, their belief in Christ's higher nature by different terms.

We

CHAPTER III.

THE TESTIMONY OF THE RISEN SAVIOUR TO HIS DIVINE SONSHIP, AS GIVEN BY PAUL AND JOHN.

I. PAUL.

§ 14.

The Apostle Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, lays great emphasis on the fact, that he had not received. nor been taught the gospel by man, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ, it having pleased God to reveal his Son in him, who had persecuted the church, that he might preach the same to the Gentiles, that after this, he had not conferred with flesh or blood, nor gone to those who had been apostles before him, but first into Arabia, then back to Damascus, and only after the lapse of three years had visited Peter at Jerusalem (i. 11-18).

How are we now to understand the words, "It pleased God to reveal his Son in me" (vs. 16)? Did this revelation consist in the light which appeared unto Paul on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, and in the voice which said unto him, " Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" and again, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest; it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks?" It is this vision to which Paul appeals in 1 Cor. xv. 8 and ix. 1, in the first place, in order to prove by the words, "At last he appeared also unto me," the truth of Christ's resurrection from the dead, and in the second, by the words: "Have I not seen Christ our Lord?"

his apostolic authority. But the words of the apostle, "It pleased God to reveal his Son in me," evidently refer to some other event than to the personal appearance of Jesus Christ; they refer to a revelation of the true nature of Christ, which took place in the mind of Paul. It is true, we learn from the Epistle to the Galatians, that this inward revelation took place about the same time that the Lord appeared to the apostle bodily; it is also true that the inner revelation was made possible and prepared for by that outward bodily manifestation, but it was, nevertheless, something different from this. The appearing of the risen Saviour to Paul, whereby his resurrection from the dead and his Messiahship were proven, was followed by the revelation of the higher nature of the Messiah in the mind of the apostle.

Paul, who had not heard Christ's testimony concerning himself while on earth, had to receive it, and did receive it, in a miraculous manner. This excites our surprise the less, as the apostle speaks also of other revelations of divine truth which were granted to him. Thus in Eph. iii. 3, etc. he writes: "By revelation he made known unto me the mystery which in other ages was not known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ by the gospel."

.....

Not by a mere act of reasoning, then, but by a direct revelation had Paul learned, that the heathens were to be partakers of the promise in Christ without submitting to the law of Moses. Nor can this revelation be found only in the words of Jesus, which he spake at his first appearance, "I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these

things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee, delivering thee from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee" (Acts xxvi. 16, etc.), nor in those of Ananias: "Thou shalt be his witness unto all men both of what thou hast seen and heard" (Acts xxii. 16); nor in the words of Jesus which he addressed to him, when he appeared subsequently to him in the temple: "Depart; for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles." (Acts xxii. 21). All these revelations do not as yet intimate by a single word, that the law of Moses is not needed as a steppingstone in order to become a partaker of Christ, but that faith alone is all-sufficient. If, then, Paul's statement in Eph. iii. is true, it follows that he received still other revelations touching this mystery by the Spirit of Christ.

These revelations, that Christ belongs equally to Gentiles and to Jews, must, however, have been attended with revelations as to his inner nature; since his relation to mankind at large, as well as to the Jews, depended on his nature, who was, after the flesh, a son of Israel.

We learn further from Paul, that he not only received revelations as to the equality of the Gentiles with the Jews from the gospel point of view, which constituted the basis of his whole apostolic ministry, but also on truths of a special character. To the Thessalonians, who sorrowed that some of their number had died without having witnessed the second coming of the Lord, he writes (1 Thess. iv. 15): “in a word of the Lord (ev λóya Kupiov)" that those, who shall be alive and remain unto it-the Lord's second coming-shall not ourstrip those, who have fallen asleep (où μǹ 40úowμev τοὺς κοιμηθέντας), but that the dead in Christ shall arise first; that after this (Teтa), those that are

alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and so ever be with the Lord. We cannot understand by this "word of the Lord" any utterance of our Lord while on earth. The two passages Matt. xxiv. 31: "The Son of Man shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other," and John v. 25: “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live," might indeed have afforded consolation. to the Thessalonians; but what Paul says, is of a much more special character; Jesus says nothing of the change of the living, nothing of the resurrection of the dead to precede this change, nothing of their being caught up in the clouds while he was still on earth, there was no need of entering into these details. The word of the Lord, then, to which Paul refers, must have been spoken by the risen Saviour to the apostle. This also appears from 1 Cor. xv. 51, etc., where he treats of the same subject, though in another connection: "Behold, I show you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." This had been a mystery, until the word of the Lord revealed it unto Paul. On still another point, closely connected with the second coming of Christ, viz. the conversion of the Jews, the apostle received a revelation: "For I would not, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in, and so all Israel shall be saved" (Rom. xi. 25, 26).