so unhappily natural to the mind of man. 'What grossness of apprehension,' it will be urged, 'is here! How can you thus confound language which merely asserts a sustained intercommunion between a holy soul and God, with those hard formal scholastic assertions of an identity of essence?' But it is obvious to rejoin that in cases like that before us, language must be morally held to mean what it is understood to mean by those to whom it is addressed. After all, language is designed to convey thought; and if a speaker perceives that his real mind has not been conveyed by one statement, he is bound to correct the deficiencies of that statement by another. Had our Lord been speaking to populations accustomed to Pantheistic modes of thinking, and insensible to the fundamental distinctness of the Uncreated from all forms of created life, His assertion of His oneness with the Father might perhaps have passed for nothing more than the rapture of a subjective ecstasy, in which the consciousness of the Speaker had been so raised above its ordinary level, that He could hyperbolically describe His sensations as Divine. Had our Lord been an Indian, or an Alexandrian, or a German mystic; some such interpretation might have been reasonably affixed to His language. Had Christ been a Christian instead of the Author of Christianity, we might, after carefully detaching His words from their context, have even supposed that He was describing the blessed experience of millions of believers; it being certain that, since the Incarnation, the soul of man is capable of a real union with the All-holy God. Undoubtedly writers like St. Augustine, and many of later date, do speak of the union between God and the Christian in terms which signally illustrate the loving condescension of God truly present in holy souls, of God's gift of Himself to His redeemed creatures. But the belief of these writers respecting the Nature of the Most High has placed the phrases of their mystical devotion beyond the reach of a possible misunderstanding. And our Lord was addressing earnest monotheists, keenly alive to the essential distinction between the Life of the Creator and the life of the creature, and religiously jealous of the Divine prerogatives. The Jews did not understand Christ's claim to be one with the Father in any merely moral, spiritual, or mystical sense. Christ did not

• e.g. Thomas à Kempis. Of his teaching respecting the union between GOD and the devout soul, there is a good summary in Ullmann's Reformers before the Reformation, vol. ii. pp. 139-149, Clarke's transl.

Christ conscious of having existed before His birth. 189

encourage them so to understand it. The motive of their indignation was not disowned by Him. They believed Him to mean that He was Himself a Divine Person; and He never repudiated that construction of His language.

(y) In order however to determine the real sense of our Saviour's claim to be One with the Father, let us ask a simple question. Does it appear that He is recorded to have been conscious of having existed previously to His Human Life upon this earth? Suppose that He is only a good man enjoying the highest degree of constant spiritual intercommunion with God, no references to a Pre-existent Life can be anticipated. There is nothing to warrant such a belief in the Mosaic Revelation, and to have professed it on the soil of Palestine would simply have been taken by the current opinion of the people as a proof of mental derangement. But believe that Christ is the Only-begotten Son of God, manifested in the sphere of sense and time, and clothed in our human nature; and some references to a consciousness extending backwards through the past into a boundless eternity are only what would naturally be looked for at His hands.

Let us then listen to Him as He is proclaiming to His countrymen in the temple, 'If a man keep My saying, He shall never see death f.' The Jews exclaim that by such an announcement He assumes to be greater than Abraham and the prophets. They indignantly ask, 'Whom makest Thou Thyself?' Here as elsewhere our Lord keeps both sides of His relation to the Eternal Father in full view: it is the Father that glorifies His Manhood, and the Jews would glorify Him too if they were the Father's true children. But it was not their Heavenly Father alone with whom the Jews were at variance. The earthly ancestor of the Jewish race might be invoked to rebuke his recreant posterity. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.' Abraham had seen the day of Messiah by the light of prophecy, and accordingly this statement was a claim on the part of Jesus to be the true Messiah. Of itself such a claim would not have shocked the Jews; they would have discussed it on its merits. They had latterly looked for a political chief, victorious but human, in their expected. Messiah; they would have welcomed any prospect of realizing their expectations. But they detected a deeper and to them a less welcome meaning in the words of Christ. He had meant,

f St. John viii. 52: ἐάν τις τὸν λόγον τὸν ἐμὸν τηρήσῃ, θάνατον οὐ μὴ θεω ρήσῃ εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα.

they thought, by His Day' something more than the years of His Human Life. At any rate they would ask Him a question, which would at once justify their suspicions or enable Him to clear Himself. Thou,' they said to Him, 'art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?' Now if our Lord had only claimed to be a human Messiah, such as the Jews of later years had learned to look for, He must have earnestly disavowed any such inference from His words. He might have replied that if Abraham saw Him by the light of prophecy, this did not of itself imply that He was Abraham's contemporary, and so that He had Himself literally seen Abraham. But His actual answer more than justified the most extreme suspicions of His examiners as to His real meaning. Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.' In these tremendous words the Speaker institutes a double contrast, in respect both of the duration and of the mode of His existence, between Himself and the great ancestor of Israel. Πρὶν ̓Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι. Abraham, then, had come into existence at some given point of time. Abraham did not exist until his parents gave him birth. But, Εγώ εἰμι. Here is simple existence, with no note of beginning or ends. Our Lord says not, 'Before Abraham was, I was,' but 'I am.' He claims pre-existence indeed, but He does not merely claim pre-existence; He unveils a consciousness of Eternal Being. He speaks as One on Whom time has no effect, and for Whom it has no meaning. He is the I AM of ancient Israel; He knows no past, as He knows no future; He is unbeginning, unending Being; He is the eternal 'Now.' This is the plain sense of His language 1, and perhaps the most instructive commentary upon its force is to be found in the violent expedients to which Humanitarian writers have been driven in order to evade it i.

St. John viii. 58. Meyer in loc.: Ehe Abraham ward, bin Ich, älter als Abraham's Werden ist meine Existenz.' Stier characterizes our Lord's words as 'a sudden [not to Himself] flash of revelation out of the depths of His own Eternal Consciousness.' That Christ should finally have spoken thus, is not, Stier urges, to be wondered at, on the supposition of this Eternal Consciousness ever abiding with Him. Rather is it wonderful, that He should ordinarily, and as a rule, have restrained it so much. Here too, indeed, He restrains Himself. He does not go on to say, as afterwards in the Great Intercession-pò TOû Tòν кóσμov elva (St. John xvii. 5).

h Milman, Hist. of Christianity, i. 249: 'The awful and significant words which identified Him, as it were, with Jehovah, the great self-existent Deity.' Why 'as it were '?

Cf. Meyer on St. John viii. 58: 'Das éyú eiμ ist aber weder: Ich bin es (der Messias) zu deuten (Faustus Socinus, Paulus, ganz contextwidrig),

Here again the Jews understood our Lord, and attempted to kill Him; while He, instead of explaining Himself in any sense which would have disarmed their anger, simply withdrew from the temple J.

With this statement we may compare Christ's references to His pre-existence in His two great sacramental Discourses. Conversing with Nicodemus He describes Himself as the Son of Man Who had come down from heaven, and Who while yet speaking was in heaven k. Preaching in the great synagogue of Capernaum, He calls Himself the Bread of Life Which had come down from heaven.' He repeats and expands this description of Himself. His pre-existence is the warrant of His lifegiving power. The Jews objected that they knew His father and mother, and did not understand His advancing any such claim as this to a pre-existent Life. Our Lord replied by saying that no man could come to Him unless taught of God to do so, and then proceeded to re-assert His pre-existence in the same terms as before m. He pursued His former statement into its mysterious consequences. Since He was the heaven-descended Bread of Life, His Flesh was meat indeed and His Blood was drink indeed. They only would have life in them who should eat this Flesh and drink this Blood . Life eternal, Resurrection at the last day P, and His own Presence even now within the soul, would follow upon a due partaking of that heavenly food. When the disciples murmured at this doctrine as a ‘hard sayingr,' our Lord met their objections by predicting His coming Ascension into Heaven as an event which would justify His allusions to His pre-existence, no less than to the life-giving virtue of His Manhood. What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where He was before s?' Again, the reality of our

noch in den Rathschluss Gottes, zu verlegen (Sam. Crell, Grotius, Paulus, B. Crusius), was schon durch das Praes. verboten wird. Nur noch geschichtlich bemerkenswerth ist die von Faustus Socinus auch in das Socinianische Bekenntniss (s. Catech. Racov. ed. Oeder, p. 144, f.) übergegangene Auslegung: "Ehe Abraham, Abraham, d. i. der Vater vieler Völker, wird, bin Ich es, nämlich der Messias, das Licht der Welt." Damit ermahne Er die Juden, an Ihn zu glauben, so lange es noch Zeit sei, ehe die Gnade von ihnen genommen und auf die Heiden übergetragen werde, wodurch dann Abraham der Vater vieler Völker werde.'

1 St. John viii. 59.

m Ibid. vers. 44-51.

• Ibid. ver. 53.

Ibid. ver. 56.

k Ibid. iii. 13.

1 Ibid. vi. 33.

n Ibid. ver. 55.

p Ibid. ver. 54.

r Ibid. ver. 60.

Ibid. ver. 62. Strauss thinks it difficult but admissible' to interpret

St. John viii. 58, with the Socinian Crell, of a purely ideal existence in the

say

they thought, by His 'Day' something more than the years of His Human Life. At any rate they would ask Him a question, which would at once justify their suspicions or enable Him to clear Himself. Thou,' they said to Him, 'art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?' Now if our Lord had only claimed to be a human Messiah, such as the Jews of later years had learned to look for, He must have earnestly disavowed any such inference from His words. He might have replied that if Abraham saw Him by the light of prophecy, this did not of itself imply that He was Abraham's contemporary, and so that He had Himself literally seen Abraham. But His actual answer more than justified the most extreme suspicions of His examiners as to His real meaning. 'Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I unto you, Before Abraham was, I am.' In these tremendous words the Speaker institutes a double contrast, in respect both of the duration and of the mode of His existence, between Himself and the great ancestor of Israel. Πρὶν ̓Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι. Abraham, then, had come into existence at some given point of time. Abraham did not exist until his parents gave him birth. But, 'Εγώ εἰμι. Here is simple existence, with no note of beginning or end 8. Our Lord says not, 'Before Abraham was, I was,' but 'I am.' He claims pre-existence indeed, but He does not merely claim pre-existence; He unveils a consciousness of Eternal Being. He speaks as One on Whom time has no effect, and for Whom it has no meaning. He is the I AM of ancient Israel; He knows no past, as He knows no future; He is unbeginning, unending Being; He is the eternal 'Now.' This is the plain sense of His language 1, and perhaps the most instructive commentary upon its force is to be found in the violent expedients to which Humanitarian writers have been driven in order to evade it i.

St. John viii. 58. Meyer in loc.: Ehe Abraham ward, bin Ich, älter als Abraham's Werden ist meine Existenz.' Stier characterizes our Lord's words as 'a sudden [not to Himself] flash of revelation out of the depths of His own Eternal Consciousness.' That Christ should finally have spoken thus, is not, Stier urges, to be wondered at, on the supposition of this Eternal Consciousness ever abiding with Him. Rather is it wonderful, that He should ordinarily, and as a rule, have restrained it so much. Here too, indeed, He restrains Himself. He does not go on to say, as afterwards in the Great Intercession-πрò Toû tòv kóσμov elva (St. John xvii. 5).

h Milman, Hist. of Christianity, i. 249: The awful and significant words which identified Him, as it were, with Jehovah, the great self-existent Deity.' Why 'as it were' ?

i Cf. Meyer on St. John viii. 58: 'Das èyú eiu ist aber weder: Ich bin es (der Messias) zu deuten (Faustus Socinus, Paulus, ganz contextwidrig),