dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten
from the Father,) full of grace and truth."[050] The writer to the
Hebrews makes a similar declaration: "God, who at sundry times and in
divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath
in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed
heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who is the
brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person."[051] It
has been noted that Christ, in speaking to His disciples, never says
_our_ Father, but either _My_ Father, or _your_ Father, or both
conjoined, never leaving it to be inferred that God is in the same sense
His Father and our Father. It appears from various passages in the New
Testament, that when He came the Jews identified Messiah with the Son of
God, as when Nathanael exclaimed, "Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou
art the King of Israel";[052] and when Martha said, "I believe that thou
art the Son of God, which should come into the world."[053] He did not
first become the Son of God when He took upon Him the nature of man. The
Divine Sonship existed in the beginning before He was the child of Mary,
the seed of the woman. He was the Son of God before the birth of
Abraham: "before Abraham was I am."[054] Though John the Baptist was
older than Jesus, and preceded Him in His ministry, Jesus was yet
preferred in honour before him, "for he was before him." "The Lord
possessed him in the beginning of his way, before his works of
old."[055] In the relation of the Son to the Father, there is a mystery
which we cannot solve. "Who shall declare his generation?" Earthly
figures fail to set forth Divine realities, and as we are dependent upon
human emblems for the conceptions we form of heavenly things, we see
through a glass darkly. But though we cannot fully understand the sense
in which our Lord is the Son of God, we yet believe that He is so in a
manner analogous to that in which we are our fathers' sons--possessing
the same nature as His Father, and having that nature communicated to