Life to which He too one day hoped to rise, bade His hearers look on
Himself Who was their Life; so far from deploring to His friends the
sins under which He laboured, challenged His enemies to find within Him
any sin at all. There is an extraordinary Self-consciousness in Him that
has in it nothing of "self" as usually understood.

Then it may be, at last, that our inquirer approaches the Gospel with a
new assumption. He has been wrong, he thinks, in his interpretation that
such a Life as this was human at all. "_Never man spake like this
man_." He echoes from the Gospel, "_What manner of man is this that even
the winds and the sea obey Him_? How, after all," he asks himself,
"could a man be born without a human father, how rise again from the
dead upon the third day?" Or, "How even could such marvels be related at
all of one who was no more than other men?"

So once more he begins. Here, he tells himself, is the old fairy story
come true; here is a God come down to dwell among men; here is the
solution of all his problems. And once more he finds himself bewildered.
For how can God be weary by the wayside, labour in a shop, and die upon
a cross? How can the Eternal Word be silent for thirty years? How can
the Infinite lie in a manger? How can the Source of Life be subject to
death?

He turns in despair, flinging himself from theory to theory--turns to
the words of Christ Himself, and the perplexity deepens with every
utterance. If Christ be man, how can He say, _My Father and I are one_?
If Christ be God, how can He proclaim that _His Father is greater than
He_? If Christ be Man, how can He say, _Before Abraham was, I am_? If
Christ be God, how can He name Himself _the Son of Man_.