But Jesus had not only a divine mission, but a divine person also; and the manner in which he manifested his divinity is, if possible, more original than any thing else in his history, and bears in itself the impress of reality.  A company of men who should attempt to give a portraiture of a divine being simply from their own conceptions would doubtless put into his lips many direct assertions of his deity, and make his life abound in stupendous miracles.  But it is not in any such crude way that our Saviour’s divinity manifests itself in the gospel narratives.  It is true indeed that in the manner of his miracles he everywhere makes the impression that he performs them by virtue of a power residing in himself; that while the commission to do them comes from the Father, the power to do them belongs to his own person.  In this respect the contrast is very sharp between his manner and that of the prophets before him and the apostles after him.  In their case the power, as well as the commission, was wholly from God, as they were careful to teach the people:  “In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.”  “Why look ye so earnestly on us, as though by our own power or holiness we had made this man to walk?” “His name, through faith in his name, hath made this man strong, whom ye see and know.”  “Eneas, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole.”  But not to dwell on this, let us look at some very remarkable ways in which our Saviour manifested his divine nature.

He called God his Father in a peculiar and incommunicable sense.  He never said, “Our Father,” by which he would have classed himself with other men, but always, “My Father,” showing that thus he stood alone in his relation to God.  As the son has the same nature with the father, and when acting under his authority, the same prerogatives also; so Jesus, as the Son of God, claimed the power and right to do whatever his Father did, and to receive the same honor as his Father:  “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”  This the Jews rightly understood to be an assertion of equality with the Father; for they “sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his own Father, (so the original reads,) making himself equal with God.”  To this the Saviour answered:  “The Son can do nothing of himself”—­acting in his own name, and without the concurrence of the Father’s will—­“but what he seeth the Father do; for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.  For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that himself doeth:  and he will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel.  For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.  For the Father judgeth no man; but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:  that all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father.  He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father which hath sent him.”  John