The mistake of the .Jews respecting the person of Christ did not come of itself; it sprang from superficial views of the work of Christ. The national king of Is- rael, such as they had come to anticipate in the Jles- siah, might have been a mere man only sjiecially as- sisted by God. There was nothing in the contemidatcd office which lay above the reach of human capacity or prowess, and it coidd not ajiiiear otherwise than blas- phemy to associate with it an incarnation of Deity. Il.ad they seen llie more essential part of the work to lie in the reconciliation of iiiicpiity, and laying «ipen, through an atonement of inlinite value and a righteous- ness all perfect and complete, the way to eternal life for a perishing world, they would have seen that un- s|>cakably higher than human powers were needed for the task. Misapprehending the conditions of the great problem that had to be solved, they utterly mistook llie kind of (pialifications re(piired for its solution, and remained blind to the plainest testimonies of their own Scriptures on the subject. They alone saw it who came to know .lesns as the Saviour of sinners, the Kedeemer of the world; and their testimony to his divine charac- ter was, like his own, exi)licit and uniform. If, as has
SON OF MAN
879
SONCINO
been well said — gathering up the substance of their statements and our Lord's own on the subject — "if the tinly-begotten and well-beloved Son of Ood, who always was, and is to be, in the bosom of the Father, in the nearness and dearness of an eternal fellowship and an eternal sonship; who is the manifestation, the expres- sion, the perfect image of God, such a reflection of his glory and express image of his person that whoever has seen the Son has seen the Fatiier also; who is the agent and representative of God in the creation and preservation of the material and the spiritual universe, in the redemption of the Church and the reconciliation of the world and the government of both, in the gener- al resurrection of the dead and the final judgment of men and angels, in all divine attributes and acts, so that he is manifestly the acting Deity of the universe — if he is not God, there is no actual or possible evidence that there is any God" (Dr. Tyler, in Bibl. Sutra for October, 18(55).— Fairbairn. See Sonship ok Chuist. Son of Man. This designation, which, like the Son of God, is now chiefly associated with Christ, has also an Old as well as a New Test, usage ; it had a gen- eral before it received a specific application. In a great variety of passages it is employed as a kind of circum- locution for man, with special reference to his frail nat- ure and humble condition ; as, when speaking of God, it is said, " He is not the son of man tliat he should repent" (Numb, xxiii, 19); and " What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest him?" (Psa. viii, 4). F\)r some reason not cer- tainly known, but probably from its being either a mere adoption of Chaldiean usage, or its possessing a sort of poetical and measured form, the designation " son of man" is the style of address commoul}' employed in Ezekiel's writings when he was called to hear the word of God (ii, 1 ; iii, 1, etc.). That Chaldican usage had, at least, something to do with it ma\' be inferred from its similar employment by Daniel; as, when speak- ing of a heavenly messenger appearing to him in the visions of God, he describes the appearance as being of one, not simply like a man, but "like the similitude of the sons of men" (x, 16), while in other parts of the de- scription this is interchanged with the simple designa- tion or appearance of a man (ver. 5, 18). Nor have Ave any reason to think that, as regards the expression it- self, anything else is indicated by "son of man" in the vision of Daniel which most directly points to New- Test, times and relations. In that vision, after behold- ing successively four different monstrous and savage forms imaging so many earthly monarchies, the proph- et saw " like a son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of Days; . . , and there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should serve him" (vii, 13, 14). The expression here, " like a son of man," is evidently equivalent to one having a human aspect, and as such differing essentially from those beastly and rapacious natures that had already passed in vision before him. The kingdoms represented by such natures, though presided over by human beings, were to be characterized by the caprice, selfishness, and cruelty which were instinctively suggested by those ideal heads; while in the higher kingdom that should come after them, and which was reallj' to attain to the universality and perpetuitj' that they vainly aspired after, there were to be the possession and display of qualities distinctivelj' human — those, namely, which are the image and reflex of the divine. This, however, it could only be by the head of the kingdom himself oc- cupying a higher platform than that of fallen liumani- ty, and being able to pervade this lower sphere with the might and the grace of (iodhead. Hence in the vision, not only is icleal humanity made to image the character of the kingdom, but the bearer of it appears coming in the clouds of heaven, the proper chariot of Deity — as himself being from above ratlier than from beneath — emphatically, indeed, the Lord from'hcaven.