We have seen that the Synoptic Gospels distinctly represent our Lord as the Jewish Messiah. They represent Him as filled from the first with the consciousness of a mission that is beyond that of the ordinary teacher or prophet. He taught as one having authority, and not as the scribes. The demoniacs recognized in Him a presence before which they were awed and calmed. He took upon Himself to forgive sins, with the assurance that those whom He forgave God also would forgive. He called Himself, in one very ancient form of narrative, ‘Lord of the sabbath.’ He did not hesitate to review the whole course of previous revelation, and to propound in His own name a new law superseding the old. He evidently regarded His work on earth as possessing an extraordinary value. He was Himself a greater than Solomon, a greater than Jonah; and, what is perhaps more remarkable, He seems to regard His own claim as exceeding that of the whole body of the poor (‘Ye have the poor always with you ... but Me ye have not always’). As His teaching went on, He began to speak as though His relation to the human race was not confined to His life among them, but as though it would be continued and renewed on a vast scale after His death; He would come again in the character of Judge, and He would divide mankind according to the service which (in a large sense) they had rendered, or not rendered, to Him. These are a number of particulars which helped to bring out what there was extraordinary in His mission. By what formula was it to be described and covered? It was described under the Jewish name ‘Messiah,’ with its various equivalents. Among those equivalents, that which the apostolic generation deemed most adequate was ‘the Son of God.’ One of the Synoptic Gospels says expressly that He applied this title to Himself (Matt. xxvii. 43), and it is quite possible that He did so, but critical grounds prevent us from laying stress upon the phrase. On two great occasions (the Baptism and Transfiguration) the title is given to Him by a voice from heaven. But only in a single passage (Matt. xi. 27; Luke x. 22) is there anything like an exposition of what is contained in the title. The mutual relation of the Father and the Son is expressed as a perfect insight on the part of each, not only into the mind, but into the whole being and character of the other. Different critics have dealt with this saying in different ways. Harnack, in his famous lectures, gave it the prominence that it deserves, but at the same time reduced its meaning, in accordance with his generally reduced conception of Christianity. His exegesis tended to limit the peculiar knowledge of the Son to His special apprehension of the truth of Divine Fatherhood. M. Loisy demurs to this. He says: