Preface

I here resume the Narrative from the point at which my first volume closed — the feeding of the multitude in the desert of Bethsaida. To every word of the previous Preface I adhere; I add a few remarks by way of elucidation. By the Title of this Book I do not mean a study of the different Portraits which have been drawn of Christ, nor even a comparison of the Pictures drawn by the Four Evangelists. The Portrait of Christ is to me the united impression produced upon the heart by these four delineations. My office is not that of a critic, not that of a creator, not that of an amender, but simply that of an interpreter; I study the Picture as it is.

I am glad that the reception by the public has invited me to pursue the subject. I am specially glad that I have not been suspected of a wish to minimise the Divine side of

Christianity. I have been for years persuaded, and with an ever-increasing conviction, that there is an element in Christ which is not to be explained by the stream of human heredity, but which implies an original Divine Sonship. But there is also confessedly that which was human — that which hungered, thirsted, hoped, feared, grew. I believe it grew into a progressive recognition of the steps of that redeeming work for the sake of which He was born, and which was already completed in the heart of the Father — that work whose every step was an act in that great Death-Sacrifice which reached from the depths of the Wilderness to the heights of Calvary. The light which is a unity in the sky is given in fragments by the pool; even so on the waters of earth was the plan of the Father revealed in fragments. The aim of this book is to piece these fragments. I have alluded only to those incidents which bear on the development. For this reason I have paused at Calvary, which is professedly the development’s close.

G. M.
EDINBURGH, 1900.