the Unanswered Question
When anyone has received a divine commission, he does not need to prove it. His credentials are written large upon his life and message. It was so with John the Baptist. There was no need for him to argue his claims. The crowds in the Jordan valley; the multitudes in the baptismal waters, were sufficient to attest him as God's servant. What he said about God and sin found corroboration in their hearts. So it was with our Lord. The masses of people that followed Him and hung on His words had no doubt that He was the heir of the vineyard. The leaders professed to doubt it, because, to use the language of the parable that follows, they were reluctant to surrender their claims to the ownership of the vineyard. Probably, sufficient stress has not been laid upon the supreme intellectual power of our Lord, which shone out so clearly in these conflicts with Hebrew casuists, and in which He always came off conqueror, by the sheer force of His mind. “We have the mind of Christ!”