26 THE KEY OF MYSTERIES

Father. This is in complete accordance with other statements made by the Lord Jesus Christ,1 and also with those made about Him by His disciples.2 He is the Way 3 for this reason, as He Himself explains. But He is also the Truth (الحق), which our Muslim friends hold to be one of God's special titles. He claims to be the life too, as He does when raising Lazarus from the dead, for then He said: 'I am 4 the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.' It is because He is the Truth that elsewhere He says: 'Heaven 5 and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.' With this accords the statement of the Prophet Isaiah: 'The 6 grass withereth, the flower fadeth but the word of our God 7 shall stand for ever.'

(3) One of the things most clearly taught in both the Old Testament and the New is that God alone should be worshipped. God alone can answer prayer, and that is one of the special attributes of the Most Merciful One. Because therefore of His own essential Deity, the Lord Jesus Christ promised to do this very thing: for He said to His disciples

1 Cf. Matt. xi, 27; John iii. 35-6; xvii. 2.
2 Cf. Rom. v. 1-2; Philip. ii. 9; Heb. x. 19-22.
3 Cf. John x. 9.
4 Cf. John i. 4; iii. 36; v. 26, 40; vi. 33, 35, 48.
5 Mark xiii. 31. 6 Isa. xl. 8.
7 Cf. John xii. 48.
PROOF OF THE DEITY OF CHRIST 27

'Whatsoever 1 ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If ye shall ask me anything in my name, that will I do.'

(4) Life is the gift of God: He is the Living One (الحي), and He alone causes life in others. With a full knowledge of this fact, the Lord Jesus Christ says of Himself: 'I 2 am the first and the last, and the Living one.' Here He claims three divine titles, as is clear from other passages of the holy Scriptures,3 but we wish here to confine ourselves to the consideration of the third. The claim to be the Living One implies that He is the source of all spiritual life to all creatures. Hence He teaches us that belief in Him is necessary to spiritual life, saying: 'This 4 is life eternal, that they should know thee, the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.' The same lesson is taught by His teaching us that He is the Bread of Life; for He says: 'I 5 am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall not hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.' Lest, however, these words and others in the same chapter should be misunderstood, He proceeds to explain that He uses them in a spiritual sense, saying: ' It 6 is the spirit that quickeneth; the

1 John xiv. 13-14. 2 Rev. i. 17-18.
3 Cf. Isa. xliv. 6; xlviii. 12. 4 John xvii. 3.
5 John vi. 35. 6 John vi. 63.