In his addresses on the future of the Protestant Church (Reden fiber die Zukunft der evangelischen Kirche, 1849), he finds the essence of Christianity in Jesus's conceptions of the heavenly Father, the Son of Man and the kingdom of Heaven.
It deals with the Bible as the final appeal in controversy, the doctrines of God, man, sin, the Incarnation, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, " both the Son of man and the Son of God," the work of the Holy Spirit, justification by faith, the perpetual obligation of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, final judgment, the law of Christian fellowship. The same principles have been lucidly stated in the Evangelical Free Church catechism.
Between the Messiah of the Jews and the Son of Man who came to give His life a ransom for many there was on the surface little resemblance; and from their standpoint the Pharisees reasoned that the marks of the Messiah were conspicuously absent from this Christ.
For Himself, and possibly for some others, they involved a reference, as appears later, to the " one like to a son of man " in Daniel's prophecy of the coming kingdom.
He warned them not to make this known; and He proceeded to give them the wholly new teaching that the Son of Man must suffer and be killed, adding that after three days He must rise again.
