EVEN though we saw every day of the year the arrival of a Job’s messenger, there is yet one day which to the most unhappy among us brings glad tidings. It is the day on which the words of the first preacher of the Gospel, on Bethlehem’s plains, are repeated: “Unto you is born a Saviour.” What fairer festival than that of which Chrysostom testified even in his day, “that, though yet young, it was nevertheless observed with enthusiasm as great as though it had been in use from time immemorial!” Now so many centuries old, it is ever afresh hailed with new joy, and—once more to use the language of the same Father—“as a good and noble shoot when it is planted, in a short time rises on high and brings forth much fruit,” not otherwise has been the experience of Christendom with regard to this festival. The child hardly becomes weary of looking at the child in the manger. The man exhausts not the thought: “God’s good pleasure in men.” The devout old man even feels his breast glow with higher emotion at the joyful message that God has had towards him also thoughts of peace. Yea, we cannot even conceive the possibility that in the course of centuries this festival too should grow obsolete, or be abolished; it stands there, resplendent with everlasting youth and unfading beauty, at the very threshold of the sacred series of festivals! What questions then can have greater significance for the Christian, intent on understanding as far as possible the mystery of the kingdom of God, than precisely those which press upon him in relation to the incarnation of the Son of God, namely, What conception are we to form of this Incarnation? and, What value must we attach to this Incarnation? To the answering of these two questions must the present chapter be devoted.

It is scarcely necessary to show that we have with justice spoken of the Incarnation of the Son of God as a voluntary one. This assertion is simply the natural result of our faith in the pre-existence of the Logos, for whom the incarnation was thus no inevitable lot, but a free, self-conscious act of omnipotence and love. Scripture also sets us the example in this respect, since in many places it regards His appearing in this light. According to the teaching of Paul, He humbled (emptied) Himself, in taking upon Himself the form of a servant, and displayed His grace in this, that being rich, He became poor.¹ According to that of John,² the denial that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is an apostasy from true Christianity; and as this word contradicts those who called in question the human nature of the Lord,’ so does it at the same time indirectly condemn those who did not acknowledge His Divine nature. For certainly the expression, Come in the flesh, would hardly have been used of the Lord, unless He had already existed, before His coming in the flesh. Ina similar sense had the Lord previously declared, that He had come forth from the Father and was come into the world, and in like manner‘ again leaves the world to return to the Father.³ With the highest right, therefore, has the believing Church of all ages—in its commemoration of the Lord’s birth—adored, not only the love of the Father, who sent His Son into the world, but also the compassion of the Son, who, moved by nothing but pure love, entered upon this mission with the words: “Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God!”⁴

But then what a wondrous incarnation, which has already for eighteen centuries afforded to Christendom an inexhaustible subject for thanking and thinking! Every measure is wanting to us, to determine—even in some degree—the distance which separates the Divine from the human. It is true, the opposition between Divine and human is not absolute, but relative.⁵ Yea, truly, man was created after the image and likeness of God—spirit of His spirit, life of His life. God made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honour, set him over all the works of His hands. The Logos assumes the nature, not of the irrational animal or the inanimate plant, but of the firstfruits of the creatures of God. There existed, as we have before seen, even from the morning of the Creation, a direct relation between Him and humanity, which even by sin was not entirely broken. But yet, notwithstanding all the affinity between the Divine and the human nature, there existed an original difference; and the distance, already so great in itself, became through sin a wide, and apparently insuperable, gulf. What is this — poor earth, for Him who as Mediate Cause called all things into existence? What is, on this earth, the equally transitory as sinful and lost man? And yet this distance was bridged over, in the moment when the Word was made flesh; and—O wonder of wonders!—the Divine and human nature in Christ blends together into one Divine-human personality. Do we mean by this confession merely that the Logos reveals Himself in an harmonious, spotless human life, as in less degree He is revealed in every particle of the Creation? We should in that case arrive at no other conception than this: Christ the pure embodiment of humanity, and, as such, the visible image and the highest revelation of the Godhead; and we have already observed how far this conception falls short of the depth and force of the Gospel utterances. Not that the man who has normally developed himself is, as such, the Son of God; but that the eternal Son of God appeared as faultless man, is the doctrine of Scripture and of the Church_—Have we then to understand the matter in this wise, that He, who according to His Divine nature filled heaven and earth, confined and, as it were, imprisoned Himself within the narrow limits of a human body, and even the body of a child? It is well known with what thoughtless and unworthy mockery this idea has been hailed, even in our own day, and how some of the mouthpieces of the modern science have not been ashamed to compare the highest miracle of omnipotence and love, as conceived of in this form, with the tales of Eastern magic. For us it is enough, that the Gospel idea of the self-limitation of the Logos does not afford the slightest ground or occasion for such ill-treatment.⁶ Precisely this we deem the ever unfathomable miracle—that the Logos, as such, is and remains truly and everlastingly, God; that, even in the fulness of the time, He did not cease to be one with. the Father, and to uphold all things by the word of His power;⁷ that, as Son, He may. be truly said to be in heaven, while in the form of a servant He appears upon this mean earth. But He, who was truly and eternally God, assumed the true human nature, of the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, through the operation of the Holy Ghost.⁸ He continues to be God, and becomes man. He does not give up the supreme possession, but only the unlimited exercise, of His Divine nature and attributes. He, the exalted, Divine Person, very God, even as the Father, voluntarily unites Himself to the human nature, and from this peerless union arises nothing less than the highest object earth has ever witnessed, a Divine-human personality.

It is already apparent, in what sense and with what justice we may speak of an incarnation of God in the person of our Lord. This language is incorrect, if thereby is meant that either the whole Divine Being, or God the Father, as man, was born, died, and was buried. With good reason did Christian antiquity condemn the heresy of Patripassianism, which conceived of an incarnation of God the Father; who is represented as having left His throne and kingdom, to live, suffer, and die, immured in a human body. Expressions like the ancient, “God Himself is dead,” are better avoided, and give rise to dangerous misconception. Not the Divine Nature in itself, and not the Father, but the Son of God, was made flesh, sent into the world by the Father to this end. We are thus not warranted in speaking of Mary as the mother of God, and just as little in speaking of her merely as the mother of the man Jesus Christ, but as the mother of the God-man. But He, whom as a child she brings into the world, is and remains, nevertheless, as to His higher nature, the Son, from all eternity one with the Father, And if this Son is very God, not less than the Father and the Holy Ghost, the incarnation of the Logos is accordingly nothing less than a personal incarnation of God.⁹

At all times those who with Scripture definitely distinguish between the Divine and human nature in the Lord, run the risk, either of too greatly separating the one from the other, or of overlooking the distinction between the two. The former was the error of Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, who, in opposition to Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, acknowledged only an outward union (συνάφεια) of the Divine and the human in the person of the Lord, and on that account was condemned by the Synod of Ephesus (431). The latter was the opinion of Eutyches, Archimandrite of Constantinople, condemned at the Council of Chalcedon, in the year 451, who, in order to escape this rock, would acknowledge what was really only one nature in the Lord, the Divine, in which the, human was necessarily lost. From the former standpoint one would necessarily be led to presuppose a twofold consciousness in the Lord, a Divine side by side with a human consciousness; from the latter, on the other hand, in place of an assumption of humanity (ἐνανθρώπησις) on the part of the Son of God, to substitute a reception of humanity into the Divine nature. To the former extreme the Swiss Reformers inclined, when they declared, e.g., that Christ as to His human nature hungered and thirsted, and as to His Divine, healed sick men. To the other was only too much the leaning of Luther, when, without any nearer definition, he asserted that Mary had borne, suckled, cradled, and fed God. Owing to the limitation of our human thought, and the poverty of our language, nothing is easier than to attach to others the stigma either of Nestorianism, or of Eutychianism, especially if one himself acknowledges only one nature in the Lord, namely, the purely human, as such one with the Divine. The highest problem is in this. way, not solved, but simply annihilated; the troublesome knot is-hewn through, not untied. But he who, with the Lord and His Apostles, believes that the Divine and the human must here by no. means be reduced to one, or confused, readily appreciates every attempt so to present the union of the two natures in Christ, that on the one hand: the original and essential distinction between. the two is unreservedly acknowledged, and on: the other full justice is rendered to the conception of a not merely outward connection, but inner union, of the two different factors. As such an attempt, the ecclesiastical decision of the seventh century, that the two natures in Christ are united inseparably, unchangeably, indvisibly, and without confusion,¹⁰ deserves to be thankfully acknowledged. The venerable men who fixed’ such doctrinal definitions would themselves certainly not have regarded them as. an absolutely final solution. of the Christological question. No one, however, has less right to look down upon these attempts as mere human hair-splittings, than he who. reverences in the Lord nothing higher than “the: greatest Son of Nature,” the Son of Mary, (possibly also of Joseph!) and for whom thus the difficulty, on the-solution of which the noblest minds have laboured through many centuries, does not in reality exist.

It suffices for our present purpose to indicate our conception as to the nature of the incarnation. No mere manifestation in a life simply human; no imprisonment or indwelling in a human body, in the sense that during three-and-thirty years the Logos dwelt and exerted His power nowhere else than in the man Jesus; but union of the personal Logos, not with a human individual—in this way two personalities would arise— but with the human nature, which as such is designed for, and capable of, entering into communion with the Divine. No incarnation in which the Son ceases to be a sharer of the Divine nature, but one in which He henceforth shares it in communion with the human; no mutation of the Son of God into a man, but a manifestation of the Son of God as a man; no merely external connection of the two natures, but also no fusion, from which ‘a new third nature arises. A union, in a word, equally essential, equally intimate, and yet from the nature of the case equally inscrutable, as the union of man’s body and spirit in one person, who knows that he consists of the two, and very easily distinguishes what must be regarded as the operation of the body, and what of the spirit. Or shall we, for the sake of clearness, give another illustration, one that has been often employed? Think of two circles, a smaller and a greater, each perfect in itself, and existing the one ‘outside the other, but which meet in one point, the common centre in which they unite. Thus it is with the two natures in Christ: originally distinct, they meet as it were, and coincide, in the consciousness of the God-man. But to this last thought we shall return hereafter. The fact of the union of Godhead and humanity existed much earlier than the consciousness of it, which only gradually developed itself in the growth and progress of the Son of man in wisdom and knowledge. For the moment we remain in presence of the miracle of the incarnation itself.

If what has been said is not entirely without foundation, it will at once be admitted that the conception of the Lord by the Holy Ghost, and His birth of the Virgin Mary, however truly miraculous in itself, was only the natural consequence of His superhuman nature and dignity. For how could it be that the eternal Word, when about to appear in the flesh, should, as one of us, be born “of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man”? (ἐκ θελήματος ἀνδρός.) In truth, nothing is easier than to render doubtful the stupendous miracle with which the earthly life of the Lord begins, if it is regarded entirely alone, and His personal pre-existence is denied. If once His own distinct utterances on this last point are set aside; if there is brought to the study of the Gospel history a-due measure of philosophic doubt and. dread. of miracle; and if then the narratives of the birth given, in Matthew and Luke, are judged of apart from all connection with that which precedes and follows, the issue may easily be predicted. The difference between the two accounts is magnified into irreconcilable opposition; their miraculous character, which it is now found cannot be effaced by any exegetical artifices, is in itself sufficient to call forth increasing suspicion, and as a result, we hear the utterance of the critical judgment, that the credibility of these communications, and consequently, the whole extraordinary birth of the Lord, is to be regarded as at least problematical, while in thought the critic only too easily allows himself to. proceed a step farther. Something different, however, is it when one contemplates these narratives in the light, not only of the so-called historical criticism, but also of the Lord’s own indubitable utterances, which surpass all power of invention, and in those of His Divinely enlightened witnesses. Then the contents of these accounts become on internal grounds probable, yea, highly worthy of God; and far indeed from its proving a stumbling-block to us that the beginning of life of the incarnate Son of God was other than in all the sons of men, we should, on the contrary, have felt a natural and involuntary surprise if it had been in all respects perfectly like our own. No isolated objections, whether of an historic or a philosophic character, can accordingly shake our faith in this mystery of godliness. The silence of the Lord as to a circumstance of this kind, was not only natural, but absolutely inevitable. The silence of some Evangelists and Apostles detracts nothing whatever from the value of the testimony borne by the others. And he who stumbles at the idea of a miracle, let him finally have the courage to write over the Gospel history in its totality, the name of “cunningly devised fables;” but then also the honesty no longer to inscribe upon his banners the name of Christian, unless this ‘word is henceforth to mean something very different from what it has ever hitherto meant.¹¹

Let no one, however, suppose that we have not a lively perception of all the stupendousness of such a miracle as the incarnation of God’s own Son, by the power of the Holy Ghost, of the virgin Mary. When we consider for a moment the incomparable antithesis! “He who was and continued to be God—became man,” we feel that we _ stand on the brink of a depth which no one has yet been able perfectly to sound. Once only do we see nature, after the creation of the first man, depart from the law to which it has attached the maintenance and continuation of the human race, At the bidding of Omnipotence we see a pure virgin bear under her maternal heart Him “whose goings forth have been from of old, from the days of eternity.¹² We thus see the Creator extend the hand to the creature, heaven to earth, the All to the Nothing. Who could believe this, unless it were’ confirmed by proofs which can stand any reasonable test, and—unless the unbelief which refuses to hail the appearing of Christ as an incarnation of the Son of God were doomed to split upon yet greater rocks than those which it supposed it had escaped? Verily one -may apply to the incarnation also the assurance which a highly gifted preacher of the Gospel of our century a few years ago expressed with regard to the Divine character of the Gospel: “When I open my Bible, and cast my eyes upon this doctrine, so foreign to the philosophy of the age; when I think of that Son of God, who dies for sin-laden men . . . . Oh! then my faith is, I will not say made to waver, but clouded, and as it were bowed down under the weight of these mysteries of God, and I am like a man who feels his sight grow dizzy, and who must sit down, in order not to fall. Who knows? In such moments perhaps a terrible temptation might present itself to my spirit, if unbelief, however comfortless for my heart, could at least offer me a system which was able to satisfy my intellect. But what have I found there? Difficulties yet infinitely greater!” To us. also they present themselves, when we bring into question either the Divine nature of the Lord, or the miracle of His extraordinary birth. For if we deny the former, we see ourselves compelled to maintain that He was either a deceiver or a fanatic; and if we rank the latter in the list of legends, we find no explanation of the enigma, that He, of all the sons of men, has remained pure and without sin. Thus we find ourselves, even apart from our own choice, led back to the Gospel conception, which we have before heard rejected as absurd. And, once more to speak with the same faithful witness, “the contradictions with which unbelief abounds, repel me, and leave me no other refuge, than faith with its sacred obscurity. In fine, if belief has so many clouds, this arises from the fact that it sheds so clear a ray of light; if it displays to us deep abysses, it is because it knows such lofty mountain-heights; if it bears the keys of hell, it is because it bears: at the same time the keys of heaven. There are no doubt things that I do not comprehend, but I comprehend also that I cannot comprehend them. Frail creature that I am, flung down in a corner of Thy kingdom, how shall I be able to take in at a glance all that Thou observest from the central-point of all Thy works? Nature has its mysteries, and yet I believe in God; the Bible has its mysteries, and yet. I believe in Christ. I believe, because it is Thou, O Lord, who speakest; and I desire henceforth to be the most believing of men, in order not to be the most credulous, the most foolish of all.”¹³

We shall no doubt be excused this long citation, because it indicates, better than we could express. it, the only true standpoint whence the sacred mystery which occupies us can be satisfactorily judged of. But where we are thus more than ever penetrated by the miraculous character of the voluntary Incarnation, no one can be surprised that the question makes itself heard with redoubled emphasis, Are we indeed to suppose that the eternal Word was truly incarnate? However old this doubt is, and however apparently legitimate, we can nevertheless boldly oppose it, and, without any kind of hesitation, ascribe to the Son of God a real incarnation. Even in the days of the Apostles we meet, it is true, with not a few who doubt of “the reality of His body.” Under different forms the denial of the true humanity of the Lord, known as Docetism, manifests itself in the midst of the Church militant. And even at the present day there is perhaps no view with regard to His ever-blessed Person so commonly entertained as this, that He, the Son of God, walked about on earth in a human body, much in the same way in which the angels earlier appeared in a bodily form. But is anything further needed, than a cursory glance at the letter and spirit of the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles, to make manifest the untruthfulness of this conception? We see the Lord, as any other son of man, developing Himself not merely as to the body, but also as to the spirit, increasing in wisdom and knowledge; so that He learns what He did not before know, and becomes conscious of that which He did not at first perceive. As against the tempter, He applies to Himself the rule, that man shall-not live by bread alone, and later reproaches the Jews that they wished to kill Him, a man who had nevertheless only told them the truth.¹⁴ In the course of His life we see, not only that He alternately experiences, and finds satisfaction for, the necessities of the body, but also that in it emotions of the soul, of joy and sorrow, anger and compassion, perturbation and surprise, constantly succeed each other. And though every other, proof were lacking, the great events of Gethsemane and Calvary would incontestably prove, that His true humanity was something more than an illusive appearance. However deeply His Apostles are impressed with His heavenly glory, this does not prevent their laying the greatest emphasis also on the other side of the matter. Full of the Holy Ghost, Peter on the day of Pentecost proclaims Jesus as a man whom God had pointed out to them by signs and wonders as the promised Messiah; and Paul gives to the Mediator of God and men the name of the man: Christ Jesus.¹⁵ Yea, the Saviour Himself denies, even after His resurrection, that He is a spirit, as His disciples fear; and Paul does not hesitate to term Him “the second man, from heaven.”¹⁶ The beloved Apostle represents the denial of the true humanity of the Lord as the very spirit of Antichrist,¹⁷ and the Church, in the year 381, condemned the opinion of Apollinaris, that in the God-man the Logos had taken the place of the human spirit, as diametrically opposed to the truth. She has rightly: done. so; for he who denies that the incarnate Son of God had a truly human reason, does not less assail His person, than he who asserts that Christ underwent the death of the cross in a phantom body. On this account, although it is easily comprehensible that one should feel a secret hesitation about accepting without any limitation the words: “in all things like unto His brethren, except sin;”¹⁸ and although this error is comparatively much less hurtful than the presumption of those who would deprive the Son of man of the crown of His true Deity, yet we have to be on our guard against turning aside either to the right hand or to the left. Not without very good reason did an excellent Christologian, in giving expression to the proposition, “in the doctrine of the incarnation of the Son of God, the reality and unchangeableness of His Divine nature must not. be in the least degree surrendered,” immediately add this other proposition, “and just as little may anything of the truth and reality of His human nature be surrendered,”¹⁹ Here also the saying applies: “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.”

Nevertheless there remains in one respect an immense difference between the Lord and those whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. The real and miraculous incarnation is at the same time a holy one. This it must be, if it was to answer to its incomparable end. “For such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.” And this He accordingly was in reality, as we shall later see: as Adam before his fall, so does the second Adam stand before us without a single stain of sin. It is true, this unsullied purity of the Son of man is, so far as we know, nowhere in the Gospel brought into direct connection with His miraculous birth. When, however, we observe—as is everywhere taught us by Scripture and experience—that the children born of sinful parents are sinful too, and that precisely He alone remained free from the stain of sin, who by the way of a supernatural birth entered into communion with our race, we shall be naturally led in some way to connect the one with the other. We lay less emphasis upon the fact that Jesus had no human father, but attach a high importance in particular to the fact, that Mary became His mother through the power of the Holy Ghost. This Spirit undoubtedly in such wise prepared her body, and in such measure sanctified her spirit, that she was perfectly meetened to give life to Christ, without communicating to Him the fatal gift of the defilement of sin-on His coming into the world. On this account, it is equally unnecessary as it is in conflict with the history of Mary’s life, to suppose—as the Romish Church of our day has at length determined, after long hesitation—that she also was conceived and born immaculate. If this supposition were necessary, we should still have to go back one, nay, many steps further, and to suppose that, by a miracle constantly continued, not only she but also the long succession of her ancestors had been preserved free from the melancholy consequences of Adam’s fall. For us it is enough to believe that, according to the word of the Angel, the Holy Ghost came upon the blessed one among women, and the power of the Highest in such wise overshadowed her, that she was in soul and body entirely qualified, without moral disturbance, to fulfil her high destiny. As the sun from the womb of the morning, so do we see the Christ proceed from Mary’s virgin womb, to be truly man as we are, but a man who bears not the name. of sinner. A following chapter will afford us the opportunity of giving an express answer to the question, what we understand by the sinlessness of the Lord, and of investigating to what extent this His unsullied purity can be historically proved.

Now, however, while we are still contemplating the beginning of the appearing of the God-man, and have learnt to regard the incarnation of the Son of God successively as a miraculous, real, and holy one, we have by slow gradations attained to a height whence we can now recognise His incarnation as also a deeply condescending one. Where shall we find words to sound the fulness of that compassion which stoops as deeply as possible to the wandering and the lost? An Apostolic writer supplies us in some measure with a standard in the words: “He layeth not hold of the angels, but of the seed of Abraham He layeth hold.”²⁰ According to the express teaching of Scripture, which reason has no right to contest, there exists a kingdom of personal evil spirits, created at first pure and holy, but as a punishment for their pride cast down into the deepest misery. Let us then suppose that the Son of God, in order to redeem these, had taken upon Him the nature of an angel, and now arrayed in this robe of light had descended into that abyss of misery. Even then the self-humiliation had. been incomprehensibly great; for the Lord would have appeared as a servant, the Creator as a creature, the Eternal One in the likeness of those who were once called forth out of nothing. Far lower in the scale of being than the least angel stands sinful man, who trembles when he beholds an angel’s appearance, and of whose race thousands were slain by a single heavenly messenger, with one stroke of the sword.²¹ And yet the Son of God deigns to become the Redeemer, not of angels, but of men, and associates Himself with frail beings, of whom whole nations are esteemed as a drop in the bucket, and as the small dust of the balance. “If,” writes a Christian Father, “we saw the sun suddenly leave the heavens and come down to the earth, how should we be struck dumb with astonishment! But now the sun of the spirit-world has left His heavens, and walked among men.” Yea, truly, here “the glory of the Lord manifests itself to us in a lustre unknown before, but a glory measured not by an earthly, but by ‘a heavenly standard. It is great to bear crown and sceptre, but it is greater to renounce crown and sceptre, and, where one can rule, out of free love to be the least of the servants. And this greatness we see the Logos display,. when—to speak with John—He tabernacles in human flesh. He remains that which He was from eternity, equally Divine, adorable, and glorious. To avail ourselves once more of a faint comparison, it is with His Divine nature, as with the human eye, which raised on high beholds heaven and earth, downcast perceives but little, and closed can discover nothing, without its peculiar nature as an eye being on that account in the slightest degree changed.

Thus also the Deity of the Logos changed not its nature, though it hides the beams of its glory behind the veil of flesh. Even where it is united with the human nature in Christ, we may on this account adore it as veritable Deity. But this Godhead we see stooping to a depth, into which perhaps the eye of the archangel cannot follow without growing dizzy. ‘To cite a bold expression of faith on the part of Luther, “Christ is God, but He wills not to be so, in order to be our servant.” All that might fill our race with terror He embraces, as it were, with His own hands; and in the most lovely form does the Divine personally present itself to us, in the form of a helpless child. We know not whether in other spheres of Creation too, besides those of men and angels, the discord of sin has penetrated, and whether their inhabitants may equally rejoice in a personal manifestation of the Logos in their nature assumed by Him.²² But certainly an honour has been conferred upon humanity by His voluntary incarnation, than which no higher can be conceived of; and when we then regard the union of Divine wisdom, holiness, and love, visible in this whole event, and consider the matchless end contemplated in the incarnation of the Lord, we feel the need to bow deep in the dust in adoration, and exclaim with the poet:—

Creation, as compared with this proceeding,
Is but the prime colour (first touch) of Thy power.²³

Or what value must we attach to the voluntary incarnation? This question, we feel, must not be allowed to pass entirely unanswered, if the image of Christ, as presented in Scripture, is to display itself in all its lustre before our eyes. We need to know in what connection this incomparably great event stands to the whole work of redemption and to the great world-plan of God. The Gospel of Holy Scripture does not even here leave us in perplexity, and however many questions as to the how of the matter it may leave unanswered, it has yet sufficiently explained itself with regard to the why.

By the voluntary incarnation of the Son of God we see first of all a new revelation afforded us. Highly do we prize that which Creation and Providence shed upon God’s nature and works. But yet, rightly regarded, what may this be called more than a faint glimmer, compared with the light which streams forth to us from Bethlehem? All the Divine perfections, of which we successively perceive the manifestation in the work of His hands, we find here blended as in a central-point; even those attributes which for our short-sighted human eye might seem to be more or less opposed to each other, such as righteousness and grace, holiness and love, we see here—so to speak—as sisters embrace each other. It is especially the love of God, the manifestation of which in the sending of His Son is most highly extolled by the Lord Himself and His Apostles. He, who had penetrated more deeply than we into the mysteries of the Father, could mention no higher proof of His love than this, that He sent His Son, not that He might condemn the world—the Lord feels: that it might, and on account of our sins must have taken place—but that the world through Hum might be saved.²⁴ “Herein is love,” cries John, in sacred ecstasy: this. may indeed be called love without measure and without equal, “not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”²⁵ And as the sending of the Son of God in itself proclaims to us: the freest, noblest, most heart-subduing love, so is His whole appearing in the flesh a revelation of Deity itself, above which we know no higher. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom: of the Father, He hath declared (interpreted) Him.”²⁶ While it belongs to the nature and essence of the Father to dwell in a light which no man can approach unto, the Son comes forth to us as it were out of the obscurity, and in Him has the Unseen One become visible. Divine omnipotence and wisdom, love and faithfulness, omniscience and holiness, are not henceforth things of which the imperfect conception is left to each person’s individual judgment; but they have appeared. visibly and palpably, in a being who presents to us the image of the Infinite Himself, in that form in which He comes nearer than in any other to our power of apprehension—that of a pure and holy Man. No wonder that Scripture constantly makes known to us — this revelation as the last and highest. According to the well-known parable, the sending of His Son was the extreme measure, to which the Lord of the vineyard at length has recourse, after the unthankful husbandmen had already put to death so many of His servants. The speaking of God by the Son is: reserved to the last days; after which no period of higher-revelation is to be looked for, but only one of final retribution.²⁷ Yea, as in this way there is given to man God’s highest revelation, so is a new revelation afforded to the spirit-world in Christ and His kingdom. He who was manifested in the flesh and justified in the spirit, also—according to the significant word of the Apostle—appeared unto the angels,²⁸ i.e., according to the most probable interpretation, became visible to the angels in a glory and brightness till then unknown to them; and through the Church, founded by God’s incarnate Son, is now made known to the principalities and powers in heavenly places the manifold wisdom of God.²⁹ Thus it becomes clear to us, even without referring to other passages, that the question so often answered in the affirmative or the negative, as to whether a higher revelation of salvation is still to be looked for, after the revelation of God in Christ, rests upon nothing else but an abstract possibility. It amounts to much the same thing as asking whether our earth will, one day, in consequence of the progress of art and civilisation, be irradiated by a better light than that of the sun.

Though we could speak of no other benefit than this, that “the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true,”³⁰ even then we should have an infinite subject of thanksgiving. But the Gospel leads us to attach a higher value to the incarnation of the only begotten Son of God. We see, yet further, a new communion founded by it. Is it still necessary to sound the depth of the chasm which the hand of sin had wrought between man and his Maker? For forty centuries did the bond of communion between heaven and earth remain broken; man trembled ‘before the angels, the angels wept over deeply fallen man, Then appears the Son of God in the flesh, and the atonement, which could not possibly proceed from ‘the creature, is brought about by the Creator Himself. It is worthy of notice in what various ways the Lord and His Apostles bring the miracle of the incarnation ‘into direct connection with the redemption of Adam’s fallen race. According to His own words, He was born and came into the world, not only to bear witness to the truth, but also to seek and to save that which was lost.³¹ “This is the bread of God,” He exclaimed on another occasion, “which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world.”³² The world was thus devoid of the true life, because it was laden-with guilt, the curse, and the dominion of sin: in what way is this life afresh given to it? God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.³³ As one of us, He became partaker of flesh and blood, that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, i.e., the devil, and on that account might deliver us from all fear of death.³⁴ It is as though. the sacred writers were striving constantly afresh to remind us that not the appearing of the Lord in itself, but the humiliation which begins with this, and attains its climax in the death of the cross, is the mediate cause of our salvation. This is the case, where Paul declares that He, who was found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, the death of the cross.³⁵ It is so, where the same Apostle assures us that God, sending His Son into the world, has done that which was impossible to the law, and condemned sin in the flesh of Christ; which certainly has reference, not to His appearing in general, but specifically to His death on the cross.³⁶ And equally little can we stand in doubt as to whether the same Apostle alludes to this where he declares that Jesus Christ came into the world. to save sinners,³⁷ which salvation, again, He must certainly ascribe to His sacrificial death, although this is not here expressly mentioned. In like sense John lays manifest stress upon the fact that God sent His Son (into the world) to be a propitiation for our sins,³⁸ a benefit which is everywhere regarded definitely as the fruit of His blood. An important hint that we should never in our contemplation remain merely at the manger of the Lord, but always, even from that point of view, look forward towards the cross on which He accomplished all things! Only to such an extent does He save sinners by His coming, as this coming was the decisive step to His atoning death on the cross. But. should we,

1166 THE IMAGE OF CHRIST.

on that account, hesitate to speak of the incarnation itself as an indispensable link in the chain of the plan of our redemption? We cannot; for this incarnation is after all the beginning of a life which shall end in the deepest humiliation, but, through this very humiliation, in the raising and exaltation of.a lost world. It is the first step in the path of the obedience of the second Adam, which attained its wondrous culmination in the death of the cross; and through which many shall be, for the judgment of God, constituted righteous, as through the disobedience of the first Adam many were constituted sinners.*® It is precisely this voluntary character of His incarnation, as afterwards of His self-surrender to the death of the cross, which gives to this sacrifice of obedience an absolutely inestimable value. Being become truly man, He can do that which would otherwise have been impossible, in our place suffer and die. Being holy man, He can also make atonement for a guilt which has remained ever alien to Himself, and in death receive the wages of a sin in which He had personally no share. Being God-man, in an entirely unique sense of the word, He extends a hand at the same time to heaven and to earth, and bows down to the greatest possible depth, in order to raise a lost race to the forfeited position of the children of God. Thus is He, in the fullest sense of the word, our Mediator, who, with His innocence and perfect holiness, covers before the face of God our sins, wherein we were conceived and born.” Thus, in the days of the

*° Rom. v. 19. © Heidelb.:Catech., Ans. 36.

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New Testament, the deeply felt want of humanity was satisfied, which, for the restoration of its lost peace, perceived a need for nothing less than the actual incarnation of God. Himself With justice might the Christian Father exclaim, “We owe even more to His poverty, whereby we were redeemed, than to His riches, whereby we were once created.” Or, to speak with Bernard of Clairvaux, “It had become evening, and the day was far spent. No angel any longer appeared, no. prophet any longer was heard. Only a faint light of Divine knowledge was still glimmering: unrighteousness had triumphed, and the fire of love was quenched. The multitude and abundance of earthly goods had caused the heavenly to be entirely neglected and forgotten. But when thus the spirit of the age was dominant, eternity broke in with its light. The Word of the Father came, God sent His only begotten Son. O man, be dumb before this infinite love, and rejoice in the great dignity to which thou art. restored!”

But we must not conclude without proceeding at least one step further. The value of the inearnation of the Son of God is only imperfectly perceived, so long as it is

” With justice is it remarked by Edmond de Pressensé, in his work already several times referred to, Le Redempteur, p. 147, “Si nous éprouvons un besoin profond de voir le Fils de Dieu sans intermédiaire, de le voir, de ’entendre en personne, qu’ayons nous besoin dela créature? C’est le Verbe Eternel, qu’il nous faut. Si un Ange eut pu étre le Christ, Marie l’eut reconnu dans Gabriel, mais lAnge comme Marie ont parlé du Saveur promis, parce qu’il n’était pas encore venu. Les Anges ont pu célébrer sa naissance, mais aucun d’eux n’aurait pu le remplacer. L’humanité connaissait les Serviteurs, elle aspirait &*posséder le Maitre.”

168 THE IMAGE OF CHRIST.

regarded only in connection with the enlightenment and reconciliation of each sinner in particular. Not merely the personal communion of man with his Creator, but also the reciprocal communion of believers with each other, yea, the reunion of heaven and earth into one great society, is, by this miracle of miracles, on the one hand. rendered possible, and on the other absolutely guaranteed in the future. For, in the last place, with the incarnation of the Son of God a new Creation is begun.

“Behold, I create ‘new heavens and a new earth;” thus spake Jehovah once to Israel,*” and the fulfilment of this promise has been, we do not say by any means completed, but at least begun, in the days.of the New Testament. Truly God. has, with the appearing of Christ, begun to.make something new, so that the former things shall not any longer be remembered.—In sending His Son, He created a new member of the Human Family. As the gardener, who will recal a sickly stem to new life, does God, as.it were, graft a new fresh scion into the disordered stock of humanity, that from it a purer and healthier sap may be diffused through the arid branches. Not of and from the tree of humanity, by the way of a natural development of its own powers, was Christ born, as if to prove how much that is fair and noble humanity is able: to: produce of itself—he who asserts this seems to have torn out one half. of the Gospel, and openly contradicts the other—but He was engrafted upon the tree of

# Tsaiah lxy. 17..

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humanity; or, to speak without a figure, having entered into communion with our race, out of a higher, invisible order of world, Christ becomes henceforth inseparably one with humanity. Over against the line of those who bear the image of the first Adam, there now begins to develop itself a second, a new and holy line of those who are redeemed by His blood and sanctified by that Spirit, of whom the second Adam according to His humanity was born. In communion with Him the sinner now becomes a new creature, through whom flows a new life, yea, to adopt one of the boldest expressions that ever fell from an Apostle’s pen, he becomes “partaker of the Divine nature.”“* Not as though, even at the highest stage of development, the distinction between the Head and the members of the new humanity would ever be entirely obliterated, far less that any one should ever be _able to rise above His absolutely ideal perfection. As many as. have received Him, to them has He given ~ power to be and to be called men of God; but the God-man, in all. the force of the word, He alone remains for ever and ever. But yet, save this limitation, it is absolutely indubitable, that all that we see in Christ which is glorious and Divine is destined in varying measure to be at the same time the heritage of all His people. He God’s eternal Son by nature, we in Him the children re-adopted into God’s.family. He the High Priest and King, we priests and kings with Him. He the Light of the world, we called together with Him to shine

8 9Pet.i.4. % “1 Tim. vi. 11.

170 THE IMAGE OF CHRIST.

as lights in the world. He one with the Father, but also all His people destined, according to His prayer, to. become one with Him, with the Father, and with each other. He the God-man in whom all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth bodily, we appointed to be one Kingdom of God, one spiritual body, which, made perfect in Him, is joint-partaker of His glory, and destined through Him to be filled unto all the fulness of God—While raising the sinner to such a height, God creates in Christ a new world, more and more the opposite of the old sindefiled one. Who can deny that from the time of Christ’s birth a new principle of life is implanted in humanity, from the mighty influence of which even they cannot wholly withdraw themselves who refuse to bow before the Christ of Bethlehem? Or does not religious life owe to the Coming of Christ a development till then unknown; philosophy a higher flight; art a new baptism; society a beneficial leaven; the family a better order; the state in many respects a happy revolution, as compared with what existed before? Is not a new world of the heart opened for all His people, a higher communion of faith, hope, and love founded, of which the Jewish and heathen world had scarcely a faint conception? Are there not everywhere to be found prints of the blessed footsteps of Him, who even now in spirit, as of old, goes about through the land doing good, healing the sick, and casting out devils, whose name is leyion? Yea, is it not truth which the holy Pascal, the sage for all ages, as Neander has rightly named him, somewhere declares: “Without Jesus Christ the world would not even exist; for either it would have

THE VOLUNTARY INCARNATION, 171

been already destroyed, or it would have become like a hell” It would form a striking opposition to place all which human wisdom and power has been able to effect apart from Christ in the moral domain, over against all that which the world owes exclusively to Him. As often as this opposition presents itself before us in broad outline, there is awakened in us—and certainly not in us alone—the presentiment of something yet higher and more glorious.—We see, finally, a new union of heaven _and earth announced, guaranteed, and perfectly accomplished, by the incarnation of the Son of God. Union, this magic word of our century, is also the highest keyword in the decree of God, with this one all-embracing distinction, that God by means of spiritual forces accomplishes that which man in vain seeks to accomplish by material forces, and that instead of a Babel of confusion He calls into being a Zion of peace. That the angels of God descend to sing the first Christmas song is the meet type of the great final aim of the incarnation: union of heaven and earth. “Henceforth,” said the Lord to His first disciples, “ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.”* The communion between heaven and earth, indicated in this figurative promise, is however by no means destined to be restricted to Him alone. From Him, as from the living Centre, flows forth an all-embracing power for the reuniting of all that is still separate; and heaven and earth are henceforth destined to become two parts of a a eeeeeeFSFSssFheseh SS”: John i, 51,

172 THE IMAGE OF CHRIST.

boundless kingdom, which acknowledges Him as Lord and King. To speak with one of the greatest Theologians of our day, “That which the appearing of the first Adam is for nature, that is the appearing of the Second for the whole human race, As man was placed in the midst of Creation, in such wise that all the other forms of nature stand related to him as, fragments to the whole, as scattered rays to the all-combining focus, so that the whole diversity of nature is, as it were, destined to be united under man.as its head and crown.: so does the human. race again. present a fragmentary. diversity of individual. oppositions, activities, and powers, which first find their point.of union in Christ—under whom the great body of humanity must be gathered together as under. ‘the Head. And just.as man, a member in the chain of beings, not only unites nature in himself, but also stands above it, so also is Christ again a particular member of the human race, who. not only microcosmically presents the whole race to our view, but stands above the same, as Mediator between. God and men. His individuality is related to that of every other human being as the. centre of the circle to every other point of the periphery.. And as He is the centre of the world of men, so is He also of the Universe—the Head of the whole Creation, in whom the heavenly and the earthly, the visible and the inyisible, the forces of Creation, the Angels, Principalities, and Powers, find their bond of union.” “* That this union will one day become a perfect

« * Martensen, Dogmatik i, pp. 295, 296.

THE VOLUNTARY INCARNATION. Ws

one, can from the Christian standpoint by no means be open to doubt. With His appearing in the flesh begins the unceasingly progressive moral renewal of the earth, on which sin had destroyed God’s fairest work; begins the removal and abolition of so many things, which for ages had caused Creation to groan; the brotherly union of holy angels and saved sinners, no longer hopelessly separated from each other. In Him heaven descends to earth, to make earth afresh the gate of heaven. The Word becomes flesh, in order that—in the sound Evangelical sense—flesh may-be conformed to the Word. He who was in the form of God made Himself of no reputation, in order that at length God may be all im all.

We shall presently have abundant opportunity of returning to the more full treatment of that which we can here but touch upon. At the first glance of the appearing of the Son of God in the flesh, we could not possibly refrain from spending a few moments on the glittering mountain-heights of faith and hope. For the present our path again wends itself downwards, and we take a step forward into a sanctuary of which our foot has hitherto only trodden the threshold of the outer court.

1) Phil. ii. 5-8; 2 Cor. viii. 9.

2) 1 John iv. 3.

3) John xvi, 28.

4) Heb. x. 7.

5) Natura humana capax Divine.

6) Very accurately is this thrice-sacred subject dealt with by Thomasius, who writes, (Evang. Luth. Dogmatik, ii. p. 180), “He, the eternal Son of God, the second Person in the Godhead, submitted to the form of human limitation, and thus to the limit of an existence in time and space, under the conditions of a human development, within the confines of an historic existence; in order to live in our nature as in the fullest sense of the word the life of our race, without on that account ceasing to be God. He determines to have His Divine nature only in unity with the human.”

7) Netherlands Confession, Art. 19; comp. Art, 2 of the Church of England:

8) Heidelberg Catechism, Ans. 35; Westminster Shorter Catech. Ans. 21.

9) At the risk of incurring one or other name of heresy, which proves absolutely nothing against the justice of our position, we may assert that the much-discussed words of Chateaubriand, however liable to misinterpretation they undoubtedly are, may also be understood in a sense consistent with perfect truth, “Le Souverain des cieux dans une bergerie; celui qui lance la foudre, enveloppé de bandelettes de lin; celui que l’univers ne peut contenir, renfermé au sein d’une femme.” For, certainly, He who is born as man does not cease to be the Son of God, which He was before His incarnation. But if He remains this, wherefore may not the names and dignities continue to be ascribed to Him, which He bore independently of this incarnation? Here also the saying is true, “He who is afraid of paradoxes, does not love the truth.” The same is the case with the oft-censured language of Vollenhoven, in his “Triumph of the Cross,” where he says of Mary:—

“Zij schepsel baart haar Schepper, zij een kind
Haar Vader, dien ze in slechte doeken windt.”

This opposition is unevangelical, if the idea is expressed by it, that the Lord as to His Divine nature was borne and swaddled by Mary; but that He whom, as to the flesh, she brought into the world and nursed, was, and notwithstanding His deep humiliation, continued to be, the Mediate Cause of the creation of the human race, the Father of eternity—can be denied only by the opponents of the Gospel doctrine of the Godhead of Christ, and it may certainly be permitted to a Christian poet to speak thus. The boldness of such oppositions as is to be found, e.g., in the “nascitur aternitas,” is certainly less open to objection than the position of preachers who, while retaining even in the pulpit the ordinary Biblical expressions with regard to the Saviour, attach to them a meaning entirely different from that in which the congregation has always understood them, or place on the lips of the flock a hymn of adoring homage to a Lord, who in their own estimation is absolutely nothing more than a sinless man. [The author, however, in his Christian Dogmatics (§ ci. 2) condemns the expression, ‘ Incarnation of God,” for which he would substitute the more accurate expression, “Son of God.”]

10) Synod of Constantinople, A.D. 680.—ἀδιαιρέτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀμερίστως, ἀὸυγχύτως.

11) Compare further our Life of. Jesus, Pt. i. pp. 344-350, and the writers there mentioned; to which add especially Ebrard, Christl. Dogmatik ii. p. 8, who more nearly formulates this miracle as follows: “That which was created was, not the Person of the Redeemer, for this already existed; neither was it a mere body, for the Son of God assumed not a human body, but human nature; there was not, however, created a human nature in the sense of concrete subsistence (a man), for the Son of God was not united to a son of man, but became man, assumed the properties of the human form of existence; what was created was only the bodily material necessary for the new form of existence of the Logos.” The reader may for the rest, consult Ebrard himself, who, in his effort to define the modus quo of the miracle, has perhaps gone a little too far.

12) Micah v. 2. (margin of Engl. version.)

13) Adolphe Monod, Sermons, 2e. edit. ii. pp. 361-363.

14) Matt, iv. 4; John viii. 40.

15) Acts ii, 22; 1Tim. ii. 5.

16) Luke xxiv. 39; 1 Cor. xv. 47.

17) 1 John iv. 3.

18) Heb. iv. 15, as compared with ii, 17.

19) Sartorius, Christol. Vorlesungen, pp. 25-28.

20) Heb. ii. 16. [For the use of the word, comp. ch. viii. 9; Matt. xiv. 31.]

21) 2 Kings xix, 35.

22) Compare in this connection a very interesting and important dissertation of Weisse in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit., 1844, iv., pp. 913—966, under the title “Christus das Ebenbild des unsichtbaren Gottes,” and think somewhat deeply on the Apostolic hints, Ephes. i. 10; Col. i. 20. [Does it not rather seem from the latter place that by the one manifestation of the Son of God incarnate in human nature, and by His sacrificial death on Calvary, τὸ αῗμσ. τοῦ σταυροῦ αὑτοῦ, the whole Creation was to be led up to God?]—Tr..

23) De schepping is bij dit beleid, Slechts doodverw uwer mogendheid.

24) John iii. 16, 17.

25) 1 John iv. 9, 10.

26) ἐξηγήσατο, John i. 18.

27) Matt. xxi. 33-44; Heb. i. 2.

28) 1 Tim. iii. 16

29) Ephes. ii. 10. 

30) 1 John v. 20.

31) Luke xix. 10,

32) John vi. 33.

33) 2 Cor. v.19.

34) Heb. ii. 14:

35) Phil. ii. 8.

36) Rom. viii. 3.

37) 1 Tim. i. 15,

38) 1 John iv. 10.