YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
HERVEY D. LELAND, YALE 1885
Gift of
JAMES R. JOY, YALE 1885

The Incarnation of the Lord

The
Incarnation of the Lord
A SERIES OF SERMONS
TRACING THE UNFOLDING OF THE DOCTRINE
OF THE INCARNATION IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT BY
CHARLES AUGUSTUS BRIGGS, D.D., D.Litt.
Edward Robinson Professor of Biblical Theology
The Union Theological Seminary New fork

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1902

Copyright, IQ02
By Charles Scribner's Sons

All rights reserved
Published September 190a

UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON
AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, u. &. a.

TO
THE RIGHT REVEREND
HENRY CODMAN POTTER,
D.D. (OXON.), LL.D. (cANTAB.),
BISHOP OF NEW YORK,
TRUE FRIEND,
MAN OF GOD, WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT REPROACH,
FATHER IN GOD, STRONG, WISE, AND GOOD,
THIS BOOK
IS DEDICATED IN FIDELITY AND LOVE.

PREFACE
TWO years ago, at the request of the Rector,
the Rev. Henry Mottet, D.D., a series of
six sermons on the Incarnation were delivered by
the author in the Church of the Holy Commun
ion, New York. Many of the clergy as well as
laymen who heard them, and others who heard
of them, urged me to publish them as soon as
practicable ; because, as they represented, they
satisfied in some measure the demand for instruc
tion on the burning question of the incarnation
of our Lord. I declined to publish at the time,
because the series was not sufficiently complete
to satisfy me.
The sermons delivered at that time were those
numbered III., V., VI., VII., IX., X. I saw
that four others were necessary, which I could
not then prepare. Soon after, the fourth sermon
was prepared and delivered in Trinity Church,
Pittsburg, and in St. Bartholomew's, New York.
Last Advent the eighth sermon was prepared and
given in St. Paul's, Rome, Italy. Sermons I.

Vlll PREFACE
and II. were prepared a few weeks ago. The
former was delivered in the Church of the Mes
siah, Brooklyn, on Palm Sunday last ; the latter
in Adams Chapel of the Union Theological Semi
nary, soon afterwards. Having at last completed
the course, the call for publication could no
longer be postponed.
There are many able and valuable works on
the Incarnation before the public ; but these deal
chiefly with the historical, dogmatic, or ecclesias
tical sides of the question. The purpose of this
course of sermons is to give the Biblical side, and
to trace the development of the doctrine in the
New Testament. This limitation is not due to
any lack of appreciation of the doctrine as de
fined by the Church after a long and sharp con
flict with errors in various forms, or of the
modern discussions which have originated out
of the necessities of our age ; but it is simply
due to the fact that I have been called more
especially to study the Biblical doctrine in accord
ance with modern Biblical methods, and therefore
to a deeper knowledge of the Biblical doctrine
than I have learned from others, and a clearer
understanding of the origin and growth of the
doctrine in the New Testament times. Within
these limits the sermons, while they contain noth-

PREFACE IX
ing contrary to Catholic doctrine, yet give the
Biblical supports of that doctrine in those new
relations and new lights which modern Biblical
science furnishes.
The sermons, however, do not confine them
selves to the field of Biblical theology ; but, in
addition to the express teaching of the passages
of Holy Scripture, logical and practical exposi
tions are given, and the whole is set in the re
hgious environment of the apostolic times.
The method of the sermon does not admit of
much discussion of the views of others, or of
other interpretations of passages of Holy Scrip
ture than those adopted by the preacher. It
was deemed unwise to use any more footnotes
than were necessary to give the texts used and
references of importance to the author's line of
thought. He refers frequently to his own books,
" Messianic Prophecy," " The Messiah of the
Gospels," "The Messiah of the Apostles," and
" General Introduction to the Study of Holy
Scripture," in which he has discussed many ques
tions in debate with sufficient fulness.
With these explanations this book is now
given to the public, in the trust that it may re
move difficulties, overcome objections, and resolve
doubts, due to the intricate and comprehensive

X PREFACE
problems involved in so great a theme, and lead
many to a firmer faith in the incarnation of our
Lord, and to a higher apprehension of what
it means to us in our personal relations to our
Saviour, and to the Church, and to mankind.
April 28, 1902.

CONTENTS Page
I. The Son of Man from Heaven  1
II. The Son of the Father  SI
III. Born of a Woman under the Law .... 6l
IV. The Self-impoverishment of the Lord ... 81
V. The Kenosis .  105
VI. The Epiphany of Our Saviour . . . . 125
VII. Made Like unto His Brethren  145
VIII. The Advent of God  167
IX. The Word made Flesh  189
X. Born of the Virgin  213
Indexes  237

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN
But that ye may know that the Son of Man hath author
ity on earth to forgive sins (he saith to the sick of the
palsy), I say unto thee, Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto
thy house. — Mark ii. 10, 11 ; Matt. ix. 6 ; Luke v. 24.
THESE words of Jesus were spoken in a
private house in Capernaum, which was
crowded to the doors with people eager to listen
to his teaching. Among them were Pharisee
doctors of the Law from Jerusalem. Some of
his friends brought a paralytic to Jesus to be
healed. Although, as St. Luke tells us, "the
power of the Lord was with him to heal," he did
not put forth that power at once. But instead
of healing the paralytic, he said to him, " Son,
thy sins are forgiven." The Pharisee doctors ex
claimed at these words as blasphemous. " Who
can forgive sins, but God alone ? " Jesus at once
meets their charge of blasphemy by the assertion
that the Son of Man had authority to forgive
sins ; and he couples his authority to forgive sins
with his power of healing, as both alike endow-

4 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
ments for his ministry on earth as the Son of
Man. This was the first occasion1 on which Jesus
used the term Son of Man, but he used it from
thenceforth as his characteristic title of himself.
It is evident that he uses it in a Messianic sense ;
that is, in the sense that had already become
characteristic of this term in the Old Testament
Scriptures and in the Jewish opinion of his
times. His words could have had no propriety
in answer to the charge of the Pharisees, that he
was blaspheming, unless he had an authority
which was unique, which was special to himself
as a person in a peculiar nearness to God. The
doctors of the Law were certainly correct in
their exclamation, " Who can forgive sins, but
God alone ? " for no one but God had ever
before forgiven sins. The forgiveness of sins in
the Law and the Prophets is reserved to God
alone ; and there is no prediction in Biblical
prophecy with reference to any of the Messianic
characters, whether king or prophet, priest or
Son of Man, that any one of these would ever

1 This is evident in the order of events in the Synoptists
Matthew, Mask, and Luke. The words John i. 51, iii. 13, 14,
are earlier in the order of that Gospel, but this order is not,
in my opinion, a chronological, but a topical order.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 5
exercise this prerogative of God. Jesus is claim
ing for himself as the Son of Man a greater
authority than any hitherto known, even in the
most sublime ideals of the Messianic future.
The dilemma is unavoidable. Either he was a
blasphemer, or he was nearer to God than any
historic person, or than any ideal person of the
prophetic Scriptures, and therefore had a unique
authority exalting him above all other known
persons but God.
The term Son of Man is doubtless a Semitic
phrase, a term of relation, emphasizing the char
acteristic, which in this case is mankind or hu
manity. Sometimes it indicates man as mortal
in antithesis to God and angels, as in the address
of God or the angel to Ezekiel,1 the prophet ;
sometimes, as in the eighth Psalm,2 the ideal
man, or humanity as such, as created a little
lower than the heavenly beings in dignity, and
yet made lord of all other creatures.
But in the prediction in the seventh chapter of
Daniel 3 the Son of Man is contrasted with the
four Wild Beasts, and stands for the kingdom of
God over against the four successive empires of

1 Ezek. ii. 1, iii. 1, iv. 1, etc. 2 Psalms viii. 4-6.
8 Dan. vii. 13.

6 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the world, whether we think of a reference to
ideal Israel in contrast to these empires, or to an
ideal person at the head of Israel over against the
king, Antiochus, or the little horn of the last of
the Wild Beasts of the prophecy. There can be
no reasonable doubt that the seventh chapter of
Daniel originated the Messianic ideal of the Son
of Man, the ideal redeemer and judge of ideal
Israel. The only difference of opinion that was
tenable for the time of Jesus was, whether the
passage was generic, referring to Israel, or per
sonal, referring to the Messianic head of Israel.
In the Similitudes of the Book of Enoch,
written probably two or three generations before
the birth of our Lord (94-64 B.C.),1 the Son of
Man of Daniel is certainly interpreted as a per
son ; and the statements of Daniel, that the Son
of Man was to come with the clouds of heaven
in order to take possession of the kingdom and
rule forever over all nations after the judgment
upon his enemies 2 are enlarged so as to identify
this Son of Man with the chosen Servant of the
Second Isaiah, and to represent him as the Elect
One who was concealed in heaven and named
before the creation of the sun and the stars ; thus

1 Messiah of the Gospels, p. 23. 2 Dan. vii. 14.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 7
as pre-existing in heaven with God prior to all
creatures, before he descends upon the clouds to
the judgment of mankind, for the redemption of
Israel and the establishment of the everlasting
kingdom. 1. It is evident that Jesus uses the term Son
of Man with reference to this prediction of
Daniel, and also with the same interpretation of
the Son of Man as a person that is given in the
Similitudes of Enoch ; and that he represents
himself as that Son of Man. It cannot be
doubted that this is the case in his great prophecy
of the destruction of Jerusalem and the End of
the Age.1 For he not only uses the term Son
of Man of Daniel with reference to himself, but
also the term abomination of desolation of the
same Daniel,2 and also the very language of
Daniel, where he says : " Then shall they see the
Son of Man coming in clouds with great power
and glory." 3 In other words he predicts that he
will come again in the clouds as the Son of Man
of Daniel to judge the world and set up the ever
lasting kingdom.

1 Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 1 35 seq.
2 Dan. ix. 27, xi. 31, xii. 1.
3 Mark xiii. 26 ; Matt. xxiv. 30 ; Luke xxi. 27.

8 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
But this prediction is only one of a large num
ber of similar ones in the Gospels, in which
Jesus enlarges upon the conception of the second
advent on the clouds. A very large proportion
of these come from the Logia of St. Matthew,
that large collection of the Wisdom of Jesus that
St. Matthew issued in the Hebrew language, and
in the measures of Hebrew Wisdom, before any
of our present Gospels were composed, and
which was used by all the Synoptists. Another
large number come from the Gospel of St. Mark,
the earliest of the four Gospels, written under
the influence of St. Peter. But each of the
Gospels has additional passages, all indicating
the fundamental importance of this term in the
usage of Jesus ; all the more that, with the ex
ception of a very few passages and some of these
dubious, the term Son of Man is used only in
passages from the lips of Jesus himself.
These words of Jesus are from the Logia :
(1) "The Son of Man shall send forth his angels,
And they shall gather out of his kingdom
All things that cause stumbling and them that do
iniquity,
And shall cast them into the furnace of fire." 1

1 Matt. xiii. 41.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 9
(2) " For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my
words,
Of him shall the Son of Man be ashamed,
When he cometh in the glory of the Father with his
angels." 1 i
(3) " If they say : Behold he is in the wilderness, go not
forth.
If they say : Behold he is in the inner chambers, believe
it not ;
For as the lightning when it lighteneth
Shineth out of one part under heaven unto the other part
under heaven,
So shall be the coming of the Son of Man."
n
" As it came to pass in the days of Noah,
They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in
marriage,
Until the day that Noah entered into the ark,
And the flood came and destroyed them all.
So shall be the coming of the Son of Man."
in
" As it came to pass in the days of Lot ;
They ate, they drank, they bought, they sold,
1 Mark viii. 38 ; Luke ix. 26 ; cf. Matt. x. 33 ; Luke xii. 9.
In this case and in those that follow an effort has been made
to find the original words of Jesus at the basis of the several
texts.

10 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
But in the day that Lot went out from Sodom
He rained from heaven and destroyed them all :
So shall be the coming of the Son of Man." x
(4) " When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all
the angels with him,
Then shall he sit on the throne of his glory :
And before him will be gathered all the nations :
And he shall separate them one from another
As the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats ;
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the
goats on his left."2
We may add, from the Gospel of St. Mark,
the following : Jesus said to the high-priest before
the Sanhedrim, in reply to his question, "Art
thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed ? " — "I
am : and ye shall see the Son of Man sitting at
the right hand of power and coming with the
clouds of heaven."3
According to St. Matthew's Gospel, Jesus said
to the Twelve : " In the regeneration when the
Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory,

1 Matt. xxiv. 37-39 ; Luke xvii. 26-30 ; cf. Matt. xxiv. 44.
The original form of these logia differs slightly from the
several versions given in the Gospels. The laws that govern
the forms of Hebrew Wisdom enable us to determine it. See
General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture, pp. 385
seq. 2 Matt. xxv. 31-33.
8 Mark xiv. 62 ; Matt. xxvi. 64 ; Luke xxii. 69.

THE SON OF MAX FROM HEAVEN 11
ye shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the
twelve tribes of Israel." 1
According to St. Luke, Jesus said : " How
beit when the Son of Man cometh, shall he find
faith on the earth ? " 2
According to St. John, he said to Nathanael :
" Ye shall see the heaven opened, and the angels
of God ascending and descending upon the Son
of Man." 3
From these passages it is evident that Jesus
regards himself as the Son of Man from heaven
of Daniel, and that he refers his coming on the
clouds to his second advent, when he will come
in glory with the holy angels to execute judg
ment upon mankind, to redeem the faithful, and
set up an everlasting kingdom of glory.
On this sure basis we are now prepared to
consider the many other passages in which Jesus
speaks of himself as the Son of Man in his work
prior to his second advent.
2. Jesus speaks of a coming of the Son of
Man at a much earlier time and in different
terms from his second advent on the clouds.
Thus, in a passage from the Logia, he says to
the Twelve, with reference to their preaching :
1 Matt. xix. 28. 2 Luke xviii. 8.
6 John i. 51.

12 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
" Ye shall not have gone through the cities of Israel,
Till the Son of Man be come." 1
On another occasion he said :
" There be some standing here which shall in no wise taste
death
Till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."2
This is an advent to establish his kingdom
of redemption, which may be referred to the
Pentecostal theophany, as distinguished from
the second advent to judge the world and es
tablish the everlasting kingdom of glory. In
such passages Jesus evidently uses Son of Man
as a term cognate with the Messianic King. It
is in entire accord with this that, at the institu
tion of the Lord's Supper, he seems to anticjpate
the establishment of his kingdom ere. another
Passover.3 There is no sufficient reason to sup
pose that Jesus confounds his future advent to
set up his kingdom with his future advent to
judgment and the erection of the kingdom of
glory ; for in the Parable of the Sower, the Son
of Man is represented as sowing the good seed,4
where the sowing at the beginning is distin-

1 Matt. x. 23.
2 Matt. xvi. 28, cf. Mark ix. 1 ; Luke ix. 27.
3 Messiah of the Gospels, p. 124. 4 Matt. xiii. 37.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 1:5
guished from the harvest of judgment at the
end : and in the Parable of the Seed Growing
Secretly 1 the several stages in the history of the
kingdom are represented between sowing and
reaping : and Jesus constantly distinguished in
conception between entrance into the kingdom
of grace by a childlike faith and regeneration by
the water and the Spirit, from entrance into the
kingdom of glory, which is always preceded by
an act of Messianic judgment.
3. Jesus frequently uses the term Son of Man
of himself in his foreboding of his passion and
prediction of his resurrection. Thus in the
Logia :
" For even as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
So sljall the Son of Man be to this generation."2
This is thus interpreted by St. Matthew :
" For as Jonah was three days and three nights
in the belly of the whale ; so shall the Son of
Man be three days and three nights in the heart
of the earth." 3 In other words the death and
resurrection of the Son of Man is to be the same
sort of a sign to his generation that the preaching
of Jonah after his resurrection from the belly of
1 Mark iv. 26-29 ; Messiah of the Gospels, p. 90.
2 Luke xi. 30. ' Matt. xii. 40.

14 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the fish was to the Ninevites. That is essentially
to say, that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead was the great sign to convince and con
vert his generation to him and his kingdom.
Jesus also said on another occasion :
" Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over
them,
And their great ones exercise authority over them.
Not so shall it be among you :
But whosoever would become great among you shall be
your minister ;
And whosoever would be first among you shall be your
servant :
Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto,
but to minister,
And to give his life a ransom for many." x
In these words Jesus identifies himself as the
Son of Man with the interposing Servant of
the Second Isaiah, just as in the Similitudes of
the Book of Enoch.2
So the Gospel of Mark gives several predic
tions by Jesus of his death and resurrection.3
Jesus regards his passion as the Son of Man
1 Mark x. 42-45 ; Matt. xx. 25-28.
2 Messiah of the Gospels, p. 24.
8 Mark viii. 31, ix. 9, 12, 31, x. 33, 34, xiv. 41 ; cf. Matt.
xvi. 21, xvii. 9, 12, 22, 23, xx. 18, 19, xxvi. 2, 45 ; Luke ix. 22,
44, xviii. 31-33, xxiv. 7.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 15
to be a fulfilment of the predictions of the Old
Testament." The Son of Man goeth, even as it is written of him :
But woe unto that man through whom the Son of Man
is betrayed ! " l
The reference to written Scripture as fulfilled in
his death and resurrection can be no other than
to the suffering Servant of the Second Isaiah.
The Gospel of John adds to the teaching of
Jesus of the Synoptists several other sayings :
" And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up." 2 " When ye
have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I
am he." 3 " The hour is come, that the Son of Man should
be glorified. . . . And I, if I be lifted up from the earth,
will draw all men unto myself." 4
The people in astonishment exclaim : " We
have heard out of the Law that the Christ abid
eth for ever : and how sayest thou, The Son of
Man must be lifted up ? who is this Son of
Man ? " 5 In a later passage Jesus says : " Now
is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified

1 Mark xiv. 21 ; Matt. xxvi. 24 ; Luke xxii. 22.
3 John iii. 14. 3 John viii. 28.
4 John xii. 23, 32. 6 John xii. 34.

16 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
in him ; and God shall glorify him in himself, and
straightway shall he glorify him." 1
These passages comprehend under the term
If ted up not only his lifting up on the cross, but
also and still more his lifting up through his
death to his throne of glory whence he exerts
ever his attracting power, drawing all men to
himself. Just as in the Synoptists the death
and resurrection are always combined, and just
as the sign of Jonah is the sign to his generation
according to the Synoptists' report, so according
to the report of St. John the lifting up of the
Son of Man is in order that all may know him
to be the one he claimed to be.
4. Jesus also represents himself to be the Son
of Man during his ministry on earth prior to his
passion. So in a passage from the Logia : Jesus
said to a man who would follow him about as a
disciple in his ministry :
" The foxes have holes,
And the birds of the heaven have nests ;
But the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." 2
This Jesus did not speak, as some have sup
posed, because of his humility as a poor man,
but in order to show his would-be disciple that
1 John xiii. 31-32. 2 Matt. viii. 20; Luke ix. 58.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 17
his ministry, and that of his closest followers, was
a ministry of voluntary poverty.
On another occasion Jesus shows the incon
sistency of the people by putting in antithesis his
simple social life with the austerity and asceticism
of John the Baptist.
" For John came neither eating nor drinking,
And they say, he hath a demon.
The Son of Man came eating and drinking,
And they say, Behold, a gluttonous man,
' And a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners ! " *
John the Baptist, according to Jesus, was a
prophet, the last and highest of the Old Testa
ment prophets. He is here contrasting his own
prophetic methods with those of John.
In his justification of his disciples for pluck
ing ears of grain to satisfy their hunger on the
Sabbath, over against the traditional interpreta
tion of the Sabbath law, Jesus said :
" The Sabbath was made for man,
And not man for the Sabbath.
The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath."2
This is not that the Son of Man, as man, is Lord
of the Sabbath ; but that the Son of Man has
1 Matt. xi. 18, 19; Luke vii. 33, 34.
2 Mark ii. 27, 28 ; Matt. xii. 8 ; Luke vi. 5.

18 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
such an authority in himself that he may deter
mine all questions as to the Sabbath over against
the teachings of the Pharisee doctors of the Law.
In response to the charge of the Pharisees
that he wrought his miracles by the power of
the devil, after showing how absurd it was to
think of the devil casting out devils, he warned
them :

" All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men,
And their blasphemies wherewith soever they blaspheme :
But whosoever shall blaspheme against the Spirit shall
not be forgiven." n
" And whosoever shall speak against the Son of Man, it
shall be forgiven him ;
But whosoever shall speak against the Spirit, it shall not
be forgiven him,
Neither in this age nor in that which is to come." 1
It is evident that Jesus here separates himself
from all men as the object of misrepresentation
and blasphemy in order to make an antithesis
between himself and the divine Spirit, implying
thereby such a unique authority that resistance

1 Mark iii. 28, 29 ; Matt. xii. 31, 32 ; Luke xii. 10.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 19
to it might be conceived as unpardonable, did he
not himself represent it as pardonable, notwith
standing it was more guilty than any resistance
to the authority of man. When this is placed
alongside of the woes upon Chorazin and Beth-
saida for rejecting his Gospel,1 we may under
stand the uniqueness of his claim to authority
even here.
From St. Luke's Gospel we have two impor
tant passages. The first is given in connection
with the conversion of Zaccha?us, the publican,
where Jesus said : " To-day is salvation come to
this house, for the Son of Man came to seek that
which was lost." 2 This evidently refers to the
purpose of the ministry of Jesus as the Messianic
prophet. On the occasion of the desire of St. James and
St. John to call down fire from heaven to con
sume the churlish Samaritans, Jesus rebuked
them and said :
" Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of :
For the Son of Man came not to destroy men's lives but
to save." 3

1 Luke x. 13. 2 Luke xix. 9, 10.
8 Luke ix. 56 ; cf. Matt, xviii. 11, which latter, however, is
not in best texts and is omitted in Revised Version.

20 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
This is not in the best texts of the Gospel, but
it is a logion which may have been added here
from another source than the Logia of St. Mat
thew. It states clearly the redemptive purpose
of the ministry of Jesus.
There are two other passages in which the
uniqueness of Jesus' work is clearly set forth.
In the Beatitude of the persecuted, Jesus
said :
" Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you,
And when they shall separate you, and reproach you,
And cast out your name as evil, for the sake of the Son
of Man."1
This implies that the persecution would
be because of their discipleship to the Son of
Man as their Master.
In warning his disciples of the troublous days,
he tells them : " The days will come, when ye
shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of
Man, and ye shall not see it."2 The context
shows that it is the presence of the Messiah in
his kingdom, or the second advent, that they
will desire before the time.
We are now prepared to go back to the pas-
1 Luke vi. 22 ; cf. Matt. v. 11, where it is shortened.
2 Luke xvii. 22.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 21
sage with which we started, where Jesus affirms
that the Son of Man hath authority on earth to
forgive sins. We have seen that this was a
unique authority, which separated him from all
other historic or ideal persons as in a peculiar
relation of intimacy with God. This is, then, in
general accord with those other passages, which
we have just considered, in which he represents
that his ministry was one of voluntary poverty,
associating familiarly with all classes of the peo
ple, seeking out the lost and endeavoring to save
men ; that he had an authority, to speak against
which, though forgivable, was a greater sin
than to speak against any other than the
divine Spirit ; that he was Lord of the Sab
bath day ; and so, in our passage, that he had
authority on earth to forgive sins. This author
ity of Jesus, which was one of the most charac
teristic features of his teaching and miracle
working — " For he taught as one having author
ity, and not as the scribes " 1 — might refer to his
prophetic call, were it not that it extends beyond
the work of the prophetic Servant of the Second
Isaiah into the scope of the lawgiving of the

1 Mark i. 22 ; Matt. vii. 29 ; Luke iv. 32 ; Messiah of the
Gospels, p. 80.

22 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Prophet greater than Moses.1 It is probable,
therefore, that Jesus had this prophecy of Moses
in mind in his Messianic consciousness on these
occasions. This is made probable by his words
to his disciples after his resurrection as reported
by St. Luke : " These are my words which I
spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how
that all things must needs be fulfilled which are
written in the Law of Moses, and the Prophets,
and the Psalms, concerning me." 2 There is no
other Messianic prediction in the Law of which
he would be so likely to speak as just this one
of a second Moses. And this is the very one
which the apostles refer most frequently to
Jesus in the apostolic age.3
This is still further confirmed by the fact that
when Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper, he
instituted a new covenant which is in antithesis
to the old covenant instituted through the medi
ation of Moses at Sinai ; 4 and this very fact im
plies that Jesus knew that he was the second
Moses of that prophecy.

1 Deut. xviii. 16-19 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 110 seq.
2 Luke xxiv. 44.
8 Acts iii. 22 ; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 30 seq.
4 Mark xiv. 22-25; Matt. xxvi. 26-29; Luke xxii. 18-20;
1 Cor. xi. 23-26 ; Ex. xxiv. 3-8 ; Messiah of the Gospels,
pp. 120 seq.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 23
An additional confirmation to this is in the fact
that according to the Gospel of St. John, Jesus
said in view of the Lord's Supper : " Except ye
eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his
blood, ye have not life in yourselves." 1 The Son
of Man was therefore the Second Moses, the
mediator of the new covenant, in his own most
precious blood.
It seems, therefore, that Jesus, in his title Son
of Man, summed up in his consciousness the
several Messianic ideals of the Old Testament,
namely : the Son of Man and the Prophet of the
Second Isaiah, as in the Similitudes of Enoch, and
these with the Messianic King and the Prophet
greater than Moses, which had not previously
been combined therewith by any one ; and thus
taught his disciples that combination of Messianic
ideas which appears in the apostolic teaching in
the Book of Acts.2
5. Thus far no statement has been made as to
the origin of Jesus. If Jesus spake any words
relating to his pre-existence and incarnation, they
are not reported in the Synoptic Gospels. Are
we justified in supposing that he never said any
thing on this subject? Is the silence of the
1 John vi. 53 ; cf. vi. 27.
2 Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 21 seq., 67 seq.

24 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Synoptic Gospels conclusive ? There are some
who think so. And yet there is something to be
said on the other side. If he did not teach his
pre-existence explicitly in any of the passages
cited, we may yet say that the very term Son of
Man implies pre-existence. We have seen that
the Son of Man of Daniel comes to earth on the
clouds of heaven after pre-existence in heaven,
without any thought of pre-existence on earth.
We have seen that the Son of Man of the Simili
tudes of Enoch had pre-existence in heaven prior
to the creation of the sun and the stars, and that he
remained concealed there until his coming on the
clouds to the earth. When now Jesus so distinctly
identifies himself with the Son of Man of Daniel,
and represents his second advent as the advent on
the clouds, does he limit the conception of his
pre-existence in heaven to the time from his as
cension to his second advent? If Jesus knew
only of the prediction of Daniel, we might sup
pose that he was induced, by his identification of
the Son of Man with the Messianic Prophet,
Lawgiver, and King, to think of an earthly min
istry prior to the heavenly abode ; but we cannot
be sure of this, because another alternative was
open to him, namely, that of thinking of his
earthly ministry as an episode between his pre-

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 25
existence in heaven and his post-existence in
heaven. There is no a priori reason against
either alternative. Which alternative did Jesus
take ? We may be guided to the right conclu
sion by several considerations.
1. The Similitudes of Enoch represent that
the Son of Man pre-existed in heaven from before
the creation of the sun and the stars, and this
notwithstanding the fact that the author identi
fies with the Son of Man the elect Servant of
the Second Isaiah.
It is very probable, for many reasons which
cannot be mentioned here, that Jesus knew the
Similitudes of Enoch. The best authority on
the Book of Enoch, Dr. Charles, thinks so, and
so have I thought for many years.1 Jesus agrees
with the Similitudes of Enoch in taking the Son
of Man as personal, and in identifying him with
the elect Servant. It is most probable, therefore,
that he agreed with the author of the Similitudes
that the heavenly state was not merely subse
quent to the resurrection, but was from before
the creation of the world ; and therefore the
earthly life must have been intermediate between
the two heavenly states, for there was no other
time left open for it.
1 See Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 25, 84.

26 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
2. There can be no doubt that St. Paul, in
his conception of the Second Adam, conceives
of him as pre-existent in heaven prior to his
earthly life.1 It is most reasonable to suppose
that his doctrine was based on the teaching of
Jesus, rather than entirely original with himself.
3. Although there is no explicit statement as
to pre-existence in the Synoptic Gospels, there
are explicit statements in the Gospel of St. John,
and two of these connected with the term Son
of Man, in words which no reasonable criticism
can detach from Jesus himself. Thus in his
discourse with Nicodemus Jesus said : " And no
man hath ascended into heaven, but he that
descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man." 2
Again, Jesus said to those of his disciples who
were objecting to his hard sayings : " What then
if ye should behold the Son of Man ascending
where he was before ? " 3
In these passages there is a direct antithesis
between ascending to heaven and descending
from heaven, the place whither he is to ascend
and the place where he was before. If he as
cended to heaven at his ascension, he descended

1 See Sermon IV.
2 John iii. 13. « John vi. 62.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 27
from heaven at his entrance into the world. If
the one is real, the other is real also. There is
identity of place.
Both of these sayings were esoteric, to Nico
demus and to select disciples. There was no
special reason why either should have been given
by the Synoptists, even if they knew of them.
There is no reasonable ground on which to dis
credit them. They are in accord with the Simili
tudes of Enoch on the one side, and the epistles
of St. Paul on the other, in their interpretation
of the pre-existence of the Son of Man.
These two passages from the Gospel of St.
John, where the Son of Man is used, are con
firmed by many more where the Son of the
Father is used. But they are reserved for the
next sermon.
If any one should think it strange that Jesus
should have been reticent as to his pre-existence
as the Son of Man prior to his earthly life, and
that he should have withheld this doctrine in so
much of his teaching as is reported in the Synop
tic Gospels, let him consider that it was charac
teristic of Jesus' entire procedure with reference
to his own person.
For : (a) he warned the Twelve, after St. Peter
confessed him as the Messiah, not to tell it to

28 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
any one ; x and the reason was, that it would
precipitate the crisis and hurry on his crucifixion
for blasphemy before the time.
(b) Even in the very last week, Jesus declined
to tell the delegation from the Sanhedrim by
what authority he acted.2 Not until he was put
under oath by the high-priest before the Sanhe
drim, did he publicly acknowledge that he was
the Messiah, and then immediately he was
charged with blasphemy and condemned to death
for blasphemy.
(c) The reason why Jesus used the term Son
of Man was doubtless because it was less likely
to be understood than any other. He veiled
under this term all his fulfilment of all the
Messianic terms of the ancient Scriptures. He
avoided all the efforts of the devil and of the
Pharisees to bring his claims to be the Son of
Man to the test of descending on the clouds of
heaven as the Son of Man of Daniel was to do.
They could not understand that the Son of Man
could be any other than one whose advent to
earth was in precisely this way. And therefore
they could treat Jesus' claim to be the Son of
Man with contempt, while they understood it
1 Mark viii. 30 ; Matt. xvi. 20 ; Luke ix. 21.
2 Mark xi. 27-33 ; Matt. xxi. 23-27 ; Luke xx. 1-8.

THE SON OF MAN FROM HEAVEN 29
to be some sort of an indefinite claim to be the
Messiah. But Jesus consciously used this term not only
to veil his Messianic claims until the time of
the crisis came ; but also as the most appropriate
one under which to sum up all the Old Testa
ment references to a human Messiah ; so that
when the proper time had come and the Messiah
gave the Messianic sign of the Son of Man by
his resurrection from the dead, after the symbol
ism of the story of Jonah, his disciples saw clearly
that in him were realized all the predictions of the
Holy Scriptures, that he was the Second Moses,
the mediator of the new covenant, the suffering
and dying Prophet of the Second Isaiah, the
Messianic King of the prediction of Nathan to
David, and last of all the Son of Man of Daniel,
who descended from a pre-existent life in heaven
with God in order to an earthly ministry in which
he had a unique authority, such as no one before
him had exercised, such as was unknown to pre
dictive prophecy, such as involved blasphemy if
he was not indeed that unique person, the Son
of Man from heaven.

II
THE SON OF THE FATHER

II
THE SON OF THE FATHER
All things have been delivered unto me of my Father,
And no one knoweth the Son save the Father ;
Neither doth any one know the Father save the Son,
And he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.
Matt. xi. 27 ; Luke x. 22.
THESE words of Jesus are a logion, derived
by our Gospels of Matthew and Luke
from the primitive Logia of St. Matthew. This
logion is given in connection with a number of
other logia of varying importance in the Gospel
of St. Matthew. But it is attached by St. Luke
to the return of the Seventy from their successful
ministry. Entirely apart from the question when
it was uttered, this logion gives the exact words
of Jesus with reference to his own sonship as the
Son of the Father, so far as words in the Greek
language can express by translation words that
were uttered in Aramaic and first written in
Hebrew. Jesus represents in this logion that he was the
Son of his Father, God, that he was the only
3

34 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Son of the Father, and that he was in possession
of a unique authority delivered unto him by the
Father, and a unique knowledge of the Father ;
and that no one could know the Father unless
the Son revealed the Father to him.
The Son of God is a Messianic term familiar
to the Jews of the time of our Lord from the
usage of the Old Testament Scriptures. The
Judaic writer of the Hexateuch states in connec
tion with the Mosaic covenant : " Yahweh saith
to Moses, — And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh,
' Thus saith Yahweh : Israel is my son, my first
born.' " 1 That is, Yahweh takes Israel as a nation
into a special relation of sonship to himself as
distinguished from all other nations. Then in
the covenant with David, Nathan the prophet
saith to him :
" Therefore Yahweh doth tell thee,
That Yahweh will make thee a house,
And it will come to pass, when thy days will be fulfilled,
And thou wilt lie down with thy fathers,
I will raise up thy seed after thee,
Him who will issue from thy bowels.
I will establish his kingdom.
He will build a house to my name,
And I will establish his throne forever.

1 Ex. iv. 22; Messianic Prophecy, p. 100.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 35
I will become a father to him,
And he will become a son to me." x
This is the covenant of David. The seed, or
royal line of David, is constituted in a special
sense the Son of God, and the reigning king of
the dynasty is in a peculiar relation to God as
his Son. Accordingly, on the day of installa
tion of the Messianic king he is addressed by
God —
" Thou art My son ;
This day have I begotten thee." z
And again, " Sit thou enthroned at My right hand
Until I make thine enemies thy footstool." 3
Accordingly, in the usage of the Jews, Son of
God and Messiah were identical terms. There
are numerous passages in the Gospels in which
Jesus is recognized as the Son of God in this
sense. Thus, at the baptism, the theophanic voice
said : " Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am

1 2 Sam. vii. 11-16; 1 Chron. xvh. 10-14; Messianic
Prophecy, pp. 1 26 seq.
2 Ps. ii. 7 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 134 seq.
8 Ps. ex. 1 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 1 32 seq.

36 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
well pleased." x So again, at the transfiguration,
" This is my beloved Son." 2 The devil tempts
Jesus with the recognition of his Messianic dig
nity as the Son of God.3 St. Peter also, as the
spokesman of the Twelve, says :4 " Thou art the
Messiah, the Son of the living God."
According to the Gospel of St. John, Nathanael
in his recognition of Jesus said, " Thou art the
Son of God, thou art King of Israel."5 The
high-priest conformed to this usage when before
the Sanhedrim he asked Jesus under oath : " Art
thou the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed ? " 6
There can be no doubt, therefore, that Jesus
regarded himself as the Son of God the Messiah,7

1 Mark i. 1 1 ; Matt. iii. 1 7 ; Luke iii. 22 ; John i. 34 ;
Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 75 seq.
2 Mark ix. 2-8 ; Matt. xvii. 1-8 ; Luke ix. 28-36 ; 2 Peter
i. 16-18; Messiah of the Gospels, p. 100.
8 Matt. iv. 1-11 ; Luke iv. 1-13.
4 Matt. xvi. 1 6 ; Mark ix. 29 ; Luke ix. 20. But, as Mark
and Luke omit the latter term, it may be that St. Peter did
not use it, but it is used in Matthew as an explanatory and
practically identical term.
6 John i. 49.
6 Mark xiv. 6l ; Matt. xxvi. 63 ; Luke xxii. 70.
7 Other passages in which Jesus is recognized as the Son
of God in the Messianic sense are Matt. viii. 29, xiv. 33, xxvii.
40, 43, 54; Mark iii. 11, v. 7, xv. 39; Luke iv. 41, viii. 28;
John i. 34, xi. 27, xix. 7.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 37
and it is therefore easy to suppose that Jesus
used Son of the Father in this Messianic sense.
But it is also noteworthy that Jesus, in the
reports of the Synoptic Gospels, never used the
term Son of God of himself. The three passages
in the Gospel of St. John l are so against the usage
of this Gospel, that the other readings in ancient
manuscripts of these passages urge us, on the
principle of consistency, to think of them as
scribal errors or inadvertent slips of the final
editor. The reason why Jesus avoided the technical
term Son of God in speaking of himself was
doubtless the same that induced him to avoid
the term Messiah ; 2 namely, to prevent a prema
ture crisis before he had finished his preparatory
work. He used, instead of Son of God, Son of
the Father, to sum all his relations to God, just
as he used, instead of Messiah, the term Son of
Man to sum up all the Messianic ideals of the
Old Testament on the human side of the
Messianic idea.3
A study of the numerous passages in which
Jesus sets forth his sonship to the Father makes

1 John v. 25, x. 36, xi. 4. s See p. 27 seq.
8 See p. 23.

38 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
it evident that he thinks of his sonship in a
sense far transcending that of the sonship of the
Messianic king.
We must also say that his conception of his
own sonship is entirely different from his concep
tion of the sonship of mankind. Jesus for the
first time reveals to the world the sublime ideal
of God's fatherhood of men. I do not mean by
this that he was the first to make known the
creative fatherhood, for that was known to heathen
poets as well as to Christian and Jewish thought ;
but fatherhood in the sense of a continual fatherly
interest in, and redemptive care for human indi
viduals as members of the divine household, es
pecially for those who by union with the Son of
the Father become children in the family of God,
this was a special revelation of Jesus. But even
this conception of God's fatherhood of men, which
is derived by all the Gospels from the original
Logia of St. Matthew, and which was one of the
most characteristic features in Jesus' teaching,
was not a fatherhood which Jesus revealed out
of the consciousness of that kind of sonship of
the Father in himself, and as identical with that
consciousness, as some have hastily supposed ; for
in fact Jesus never used the terms Father and
Son in such a way that it is possible to interpret

THE SON OF THE FATHER 39
him as teaching that he shared his sonship of the
Father with other men. He always keeps dis
tinct God's fatherhood of men from God's father
hood of himself, which latter is always unique.1
Thus Jesus uses the term with reference to
his second advent :
" For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words,
The Son of Man also shall be ashamed of him,
When he cometh in the glory of his Father with the
holy angels." 2
He also speaks of himself as the Son entitled
to know more than the angels, and only less
knowing than the Father :
" But of that day or that hour knoweth no one,
Not even the angels in heaven,
Neither the Son, but the Father only." 3
This is in striking accord with the logion which
we use as our text, inasmuch as it ascribes unique
knowledge to the Son, and yet makes him less
knowing than the Father. It also indicates that
his sonship was something more than Messianic
sonship, in the sense of ancient prophecy ; for no-

1 See Messiah of the Gospels, p. 274.
2 Mark viii. 38 ; Luke ix. 26 ; cf. Matt. xvi. 27.
8 Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxiv. 36.

40 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
where in prophecy is the Messiah exalted above
the angels in knowledge. Jesus makes the Son
of Man lord of the angels in all those passages
where he represents himself as sending them
forth at his second advent.1 His enlarged sense
of sonship exalting him above the angels is only
in accord with his extension of the conception of
the Son of Man in this direction.
So we might interpret several other passages.
He said unto the Twelve with reference to the
Messianic kingdom :
" I appoint unto you a kingdom even as my Father ap
pointed unto me." 2
" And behold I send forth the promise of my Father
upon you."3
" No one can know times or seasons,
Which the Father hath set within His own authority.1'4
So also in passages which conceive of the
Father as exercising judicial functions :
" Every plant which my Father planted not shall be
rooted up." 5
1 See pp. 8 seq. * Luke xxii. 29- 8 Luke xxiv. 49.
4 Acts i. 7; so Western Text, which is preferable; see
Briggs' "Apostolic Commission," in Studies in Honor of B. L.
Gildersleeve, p. 13.
6 Matt. xv. 13.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 41
" So shall my Father do unto you if ye forgive not every
one his brother." 1
In these instances, it is difficult to see why
Jesus could not have said your or our Father
unless he meant to emphasize his own personal
relation to the Father in these acts of judgment.
In his agony in the garden it can be no other
than a unique relation of sonship which in view
of the impending passion impels him to cry out :
" Father, all things are possible to Thee ;
Remove this cup from me :
Howbeit, not what I will but what Thou wilt."2
With this we may compare the words of Jesus
on the cross :
" Father, forgive them for they know not what they do."
" Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit."3
From these passages it is clear that Jesus was
conscious of a unique relation of sonship, in
1 Matt, xviii. 35.
2 Mark xiv. 36 ; Matt. xxvi. 39 ; Luke xxii. 42.
3 Luke xxiii. 34, 46. The remaining passages in the
Synoptists where " Father " is used are Matt. vii. 21, x. 32, 33,
xii. 50, xvi. 17, xviii. 10, 14, 19, 35, from the Logia, and Matt.
xx. 23, xxvi. 29, 53, from another source. Matt, xxviii. 19,
so far as the trinitarian formula is concerned is not from
Jesus. See Briggs' " Apostolic Commission," Studies in Honor
of B. L. Gildersleeve, p. 10.

42 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
which he stood to God as his own Father, in
which he possessed unique authority and unique
knowledge as the Father's own Son.
The Gospel of St. Luke gives us an account
of Jesus' words to his parents, at twelve years of
age, when they found him in the temple with
the doctors of the Law. He said : " Know ye not
that I must be about my Father's business ? " 1
These words indicate the consciousness of his
unique relation of sonship at this early age.
There is no valid reason for doubting this re
port of St. Luke, for the question must arise,
whence did Jesus derive this consciousness of his
unique relation to God as Son of the Father ?
Whence did he derive this consciousness of
unique authority from God, and unique knowl
edge of God as his own Father ? We might think
of the authority as imparted at his baptism by the
theophanic voice ; that was, however, authority
as the Son of God, the Messiah. Nothing more
is apparent.2 There was nothing in this event as
reported in the Gospels to indicate his endow
ment with such absolute and exclusive authority
as that asserted in our text. And even if this be

1 Luke ii. 49. I prefer the rendering of the Authorized
Version to that of the Revision.
2 Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 75 seq., also p. 35.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 43
strained to the uttermost possible degree, whence
was this consciousness of the personal relation
between God, his own Father, and himself as
the unique Son ? This knowledge can hardly
have come from reflection. There was nothing
in the Messianic ideals of the Old Testament to
suggest it. It was a new knowledge, and one so
original and unique that we cannot think it the
invention of one who makes a hypocritical and
blasphemous assertion of a presumptuous conceit
and vain imagination. It is impossible to find
any circumstances to suggest such pretensions
even if it could be thought of in the case of Jesus,
the prophet, the Messiah, the Son of Man. It is
necessary to think of it as originating from a
reality ; and if from a reality, not a reality of
sudden illumination, or coming from the sug
gestion of the spirit of prophecy. For he speaks
of it not as a new experience, a fresh inspiration,
born in his soul for the first time with a call to
deliver it as a message. Compare his words with
those of the ancient prophets and we are impressed
with the absence of any trace of the enthusiasm
of such an illumination of so great a call. He
speaks of his knowledge of the Father calmly, as
characteristic of himself, as one that he has always
possessed, as one which he never has been with-

44 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
out, and which no one else ever possessed, or
ever could or ever can possess, except through
him as the only one entitled to reveal the
Father. Therefore, there is no reason to doubt
that he had this consciousness of knowing the
Father, and of doing the work of the Father, and
of attending to the affairs of the Father before
his baptism, and even as early as twelve years of
age, so far as his consciousness as a boy was ca
pable of this knowledge. And it was only in the
order of nature that his first visit to the temple
at the legal age for assuming his ceremonial
duties should invoke from his inner conscious
ness this knowledge, in the special circumstances
in which he was then for the first time placed.
There is in this story the same calm statement
of his sonship that we have seen in the other
passages, as so characteristic of Jesus, indicating
that this was no new experience, no novelty of
consciousness, but a characteristic and habitual
experience. We are now prepared to study the passages
relating to the Son of the Father in the Gospel
of John. One of the most characteristic features
of this Gospel is the use that Jesus makes of
Father in addressing God or speaking of God.
Seventy-nine times he says " the Father," twenty-

THE SON OF THE FATHER 45
five-times " my Father," nine times " Father,"
and once " the living Father ; " J and in all these
passages the unique relation already taught in
the Synoptists is either presupposed and implied,
or else asserted in similar, or varied, or enhanced
terms. Thus Jesus comes into conflict with the Phar
isees by healing an infirm man on the Sabbath.
As in the Logia Jesus said that the Son of Man
was Lord of the Sabbath,2 so here he justifies
himself by saying, " My Father worketh even
until now, and I work ; " 3 that is, notwithstanding
the fact that God rested on the Sabbath of the
Creation, he yet continued to work mighty works
of judgment and redemption. Hebrew history
resounds with the wondrous works of God ; He
brew poetry celebrates them in song ; Hebrew
Wisdom recounts them in chosen sentences ; and
Hebrew prophecy depicts them as characteristic
of the Messianic future. Therefore, as the Son
of the Father, Jesus was entitled to work these
mighty works as the Father worked them.
The author of this Gospel tells us that the
Jews sought to kill him, not only because he

1 Messiah of the Gospels, p. 274.
2 Sermon I.,p. 17. 3 John v. 17.

46 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
brake the Sabbath, but because he was guilty of
a much greater sin, in that he also called God his
own Father, making himself equal with God ; that
is, they understood him to be claiming sonship
to God in a unique sense, as belonging to him
alone, with the necessary implication that he
made himself equal with God. Jesus did not
say this. It was the inference of the Pharisee
doctors who heard him. But it is the same in
ference that Christians subsequently made, and
it is altogether probable that Jesus' words were
designed to imply as much. But he was not ex
plicit. He veiled here as elsewhere his personal
revelation behind his revelation in word and work
and his mission from God. In the subsequent
context there is a larger statement of the works
that Jesus did and was to do as the Father's own
Son. " Verily, verily I say unto you, the Son can
do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the
Father doing ; for what things soever He doeth,
these the Son also doeth in like manner. For
the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all
things that Himself doeth ; and greater works
than these will He shew him, that ye may mar
vel. For as the Father raiseth the dead and
quickeneth them, even so the Son also quick-

THE SON OF THE FATHER 47
eneth whom he will. For neither doth the Father
judge any man, but He hath given all judgment
unto the Son ; that all may honour the Son, even
as they honour the Father. He that honoureth
not the Son honoureth not the Father that sent
him. " Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth
my word, and believeth Him that sent me, hath
eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but
hath passed out of death into life. Verily, verily,
I say unto you, The hour cometh, and now is,
when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son ; '
and they that hear shall live. For as the Father
hath life in Himself, even so gave He to the
Son also to have life in himself: and He gave
him authority to execute judgment, because he
is Son of Man." 2
Jesus states that the Son does whatsoever the
Father doeth because the Father in love showeth
him all things that he doeth. This is only an
enlargement of the statement of our logion " All
things have been delivered unto me of my Father f

1 The words " Son of God," in my opinion, were not said by
Jesus ; but they came into the text either as the editor's un
conscious substitution of his own term for that of Jesus, or as
an early copyist's mistake.
2 John v. 19-27.

48 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
He also says here that the Father hath given all
judgment unto the Son. This is a specification
of what is already contained in the " all things ; "
and is in entire accord with the judgment to be
exercised by the Son of Man at his second advent,
according to the Synoptists. The additional feat
ure given here is that the Father hath given to
the Son to have life in himself and to be the
fountain of life to men ; for the Son, like the
Father, " raiseth the dead and quickeneth whom
he will." This is certainly new in specification ;
but it is not surprisingly new in view of the judg
ment which presupposes resurrection, and of the
" all things " which could not therefore exclude it.
So Jesus says in his last discourse, " Father,
the hour is come ; glorify Thy Son, that the
Son may glorify Thee : even as Thou gavest him
authority over all flesh, that whatsoever Thou
hast given him, to them he should give eternal
life." J The life of the Son in himself as well as
the authority to exercise judgment, and to do
mighty works and give eternal life, are all alike
derivative from the Father, although the Son
does the same things, in all these respects that
the Father does, equally with Him.

1 John xvii. 1, 2.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 49
There are several passages in the Gospel of
John in which the unique knowledge of God,
which the Son has, according to our logion, is
set forth in strong terms. Jesus said : " Not that
any man hath seen the Father, save he that is
from God, he hath seen the Father." x — " If I
glorify myself, my glory is nothing : it is my
Father that glorifiefh me ; of whom ye say, that
He is your God ; and ye have not known Him :
but I know Him ; and if I should say, I know
Him not, I shall be a liar like unto you : but I
know Him and keep His word." 2 — "I am the
good shepherd ; and I know mine own, and mine
own know me, even as the Father knoweth me,
and I know the Father." 3 — "I am the way, and
the truth, and the life : no one cometh unto the
Father, but by me." 4 And in his last discourse :
" O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not,
but I knew Thee." 5 In these passages there is no
difference from the teaching of our logion other
than fulness of detail, and specification of its
general terms.
There is no assertion of pre-existence in any of
the passages in the Synoptic Gospels. There is

1 John vi. 46. 2 John viii. 54, 55. 8 John x. 14, 15.
4 John xiv. 6. 5 John xvii. 25.
4

50 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
no explicit teaching of the pre-existence of the
Son of the Father any more than of the Son of
Man. But does not the term Son of the Father
in itself imply pre-existence as well as the term
Son of Man ? 1 If we find it impossible to con
ceive of such a unique relation and such a unique
knowledge of the Father, as originating as a new
experience at any stage in the earthly life of
Jesus, what else can we think than that he
brought it into the world with him from a pre-
existent state ? If he was the only Son of the
Father, the only one through whom the Father
could ever be revealed to mankind, can we sup
pose that such a son originated for the first time
when Jesus was born into the world ? Can we
suppose that this consciousness of sonship and
knowledge of the Father, which appears in him
so soon as Jesus himself appears, and which was
a native endowment, as natural to him as any
other characteristic of his person, that this con
sciousness originated in his birth from Mary ?
Such knowledge is intellectual and it is moral ;
and must have intellectual and moral causes, and
could not originate by heredity, especially where
there was no such inheritance from his human

1 See Sermon I., p. 24.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 51
ancestry. Some scholars content themselves with
defining this unique relation as a moral one ; but
it is necessary to go further and ask what is meant
by this moral relation ; and how it originated.
There can be but one answer to the question
when it is pressed to its necessary consequences.
This personal relation between the Father and
the Son is a reciprocal one. It is not simply that
no one knows the Father but the Son ; but no
one knows the Son but the Father. The knowl
edge of the Father by the Son and the knowledge
of the Son by the Father are reciprocal the one
to the other. It is possible to think that the
Father's knowledge of the Son was a knowledge
of an ideal of such a Son in His decree and pur
pose : but we cannot say this of the Son's knowl
edge of the Father. Does not the reciprocal
knowledge stated in equal terms in the paral
lelism of the two clauses of Hebrew Wisdom
imply a knowledge not only co-extensive in per
sonal relations but also co-extensive in temporal
relations ? Furthermore this special relation and
this unique knowledge is exclusive of all others,
not only of men but of angels ; for it is abso
lutely unlimited. And although angels are not
mentioned in this passage, they are mentioned
in other passages in which the Son of the Father

52 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
is conceived as above them in authority and
power. And there can be no doubt that Jesus
regarded himself as having authority over the
angels. Therefore a necessary implication is that
he not only included the angels when he said,
" All things have been delivered unto me of my
Father," as he did a short time afterwards when
he said, "All authority is given unto me in
heaven and on earth," x but he also included
the angels when he said, "No one knoweth the
Father save the Son," and also in the clause " JVo
one save he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal
Him." Therefore Jesus meant to represent him
self as the revealer of the Father to angels as
well as to men ; and so he was as conscious of
his pre-existence as the Son of the Father with
the angels, as the revealer of the Father to the
angels, as he was certain of his post-existence
after his death on the cross as the mediator of
angels and men.
What is implicitly contained in this logion is
explicitly taught in a number of passages in the
Gospel of John. It is doubtless true that in this
Gospel we are not so near to the exact words
and the exact conceptions of Jesus as in the
sayings of the Logia of St. Matthew and the
1 Matt, xxviii. 18.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 53
Synoptic Gospels. The author, as I think, trans
lates an original Hebrew Gospel of St. John, and
enlarges it with explanatory words and sentences
setting forth the thinking about Jesus' life and
teachings current toward the close of the century
among the pupils of St. John.1 He also to a
much larger extent than the authors of the Syn
optic Gospels seeks to give the substance of
Jesus' thought, rather than his words ; and not
infrequently so mingles interpretation and ex
position with the words of Jesus that it is not
easy to distinguish between what Jesus actually
said and what the author understood him to have
meant. But taking all such things into account,
we may yet be confident that we can determine
substantially Jesus' teaching about himself in this
Gospel as well aa in the others ; and we ought
not to be surprised to find more advanced teach
ing, inasmuch as the teaching in St. John is so
largely esoteric, to the chosen disciples or the
Pharisee doctors ; and these discourses of John's
Gospel were given chiefly in the last few weeks
of his life in Jerusalem, whereas the sentences of
the Logia were given at a much earlier date in
Galilee or in Perea.

1 General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture, p. 327.

54 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
According to the sixth chapter of St. John,
Jesus teaches that he came down from his Father
as the bread from heaven. "For the bread of
God is that which cometh down out of heaven,
and giveth life unto the world." — "I am the
bread of life." — " For I am come down from
heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of
Him that sent me." x His hearers, according to
St. John, certainly understood, that which his
words seem clearly to teach, that he came down
from a pre-existent life in heaven ; for they said :
" Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father
and mother we know ? How doth he now say, I am
come down from heaven " ? 2 The term bread of
God is metaphorical, but the coming down from
heaven of the Son cannot be metaphorical ; for
this coming was to teach his unique knowledge
of God, and work the unique works of God, as
in the other passages, for the salvation of men.
That which was implicit there is explicit here.
Jesus tells the Pharisees, " Ye are from be
neath ; I am from above : ye are of this world ;
I am not of this world." 3
What is this but to separate himself as heav
enly in origin from all others as originating in
1 John vi. 33-38 ; cf. vi. 51. 2 John vi. 42.
8 John viii. 23.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 55
this world ? Farther on he says : " Your father
Abraham rejoiced to see my day ; and he saw it,
and was glad." l He might be understood to say
that Abraham as a prophet in prophetic vision
saw his day as an ideal of prophecy, and rejoiced
in that vision. But the Pharisees did not so
understand him. They interpreted his words as
teaching his personal pre-existence with Abra
ham ; for they said unto him : " Thou art not
yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abra
ham?"2 Jesus does not reject their interpreta
tion, but accepts it in his reply, and goes further
still, claiming pre-existence before Abraham.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham
was born, I am." 3 It is evident that his hearers
understood him to teach pre-existence prior to
Abraham, for they thought it to be blasphemy,
and in a passion they took up stones to cast at
him. It is indeed difficult to see how any other
interpretation is possible. It is true that many
scholars think that Jesus is teaching ideal pre-
existence. But ideal pre-existence was familiar
to his Pharisee hearers. There was in the current

1 John viii. 56. 2 John viii. 57.
8 John viii. 58 ; Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 283 seq.

56 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
opinion of the time an ideal pre-existence of the
Law, of the Temple, of Jerusalem, of the Throne
of glory, of Paradise, of Gehenna, and of other
religious things, and also of the name of the
Messiah,1 even before the creation of the world.
Jesus might have stated his ideal pre-existence,
therefore, without shocking his hearers to so great
an extent. If the facts of the case are correctly
stated in this Gospel, there can be no reasonable
doubt that Jesus taught his real pre-existence
and that what he said was either blasphemy or
a reality. In the last discourse of Jesus according to St.
John, which is probably a combination of his words
spoken on several occasions, there are several dis
tinct statements respecting his union with the
Father and pre-existence as the Son of the Father.
To Philip he said : " He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father. — I am in the Father, and the
Father in me." 2 This is as much as to say that
the unique relation of sonship was so close, that
the Son resembled the Father so exactly,
that the Son was in such unity with the Father,
that the Father was in the Son, and the Father

1 Messiah of the Apostles, p. 8.
2 John xiv. 9, .11.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 57
appeared in the Son, and was seen in the Son.
And so he says furthermore : " In that day," that
is, the day of the advent of the Paraclete, "ye
shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in
me, and I in you." l Again he said to the dis
ciples : " I came out from the Father, and am
come into the world : again, 1 leave the world,
and go unto the Father." 2 The antithetical
clauses make it evident that the pre-existence is
as real as the post-existence ; the coming from
the Father into the world as much an event in
history as the going unto the Father.
I am not concerned to exaggerate the number
of passages that teach the real pre-existence of
Jesus Christ. There can be no doubt that the
conception of an ideal pre-existence prepared the
way, in the thought of the centuries in the midst
of which Jesus was born, for the conception of
the real personal pre-existence of the Son of God
when the time had come for them to understand
it. It matters little, therefore, a priori, how
many passages you may regard as teaching this
ideal pre-existence, so long as you recognize that
eventually the doctrine of the real pre-existence
emerges. I would not be troubled in the least,

1 John xiv. 20, cf. xvii. 21. a John xvi. 28.

58 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
if it could be shown that every passage in the
Gospels teaches nothing more than ideal pre-
existence. I have carefully examined all the
arguments of learned men in favor of this theory.
I have no prejudice whatever against their views.
But it seems evident to me that not only are
their arguments forced and inconclusive, going
only so far and halting where we cannot stop
thinking, but that the positive arguments on the
other side for the real personal pre-existence of
the Son of Man and the Son of the Father are
convincing and impregnable so far as Biblical
Criticism and Biblical Exegesis can go.
The conception of the pre-existence of the
Son culminates as we might anticipate, in the
high-priestly prayer of Jesus. Here, in that deep,
vital, and comprehensive experience, when he
bears upon his soul the burden of the salvation
of his disciples and of their disciples in long line
of succession until the consummation of his re
demptive work, he prays incidentally for himself :
" And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine
own self with the glory which I had with Thee
before the world was." 1 And he expresses the
certainty of a son's confidence when he says : " For

1 John xvii. 5.

THE SON OF THE FATHER 59
Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the
world." x In these passages, the unique relation
of sonship, which in the passages previously con
sidered has unfolded into a unique knowledge,
a unique authority of working, a unique power
of life, a unique oneness with the Father — before
the Son descended from heaven, from the Father,
into the world, before the birth of Abraham, the
father of Israel — reaches its climax in a unique
relation of love and a unique relation of glory
before the creation of the world.
The ideal of the Son of the Father, as compre
hending the relation of Jesus to God, has thus
unfolded in parallelism with the ideal of the Son
of Man summing up the relation of Jesus to hu
manity ; and both ideals alike in the Gospel of St.
John explicitly set forth what was implicitly in
volved in the Synoptic ideals, namely, the pre-
existence of that holy person who comprehended
both ideals, Son of Man and Son of the Father,
before the creation of the world in a state of
everlasting heavenly glory with God, into which
the earthly life came as an episode of redemptive
teaching and work for the salvation of the
children of mankind.

1 John xvii. 24.

Ill

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE
LAW

Ill

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE
LAW
But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth
his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, that he might
redeem them which were under the Law, that we might re
ceive the adoption of sons. — Gal. iv. 4, 5.
THE Incarnation of our Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ is one of the cardinal facts and
doctrines of the Christian religion. The Incar
nation of Christ and the Resurrection of Christ
are the two poles of the Christian system of doc
trine. The Pauline writings lay their chief
stress on the Resurrection, and the Johannine
writings on the Incarnation ; but this is a matter
of proportion, for both sets of writings recognize
the two as essential facts and fundamental doc
trines of Christ and Christianity.
Divine revelation is gradual in its instruction,
it is manifold in its training, here a little, there a
little, step by step, as mankind in the many gen
erations are able to understand it and use it. As

64 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells
us, " God, having of old time spoken unto the
fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in
divers manners, hath at the end of these days
spoken unto us in the Son." 1
And so the revelation in the Son was not
given all at once, but Jesus taught the Twelve
gradually as they were able to understand him ;
and he did not give them a full and complete
revelation of himself. He promised them that
after his departure to the Father he would send
them another Paraclete or Counsellor. He told
the Twelve : " I have yet many things to say unto
you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit,
when he the Spirit of truth is come, he shall
guide you into all the truth : for he shall not
speak from himself, but whatsoever he shall hear,
these shall he speak, and he shall declare unto
you the things that are to come. He shall
glorify me : for he shall take of mine and shall
declare it unto you." 2
Therefore, those people are mistaken who
think we are to find the last and highest reve
lation in the teachings of Jesus, as recorded in
the Gospels. Jesus himself tells us that we are

1 Heb. i. 1, 2. 2 John xvi. 12-14.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 65
rather to find it in the teachings of his disciples,
as they were guided by the divine Spirit to
understand the great facts of the life of Jesus.
It was impossible that they should understand
these before the earthly life of Jesus had reached
its end, and all the facts of his life were for the
first time illuminated by the enthronement of
Christ at the right hand of God and the advent
of the divine Spirit. On the day of Pentecost
the Church of Christ was instituted ; but the
Spirit did not give his instruction all at once, on
that birthday of the Church ; he began a training
which was to continue through the apostolic age,
in the gradual enlightenment of the apostles and
prophets, to understand the life and work of
Christ. They did not understand the whole
significance of the resurrection of Christ all at
once : so they only gradually learned the signifi
cance of the Incarnation. The Incarnation was
a fact, an event in the history of the world, and
as such it has its historical importance, whatever
any one may think about it ; but it is just what
men think about it which determines their atti
tude to it, and the religious influence it may have
upon them. In this series of discourses, I am
endeavoring to trace the development of the
doctrine of the Incarnation within the writings
5

66 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
of the New Testament, as Christ through his
spirit gradually revealed it to his disciples.
The earliest writing which has been preserved
for us from apostolic hands, in my opinion, is the
Epistle to the Galatians, written by St. Paul
from Antioch shortly before the apostolic council
at Jerusalem within seventeen or eighteen years
after the Resurrection of Christ.1 The common
opinion is that the epistle was written some years
later, in the spring of a. d. 58, shortly after the
Epistles to the Corinthians and shortly before the
Epistle to the Romans. There is much in common
between the Epistle to the Galatians and the
Epistle to the Romans. This has misled scholars
to the opinion of nearness of composition. The
Epistles to the Corinthians stand apart by them
selves. So far as Christology is concerned, the
order of development is Galatians, Corinthians,
Romans. It is evident from these epistles that St. Paul
emphasized the resurrection of Christ rather
than the incarnation, and that his mind starts
from the resurrection backwards through the
death of Christ to his birth into this world. It

1 The early date of this epistle is shown in an article
The Dale of ihe Epistle of St. Paul to the Galatians, by Emilie
Grace Briggs, New World, March, 1900.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 67
was natural and indeed necessary that this should
be the experience of this apostle. For he did
not know Jesus during his earthly life. He had
not the privilege of his personal training and
friendship. He was startled in his career as a
persecutor by a Christophany. He saw the
Christ in his glorious majesty interposing in
behalf of his persecuted followers.1 The risen
and enthroned Christ was the Christ whom St.
Paul knew in this Christophany, by his sense-
perception, and subsequently by his intellectual
conception and imagination in his communion
with him in faith and contemplation. All that
he learned about Christ from the earlier disciples
subsequently was built upon this, to him the
most essential knowledge. St. Paul knew Christ
as his own personal Saviour, who had transformed
him from Saul the Pharisee to a Christian prophet
and apostle.2 His experience was expressed in
his words, " The Law hath been our tutor to
bring us to Christ that we might be justified by
faith."3 The Law had performed this service
for him and for others like him. Christ the Son
of God represented a higher dispensation than

1 Acts ix. 1-9; xxii. 5-11 ; xxvi. 10-18.
2 Phil. iii. 4-14. 8 Gal. iii. 24.

68 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the Law in which he had been trained previously.
The Law of God, leading on in its development
to the Christ of God, necessarily involved that
both the Law and the Christ had been compre
hended in God's purpose and plan from the
beginning ; and thus the apostle's mind springs
to the birth of Christ as bringing to completion
the dispensation of the Law, and introducing the
dispensation of Christ ; a birth which came when
God purposed it should come in the fulness and
completeness of the Time.
1. St. Paul conceives of the birth of Christ as
a birth under the Law. Christ was born, as a
Jew, under the dispensation of the Jewish Law,
inheriting all its privileges, but also sharing in
all its burdens. Although he was blameless
under the Law and although he fulfilled all its
righteousness, he yet had to submit to all the
injustice and wrong wrought by the administra
tors of the Law. He was persecuted by the
Pharisee lawyers, condemned to death as a blas
phemer by the judges in the supreme court of
the Sanhedrim, and crucified by a Roman execu
tive as a malefactor. He bore the curse pro
nounced by the Law upon every one hanging on
a tree.1 Christ undertook this burden of the

1 Gal. iii. 13.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 69
Law " that he might redeem them which were
under the Law." He showed by his life and
teaching that the Law was incompetent for full
salvation, that something higher than the Law
was needed, and that the time for the higher
dispensation had come. He lived the life of
bondage under the Law, and he also lived the
higher life of a Son of God, a life of holy self-
sacrificing love ; and he introduced all who en
tered into communion with him into that higher
life, a life of the liberty of faith and love of a
child of God, in place of the life of the bondage
of fear and the obedience of a servant. This was
the purpose of his birth under the Law, this was
the reason why God sent forth His Son to be born
under the Law.
The fulness of the time, therefore, must be a
fulness which makes full a time going back to
the first giving of the Law. When God first
gave the Law in its earliest and simplest form to
Moses, and made the old covenant on the basis
of that Law, he designed that Law as a prepara
tion for the mission of His Son. And so through
the centuries of the Old Testament dispensation,
as the Law unfolded into a multitude of precepts
and passed through many stages of codification
until it reached its completion in the Law as

70 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
contained in the Canon of Holy Scripture,1 it
all the time was preparing Israel for the higher
revelation when the Old Covenant was to pass
over into the New Covenant, and the Law was
to give place to the Gospel. The birth of the
Son of God "under the Law, to redeem them
that were under the Law," was a mission from
God the Father in order to fulfil His plan and
purpose which He. formed before He spake the
Ten Words in the thunders of Sinai, before the
Old Covenant was made on the basis of the Law.
It was in the fulness and ripeness of that time,
which rolled on in incessant preparation through
all the centuries of Jewish history from Moses to
Christ. 2. St. Paul conceives of the birth of Christ as a
birth of the seed of Abraham to fulfil the divine
promise to Abraham. This conception is not
given in the words of our text, but it is plainly
stated in both the previous and subsequent con
texts, and in the wider sweep of the discourse.
Thus St. Paul says : " Now to Abraham were the
promises spoken and to his seed. He saith not,
And to seeds, as of many : but as of one, And to

1 Briggs' Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch, new edition,
pp. 160 seq.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 71
thy seed, which is Christ." l " And if ye are
Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, heirs ac
cording to promise." 2 In other words, Jesus
Christ was born into the world as the seed of
Abraham through whom the inheritance of Abra
ham was to come upon all who are Christ's.
The promise to Abraham was an earlier stage of
preparation than the stage of the Law, but it
contained something more than the Law con
tained. The Law unfolded a certain portion of
the divine revelation only, and not the whole of
it. As St. Paul said, " A covenant confirmed
beforehand by God, the Law which came four
hundred and thirty years after, doth not disannul,
so as to make the promise of none effect." 3 —
" The gifts and the calling of God are without
repentance." 4 Even though long forgotten and
pushed in the background by other later and
apparently more important things, they will
stand forth in their own time, in their proper
place and importance. And so it was that in
the fulness of time, the Son of God was born
as the seed of Abraham, as well as the prophet
who was to perfect and complete the work of

1 Gal. iii. 16. 2 Gal. iii. 29.
s Gal. iii. 17. * Rom. xi. 29.

72 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Moses. Accordingly that time whose fulness
was attained when Jesus Christ was born dates
back in its origin prior to the birth of Isaac
and the call of Abraham. As Jesus said to the
Pharisees, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to
see my day ; and he saw it and was glad." 1
It was the plan and purpose of God, when He
called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees and
sent him into the land of Canaan to become the
father of the faithful and endowed him with the
covenant of promise,2 to use him and his descend
ants through all the generations to prepare the
way for that fulness of time, when He would send
His Son to secure for the seed of Abraham the
promised inheritance and to make them heirs of
God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
3. St. Paul conceives of Jesus Christ as " born
of a woman." This phrase, placed alongside of
and antecedent to the other phrase " born under
the Law," has a parallel significance which St.
Paul only suggests in this passage, but which he
unfolds in the Epistle to the Romans. As he was
born under the Law to redeem those that were
under the Law, so he was born of a woman to

1 John viii. 56. See Sermon IL, p. 55.
2 Gen. xii. 1—4.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 73
redeem those that were born of woman, that is,
the human race as such. He was not born to
redeem the Jews only, but to redeem the human
race as well. This St. Paul states clearly in this
epistle where he says, " For ye are all sons of God,
through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of
you as were baptized into Christ did put on
Christ. There can be neither Jew nor Greek,
there can be neither bond nor free, there can be
no male and female : for ye all are one in Christ
Jesus."1 In the Epistle to the Romans St. Paul regards
Christ as the second Adam over against the
first Adam who sinned and brought an entail
of woe upon our race. He conceives of sin and
death entering into the world through the fall
of the first Adam. He represents all the race
of his descendants as under the bondage of sin
and the tyranny of death.2 Jesus the Son of God
was born as the seed of the woman, the second
Adam, to redeem mankind from this bondage
and tyranny and to bring them forth into the
freedom of sonship and the heritage of everlasting
life. This is the great thought of the Epistle to

i Gal. iii. 26-28.
3 See Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 152 seq.

74 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the Romans. " For if, by the trespass of the one,
death reigned through the one ; much more shall
they that receive the abundance of grace and of
the gift of righteousness reign in life through the
one, Jesus Christ." x " There is therefore now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
made me free from the law of sin and of death.
For what the law could not do in that it was weak
through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the
likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering, con
demned sin in the flesh, that the ordinance of the
law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the
flesh, but after the spirit." 2 It is evident, there
fore, that the time which reaches its fulness when
Christ is born, goes back in its origin to the
time when our first parents sinned and fell in the
garden of Eden. When Jesus Christ was born
of a woman, he was born as the seed of the wo
man of that first gospel given to mankind imme
diately after the Fall. And so we must think of
the antediluvian time from Adam to Noah, and
of the patriarchal time from Noah to Abraham,
as the earlier unfoldings of that one great epoch
extending from the sin of Adam to the advent

1 Rom. v. 17. 2 Rom. viii. 1-4.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 75
of Christ, whose one essential, all-dominating
purpose was to prepare more and more fully, as
the centuries went by, for that fulness of the
time when the woman's seed was to be born and
mankind redeemed from sin and death.
The apostle does not in these passages go far
ther back in time than the fall of mankind, and
the original promise to our first parents ; but
elsewhere the work of Christ in this world is
represented as in accordance with a plan and pur
pose of God of a still earlier period. Thus St.
Peter speaks of him as the lamb " who was fore
known indeed before the foundation of the
world ; " : and in the Second Epistle to St. Tim
othy it is said that the purpose of God's grace
in Christ was " before times eternal." 2
When now we put all these statements together
and try to deduce from them their full signifi
cance, we go far beyond the scope of St. Paul's
intention and raise more questions than can be
answered. This much is evident, that it was in
the plan and purpose of God to send His Son into
the world at a certain definite time in history, which
St. Paul designates as the fulness of the time, and
that time began, to St. Paul's mind in our pas-

1 1 Peter i. 20. 2 2 Tim. i. 9-

76 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
sage, after the first sin of our race, with the first
promise of redemption. There can be no doubt
that the New Testament writers elsewhere con
ceive of the plan of redemption as devised in the
counsels of eternity, but there is no evidence that
St. Paul conceives of the time whose fulness he
speaks of here as extending so far backward.
Rather the " times eternal " of Second Timothy
are a plural of aeons whose sum is eternity, and
these are all prior to the time of the preparation
for the advent of the Son of God, of which St.
Paul here speaks as attaining its fulness when
Christ was born.1
4. St. Paul tells us that God sent forth His
Son ; that is, the Son of God was born on a
mission from the Father. Does that imply the
pre-existence of the Son ? Our text is not defi
nite in its statement at this point, and logical
deductions from it are not decisive.
That the Son of God was born on a mission
from God, does not necessarily imply that he had
a prior heavenly existence with God before he was
born. For of Jeremiah the prophet God said,
" Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee,
and before thou earnest forth out of the womb

1 Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 237 seq.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 77
I sanctified thee, I have appointed thee a prophet
unto the nations." 1 And of John the Baptist it
was said by the angel of the annunciation, " He
shall be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his
mother's womb. And many of the children of
Israel shall he turn unto the Lord their God." 2
It would be entirely in accordance with good
usage to say that God sent forth His Son born of
a woman, born under the Law, even if he were
simply a prophet, whose life began with his con
ception and birth. It would simply imply that
Jesus had a mission from God, as the seed of the
woman, the seed of Abraham, the seed of David,
of ancient prophecy, to redeem men and to se
cure their adoption as the children of God.
St. Paul tells us that the birth of the Son of
God was in accordance with the purpose of God
formed and proclaimed on different occasions
from the time of Adam onwards. This implies
that the Son of God was in the plan and purpose
of God through all this preparatory dispensation,
but it does not necessarily imply that the Son of
God was a real being existing in heaven before
he was born of woman on this earth. In other
words, the passage implies the ideal pre-existence

1 Jer. i. 5. a Luke i. 15, 1 6.

78 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
in the plan of God, but not real pre-existence as
a heavenly being.
Both of these statements would be in entire
accordance with the doctrine of the real pre-
existence of Christ, if we could prove that doc
trine to have been in the mind of St. Paul at this
time, or about this time, from other passages of
his writings. But we cannot prove it from this
passage. There is nothing in its favor in the
Epistle to the Galatians or in the Epistle to the
Romans. But in the Epistle to the Corinthians
there are several passages of some importance
which teach the real pre-existence of the Son
of God.1 These passages will all be examined
in our next sermon.
If the Epistle to the Galatians were, as many
hold, subsequent to these Epistles to the Corin
thians, then it would be difficult to avoid the
conclusion that St. Paul, when he wrote the
Epistle to the Galatians, had the real pre-existence
of Christ in his mind, even if it is so far in the
background of his thought that we do not see it
when he tells us of Christ's mission into the
world. But if we make the Epistle to the Gala-

1 1 Cor. viii. 6, xi. 3, xv. 45-47 ; 2 Cor. viii. 9. See Messiah
of the Apostles, pp. 99 seq.

BORN OF A WOMAN UNDER THE LAW 79
tians a number of years earlier than the Epistles
to the Corinthians, we may conclude that the
Epistle to the Galatians gives us the earliest con
ception that St. Paul had of the Incarnation ;
and that he was guided by the divine Spirit to a
fuller and richer conception when he wrote the
Epistles to the Corinthians. If St. Paul knew of
the teaching of Jesus as to the Son of Man and
Son of the Father, his words in our text might
be understood as implying the pre-existence that
our Lord himself taught. But St. Paul never
listened to that teaching of Jesus which is given
in the Gospels. So far as we can know, he died
his martyr death before any of them were com
posed. All that he knew of the teaching of
Jesus at this time he had learned in very brief
interviews with St. Peter and St. James and other
original disciples in Jerusalem,1 and we have no
evidence that they then told him of these things.
The teaching of the original disciples as reported
in the Book of Acts prior to the council at Jeru
salem, contain no reference whatever to the pre-
existence of our Lord. Therefore we cannot
interpret St. Paul's words in his earliest epistles
by the teaching of Jesus of which he was
probably ignorant at that time.
1 Gal. i. 17-19-

80 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
It is unwise in our study of Holy Scripture
to go beyond the necessary consequences of its
statements. It is of no advantage to Christian
theology to build on uncertain interpretations.
Let it suffice us at present to take our stand by
the simplest explanation of our passage, which
can hardly be questioned, namely, that God, im
mediately after the sin and fall of our first parents,
determined to redeem mankind by sending the
Son of God into the world ; that He promised to
our first parents the woman's seed, to Abraham
a seed of inheritance, to Moses a prophet greater
than himself; and that these, and all the subse
quent unfoldings in prophecy and history, were
preparatory to the fulness of the time, when
Jesus Christ came into the world. Then God
sent him, he was born of a woman to redeem
mankind ; he was born as the seed of Abraham
to secure the inheritance of Abraham; he was
born under the Law to redeem from under the
Law ; and the goal of all was sonship and joint
heirship with Christ for all who attached them
selves to him by faith and baptism.

IV

THE SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF
THE LORD

IV
THE SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF
THE LORD
For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though
he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through
his poverty might become rich. — 2 Cor. viii. 9-
THESE words of St. Paul represent that
Jesus Christ was at one time rich, and
that subsequently he became poor. According
to the Evangelists, Jesus was poor during his
entire ministry. He had no home, no property,
no possessions. He was poor before he began
his ministry. He was the carpenter's son brought
up in obscure Nazareth, earning his daily bread
by the toil of his hands. He was born poor.
His parents, though of the royal line of David,
when they went to their native city for the
enrolment decreed by Augustus, had no home
into which they could be received, and there was
no room for them in the inn. They had to take
refuge in a cattle stall. There Jesus was born

84 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
and was cradled in a manger. So after his birth
his parents were compelled to flee to Egypt to
escape the blood bath of Bethlehem. Therefore
it is impossible to think of any time during the
earthly life of Jesus, from his birth in the manger
until his death on the cross, when it could be said
that he was rich. He was at last buried in the
tomb of a rich disciple. He had no burial-place
of his own. The apostle evidently refers not to
any time of his earthly life, but to a pre-existent
state before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, when
alone it was possible to say of him that he was
rich. Though he was rich, yet he became poor. This
was not an enforced poverty, to which he was
compelled by the superiority of others ; it was
not the result of a squandering of his estate ; it
did not arise through a misfortune or a calamity
of any kind ; it was in no sense involuntary or
constrained. It was voluntary poverty. It was
an act of love when he became poor. He became
poor not for his own sake or with a view to any
gain on his part, but simply and alone " for your
sakes," in order to the enrichment of the children
of men by saving them from sin and evil and
establishing them in righteousness and blessedness.
It is evident, therefore, that the apostle here

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 85
puts in striking antithesis a pre-existent state
of heavenly richness with an earthly state of
voluntary poverty.
He speaks of this gracious abandonment of
wealth, and voluntary assumption of poverty on
the part of Jesus, as an incentive to the Corin
thians to follow his example and voluntarily
undertake gifts and deeds of love.
The doctrine of the pre-existent wealth of
Christ is accordingly incidental to his main pur
pose of exhorting the Corinthians, so far as prac
ticable, to imitate the Lord. It presupposes a
knowledge of this pre-existence of Christ on their
part, and also further statements of this great
fact on the apostle's part, in his previous instruc
tion given to them. Such instruction we find
in three passages of his First Epistle to the
Corinthians, which it will repay us to study be
fore we proceed further in the exposition of our
text. 1. St. Paul says : " For I would not, brethren,
have you ignorant, how that our fathers were all
under the cloud, and all passed through the
sea ; and were all baptized unto Moses in the
cloud and in the sea ; and did all eat the same
spiritual meat ; and did all drink the same
spiritual drink : for they drank of a spiritual

86 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
rock that followed them ; and the rock was
Christ." l
The apostle here represents that Christ was
the spiritual rock that followed the Israelites in
their journey from Egypt through the Red Sea
and the wilderness into the land of Canaan, that
the Israelites at that time all drank of Christ,
their spiritual drink, and they all ate of Christ,
their spiritual meat. Their meat was doubtless
the manna sent from heaven when they were
about to die of hunger,2 their drink the water
which burst forth from the rock when they
were about to perish from thirst.3 This water
and this manna were the gift to them of heavenly
spiritual nourishment. These were given, accord
ing to the narrative of the Exodus, by the angel
of the presence, who led Israel in all their jour
neys in the cloud, a pillar of cloud by day, a
pillar of fire by night.4 When St. Paul tells the
Corinthians that Christ was the spiritual rock of
which the Israelites drank in the Exodus, it was
as much as to say that Christ was the pillar of
cloud and fire, Christ was the angel of the cove-

1 1 Cor. x. 1-4; Messiah of the Apostles, p. 99-
2 Ex. xvi. 8 Ex. xvii. 1-7.
4 Ex. xiii. 20-22, xiv. 19-31 ; Num. x. 34-36.

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 87
nant, Christ was the theophanic presence of God,
described in ancient Hebrew history.
The theophanic presence of God here referred
to was not an isolated fact in the history of Israel.
This presence remained with Israel from the
Exodus out of Egypt until the entrance into the
Holy Land. The Angel of the Presence was
the same theophanic angel who appeared to the
patriarchs, to guide them in the great crises of
their experience.1 The theophanic cloud was the
same which entered into the throne room of the
tabernacle2 and the temple, and, as the Glory of
God, was enthroned above the cherubim ; the
Shekinah which remained as a permanent the-
ophany in the temple until Ezekiel saw it
departing from the temple when God had de
termined to discard the defiled and desecrated
buildings.3 When St. Paul identifies Jesus with the the
ophanic Angel of the Presence, he identifies him
also with the Shekinah and with all those the
ophanic manifestations of God which deter
mine the history of Israel from Abraham to the
Exile. Therefore St. Paul tells the Corinthian Chris-

1 Gen. xvi. 7 seq., xxii. 11-15, xxviii. 10-22, xxxii. 24-31.
2 Ex. xl. 34-38. 8 Ezek i. — iii-

88 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
tians that Jesus Christ, before he was born in
Bethlehem, had pre-existed in a heavenly state
which extended far back in history to the time
of Moses and the patriarchs ; that Moses and the
Israelites of the Exodus had been given spiritual
meat and drink by Christ at that time, as Chris
tians received spiritual meat and drink from the
same Christ in the Lord's Supper ; and that the
theophanic angel and cloud were one and the
same as Jesus Christ.
Accordingly we might say, recurring to the
thought of our text, that Jesus was rich in his
possession of the spiritual food and drink with
which he richly blessed Israel of the Exodus,
that he was rich in the theophanic glory with
which he then manifested himself. He became
poor in that he divested himself of theophanic
glory and assumed the garb of a lowly workman,
in that he dispossessed himself of the riches he
had through so many centuries generously be
stowed on Israel, and undertook the shame of a
recipient of alms. He became poor by volun
tarily becoming a travelling mendicant, a home
less wanderer, one rejected and despised as a
pretender. 2. St. Paul tells the Corinthians, "I would
have you know that the head of every man is

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 89
Christ ; and the head of the woman is the man ;
and the head of Christ is God." l
This was in order to enforce his exhortation
that the Corinthian women should be veiled.
That " the head of the woman is the man " is based
on the creation of the woman out of man accord
ing to the second chapter of Genesis. " For the
man is not of the woman ; but the woman of the
man : for neither was the man created for the
woman ; but the woman for the man." 2 There
fore, as the headship of the man over the woman
is based on the order and dependence of the crea
tion of the human pair, so we must think of the
creation of man when the apostle says, in the
same verse, "... the head of every man is Christ." 1
This is enforced in the context which says :
" For a man indeed ought not to have his head
veiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of
God : but the woman is the glory of the man." 3
Therefore Christ is the head of man as created,
the head of the human race as its originator.
He was the image of God after which mankind
was created. It is evident that the apostle is
here thinking of the story of the creation of man
kind in the image of God given in the first

1 1 Cor. xi. 3 ; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 98 seq.
2 1 Cor. xi. 8, 9- s 1 Cor. xi. 7.

90 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
chapter of the Book of Genesis. God is repre
sented as saying : " Let us make man in our
image." 1 The image of God is here, therefore,
either the image of a plurality of beings compre
hended under the term God, or the plural is the
Hebrew plural of intensity used commonly in
nouns, but only here in a verbal form, implying
that God sums up in Himself the supreme concep
tion of the attributes involved in the terms em
ployed. The most natural interpretation is to
think of a plurality of beings, and then of God
and the holy angels, all of whom are 2 in the eighth
Psalm included, according to the Greek and other
ancient versions and the authorized version, when
it is said, man was made " a little lower than the
angels," and who are certainly associated with
God in the creation of the world in the Book
of Job.3 This form or image, which the ancient
writer conceives as common to God and the
holy angels, is here conceived by St. Paul as
specially that of the pre-existent Christ. He is
therefore conceived as the archetypal man, pre-

1 Gen. i. 26.
2 Psalm viii. See Messianic Prophecy, p. 147, and my
exposition of the word DtiSn in the New Hebrew Lexicon
B.D.B. 8 Job xxxviii. 7.

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 91
existent before the creation of man on the earth,
supreme over humanity as the head of humanity,
having himself no other head but God. This is
in accordance with the conception of St. Paul
that Jesus Christ was the " man of heaven,"
as distinguished from Adam who was of the
earth. " It is written,1 The first man Adam
became a living soul (a living sensuous being).
The last Adam a life-giving spirit. Howbeit
that is not first which is spiritual, but that which
is natural (sensuous) ; then that which is spiritual.
The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second
man is of heaven." 2 If one thinks of the historic
order, so far as this world is concerned, Jesus
Christ is the last Adam, the second man, over
against Adam, the father of the race, as first man.
But if one compares the two as to nature, the
first Adam was of the earth, earth-born and so
essentially sensuous in his being : the second
man was of heaven, heaven-born, and so essen
tially spiritual in his being. Therefore Jesus,
though the second Adam as appearing subse
quently to the first Adam in the history of this
world, is yet of heavenly origin, and so primary
to him as pre-existent in the heavenly state before

1 Gen. ii. 7. 2 1 Cor. xv. 45-47.

92 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
creation. That is, when he entered this world
he entered it as a being from heaven,1 as one
endowed with an essentially spiritual nature,
over against the first Adam and all his descend
ants, who were earth-born and of essentially
sensuous natures. And he was not only the
heavenly man because pre-existing in heaven
before he was born in this world, but he was also
pre-existent before the creation of the first Adam,
who was formed in the image of Christ as the
ideal prototypal archetypal man.
There are some scholars who insist that all this
is in the realm of the ideal, and that the pre-
existence of Christ here taught is ideal pre-exist
ence, that is, pre-existence not in reality as a
real being, but as an idea or ideal in the plan and
purpose of God before the creation of the world.
This opinion is, however, untenable as a matter
of interpretation ; for the reason that the head
ship of Christ over humanity is co-ordinated with
the headship of man over the woman and the
headship of God over Christ in the same verse.
The headship is the same kind of headship in the
three instances, unless one can give some valid
reason for a difference. There is no ground in

1 Messiah of the Apostles, p. 117.

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 93
text or context on which to base any difference
in headship in the three clauses. There is none
in the teaching of St. Paul elsewhere. There is
none in the New Testament. Therefore, as the
headship of the man over the woman is a real
headship, and the headship of God over Christ is
a real headship, the headship of Christ over man
must also be a real headship, according to the
teaching of St. Paul in this passage. And inas
much as the time of the thought is the time of
the creation, there is no other alternative than to
think of the real headship of Christ over man as
at the time of creation, and so of his pre-existence
as a real being, the divinely appointed head of
humanity, the image of God prior to the creation
of man, the model after which mankind was
created. If it be said, that St. Paul implies that Jesus
was a heavenly man before he became an earthly
man, we may say that this inference is not justi
fied ; for the reason that the apostle represents
that Jesus Christ was the. pre-existent head of
humanity and the image of God after which hu
manity was constructed ; but he does not say
that Jesus was a man in heaven, but that he was
a man who came from a pre-existent state in
heaven.

94 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
In that pre-existent state, although all heavenly
beings, possessed of intelligence and moral and
religious natures, were after the image of God,
Jesus Christ, pre-existent in the heavenly state,
was in a special sense the image of God ; and al
though mankind was created in the image of all
the heavenly intelligences, God and angels, it was
especially in the image of the pre-existent Christ
that they were created ; because God had consti
tuted His Son not only in His plan of creation,
but also in reality, the head of humanity, the
mediator of the creation and government of
mankind. If the readers of our text in the Second Epis
tle recalled this thought of the pre-existence of
Christ before the creation of man in the First
Epistle, they might have seen in the riches that
he possessed in his heavenly life his wealth as the
head of humanity, and his rich endowments in
spiritual nature as a heavenly being ; and so have
thought of his voluntary poverty as a divesting
himself of his headship of the human race to
become a humble subject in a nation trodden
under foot by the proud Roman race ; of his put
ting aside his headship even of Israel, though it
was his birthright as an heir of David, and volun
tarily becoming a servant of servants to his peo-

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 95
pie. They might have thought of this heavenly
man, essentially spiritual in his nature, conde
scending to an earthborn existence, and of his
spiritual nature encasing itself in a sensuous
nature and clothing itself in the likeness of
sinful flesh.
3. St. Paul tells the Corinthians, " For though
there are that are called gods, whether in heaven
or on earth ; as there are gods many, and lords
many ; yet to us there is one God, the Father,
of whom are all things, and we unto him ; and
one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all
things, and we through him." Over against the
many so-called gods worshipped among the na
tions there was to the Christian only " one God,
the Father, of whom are all things." So, over
against the many lords of the nations, Christians
have only " one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom
are all things." The " all things " in both clauses
is coextensive and unlimited. One cannot doubt
that the " of whom are all things " refers to the
creation of the world by God, and that He is
represented therefore as the creator of all things.
So, then, the clause "through whom are all
things " also refers to the creation, and represents

1 1 Cor. viii. 5, 6 ; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 97, 98.

96 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Christ as the mediator of the creation. As the
one God, the Father, is the Creator, " of whom,"
as the author, " all things " came into being ; so
the one Lord, Jesus Christ, is the mediator of
creation, " through whom all things " came into
being. Therefore Jesus Christ is conceived as
the mediator of the creation, as participating in
the creation of the world, and therefore as pre-
existent at the creation of the world, and prior to
the creation of the world.
The term one Lord, as used of Christ over
against " one God, the Father " as used of God,
is also significant, because of the fact that Lord
was the well-nigh universal term of addressing
God or speaking about God, both among the Hel
lenistic and the Palestinian Jews of the New
Testament times. The writers of the New Testa
ment after the resurrection of Jesus Christ apply
Lord to Jesus Christ only, and no longer apply
it to God who is called the Father, if not simply
God.1 Jesus Christ, as the mediator of the creation of
all things in this passage, as he was mediator of
the creation of mankind in the other passage, is
the one Lord of all things here, as he was the

1 Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 86, 87.

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 91
one Head of humanity there. This cannot be
regarded as merely ideal pre-existence, if for no
other reason, yet for this, that the parallel clauses
" of whom are all things " and " through whom
are all things " cannot one be real and the other
ideal ; they must both be the same, whether real
or ideal. The creation of all things by God was
certainly conceived as real ; therefore the creation
of all things through Christ must be real also.
If the Corinthian Christians had in mind this
passage of the First Epistle when they read in the
Second " he was rich," they might have thought
of Christ's riches as the wealth of one who was the
one mediator of creation through whom all things
came into existence in this world of ours, and of
the one Lord and sovereign of all these things,
which originated through him. The creator
of all things was the original source of all
riches, — the sovereign Lord of all things is the
owner of all riches, so that from this point of
view they might have thought, not simply that
he was rich, but that he was the richest of all, as
the owner of all the wealth of the universe. The
Messiah, when he voluntarily became poor, there
fore, put aside his state as creator to become a
creature. He divested himself of the lordship
of all in order to become a servant of all. He

98 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
ceased to be the owner of infinite riches, in order
to voluntarily taste the hardships and shame of
the destitution of riches.
These three passages, teaching the pre-existence
of Christ, had all been written by St. Paul to the
Corinthians a few weeks before he sent them
the Second Epistle with the words of our text.
The apostle had already taught them that Jesus
Christ pre-existed in the theophanic angel of the
covenant in the days of the Exodus ; that he was
the head of the human race, the image of God
after whom mankind was created ; that he was
Lord prior to the creation, the mediator through
whom all things had been created. Therefore
when he said in our epistle that Christ was rich,
he was doubtless thinking of the riches he pos
sessed in his heavenly state when he acted as the
theophanic presence of God during the Old Tes
tament, and as the mediator of the creation, and
the model and archetype of mankind.
This idea of St. Paul of the pre-existent Christ
as the mediator of creation, and the archetypal
man, seems to be such a natural evolution of
the teaching of Jesus as to the pre-existing Son of
Man and Son of the Father that it seems quite
probable that St. Paul learned in some way of
this teaching of Jesus after writing the Epistle

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 99
to the Galatians and before writing the First
Epistle to the Corinthians, possibly at the Coun
cil of Jerusalem itself, where he must have had
considerable intercourse with those who had
heard the Lord.1 The Son of Man, what was
he but the man who comprehended in himself
all that was characteristic of humanity,2 as a
second Adam over against the first Adam, as the
archetypal man ? The Son of the Father who
was the only mediator for making known the
Father to men and angels,3 what more natural
than that he should be conceived as the primal
image of God, and that the mediator of knowl
edge and of authority to work mighty deeds and
execute judgment should also be conceived as
the mediator of creation ?
In these other passages from the First Epistle
St. Paul taught the pre-existence of Christ, and
said nothing explicitly about the incarnation ;
here the pre-existence is briefly stated in order to
emphasize the nature of the incarnation. " For ye
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that,
though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became
poor, that ye through his poverty might become
rich." 4 The incarnation was therefore essentially
1 Acts xv. 2 Sermon I., p. 29.
3 Sermon II., p. 39. i 2 Cor. viii. 9.

100 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
a self-impoverishment, the voluntary abandon
ment of a state and condition of wealth, and the
voluntary entrance upon a state and condition
of poverty. The purpose of it was gracious, in
order to enrich mankind.
The incarnation was in fact a most sublime
act of self-impoverishment. Jesus might have
been born a Roman, he was born a Jew. His
nation had a glorious history, that was in the
distant past. It was now a poor and oppressed
people. He might have been born in the family
of the high-priest or of the king of the Asmonean
line, but he was born of Joseph and Mary.
Joseph was indeed the heir to the throne of
David, and about him clustered all the glorious
ideals of Messianic prophecy ; but he was a dis
inherited exile from his native Bethlehem, and
had become a poor carpenter, hiding in the
obscurity of Nazareth from the jealous and un
scrupulous Herodians. Jesus might have used
his extraordinary ability and talents in order to
become rich and exalted ; he might have been a
great Rabbi, chief of the rabbinical schools in
Jerusalem, a leader in the Sanhedrim ; for his
wisdom was choicer than Solomon's or that of
Jesus Ben Sira ; his skill in Haggada and Hala-
cha excelled that of the ablest rabbis of his time.

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 101
Never man spake as he spake. No magician ever
did such wondrous deeds of healing and restora
tion to life, which would have enriched him
beyond the dream of avarice had he been so dis
posed. But Jesus never received wages for his
teaching or for his cures. He voluntarily chose
a life of poverty. He persisted in a life of pov
erty. He preferred to receive alms rather than
to accept wages. He gave freely everything he
had. He accepted as freely any loving gift to
him. He freely gave life to the nobleman's son.1
He accepted from Mary the princely gift of the
precious ointment.2 He not only identified him
self with the poor by giving up everything in
order to be and always remain poor ; he also
identified himself with the poor by accepting alms
from rich and poor alike. His purpose in this was
not to discredit riches and honour poverty. If that
had been his purpose the apostle could not have
said, " that ye through his poverty might become
rich." He could never have enriched others, if to en
rich them was to do them a moral injury. The
poverty he assumed was a voluntary poverty in
order to enrich others. The poverty he praised

1 John iv. 46-53. 2 John xii. 1-8.

102 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
was the voluntary poverty of his disciples for his
sake and for the sake of his kingdom and for the
welfare of mankind ; of those and those only who
voluntarily became poor and voluntarily remained
poor. Jesus had to restrain himself to a most extraor
dinary degree in order to remain poor. Why,
said the devil, should he suffer hunger when he
could transform stones into bread ? Why should
he remain homeless to whom the throne of the
world was open ? Why should he suffer grief
and pain who had authority over life and death ?
He satisfied the hunger of the multitude. He
preferred to suffer hunger himself. He saved
others from pain and sickness and death. Him
self he did not save. He became poor to enrich us.
He remained poor to enrich the people. He died
poor to enrich mankind. He made it evident to
the world for all time that the holiest of men,
the wisest of men, the greatest of men, could live
a life of voluntary poverty from the cradle to the
grave. The pre-existent creator and Lord of all
became incarnate in poverty, and so consecrated
and glorified voluntary poverty as the state of
Christian sainthood.
The incarnation, therefore, was an incarnation
of grace. The apostle tells the Christians of

SELF-IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE LORD 103
Corinth : " Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ." They knew it in just this life of volun
tary poverty which Jesus had lived for the enrich
ment of them and of others and of all mankind.
They saw in the incarnate one the grace of God
embodied in human face and form. Grace shone
from his face, grace distilled from his touch,
grace flowed from his lips, all gracious was his
presence. The grace of God was made known
in Christ Jesus. The incarnation was an incar
nation in poverty. It was an incarnation of
grace in poverty. St. Paul tells us that Jesus
said, "It is more blessed to give than to re
ceive." 1 Jesus was the all-giver. He gave all.
He kept back nothing. He gave all the time.
He never declined to give good things to the
needy. He was the incarnation of grace, because
gracious gifts came forth from him spontaneously,
freely, constantly, as from their original, perennial
fountain source. It was his nature to be gracious,
and he was gracious because the grace of God
was incarnate in him. He was loving because
he was the incarnation of love, the true Son of
the Father, who " is kind to the unthankful
and evil." 2 Jesus loved his enemies and perse-

1 Acts xx. 35. 2 Luke vi. 35.

104 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
cutors, submitted to be robbed and scorned and
slandered, without letting these indignities im
pair in the slightest degree the calm and rich
and full outflow of grace from a person who was
all love and all grace as the incarnation of God's
grace and love for the enrichment of mankind.

V
THE KENOSIS

V
THE KENOSIS
Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus : who,
being in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be on an
equality with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant, being made in the likeness of men ; and being found
in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient
unto death, yea, the death of the cross. — Phil. ii. 5-8.
THE Epistle to the Philippians was written
some fourteen years after the Epistle to the
Galatians, and some six years after the Epistles
to the Corinthians. During that time St. Paul
had an experience of communion with Christ in
his work as an apostle which was unique. He
had successively brought to Christ large num
bers of Jews and Gentiles in Macedonia and
Greece, in Asia and in Rome. He had made
several extended missionary journeys, had suf
fered two long imprisonments, and numberless
perils of every kind. We ought not to be sur
prised, therefore, that he had himself grown in
Christian knowledge, and that he had advanced
in his apprehension of the incarnation of our

108 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Lord. In the Epistle to the Philippians it is as
evident as in the Epistles to the Galatians and
Corinthians that his mind went back from the
enthroned Messiah to the Messiah of the Cross
and his entrance into the world. But in the Epis
tle to the Philippians he takes a more extended
and comprehensive view. He sees that the en
trance of the Son of God into the world was
something more than a mission from God, begin
ning when he was born of a woman under the
Jewish Law ; something more than the voluntary
self-impoverishment of the rich Lord from
heaven ; it was a voluntary act on the part of the
Son of God, who, pre-existing in the form of
God, deliberately assumed the likeness of men,
and who, though entitled by birthright to an
equality with God, did not grasp it as a prize, but
was minded rather to take the form of a servant
and to suffer and die upon the cross, and so by
the extremity of his humiliation win the name
above all other names.
St. Paul conceives of the incarnation on the
one side as the Son of God " emptying himself,"
and on the other side as his taking the form of a
servant, and " being made in the likeness of men,"
and " being found in fashion as a man." The
Greek word used here is kcvooj. It is trans-

THE KENOSIS 109
lated in the common version " made himself of no
reputation," but more correctly in the Revised
Version, " emptied himself." I shall use the term
Kenosis as the technical term of this passage, not
in the sense of any of the modern Kenotic
theories, which seem to be altogether inadequate,
but always in this sense of emptying himself.
In the Epistle to the Corinthians the apostle
conceives of Jesus as the second Adam, as the
" head of every man," l as " the man of heaven,"
with the " life-giving spirit ; " 2 in the Epistle
to the Romans as the Son of God " in the like
ness of sinful flesh," 3 as the one man through
whom we receive " the abundance of grace and
of the gift of righteousness."4 It is altogether
probable, therefore, that the antithesis between
the first Adam and the second Adam was in the
mind of the apostle in our passage, when he says
that Christ Jesus " counted it not a prize to be
on an equality with God, but emptied himself,
taking the form of a servant, being made in the
likeness of men." Our first parents were tempted
to grasp the forbidden fruit that they might
become as God.5 Jesus Christ did not seize the

1 1 Cor. xi. 3 ; see p. 89. 2 1 Cor. xv. 45, 47.
8 Rom. viii. 3. 4 Rom. v. 17.
6 Gen. iii. 5.

110 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
prize of equality with God, even when it was
within his grasp ; but, on the contrary, deliber
ately emptied himself of the form of God and
was made in the likeness of men.
It is also probable that St. Paul had in mind
the servant of Yahweh of the Second Isaiah,1 who
was to interpose for his people and suffer and die
for them. The Son of God in taking the form
of a servant intended to appear among men as a
prophet and to become a martyr.
The text indicates with sufficient plainness
what it was that the Son of God emptied him
self of. It was the form of God, because he was
made in the likeness of men ; it was his lordly
rank as the Son of God, because he became a
servant ; it was the glory of his heavenly state,
because he humbled himself to the shame of the
cross. 1. The Son of God emptied himself of all the
appearance and likeness of God ; he filled himself
with the likeness of men. He was born of
woman as a little child. He grew in wisdom
and stature. He worked as a carpenter to earn his
livelihood. He waited until he was thirty years of
age or more before he left his obscure life at

1 Isa. liii ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 356 seq.

THE KENOSIS 111
Nazareth to begin his ministry. No one could
suppose that the carpenter of Nazareth was any
thing more than a man. He lived as a plain man
of the people. He had no wealth or property.
He was not trained as a scholar. He had no rank
or position. He was a man of the masses and
not of the more favored classes. There was noth
ing in his appearance that would lead any one to
suppose that he was any other than the man in
whose fashion he was formed.
It is evident that, if the Son of God deliber
ately and for a holy redemptive purpose emptied
himself of the form of God and assumed the form
of a servant, and the likeness of men, he could
not let his divine nature express itself through
his humanity without destroying in a measure
the likeness of man. He deliberately emptied
himself of the form of God in order that he
might appear to be man, and not appear to be
God, during his ministry of redemption ; and so
his divinity found no expression through his
human form and his earthly life, except near the
close of his life in some glimmerings in the inner
circle of the Twelve.
2. The Son of God, having life in himself,
submitted himself to the conditions of human
life and death. The Gospel of St. John tells us,

112 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
" For as the Father hath life in Himself, even
so gave He to the Son also to have life in
himself." : It was impossible that the Son of
God should ever cease to have life in himself, or
suspend the living of the life in himself. Jesus
himself tells us : " Therefore doth the Father
love me, because I lay down my life that I may
take it again. No one taketh it away from me, but
I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay
it down, and I have authority to take it again." 2
Thus Jesus had authority over his own life. He
voluntarily submitted to the cruel death of the
cross. No one could have crucified him without
his consent. He voluntarily died ; and he died
with the full consciousness that he would live
again whenever he chose to live. Of course, the
life and death he is here speaking of are his
human life and death as the Messiah ; but it was
only so far as he was conscious that he had a life
in himself which could not be taken from him,
that he could speak these words. Underlying
the human life which he was to lay down and
take again, was the divine life which persisted
during the death of the human life, with the
quickening power of the resurrection involved

1 John v. 26. 2 Johnx. 17, 18.

THE KENOSIS 113
in it. This opens our eyes to understand the
Kenosis of the divine life of the Son of God.
The Son of God lived the divine life when he
lived the human life, only the divine life did not
exert itself so as to sustain or to preserve from
death the human life, until the time had come
for the Kenosis to cease and the exaltation to
begin. Attention has been called by some writers to
the several miracles of Jesus, in which he raised
the dead, as evidence that he did put forth the
quickening energy of the divine life during his
earthly ministry. But we should remember that
raising the dead is attributed to Elijah and Elisha
in the Old Testament, and that therefore it
comes within the sphere of prophetic activity.
We may conclude therefore that Jesus, though
conscious of the divine life within him, deliber
ately refrained from putting forth the energy of
that life, and intentionally limited himself in his
earthly career to living the life of a man.
3. The Son of God emptied himself of the
form of God in omnipresent relations in order to
do the work of redemption in local relations in
this world. It is beyond the scope of St. Paul
in this passage to think of the relations of the
Son of God to the universe. These come into

114 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
view in the Epistle to the Colossians where the
work of reconciliation extends to the several
orders of angels.1 The Kenosis is conceived in
its relation to the work of Christ Jesus for man
in this world. So far as the Son of God has
other relations to the universe, the Kenosis here
mentioned does not apply. As the mediator of
the divine government of the universe, in whom
" all things were created " and in whom " all things
consist,"2 he continues in the form of God, at
the same time as in the incarnation he empties
himself of the form of God. He did not divest
himself of his universal relations when he became
man in special relations ; he did not put away
the attribute of omnipresence to the whole crea
tion, when he limited his presence for the work
of redemption to the land of Palestine and the
form of Jesus of Nazareth.
4. The Son of God emptied himself of the at
tribute of omnipotence when he took the form of
a servant. He limited his powers to such as a
prophet might use. It is true he wrought many
miracles, but so did Moses and the prophets.
The miracles of Jesus no more prove his divinity

1 Col. i. 15-20. Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 210 seq.
2 Col. i. 16, 17.

THE KENOSIS 115
than the miracles of Moses prove his divinity.
Indeed the Pharisees and the people regarded the
miracles of Jesus as less than those of Moses, and
as altogether insufficient to prove that he was
the Messiah, to say nothing of his divinity.1
There is nothing in the miracle-working of Jesus
anywhere that cannot be explained as the work
of a prophet. In fact, according to the Gospels,
no one thought he was divine because of his
miracles. At the most they were convinced that
he was a prophet of God or the Messiah.2 Shall
we then suppose that Jesus was unconscious of
divine power when he deliberately chose to limit
himself to the use of human power under the im
pulse of God's Spirit ? It is not necessary to
think so. Jesus deliberately refrained from using
his divine power. He intentionally submitted
himself to violence and wrong without resistance.
He himself illustrated his own principle of love
by turning his cheek to the smiter and praying
for those who crucified him. Nothing is more
sublime than the scene of the betrayal when
Jesus told St. Peter to put up his sword and
healed the ear of Malchus which had been cut
off, while he said that more than twelve legions

1 John vi. 30-31. 2 Mark viii. 27-29.

116 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
of angels were at his call.1 He testified under
oath before the Sanhedrim that he was the Messiah
and that they would see him enthroned at the
right hand of power and coming in the clouds of
heaven ; 2 and yet he submitted patiently while
they spat on him and abused him.3 No greater
irony is known to the world's history than the
real king of the Jews, the King of Kings and
Lord of Lords, crowned with thorns, clad in a
purple robe, and holding a reed as sceptre, sub
mitting to the mockery of a brutal soldiery.4
Never did the Messiah put forth his divine power
from the day of his birth until his death. We
wonder how he could have so restrained him
self and so emptied himself of his omnipotence.
Wonderful self-restraint, self-humiliation beyond
compare, long-suffering infinite, patience divine !
5. The question now arises, how far the in
carnate Son of God emptied himself of divine
wisdom, how far he could refrain from exercising
his divine intelligence and be subject to human
ignorance and error. So far as the divine wis
dom is intuitive, and so far as it sums up all

1 Matt. xxvi. 51-53 ; Mark xiv. 47-49; Luke xxii. 49-53;
John xviii. 10, 11.
2 Mark xiv. 61-63. 8 Mark xiv. 65.
4 Mark xv. 16-20.

THE KENOSIS 117
things in a holy ideal and a divine decree, it could
not have been emptied from the consciousness of
the Son of God when he became man. But it
might have been kept secret ; he might have ab
stained from its use, either for his own benefit or
that of others, during his earthly ministry ; and
he might have so concentrated his attention in
his human intelligence as to banish from his con
sciousness for a time his divine knowledge. It
is necessary for us to suppose that Jesus had a
human mind as well as a divine mind. The
human mind of the child Jesus was as empty of
content at the beginning as that of any other
man child. Jesus is represented in the Gospel
of St. Luke as growing in wisdom as well as in
stature. The mind of Jesus had to be trained in
the family, in the school, in society, at the car
penter's bench, and in the great world, as truly
as the mind of any other child in Nazareth at
the time. The human mind of Jesus was at first
incapable of the contents of the divine mind, and
could not appropriate these contents except grad
ually. When Jesus used the powers of human
speech he spake human concepts from his human
mind, he used human memory, even though he
was sub-conscious of the possession of the divine
mind of his divine nature.

118 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
The human mind was ignorant of all that it
had not learned, and it was not possible for it to
grasp in human conception the perfect knowledge
of the divine mind of the Son of the Father. If
Jesus had a double mind, we must recognize the
difference between his human and his divine
mind, no matter how docile and capable his
human mind may have been. We cannot deny
the human mind of Jesus without destroying his
essential humanity. We may suppose, however,
that he restrained his divine wisdom from in
structing his human mind in order that his
human mind might grow in knowledge as any
other man's mind might grow, and that it might
depend upon the divine Spirit and communion
with the heavenly Father as any other man
must depend. We may also think that the
human mind could only gradually learn from the
divine mind of the Son of God, as the human
mind grew in the ability to use the memory and
the reason. It is impossible that the divine mind
dominated the faculties of the human mind, in
fusing divine conception and divine memory into-
it. For that would be a confusing the two
minds, and mixing the two natures of the Son
of God.
There can be no doubt of the wonderful wis-

THE KENOSIS 119
dom and knowledge of Jesus as exhibited in his
teachings, but there is nothing that cannot be
explained from the point of view of the Messianic
prophet speaking in the energy of the Spirit
which he possessed beyond measure, and out
of the communion with the Father which
the Son ever enjoyed. There is no evidence
that Jesus spake out from the wisdom of his
divine nature, or that he spake his prophetic
mind as it was taught of his own divine mind,
except, possibly, a few passages in St. John's
Gospel, spoken esoterically to the Twelve, near
the close of his life.
We ought not to be surprised, therefore, that
Jesus should confess that he did not know the
day of his second advent.1 As the Son of God,
the second person of the Trinity, in his divine
mind, he knew it as really as the Father did.
But when he spoke as a prophet, he spoke out
of his human mind, as the divine Spirit taught
him and inspired him, — he did not speak out of
his divine mind. It is indeed difficult for us to
understand how Jesus could be conscious in his
divine mind of knowledge of an event, and yet
conscious in his human mind of ignorance of an

Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. xxiv. 36.

120 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
event ; or that he could say that he did not know
as man what he really knew as God ; but we
may understand it in part by analogy. Man has
the power of concentrating the attention of his
consciousness upon a definite area of knowledge,
and of banishing from consciousness, for a season,
that which is beyond that area. It is quite pos
sible to be unable to know and to tell, at any
particular time, what, under other circumstances
and at other times, we know thoroughly well.
Those who have the greatest power of concen
tration, those who are most gifted to solve the
problems of life, know this well. It was, there
fore, psychologically entirely possible for Jesus
not to know as man in his consciousness what he
knew as God in his subconsciousness. His divine
knowledge might have been dormant in subcon
sciousness when he was conscious that he was
speaking and thinking as a man. This is still
easier to understand when we know that the
faculties of conception and memory, upon which
speech depend, must have been entirely indepen
dent in their activity in the human mind of Jesus
from the action of the same kind of faculties in
the divine mind, and that, therefore, he did not
and could not conceive, remember, and speak as
a man what he conceived and remembered as

THE KENOSIS 121
God, without an instruction of the human mind
by the divine mind, even in the one consciousness
of Jesus himself. From this point of view it
was quite possible that Jesus in his human
knowledge may not only have spoken and acted
in the limited area of the knowledge of his own
age as to many things ; but that he did not really
know in human knowledge any more than he
had been- taught ; and that in his human knowl
edge he was subject to the ordinary errors of the
men of his times, except so far as he had learned
to overcome them. This does not at all interfere
with the doctrine that he was infallible in his
teaching. For it is no more necessary to invoke
the divinity of Christ to prove the infallibility of
his doctrine, than it is to invoke divinity to prove
the infallibility of Moses and the prophets, the
evangelists and the apostles.
During his earthly ministry the Son of God
refrained from using his divine wisdom ; he
refrained from letting the light of divine truth
shine from his divine conception and memory
into his human conception and memory, except
so far as his human mind was capable of it. He
emptied himself of it all in order that he might
have the likeness of men in his knowledge, and
the form of a prophetic servant in his wisdom.

122 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
6. What shall we say as to the moral and
religious character of Jesus ? Did he begin with
a perfection of character ? This is not the teach
ing of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which repre
sents that he was made perfect by sufferings, and
that he was tempted in all points as men are, yet
without sin.1 And Jesus tells us that he sancti
fied himself.2 In fact Jesus grew in righteousness
and holiness, and was perfected in faith and love,
just as other men are, — by temptations, by trials,
by sufferings, and by the exercise of his moral
and religious faculties, in the practice of good
and abstinence from evil. He was innocent and
sinless at the beginning of his life, and he retained
his innocence and sinlessness throughout his life,
while he was ever as a son giving entire and
perfect satisfaction to his Father. The perfect
holiness and infinite love that were involved in
the divine nature of the Son of the Father, were
doubtless in his consciousness, and influenced in
some measure the development of his human
nature ; and yet we are justified in supposing
that the Kenosis extended even to this sphere,
and that Jesus, in his human nature, grew in
grace, holiness, and love, as any man could grow

1 Heb. iv. 15, v. 8, 9- See Sermon VII., p. 156.
2 John xvii. 19-

THE KENOSIS 123
who lived in communion with God under the
influence of the divine Spirit ; and that the holi
ness of the divine nature of the Son of the Father
did not constrain the free development, under
temptation and discipline, of the moral and reli
gious nature of the man Jesus. It was necessary,
if he were to be head and norm of humanity,
that the man Christ Jesus should by moral
growth transform the possibility of sinning into
an ethical impossibility of sinning.
Thus, in all the being and attributes of the
Son of God, as pre-existent in the form of God,
there was a self-emptying, a self-divesting, a self-
renunciation of them so far as the form and
appearance of the man Christ Jesus was con
cerned, which was not merely when the incar
nation began, at the moment of his conception
or birth, but which continued throughout the
earthly life of Jesus ; so that we have to think of
a continual Kenosis, a continuous withholding
of the form of God, and a continuous unfolding
of the form of man, a continuous entering into
the human nature of a knowledge of and life in
the divine nature, a continuous entering into the
divine nature of the experiences of the human
nature ; and all with a determined adherence of
the Son of God to the likeness of the servant,

124 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
until the death of the cross, and the descent into
the abode of the dead, brought the Kenosis to its
end. During all that time of somewhat more
than thirty years the Son of God was more and
more incarnating himself in the man Jesus, as the
man became more and more capable of the divine ;
he was all the time voluntarily and fully empty
ing himself of the form of God, withholding,
refraining from, and abstaining from the use of
his divine life and attributes, until the goal was
at last reached of a perfect humanity. Just so
soon as human perfection in obedience and love
was reached and tested in his mediatorial death,
the exaltation began, and the Messiah received
the reward of his perfect obedience and perfect
conformity to the divine ideal. Then the hu
manity had become fully capable of divinity, and
was filled full of deity, and the Son of God
became perfect humanity ; the divine and the
human came into perfect unity and harmony in
the divine-human person of the Messiah, who
was then exalted to equality with God, and given
the name above every name, and was worshipped
by all creatures as Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.

VI
THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR

VI
THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR
Suffer hardship with the gospel according to the power
of God ; who saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not
according to our works, but according to his own purpose and
grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal,
but hath now been manifested by the appearing of our Saviour
Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and incor
ruption to light through the gospel. — 2 Tim. i. 8-10.
THE Epistles to Timothy and Titus constitute
the so-called Pastoral Epistles, because, in
substance, they contain pastoral advice to these
two companions and helpers of St. Paul. If they
were written by St. Paul, they represent a Chris
tian knowledge and experience some years
further on than the Epistles of the Imprisonment,
and it is necessary for us to assume that the
apostle was released from his first imprisonment
at Rome, and then, after a brief period of mis
sionary journeys, was again arrested, and was
imprisoned a second time, before he was finally
condemned to death, and was executed.

128 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Although this is the opinion of many scholars,
and it seems to be altogether probable, there is
not sufficient evidence to lift it above all doubt.
Those modern scholars who deny his second im
prisonment feel for the most part compelled to
suppose that these epistles were written by dis
ciples of St. Paul ; but they disagree whether
there were original letters of St. Paul to Timothy
and Titus, which constitute the nucleus of the
present epistles, or whether they were altogether
the work of disciples of St. Paul. In any case,
these epistles represent a later stage of the
school of St. Paul. This is certainly true of the
doctrine of the incarnation. There are several
references to the incarnation in these epistles ;
thus : " Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all
acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners." l " He who was mani
fested in the flesh." 2
In this last passage as well as in the text, the
incarnation is conceived as an epiphany or mani
festation. Epiphany, in ecclesiastical usage in
the Eastern Church, refers to the baptism of
Christ when he was first manifested to men as the
Messiah. But in the Western Church it usually

1 1 Tim. i. 15.
2 1 Tim. iii. 16; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 229 seq.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 129
refers to the manifestation to the three wise men
from the East, in connection with the theophanic
star.1 But there is also an ancient reference to
Christmas Day as the great epiphany or birthday
of Christ into the world.
The term epiphany is used in the New Testa
ment, in both its nominal and verbal forms, at first
for the appearance of Jesus Christ at his second
advent to judge the world 2 and so commonly in
the pastorals.3 But in the First Epistle of St.
Peter,4 and the First Epistle of St. John,5 it is
also used for the first advent or the incarnation,
as well as in the two passages already given from
the pastorals. This change of usage, by which a
term originally applied to the second advent
was transferred to the first advent, and used
indifferently of both advents, is quite significant,
because it indicates a firmer and more assured
grasp of the doctrine of Christ's heavenly pre-
existence. The first advent is just as truly an
appearance of the Son of God, and manifestation
from a state of heavenly pre-existence, as his
second advent will be an appearance and mani
festation of one who has been in heaven from

1 Matt. ii. 1-12. 2 1 Peter v. 4; Col. iii. 4.
3 1 Tim. vi. 14 ; Titus ii. 13; 2 Tim. iv. 1.
4 1 Peter i. 20. 6 1 John iii. 5, 8.
9 '

130 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
his resurrection to his second advent. In other
words, the pastorals conceive of the incarnation
and the second advent as both alike appearances
or manifestations of the Son of God, coming out
from a heavenly life with God into the world of
man. The author of these passages was as firm
in his doctrine of the real pre-existence of Christ
before the incarnation, as he was of his medi
atorial reign before the second advent. He
regards both advents alike as episodes in the
larger and more comprehensive life of the Son
of God.
The term epiphany, which means appearing,
appearance, manifestation, has associated with it
the more concrete idea of light and brilliancy of
appearance. It was used by the Greeks for the
glorious manifestations of the gods ; so it is appro
priate to the second advent of our Lord which
is a christophany with visible signs of light and
fire and glory. So it is appropriate to the epiph
any of the star of the wise men. The associations
of the term, in classic Greek and in the ordinary
New Testament usage, with theophanies, suggest
that the author of the pastorals conceived "of the
incarnation as theophanic in character.
1. The epiphany of Christ in the incarnation
was essentially a theophanic manifestation of the

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 131
pre-existent Son of God. This is tersely ex
pressed in the first line of the credal hymn : " He
who was manifested in the flesh." 1 That is, the
Son of God, pre-existent in heaven, came out of
the invisible world into the visible world, came
forth from heaven to the earth, and he became
visible, appeared in, and was manifested in
flesh. How can we reconcile this conception of the
incarnation as a theophany, with the statement
of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Philippians that
the incarnation was a self-emptying ? We have
seen that the apostle there taught the putting
away of the form and appearance of God, and of
all rank and equality with God, and a hiding, a
restraining, a keeping secret all that was divine,
so as to live and act in the appearance of man, in
the form of a servant. The conceptions do not
coincide ; they are from different points of view.
The reason of it is that St. Paul, in the Epistle to
the Philippians, emphasized the humiliation of
Christ to the utmost, in its several stages, in
order to give the antithesis of his exaltation as
Lord of all ; but in this epistle the humiliation
of Christ is entirely out of mind ; the writer is

1 1 Tim. iii. 16.

132 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
thinking only of the great benefits brought into
the world by Christ, and he conceives of these
benefits as appearances or manifestations. We
have found it necessary to think of a gradual
Kenosis. It is still more necessary in the inter
pretation of the epiphany to think of a gradual
manifestation, because that, which the writer
specifies as manifestations of the epiphany, extends
over the entire earthly life of Jesus ; namely, the
manifestation of the grace of God, the appearance
of Christ as Saviour, and the bringing to light of
life and incorruption.
The mind of St. Paul, if he wrote these words,
or of his disciple, if he knew the mind of his
teacher, was prepared by the statement in the
Epistle to the Corinthians that Christ was in the
theophanic angel of the Exodus x who led Israel
up out of Egypt into the Holy Land. If Christ
was this theophanic angel, the most important of
all the historical theophanies, then this involves
the conception that all the theophanic manifesta
tions of the Old Testament were manifestations
of the pre-existent Son of God, and that they
all led on in several stages of preparation for the
culminating act when the Son of God manifested

1 Sermon IV., p. 86.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 133
himself in human flesh. The conception of the
Kenosis does not exclude the conception of this
theophanic manifestation.
The incarnation may be conceived as an ap
pearance or manifestation of the Son of God in
the flesh, the culmination of all theophanies,
without the necessary implication that it was
nothing more than a theophany. To think of
the incarnation as a mission from God the Father
does not exclude the later conception that the
incarnation was a self-emptying of the form of
God ; the doctrine of the self-emptying is not in
consistent with the conception of the theophanic
manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh.
No more does the theophanic manifestation ex
clude the later and higher doctrines that the Son
of God took hold of the flesh and blood of the
children of Abraham,1 and that he became flesh,
and took human nature into organic union with
himself as the eternal God-man.2 The Holy
Spirit was gradually training the Apostolic Church
to understand the mystery of the incarnation.
The conception of the incarnation as the theo
phanic manifestation of the Son of God in the
flesh, the culmination, realization, and fulfilment

1 Sermon VII. 2 Sermon IX.

134 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
of all theophanies, is true and suggestive so far
as it goes ; but it is not the complete and final
statement of the doctrine. Those who build
their faith on it alone, and deduce from it all its
consequences, as if it contained all the truth and
facts of the case, fall inevitably into error. Some
of the early Christian sects are beacons of warn
ing in this respect. But with this caution, it is
sufficient at present to abide by the teaching of
the pastorals, and reserve the higher doctrine for
later study.
The pastorals teach that Jesus appeared or
manifested himself in the flesh, and that this
manifestation was essentially theophanic of the
pre-existent Son of God.
2. The epiphany of Christ was a manifesta
tion of the grace of God.
The grace of God was in the purpose of God
before times eternal. Before all time, Christ was
the predetermined bearer of the grace of God
into the world of man. Prior to the promise of
redemption to our first parents, prior to the first
sin, and ages before those first things of the
earth and man, before all the ages, God had a
purpose of grace that, at a certain definite time
in the history of the world, He would realize in
His Son. This purpose was a secret purpose, it

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 135
was hidden in the decree of God, it was a
mystery unknown even to angels, it was mani
fested for the first time in the epiphany of Jesus
Christ. Thus the First Epistle of St. Peter
represents that the Lamb " foreknown indeed be
fore the foundation of the world — was manifested
at the last of the times." x So the Epistle to Titus
tells us : " For the grace of God hath appeared,
bringing salvation to all men, instructing us, to
the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly
lusts, we should live soberly and righteously and
godly in this present age."2 So the Second
Epistle of St. Peter represents all ancient proph
ecy as a lamp shining in a dark place ; but in
Jesus Christ the day of redemption dawned.3
The whole history of Israel was a history
of redemption through the grace of God. The
entire Old Testament is a revelation of a plan
and purpose of grace which was in process
of development. That development came to a
head in Christ and his gospel. The love of God
the heavenly Father, a pre-existent, anticipatory
love, an eternal purpose of grace, became mani
fest in Christ at the incarnation.
But this manifestation was only gradually

1 1 Peter i. 20. 2 Titus ii. 11, 12. ° 2 Peter i. 19.

136 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
made. It was not manifest except potentially at
the birth of Christ, in connection with the the
ophanies which accompanied the birth according
to the Gospel of the Infancy ; but it began to be
manifest in Christ, in his teachings, and in his
works of love, and, above all, in his life and death
of love. So that looking back over the life of
Jesus in this world as a first advent, over against
the future second advent, it was conceived in
these pastorals as a manifestation of the grace of
God in Christ Jesus, — a grace bringing salva
tion to all men, and instructing them in a godly
life. 3. The epiphany of Jesus Christ was a mani
festation of our Saviour. Jesus Christ came
into the world to save sinners.1 So soon as he
appeared in this world in human flesh, the
Saviour of the world appeared. The great ini
tial act of the incarnation was in itself a redemp
tive act upon which all other redemptive acts of
the Son of God depended. But it was only the
initial act which did not in itself, apart from the
subsequent acts of the Son of God, manifest him
to be a Saviour. It is true that the theophanic
manifestation of the heavenly choir guided the

1 1 Tim. i. 15.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 137
shepherds of Bethlehem to the manger where
their Saviour was laid,1 and the theophanic star
led the wise men from the East to worship the
infant king of the Jews ;2 but these theophanic
manifestations were not manifestations in and
from the flesh of the Messianic child. So Simeon
saw in him the salvation prepared before the face
of all people ; 3 but he was in the Spirit, and was
enlightened in his spirit by the divine Spirit ; he
did not see any manifestation of the Saviour in
the flesh or from the flesh of the babe in his arms.
These were all epiphanies leading to a recogni
tion of Jesus as Saviour, not epiphanies of Jesus
himself as Saviour. So at his baptism there was
an epiphany or manifestation, in that the voice
of the Father recognized him as the well-beloved
Son, and the divine Spirit came upon him in the
form of a dove, and he was thus made manifest
as the Son of God, the Messiah.4 But even
here, so far as we can learn from the narratives,
there was no manifestation going forth from
Christ's own flesh ; there was no appearance in
his flesh that manifested that he was the Saviour
of the world. Jesus manifested that he was the
Saviour by his words of salvation to men, and
1 Luke ii. 8-20. 2 Matt. ii. 1-12.
3 Luke ii. 25-35. 4 Mark i. 9-1 1.

138 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
his acts of salvation for them during his ministry
on earth ; but especially when by his death and
resurrection he manifested in christophany that he
was the Saviour of the world. This is the view that
the Epistle to the Hebrews takes where it says :
" But now once at the end of the ages hath he
been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself." x Therefore, as we are obliged to
interpret the manifestation of the Epistle to the
Hebrews as a manifestation culminating in his
sacrifice for sin, so we must interpret the mani
festation of the Saviour of the pastorals as a
manifestation of himself as Saviour in his work
as Saviour, and so as virtually comprehending
his entire earthly career. The manifestation of
the Saviour was thus a gradual one, beginning
with the birth, extending through the life, and
culminating in the death and resurrection of
Christ Jesus ; just as the Kenosis was a gradual
one in a similar way.
4. Jesus Christ in his epiphany manifested,
or brought to light, life and incorruption. The
Revised Version correctly renders the Greek
word, d^Oapaia, by incorruption. The " immor
taUty " of the Authorized Version leads to mis-

1 Heb. ix. 26.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 139
understanding of the author's meaning. There
is a difference between immortal life and a life
that knoAvs no corruption. Associated with this
bringing of incorruptible life to light is the abo
lition of death. We are reminded of the First
Epistle to the Corinthians, where the abolition
of death, the last enemy, is attributed to the final
work of the second advent.1 Here the abolition
of death is conceived as the manifestation of the
first advent and the work of the incarnation.
This is because it is in antithesis with the bring
ing to light of life and incorruption. We are
also reminded of the man from heaven with the
life-giving spirit of the Epistle to the Corin
thians.2 As I have said elsewhere : " It is quite
true that the Messiah does not, in fact, become
a quickening spirit to mankind until the resurrec
tion of the dead at the Parousia ; that he first
took his position at the head of redeemed hu
manity as a heavenly, life-giving spirit when he
rose from the dead and was enthroned in heaven ;
and that he first appeared to men as life-giving
spirit when he rose from the dead. But in accord
ance with John x. 18, Christ must have been a
life-giving spirit before his resurrection, or he

1 1 Cor. xv. 24-26. 2 1 Cor. xv. 45. See Sermon IV., pp. 92.

140 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
could not have had authority to lay his life
down and take it again. According to John v.
21, the Son had in himself, as the Son, the power
to quicken whom he would. The life-giving
power was not communicated to the Son when
the Father raised him from the dead ; but it
belonged to the Son, as the Son of the Father.
Accordingly, that principle of life must have
entered the world with him. He became the
Second Adam — the man from heaven — at his
incarnation, just as he was born as the Mes
sianic king. But he did not begin his reign until
his ascension. He does not, in fact, become a
life-giving spirit to men until the Parousia." 1
So also in the Epistle to the Hebrews the vic
tory over death is attached to the first advent.
" Since, then, the children are sharers in flesh and
blood, he also himself in like manner partook of
the same ; that through death he might bring to
nought him that had the power of death, that is,
the devil ; and might deliver all them who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to
bondage." 2 We may also think of the words of
the Epistle to the Romans : " There is, there
fore, now no condemnation to them that are in

1 Messiah of the Apostles, p. 117.
2 Heb. ii. 14, 15.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 141
Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin
and of death." 1
It is evident from these passages that different
authors, and even the same authors in different
writings, take somewhat different views as to the
relation of the victory over death and the mani
festation of incorruptible life, in the several
stages in the work of Christ for our salvation.
These differences do not involve inconsistencies
of statement, but differences of point of view,
all of which must be comprehended in any com
plete doctrinal statement.
In the pastorals the abolition of death and the
manifestation of incorruptible life are attached to
the manifestation of Christ at his first advent,
that is, to the incarnation. The Son of God,
when he was manifested in the flesh, manifested
or brought to light an incorruptible life. His
flesh was human flesh. It was in the likeness of
sinful flesh, as the Epistle to the Romans ex
presses it ; but it was not sinful flesh, and so was
not itself under the dominion of sin and death.
So his flesh was in the likeness of corruptible
flesh, but it was incorruptible. The flesh of the
incarnate Saviour knew no corruption. Being
1 Rom. viii. 1, 2.

142 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
in the likeness of sinful flesh, he was subjected
to the penalty of sinful flesh, and was condemned
as guilty. Being in the likeness of corruptible
flesh, he was beaten and put to death. But his
flesh was as incorruptible as it was sinless.
This was a new manifestation to the world.
All flesh of men prior to the flesh of Christ had
been sinful and corruptible and under the do
minion of death. His flesh was a flesh that sin
could not control or corrupt, and that death
could not conquer. The incorruptible life of the
Son of God in the flesh was not here the divine
life of the Son of God ; it was the human life in
the flesh, in which the Son of God manifested
himself. There is, therefore, no necessity of cor
ruption and death in human flesh ; that corrup
tion is due to the dominion of sin and death.
The man Christ Jesus, living entirely apart from
the dominion of sin and death, and entirely in
communion with God, lived a normal, incorrup
tible life in the flesh, and so for the first time in
history brought life and incorruption to light.
This was a fact at the beginning and at every
stage in the life of Jesus ; but it reached its cul
mination in the resurrection when the flesh of
Jesus Christ came forth incorruptible into the
life of the enthroned and glorified Redeemer.

THE EPIPHANY OF OUR SAVIOUR 143
This manifestation of incorruptible life was
also a manifestation which enlightens mankind
with the light of life. Jesus was the resurrection
and the life to all who believed in him, so soon
as they entered into communion with him. As
Jesus said, according to the Gospel of St. John :
" He that heareth my word, and believeth Him
that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not
into judgment, but hath passed out of death into
life."1 This is so far as the essential spiritual
life of the regenerate man is concerned. But
the full accomplishment of the abolition of death
and the enjoyment of incorruptible life can only
be at the final resurrection. As says the Epistle
to the Philippians : " For our commonwealth is
in heaven ; from whence also we wait for a
Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ : who shall fashion
anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be
conformed to the body of his glory, according to
the working whereby he is able even to subdue all
things unto himself." 2 Then first, according to
the Epistle to the Corinthians : " This corruptible
must put on incorruption and this mortal must
put on immortality. But when this corruptible
shall have put on incorruption and this mortal

1 John v. 24. 2 Phil. iii. 20, 21.

144 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
shall have put on immortality, then shall come
to pass the saying that is written, Death is
swallowed up in victory." '
The Epiphany of Christ Jesus is thus a theo
phanic manifestation of the pre-existent Son of
God, a manifestation of the grace of God, a
manifestation of our Saviour, and a manifesta
tion of incorruptible life. This manifestation
began when Jesus Christ was born in human
flesh ; but it only gradually overcame the dark
ness of this world, shining forth more and more
during the earthly life of Jesus, and rising into
full noontide glory at the Resurrection.
1 1 Cor. xv. 53, 54.

VII
MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN

VII
MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN
Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he
also himself in like manner partook of the same ; that through
death he might bring to nought him that had the power of
death, that is, the devil ; and might deliver all them who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
For verily not of angels doth he take hold, but he taketh
hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behoved him in
all things to be made like unto his brethren, that he might
be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining
to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. —
Heb. ii. 14-17.
THE Epistle to the Hebrews was not written
by St. Paul, as many have supposed, but
by a Christian from Alexandria, like Ap°fl°s-
The author represents a different point of view of
Christ and his salvation from that of St. Paul ;
and indeed a much later one, which did not
emerge until subsequent to the death of the
apostle. We should expect, therefore, another
view of the incarnation, and a later and further
development of the conception of the entrance
of the Son of God into the world.

148 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
We have seen that the earliest conception of
St. Paul in the Epistle to the Galatians, was that
the incarnation was a mission from the Father,
that the more advanced conception of the Epistle
to the Philippians was a Kenosis or emptying
himself of the form of God, taking the form of
man. In the pastorals, the conception was of
an epiphany or theophanic manifestation of the
Son of God from heaven in human flesh. The
Epistle to the Hebrews now conceives that the
relation of the Son of God to human flesh was
much closer than an epiphany or manifestation
in it ; the Son of God shared in flesh and blood
in common with all the children of men ; he par
took of the same flesh as other men, he took hold
of the seed of Abraham to help them, he was in
all things made like unto his brethren.
1. The Son of God did not take hold of angels,
but he took hold of the seed of Abraham. The
taking hold here is the appropriation, the assump
tion of the nature and being in order to help
them. He did not take hold of angels ; but he
did take hold of the children of Abraham to help
them. The Epistle to the Hebrews conceives of
the pre-existent Son of God in a more compre
hensive and thoroughgoing way than any pre
vious epistle. The nearest to it is the Epistle to

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 149
the Colossians. The Epistle to the Colossians
represents that all things were created through
the Son of God and unto him ; the Epistle to
the Hebrews, that he is the appointed heir of
all things, through whom God made the ages.
The Epistle to the Colossians represents the Son
of God as the image of the invisible God ; the
Epistle to the Hebrews, that he is the effulgence
of the divine glory and the very image of his sub
stance. The Epistle to the Colossians 1 represents
that in the Son of God all things consist ; the
Epistle to the Hebrews, that he upholds all things
by the word of his power.2
Thus the Son of God prior to his incarnation
was the mediator of the creation and government
of the world, the appointed heir and sovereign of
all creatures. He was higher than the angels
and archangels ; he was above every order and
rank of created beings ; he was the one only son
and heir of the Father, who represented God to
the entire creation. The author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews conceives of the Son of God in
his unique exaltation looking down the rank of
beings he had created. Which of these ranks
shall he lay hold of in his purpose of redemption ?
1 Col. i. 12-22 ; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 210 seq.
2 Heb. i. 1-14 ; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 243 seq.

150 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Shall he lay hold of the archangels, of the
thrones, the principalities, the dominions, the
powers, — those several ranks of angels mentioned
in the epistles ? Or shall he lay hold of the low
est rank of angelic beings, the ordinary min
istering angel ? This possibility is mentioned only
to be rejected. In his theophanic manifestation
to the patriarchs he had manifested himself in
angelic forms, and so especially in that most
striking of all theophanies, the Angel of the Pres
ence, who led Israel up out of Egypt to the Holy
Land. Why not take the form of an angel and
appear among men as an angel from heaven ?
Such an incarnation would be welcomed by Israel.
It was somewhat in accordance with their ex
pectations. But as man was at his creation made
a little lower than the angels, so the Son of God
descends below the rank of the angels to the rank
of a son of man, and among the sons of men
selects the children of Abraham and lays hold of
that which is common to the seed of Abraham.
This does not imply that the Son of God in
his incarnation limited his purpose of salvation to
the seed of Abraham, which he took to himself ;
for the Epistle to the Hebrews regards Christ's
salvation as for the race of man ; and the Epistle
to the Colossians represents the angels as sharing

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 151
in the reconciliation of Christ.1 It is rather that
the Son of God descends down through the orders
of angels, below the rank of angels, to the rank
of man, and the rank of a man of a people in
bondage, in order that, as he reascended the ranks
of creatures, he may redeem them all.
2. The Son of God partook of flesh and blood.
He shared with his brethren in flesh and blood
that he might share with them in sufferings and
death. He tasted sufferings and death in order
that he might, in his own experience, battle with
them and overcome them ; for he was waging a
holy war against the devil, the supreme power of
evil, for the redemption of mankind. We have
seen in the Epistle to the Philippians that the
Kenosis extended to the death of the cross,2 and
in the pastorals that the epiphany of Christ
abolished death and brought life and incorruption
to light.3 Here the author looks deeper into the
relation of Christ to the flesh and the conse
quences of his death in the flesh. The flesh of
the Son of God was assumed not merely for pur
poses of manifestation. He assumed the flesh as
a flesh sensitive to pain and suffering, which he
undertook to experience in his work of salvation.
1 Messiah of the Apostles, p. 21 6.
2 Sermon V., p. 123. 8 Sermon VI., p. 135.

152 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
He partook of human blood, that he might
experience its pulsations and pour it forth volun
tarily, in the wounds of the scourge and the
cross. He tasted death for every one ; that is, he
went through the same experience of death as
other men for their salvation. It is altogether
probable that the experience was much more bit
ter to him than to other men. For the Epistle to
the Hebrews tells us that : " In the days of his
flesh, having offered up prayers and supplications
with strong crying and tears unto Him that was
able to save him from death, and having been
heard for his godly fear, though he was Son, yet
learned he obedience by the things which he
suffered." 1 This is probably in reference to the
scene in Gethsemane described by St. Luke :
"And being in an agony he prayed more ear
nestly : and his sweat became as it were great
drops of blood falling down upon the ground." 2
There can be no doubt, therefore, that Jesus
suffered extraordinary agony in the contempla
tion of his impending death. He agonized in
prayer to the Father that if it were possible he
might be spared the experience. But it was not
possible. In no other way could he accomplish

1 Heb. v. 7, 8. 2 Luke xxii. 44.

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 153
the death-struggle with death for the salvation
of men. So the narrative of the crucifixion
makes it evident that Jesus suffered a most cruel,
painful, and shameful death. The officers of the
Sanhedrim spat on him and beat him. The
soldiers crowned him with a crown of thorns, and
smote him with the reed sceptre, and abused him
in every way. He was scourged by command
of Pilate, and his back was scarred with the
stripes. He was so weakened by this cruel treat
ment that he was physically unable to bear his
cross to the place of crucifixion. He was then
nailed to the cross, and hung there in pain and
deadly anguish, amidst mockery and abuse, until
he died. His agony was so great that it seemed
as if God the Father had forsaken him. It would
be difficult to find anywhere in human history a
more bitter experience in death than Jesus the
Son of God suffered. At the time when he thus
suffered, he had become perfect in his human
nature by obedience. His human nature had
become capable of the divine. The human
nature and the divine nature of the Son of God
had harmonized and become unified in his divine-
human personality. Therefore it was in a full
knowledge and consciousness of his divinity that
he suffered this terrible experience of death.

154 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Being himself the resurrection and the life, having
in himself divine life of which he could not be
deprived, he yet voluntarily submitted to all this
experience of pain, agony, shame, and death.
Death did its worst with him. The devil, who
had the power of death, put forth all his power
in testing him and trying him to the utter
most. The devil exhausted himself in the death
of the Son of God, so that when the Son of God
rose from the state of death, the devil was over
come, stripped of his power and dominion, not
only for the Messiah himself, but for all those who
belong to the Messiah. So the Book of Revela
tion represents the Messiah as himself saying :
" I am the first and the last, and the living one ;
and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for ever
more, and I have the keys of death and of Hades "
(the abode of the dead).1 The power of the devil
having been destroyed so far as Christ was con
cerned, and death abolished by the resurrection of
Christ, an entirely new face was put on the des
tiny of humanity. For the Son of God gained his
triumph not for himself. He became incarnate
for the redemption of mankind. He won victory
over death and the devil for all his brethren.

1 Rev. i. 17, 18.

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 155
Therefore they have nothing more to fear from
death or the devil. They are no longer liable to
the dominion of death ; they have been delivered
from the bondage of the dread of it. Life and
incorruption have been brought to light, — life,
everlasting life in union and communion with
Jesus Christ. The Son of God partook of human
flesh and blood in order that, through his experi
ence of agony in the flesh and the shedding of
blood, he might deliver mankind from the agony
of the dread of death and the dominion of the
sovereign of death.
3. The Son of God was made like unto his
brethren, that he might be a merciful and faith
ful high-priest.
We have seen in the Epistle to the Philippians
that the Son of God was made in the likeness of
men ; 1 so here he was made like unto his breth
ren. There it was the likeness of men over
against the form and appearance of God. Here
it is like unto the brethren in sharing with the
brethren in a common likeness. All that was
common to the brethren, Jesus shared with them.
The Epistle to the Hebrews lays great stress
upon human experience. Thus, as we have seen,

1 Sermon V., p. 108.

156 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Jesus was perfected by sufferings. He was vol
untarily poor ; he had not where to lay his head ;
he was without money or property of any kind.
He suffered hunger and thirst, as in the tempta
tion in the wilderness. He suffered hardship
and exposure. He was in peril of death when
he was born in Bethlehem ; and in constant peril
of arrest, and condemnation to death, during his
brief earthly ministry. All this was a hard dis
cipline, a life of trial and suffering. In most
men such an experience would embitter them,
make them sour and melancholic, censorious and
pessimistic. But Jesus was perfected by his suf
ferings. They were a divine discipline that
trained his pure childhood and innocent youth
into the perfect righteousness of right conduct,
and of holy love as a Son of God.
The likeness of Jesus with his brethren is
chiefly viewed in the Epistle to the Hebrews as
a likeness of temptation, as a moral discipline in
order to perfect the Messiah as the great high-
priest. " For in that he himself hath suffered
being tempted, he is able to succor them that
are tempted." x " For we have not a high priest
that cannot be touched with the feeling of our

1 Heb. ii. 18.

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 157
infirmities ; but one that hath been in all points
tempted like as we are, yet without sin." %
The apostle here teaches that Jesus was like
his brethren in all points of temptation, and that
he differed from them alone in the results of the
temptation. They were sinful, he was without
sin. Temptation is ordinarily assigned to three
sources, — the world, the flesh, and the devil.
(a) The statements of the New Testament
present to us a conflict between Jesus and the
devil which extends from the temptation in the
wilderness, before the public ministry began,
until the struggle on the cross and in the abode
of the dead, with the final victory which was in
the resurrection. It is safe to say that no human
being has ever had to sustain such a severe trial
and intensity of temptation by the devil as Jesus
experienced. He overcame it all, and remained
sinless, triumphantly righteous, and loving in
self-sacrifice. (b) The life of Jesus also makes it plain that
he had to sustain a terrible strain of temptation
from the world. The world was against him as
it was never before against any man. He had

1 Heb. iv. 15.

158 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
no help from the world. He lived a life of
abstinence from all that the world regards as
attractive and desirable. The world was his
enemy : in the Jewish authorities, in the royal
house of Herod, and in the Roman governor ;
even in the populace, who cried out against him,
" Crucify him, crucify him." The whole world
conspired to urge him to change his teachings
and abandon his career under the penalty of per
secution and death. He tells his experience to
his disciples in the Gospel of St. John : " If the
world hateth you, ye know that it hath hated
me before it hated you. If ye were of the world,
the world would love its own : but because ye
are not of the world, but I chose you out of the
world, therefore the world hateth you. Remem
ber the word that I said unto you, A servant
is not greater than his lord. If they have per
secuted me, they will also persecute you." 1
(c) As for the temptation that arises from the
flesh, it is difficult to see how Jesus could have
been in all points tempted like his brethren. So
far as the trials of the flesh are concerned, which
come from hunger and thirst, from pain and
sorrow, from bereavement and want, from hard-

John xv. 18-20.

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 159
ships and all the physical infirmities that flesh is
heir to, the New Testament gives us sufficient
warrant for saying that Jesus endured them all.
He was indeed the great suffering prophet of the
Psalter and the Second Isaiah. As St. Matthew
tells us : He " himself took our infirmities, and
bare^our diseases." x No man ever lived who suf
fered more trial in the flesh or was more tempted
by suffering than Jesus Christ.
But mankind have other temptations in the
flesh which it is difficult, if not impossible, for us
to attribute to Jesus. St. Paul tells us that there
is in man an inherited taint, defilement, or habit
of sin. " I am carnal, sold under sin. For that
which I do I know not : for not what I would,
that do I practise ; but what I hate, that I do.
But if what I would not, that I do, I consent
unto the law that it is good. So now it is no
more I that do it, but sin which dwelleth in me.
For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh,
dwelleth no good thing." 2 On the one hand, if
we suppose that Jesus was free from this heredi
tary taint, that he felt no sinful impulses in his
flesh, and that, though he was made in the like
ness of sinful flesh, his flesh was not sinful as the

1 Matt. viii. 17. 2 Rom. vii. 14-18.

160 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
flesh of his brethren ; then how could the author
of the epistle say that he was tempted in all
points like as we are ?
Accordingly some great and good men have
insisted that Jesus must have experienced the
same tendencies to sin in his flesh that all other
men experience in their flesh, that he really
shared in sinful flesh, though he never yielded to
its impulses, and never for a moment was defiled
by an evil thought or desire.
On the other hand, if we hold to the Church
doctrine of original sin, it is difficult to see how
we can say that Christ was sinless, if he really
shared in sinful flesh. Accordingly the Church
has always insisted that Christ had no share in
the original sin of the race, no part in the inherited
tendency to sin in human flesh born with us into
the world.
Before we enter into this difficult question, it
is important to say that the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews did not consider it. It was not
within the scope of his discourse. There is noth
ing in this epistle to indicate that he held to that
view of original sin which is stated in the Epistle
to the Romans. It is agreed among scholars
that St. Paul's view of the moral relations of
human flesh is not to be found, either explicitly

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 161
or implicitly, in this epistle. The author limits
himself to infirmities of the flesh which are the
source of trials and temptations, but does not
conceive of these as moral infirmities. Such
physical infirmities of the flesh Jesus shared with
all men. He is touched with the feeling of our
infirmities because he shared them, and was in
all points tempted like as we are.1
It is true that contrasted with the high-priests
under the law, who were appointed having in
firmities, Jesus Christ was perfected for ever
more.2 But this does not imply that Jesus did
not have infirmities during his earthly life. He
was perfected for evermore in that he conquered
his infirmities and was so, by temptation in his
infirmities, made perfect. He in his earthly
discipline became holy, guileless, undefiled, sepa
rated from sinners, and so was made higher than
the heavens,3 whereas those other high-priests in
their infirmities fell into sin under temptation,
and so had to sacrifice for their own sins as well
as the sins of the people.4
It is evident, therefore, that we have no right
to interpret " the all points," in which Jesus was

1 Heb. iv. 15. 2 Heb. vii. 28.
8 Heb. vii. 26. 4 Heb. vii. 27.
11

162 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
tempted like as we are, beyond the physical in
firmities of the flesh which alone the author of
this epistle had in mind. The question which
troubles us is, therefore, a question which arises
from a combination of the Pauline doctrine of
original sin with the thought of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, that Jesus was made like his
brethren. At the same time it is necessary to consider
the question, for it is a very important one. We
must, however, make one other preliminary
statement, namely, that sin is not a natural and
necessary characteristic of human flesh. Al
though it is an inheritance of the children of the
first Adam, it entered into the world and into
human flesh for the first time, according to St.
Paul, after the creation of human flesh, by a single
act of sin by our first parents. It is not normal
to human flesh ; it is abnormal. There was no
inherent necessity, therefore, why the Second
Adam should assume sinful flesh when he as
sumed human flesh. He assumed what was
normal to humanity, and so became more truly
the normal man, the Second Adam, than if he
had assumed abnormal sinful humanity. So far
as it was necessary to the work of salvation, he
assumed also all the abnormal situations and

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 163
circumstances and consequences of fallen hu
manity ; but it was not necessary that he should
inherit the abnormal moral character and rela
tions of fallen mankind. He came rather as the
Second Adam to renew and save the human race
by presenting an entirely normal man, pure and
innocent at the beginning, and sanctifying him
self and attaining perfect righteousness by over
coming all temptation, doing all the holy will of
God, and exceeding and transcending all law by
a life of love and a death of self-sacrifice, and so
fully and completely revealing the Father's love
for mankind in a faithful and loving child of the
Father, in human flesh and blood. It was just
this likeness to the brethren, in every respect but
sin, which made him competent, so soon as he
had perfected himself, and shown himself tri
umphant over all sin and evil, over death and
the devil, to be the everlasting high-priest of
mankind, perfect man and so the perfect surety,
guarantor, and surrogate of humanity in the pres
ence of God, and, at the same time, the all-loving
Son of God, the guarantor of full salvation to all
who will follow him in fidelity and love.
There is a seeming defect in the absence from
the man Christ Jesus of any temptations arising
from his own sinful flesh ; and there is in the

164 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
thought that, if he experienced such temptations
and conquered them, he accomplished a grander
act of heroism than in the victory over all physi
cal frailties and temptations from without. But,
on the other hand, the necessary consequence of
that thought, that there were moral frailties in
the flesh of Jesus at the beginning, would so seri
ously impair his moral perfection that he would
be after all less innocent than the first Adam
before the fall, and less perfectly the norm of
humanity. Jesus shared in human flesh and
blood for the salvation and the perfection of our
race ; he shared in all that belongs to humanity
as such ; he undertook all the trials and tempta
tions that were necessary for his sympathy and
help as the great high-priest of our race ; but he
could not undertake anything morally abnormal,
or religiously inadequate, without in a measure
making his salvation inadequate and abnormal.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews
conceived of the Son of God as sharing in human
flesh and blood, partaking of human nature, as
being made like the brethren, not merely for his
life in this world, but for a permanent heavenly
ministry, as a great high-priest after the order
of Melchizedek, who continuously at the right
hand of the Father interposes for mankind in his

MADE LIKE UNTO HIS BRETHREN 165
human flesh and blood. He has a fellow-feeling
for us all, in our infirmities, our temptations, and
our trials. He shares with us his victories over
sin and death and the devil. His flesh is the
veil through which we enter the Holy of Holies
of the Father's love. His blood ever remains on
the holy altar, washing away all the guilt of our
sins. His flesh ever guarantees our eventual
righteousness through the perfect work he is
carrying on in us. His flesh and blood are ever
on the altar-table of the Church, as the food and
drink of everlasting life.

VIII
THE ADVENT OF GOD

VIII
THE ADVENT OF GOD
And this is the witness of John, when the Jews sent unto
him from Jerusalem priests and Levites to ask him, Who art
thou ? And he confessed, and denied not ; and he confessed,
I am not the Messiah. And they asked him, What then ?
Art thou Elijah ? And he saith, I am not. Art thou the
prophet ? And he answered, No. They said therefore unto
him, Who art thou ? that we may give an answer to them that
sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? He said, I am the
voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way
of the Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet. • — John i. 19-23.
THIS narrative of the Gospel of St. John
sets forth distinctly what St. John the
Baptist thought of himself. He knew that he
was none of the Messianic persons predicted in
Old Testament prophecy, and anxiously awaited
and longed for by the Jews in the New Testa
ment times ; but he also knew that he was the
herald of the Lord predicted in the fortieth
chapter of the Book of Isaiah.
The prophet, in glowing terms and in graphic
and picturesque language, depicts the advent of

170 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
God. Yahweh, the God of Israel, is seen march
ing across the Syrian desert into the holy land,
and to the royal city, Jerusalem. The herald
precedes him, calling not only upon man, but
also upon all nature, to prepare his way. Zion
and Jerusalem take up the message, and pro
claim it to all the cities of Judah : " Lo, your
God is coming." Before him all the crooked
places straighten themselves ; all the rough places
smooth themselves out ; every hill and mountain
humbles itself; every valley and wady raises
itself. So, according to another passage,1 the wilder
ness is glad, and the solitary place rejoices, for
waters break forth, and streams and lakes appear
on every side. The sandy, barren soil is covered
with fresh grass and brilliant flowers of every
kind ; all the glorious flora of Sharon is there,
sweet-scented shrubs of Lebanon, the stately
forests of Carmel, and the majestic cedars of
Lebanon. " The glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh
shall see it together."
" Behold, Adonay Yahweh cometh as a Strong one, His
arm ruling for Him.
1 Isa. xxxv.

THE ADVENT OF GOD 171
Behold his wage is with Him and His recompense before
Him.
He feedeth His flock like a shepherd, He gathereth the
lambs with His arm,
And in His bosom lifteth them, gently leadeth those that
suckle their young." 1
There can be no doubt that the prophet is here
depicting a divine advent : that the herald is the
herald of the advent of God ; and therefore, when
St. John the Baptist tells the delegation of the
Pharisees that he is the herald of this advent, he
tells them that he is the herald of the advent of
the Lord God.
But did St. John the Baptist understand that
Jesus Christ was God ? We cannot say this.
He bears witness to him that he was the " Lamb
of God that taketh away the sin of the world " : 2
in other words, the Servant of Yahweh of the
fifty-third chapter of Isaiah, upon whom the Lord
laid the iniquity of us all ; who bore the sin of
many, who was brought as a lamb to the slaugh
ter and offered himself as a trespass offering.
He also testified that Jesus was mightier than he,
whose shoe-latchet he was unworthy to unloose,
and that he would baptize with the Holy Spirit.3
1 Isa. xl. 10, 11 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 375 seq.
2 John i. 29. a Mark i. 7, 8.

172 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
But the Servant of the Lord of the Second
Isaiah was not the Lord of the Second Isaiah. It
is evident that St. John the Baptist was some
what perplexed about Jesus, for he sent some of
his disciples to ask Jesus : " Art thou he that
cometh, or look we for another ? " x Jesus refers
him to his preaching the gospel to the poor, and
to his miracles of mercy, as the evidence of what
he was. These, again, are just those things that
are predicted of the Servant of Yahweh in Isaiah,
chapter sixty-one. And accordingly St. John
the Baptist died his martyr death convinced that
Jesus was the prophetic Servant of the Second
Isaiah, but unable to see how Jesus was related
to the advent of Yahweh Himself, of which he
was the divinely appointed herald.
This situation of affairs ought not to surprise
us, for the Messianic idea of the Old Testament
is exceedingly complex. There is variety enough
in the ideals, but there is no unity. This appears
in the questions put by the Pharisees to St. John
the Baptist : " Art thou the Messiah ? Art thou
Elijah? Art thou the prophet?"2 The same
appears in the words of Jesus to the Twelve.
He asked his disciples : " Who do men say that

1 Matt. xi. 3. 2 John i. 19-28.

THE ADVENT OF GOD 173
lam?" And they said, " Some John the Bap
tist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah, or one of
the prophets. He saith unto them, But who
say ye that I am ? And Simon Peter answered
and said, Thou art the Messiah." 1
The perplexity of St. John the Baptist bears wit
ness to the same thing. There are in the Old Tes
tament two distinct lines of the Messianic idea, —
the one predicting the advent of God for redemp
tion and judgment, the other predicting the ad
vent of a redemptive man. The redemptive man
is conceived sometimes as the Seed of the Woman,
or Seed of Abraham, as the Lion of Judah, as
the Second Moses, as the Son of David, the Son
of God, the Messiah, as the Martyr Servant,
as the Priest King, as the Martyr Shepherd,
as the Son of Man.2 It is impossible to combine
these in any unity so far as the Old Testament
is concerned. And there is not the slightest in
dication that there is any coincidence of the line
of the divine advent with the line of the advent
of any of these human Messiahs. It is as if a
master artist had conceived a great ideal whose

1 Mark viii. 27-30; Matt. xvi. 13-20; Luke ix. 18-21;
Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 93 seq.
2 Messianic Prophecy, pp. 476 seq.

174 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
execution he had committed to many hands be
sides his own. Each artist, working under the
direction of the master, has to depict his own
special ideal, — one the suffering Servant, another
the glorious King, still another the martyr Shep
herd, and yet another the Lion of Judah, further
on, another, the Priest King of the order of Mel-
chizedek, and still further on, another, the Son of
Man ; and intermingled with these, many are
depicting the various representations of the ad
vent of God. These are all kept apart. The
work has progressed so far that all the separate
ideals are there in outline, and some of them in
all the glory of oriental color. But when we
have taken the survey of the whole, there is a
lack of harmony ; there is no unity ; there is a sur
prising lack of finish. It is not to be wondered
at that the Jews in the time of our Lord were
troubled, that St. John the Baptist was per
plexed, that even the Twelve could understand
only in part ; for none but the Master, none but
he could give unity and harmony and finish to
the representations, and show by his own life and
work that all the lines of the Messianic ideal
were so many tracings of that wondrous variety
which found its unity and harmony in his glorious
person.

THE ADVENT OF GOD 175
When now we turn from the Gospel of St.
John to the Synoptic Gospels, we find that the
very words which are put by St. John in the
mouth of St. John the Baptist are written by St.
Mark, St. Matthew, and St. Luke as their own
words. Thus St. Mark says : " The beginning of
the gospel of Jesus Christ, the son of God. Even
as it is written in Isaiah the prophet, Behold, I
send my Messenger before thy face, who shall
prepare thy way ; the voice of one crying in the
wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight ; John came, who bap
tized in the wilderness and preached the baptism
of repentance unto remission of sins."1
The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke adopt
these words from the Gospel of St. Mark with
slight modifications which do not in any respect
affect their essential meaning.2 The use of these
words by these evangelists as their own testi
mony, puts them in an entirely different light
from the use of them by St. John the Baptist as
his testimony ; for St. John the Baptist died a
martyr death some considerable time before the
life work of Jesus had reached its completion ;

1 Matt. iii. 3 ; Luke hi. 4-6.
2 Mark i. 1-4 ; Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 64 seq.

176 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
whereas all these evangelists gave their testi
mony many years after the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ, looking back upon his entire
earthly career and also upon the apostolic witness
as to Christ until their own time. St. Mark
writes under the influence of St. Peter, St. Luke
under the influence of St. Paul, — both in the city
of Rome, some time subsequent to the martyr
death of the two chief apostles ; and St. Matthew's
Gospel represents the opinion of the Eastern
Christians as to the person and life of Christ.
The question, therefore, whether Jesus was iden
tified with Yahweh, the God of the advent of the
fortieth chapter of Isaiah, assumes an entirely
different situation. When St. Mark tells us that
St. John the Baptist was the herald of the advent
of Yahweh, at the beginning of his Gospel, what
else can he mean than that Jesus Christ, whose
redemptive life is the theme of his Gospel, was
that very Yahweh ? St. Mark knows of no other
advent of Yahweh in his Gospel. He knows of
a second advent of Jesus as the Son of Man in
the clouds of heaven for the judgment and re
demption of the world ; but even if we suppose
that he thought of a specifically second advent
of the Lord, it is difficult to see how he could
represent St. John the Baptist as the herald

THE ADVENT OF GOD 177
of that advent, when the first advent had
intervened, and also the death, resurrection,
ascension, and enthronement of Christ, and the
organization and grand progress of his church in
the world. And even then this second advent is
the advent of the Son of Man, the divine ad
vent being so much in the background that it is
evident that the advent of Christ has taken the
place and the importance of the divine advent
of the Old Testament Scriptures.
Furthermore, St. Mark not only represents St.
John the Baptist as the herald of Yahweh of
the Second Isaiah, but he also presents him as the
messenger of the Lord of the prophet Malachi,
where the prophet says : " Behold, I send my
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before
me ; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly
come to His temple, even the angel of the cove
nant whom ye delight in. Behold, he cometh,
saith Yahweh Sabaoth. But who may abide the
day of his coming ? and who shall stand when he
appeareth ? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like
fuller's soap." J The prophet here represents that
the theophanic angel of the covenant, who was
the guide of the patriarchs and of Israel of the

1 Mai. iii. 1, 2 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 473 seq.
12

178 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Exodus, and who had occupied the ancient
throne room of the tabernacle and the temple
as the permanent theophany, the Shekinah, —
that this theophanic angel would again suddenly
return to the temple, and that his advent would
be preceded by a messenger, and that when he
came there would be a judgment of fire. When
St. Mark represents St. John the Baptist as this
messenger, what else can he mean than that Jesus
is the angel of the covenant ? It is true that the
advent of the angel of the covenant is for judg
ment, and that this judgment is referred by Jesus
to his second advent ; but this is due to the fact
that prior to the two advents they are combined
in prophecy in the unity of one dispensation.
But, on the other hand, it is characteristic of the
teaching of Jesus that the Father has committed
all judgment to the Son, and that the Son of
Man, the Messiah, takes the place in the judg
ment that God is represented as taking in the
Old Testament Scriptures. And so this is an
other evidence that Jesus is conceived as Yahweh,
the Lord of the judgment of the Old Testament.
Furthermore, St. Mark writes with a full
knowledge of what St. Paul had written many
years before on this subject. As we have seen,
St. Paul identifies Jesus with the Angel of the

THE ADVENT OF GOD 179
presence of the Exodus.1 We ought to expect,
therefore, that St. Mark would identify him with
the same Angel of the covenant whom the
prophet Malachi predicted as suddenly coming
to his temple.
So when St. Luke, using the language of St.
Mark, speaks of St. John the Baptist as the
herald of the advent of Yahweh, the God of
Israel, he speaks as the beloved physician, the
pupil of St. Paul, who carries on the work of the
great apostle to the Gentiles after his martyr death
at Rome. What else can we think than that he
meant to teach the same doctrine as to the divin
ity of Christ which St. Paul teaches in his epis
tles, when he represents that Jesus Christ was
pre-existent before he entered this world as the
mediator of the creation of the world, as the head
of the human race,2 as equal with God,3 as the
image of the invisible God, the first-born of all
creation, in whom all things were created, all
things having been created through him and unto
him, who was before all things and in whom
all things consist,4 who also, when he entered

1 Sermon IV., p. 85. 2 Sermon IV., p. 89.
8 Sermon V., p. 108.
4 Col. i. 12-20; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 210 seq.

180 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the world, came as an epiphany, or manifesta
tion of God.1
Moreover it is altogether probable that St.
Luke writes with the full knowledge of the
Epistle to the Hebrews. Indeed St. Luke is in
some respects so kindred in his style and thought
to the author of that epistle, that some scholars,
though I think wrongly, have supposed that he
was the author. The author of this epistle rep
resents Jesus as the effulgence of the Father's
glory, the very image of His substance, through
whom also He made the ages, and who upholds
all things by the word of His power ; and he also
identifies him immediately with Yahweh, the
God of Israel, in several passages which he
quotes.2 Therefore, with the doctrine of the divinity
of Christ, and the identification of Christ with
Yahweh, the God of the Jews, in the writings of
St. Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews behind
him, as taught and established in the school of
St. Paul to which he belonged, we can hardly
interpret St. Luke here in any other way than as
regarding the advent of Jesus Christ, when he
came into the world, as the advent of Yahweh,

1 Sermon VII., p. 130.
2 Heb. i. 1-14; Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 243 seq.

THE ADVENT OF GOD 181
the God of Israel of the Second Isaiah ; and that
St. John the Baptist was the herald of that advent,
even though St. John the Baptist himself could
not reconcile the actual appearance of Jesus with
the message which God had called and inspired
him to give.
The situation is entirely similar with the Gos
pel of St. Matthew. Writing after the divinity
of Jesus Christ had been firmly established in the
East as well as in the West, he can hardly be
interpreted in any other way than St. Mark and
St. Luke. We may bring in here, from the
Book of Revelation, prophecy which was cer
tainly written in the East, a little later, it is true,
than our Gospel of St. Matthew, but not very
distant in time from it. One of these prophets
clearly identifies Jesus Christ with Yahweh of
the Second Isaiah, when he puts into the mouth
of Jesus himself these words :
" Behold, I come quickly ; and my reward is with me,
To render to each man according as his work is.
I am the Alpha and the Omega,
The first and the last, the beginning and the end." '
These are the very words which in the Second
Isaiah 2 are used of Yahweh, and of Yahweh alone.3

1 Rev. xxii. 12, 13. 2 Isa. xlviii. 12.
3 Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 388 seq.

182 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
We may, therefore, say with confidence that
the three Synoptic Evangelists agree in thinking
of Jesus Christ as the Yahweh of the Old Testa
ment, and that his advent, as heralded by St.
John the Baptist, was the divine advent of the
Second Isaiah, as well as the human advent of
the Servant of Yahweh ; in other words, that
they saw in Jesus Christ, the Messiah of history,
the coincidence of the line of the divine redeemer
with the line of the human Messiah ; that they
saw all the Messianic ideals combine in him ;
that the historical Christ had himself in his life
and work before the very eyes of the apostolic
Church taken into his own glorious hands the
unfinished work of the Old Testament prophecy,
and himself drawn the harmonizing lines, himself
made the unifying touches, so that all might see
that he who alone harmonized and unified so
great a complexity of representations was the
very same pre-existent God whose servants the
prophets had each fulfilled his appointed task in
the gradual preparation, through many centuries,
of so great a masterpiece of redemption.
It is doubtful whether any one can adequately
realize the significance of the tremendous change
that took place in the understanding of the
Messianic ideal between the death of St. John

THE ADVENT OF GOD 183
the Baptist and the close of the first Christian
century. The complexity of the Messianic ideal
of the Old Testament was so great that it was
not possible for even those nearest to the Master,
and the best instructed, to learn it excepting by
gradual appropriation. So far as we can judge
from the history, it was not in the circle of the
Twelve that the doctrine of the divinity of Christ
first appeared. It seems that the task assigned
to them was to harmonize the many complex
ideals attached to the human Messiah. Their
very familiarity with Jesus as man possibly made
it difficult for them to identify him with God.
But St. Paul knew not Jesus after the flesh.
He knew him first in theophany, as the heavenly
being who once lived and died on earth. There
fore it was easier for him, and we may say more
natural for him, to think out the heavenly rela
tions of the Messiah, and it seems to have been
his task, therefore, to unfold the doctrine of the
pre-existence of Christ and his true divinity.
The combination of the two conceptions of the
humanity and the divinity then became easy, when
at Rome St. Peter and St. Paul united to estab
lish the Christian Church on the true foundation
of the God-man.
It is not surprising that the Christian Church

184 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
could not for some centuries construct a harmo
nizing and satisfying doctrine of the God-man.
The human mind is so constituted, of such differ
ent temperaments, of such one-sidedness, that it
is easy and natural for one to consider one side
of a question, another a different side of the same
question. Even when it was an established fact
that the God-man united and harmonized in him
self all the Messianic ideals of the Old Testa
ment, it was still inevitable that each of these
ideals would be emphasized by some scholars to
the neglect of other no less important ideals.
Yes, even after the Church had established the
catholic doctrine of the person of Christ in the
decrees of the ancient councils and in the catholic
creeds, while there was unity in the catholic faith,
there still continued to be one-sidedness and inad
equate representation in the best of writers. That
is still more the case in our day, when freedom
of investigation of all problems is the watchword
of scholarship. The complexity of these Mes
sianic ideals is better appreciated than ever before.
The exaggerations of the divinity of Christ on the
one side, and of the humanity of Christ on the
other, are more marked than ever.
Every one of the Messianic ideals passes
through the fires of objective and subjective crit-

THE ADVENT OF GOD 185
icism, and is either exaggerated or depreciated in
accordance with the temperament and presup
positions of the scholars who study them. All
this will doubtless result, in the providence of
God, in a vastly higher and grander apprehen
sion of the sublime unity in Jesus Christ of all
these ideals, springing out of a more profound
apprehension of their variety and complexity.
The modern world has a vastly higher and
broader knowledge of what humanity means than
the ancient world. The modern ideal of God is
vastly higher and more sublime than that of the
apostolic times. Is Jesus the ideal man, compre
hending in himself all the highest ideals of hu
manity in the modern sense ? Is Jesus God,
comprehending in himself the sublime ideals of
God of modern times ? Does he combine these
ideals in the unity of his person ? If it be more
difficult for the modern mind to grasp such a
unity, it is a vastly grander unity when it is once
grasped. But even from the ancient point of view, it
was not easy to accept the incarnation as a fact ;
to assuredly believe and know that Yahweh, the
God of the Hebrews, became man in Jesus Christ.
That the three synoptic evangelists all teach
that doctrine so clearly in accordance with the

186 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
epistles and the Apocalypse, shows that it had
become a common Christian doctrine long before
the close of the first Christian century, before
apostolic instruction had passed away from the
earth. This doctrine, doubtless, involved more
than the evangelists supposed. They give us
two passages only of the Old Testament. But
these are representative of many more. If Jesus,
when he came to the baptism on the Jordan, was
indeed coming as the Yahweh, whose advent of
salvation and judgment was depicted in the Sec
ond Isaiah and Malachi, then it is equally true
that he is the Yahweh of all the passages of Old
Testament prophecy that depict such an advent.
He is the Husband of Israel of Hosea, who after
faithful discipline will unite Israel again to him
self in everlasting bonds of love.1 He is the
faithful Husband of Zephaniah, Jeremiah, and
the great Prophet of the Exile.2 He is the
Shepherd who seeks out and gathers his scattered
flock, and restores them to their own land.3 He
is the Judge and the Saviour of Israel and man
kind as depicted in the various representations

1 Hosea ii.-iii. ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 165 seq.
2 Zeph. iii. 8-20 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 224 seq., 242
seq., 374 seq.
8 Ezek. xxxiv. 11-31 ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 272 seq.,
483.

THE ADVENT OF GOD 187
of a host of prophets. He is the conquering
King whose return to Zion in triumphal proces
sion is described in many psalms and prophets,
but perhaps in none so grandly as in that royal
psalm which reflects the influence of the Second
Isaiah.
" Sing to Yahweh a new song ; for He hath done wonders ;
With His right hand, and His holy arm, He hath gained
Him victory.
He hath made known His salvation, in the eyes of the
nations hath revealed His righteousness ;
Hath remembered His mercy and His faithfulness to the
house of Israel.
All the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our
God.
" Make a joyful noise to Yahweh, all the earth :
Break forth and sing for joy, and sing praises ;
Sing praises unto Yahweh with the harp,
With the harp and the voice of melody,
With trumpets and sound of cornet ;
Make a joyful noise before the King.
Let the sea roar, and its fulness ;
The world, and they that dwell therein ;
Let the streams clap their hands ;
Let the mountains sing for joy together ;
Before Yahweh, for He cometh to judge the earth :
He will judge the world with righteousness, and the
peoples with equity."1
1 Ps. xcviii. ; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 453 seq.

IX
THE WORD MADE FLESH

IX
THE WORD MADE FLESH
And the Word became flesh,
And tabernacled among us,
And we beheld his glory,
Glory as of an only begotten from a father,
Full of grace and faithfulness.1 John i. 14.
IT is agreed that the Gospel of St. John was
written not earlier than near the end of the
first Christian century. It was much later in
date than the Epistle to the Hebrews, and there
fore represents a more matured conception of the
person and work of Jesus Christ than any other
writing in the New Testament. The Gospel has
an introduction in verses 1-18 of the first chap
ter. This seems to be a Christian hymn of the
incarnation. This hymn was probably sung in
the churches of Asia towards the close of the
century, for it has measured lines and strophical

1 See Messiah of the Apostles, pp. 508 seq., for a justification
of this translation and this arrangement, and also for fuller
exposition.

192 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
organization. It has as its essential theme the
Logos, or Word of God, in his pre-existence and
in his incarnation.
It uses a term for the pre-existent Son of God,
different from any that have been used before.
This term was used because it had become a
technical one in the Jewish school at Alexandria,
and because it was appropriate to explain, in a
more philosophical way, the relation of the Son
of God to the Father. The Old Testament tells
us of a number of theophanies by which God
manifested Himself at the great crises of the his
tory of redemption. These theophanic manifes
tations were identified with the pre-existent Son
of God by St. Paul.1 Furthermore, in the Book
of Proverbs,2 the Hebrew sages conceived of God
as creating and governing the world by means of
Wisdom, his daughter. In Ecclesiasticus or
Wisdom of Ben Sirach,3 Wisdom is represented
as coming forth from the mouth of God and
taking up her abode in the pillar of cloud and in
the tabernacle and temple, and is thus identified
with the Angel of the presence and the Glory of
God in the Holy of Holies. In the Wisdom of
Solomon,4 Wisdom is represented as the breath
1 Sermon IV., p. 85. 2 Prov. viii.
8 Eccles. xxiv. 3-11. 4 Wisdom vii. 25-27.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 193
of the power of God, the effulgence of His glory,
in all ages inspiring holy prophets, pervading and
influencing all things. Accordingly, the Epistle
to the Colossians conceives of the Son of God as
the image of the invisible God, the first-born of
all creation, the mediator of the creation and
government of the world ; l and the Epistle to the
Hebrews describes the Son of God as the efful
gence of His glory, the very image of His sub
stance.2 Thus the Son of God is identified with
the Wisdom of God, as well as the theophanies
of God.
But the prologue of St. John's Gospel goes fur
ther, and that in the line of thought of the Jewish
philosopher Philo. Philo made a distinction be
tween the Logos, the Word of God, as subjective,
in the divine mind itself, and the Word as objec
tive, in the universe. The objective Logos is j
God, so far as He reveals Himself. All the j
theophanic manifestations in the Old Testament, j
as well as all the communications between God
and the universe, are through the Word of God,
who sums up in himself all of God that is re
vealed or made known to the creature.
From another point of view, the Jewish scholars
1 Col. i. 15-17. 2 Heb. i. 3.
13

194 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
of Palestine sought in every way to avoid the
anthropomorphisms of the early history, that is,
those statements which conceive of God after/
human ways, with human parts and passions.
Accordingly, when there is no mention of the
ophanies in communications of God to man, they
interposed the Word of God, in order that God
Himself might always remain alone and apart
from the creature, that all relations of God to
man might be through a mediator.
Thus, both in Alexandrian Judaism and in
Palestinian Judaism, it had been found necessary,
in theological speculations, to distinguish between
God as transcendent — - that is, as above and apart
from the creature, invisible, unapproachable, un
knowable — and God as immanent, that is, as
within the world and in communication with the
creature. And so the author of the Christian
hymn to the Logos introduces into the New
Testament, and into Christian theology, this
speculative, philosophic way of thinking about
the relation of the Son of God to the Father.
It is no disparagement to Christianity, as some
people think, that it uses the best thoughts that
have come to men outside the sphere of divine
revelation. It is rather an evidence of a sublime
confidence in truth and fact. The best Christian

THE WORD MADE FLESH 195
scholars from St. John's time onward have not
hesitated to recognize and use, in constructing
Christian theology and Christian institutions, all
that is good and true and noble in the religions
and philosophies formed outside the ranges of
divine revelation. They did this, because they
recognized that the divine Word is the light of
the world, and that he shines in some measure
in all ages and in all lands, struggling with the
darkness everywhere, and imparting gleams of
light even in the darkest minds. We ought,
therefore, to expect to find the light of truth in
such a profound thinker as the Jewish philosopher
Philo, and in the Greek philosopher Socrates.
This first introduction of philosophy into
Christian theology by the author of this early
Christian hymn was only the first wave of a
flood of thought which gave Christian theology
its philosophical form for all time. The Greek
mind had been trained by the divine Word to
make this contribution to Christian theology.
Thus the author of our text makes the distinc
tion between God in Himself and God as He
manifests Himself in creation and providence.
He identifies the Son of God with the objective
Word of God, with the immanent God, with all
the manifestations and relations of God to the

196 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
creature. Accordingly, the Son of God, as the
Word of God, was in the beginning prior to all
creatures as their creator.
" All things were made by him ;
And without him was not anything made.
That which hath been made was life in him." 1
He was with God in the beginning and from the
beginning throughout all time. He was distinct
from the Father as the Son of the Father ; but
this distinction was in the same being or sub
stance, and not in a different being or substance.
He was God, — not another God from the
Father, but one and the same God as the Father.
The Son was begotten from everlasting of the
Father, within the divine substance, and not
without the divine substance. From the begin
ning, God was manifesting Himself in the crea
tion of world upon world, solar system after solar
system, throughout all the immensities of the
universe, and all those manifestations, every
where and at every time, were in the Word of
God. From the beginning of human history
God was revealing Himself to mankind and
training him in redemption, — and all that rev-

1 John i. 3 ; Messiah of the Apostles, p. 501 seq.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 197
elation was in the Word of God. All the real
guidance that men have had in any form of re
ligion whatever, even the lowest types, has been
through the Word of God. All the help that
has come through the reason and the conscience
of men, in any part of the world or in any age
of its history, has come from the Word of God.
All the course of nature, all the movements of
history, have been guided and directed and con
trolled by the Word of God, immanent, all-
pervading, and controlling all things. And so
the hymn of the Logos sings :
" And the life was the light of men,
And the light shineth in the darkness,
And the darkness apprehended it not." 1
As he was the creator of all things, so he was
the fountain of life to all living creatures. They
lived in him and through him. From everlasting
he was quickening the world and mankind with
life, and ever imparting it more abundantly.
And so he was the light of the world, lighting
up the conscience and the reason, training man
kind in their intellectual, religious, and moral
development, ever upward and onward. Though
the world knew him not, he continued imparting
1 John i. 4, 5.

198 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
his life and his light. Though they appre
hended him not, he continued shining, preparing
the way as the stars prepare the way for the day-
dawn. The poet conceives of all this hidden,
secret working of the immanent God, the Word
of God, in the world of man, as a great prepara
tion for the incarnation. The Word was ever
speaking through holy men and prophets ; the
life was ever imparting itself ; the light was ever
shining in the world before the advent of Christ ;
and notwithstanding the darkness, the deadness,
and ignorance of the mass of mankind, they were
yet in training for the day of redemption, the
coming out of the Immanent Word of God from
behind the veil of nature into full view in human
flesh. 1. The Word of God became flesh. We have
seen in the Epistle to the Philippians that the
Son of God emptied himself of the form of God,
and took to himself the form, likeness, and fashion
of man.1 In St. John's Gospel, it is more than
the taking of the form, it is the taking of the
substance of man ; it is more than the taking of
the substance, it is becoming flesh.
In the pastorals, the Son of God made an

1 Sermon V., p. 108.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 199
epiphany or manifestation of himself in the flesh.1
Here it is more than a manifestation, it is the
becoming flesh, so as to be, and continue to be,
flesh. The Epistle to the Hebrews represents
that the Son of God partook of flesh and blood,
shared it with his brethren, and was made like
unto them in all points of trial and suffering.2
Here the expression is somewhat stronger. He
had been in his pre-existence God ; in his incar
nation he became flesh. As he had from all
eternity been truly God, so he became at the
incarnation as truly man, and so ever continues
from thenceforth to be both God and man. He
did not cease to be God when he became man.
He did not transform himself from being God
into being man. But, retaining his divine nature
in its entirety, he became also man, and so added
to himself human nature in its entirety.
The Word of God became flesh ; that is, the
Word as the Son of the Father became flesh. The
Father did not become flesh. The Divine Spirit
did not become flesh. But the Son of God, the
Word, he and he alone of the three persons of
the Trinity, became flesh. The term person,
when used of the three persons of the Holy

1 Sermon VII., p. 133. a Sermon VIII., p. 151.

200 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Trinity, has not the same meaning as when used
of different men. The second person of the
Trinity is not a different being from the Father
and the Spirit, as one human being is different
from another. He is of one being with the
Father and the Spirit. He is not a separate and
distinct person from the Father and the Spirit,
as James is a different person from Peter and
John. The distinctions within the Godhead are
personal distinctions in a technical, theological
sense. It is a theological problem which has
not yet been solved : what are the constituent
elements of the tri-personality of the Godhead.
The Church has been concerned in her state
ments to ward off dangerous errors, not to make
distinctions further than has been found neces
sary. The Holy Scriptures do not determine all
questions for us. The Church has not yet, by
logical deduction from the teachings of Holy
Scripture, reached a solution of all questions.
But so much is evident. There is a self-distinc
tion between the Son and the Father. For so
much is involved in the statement : The Word
was with God. And there is no distinction of
natures, for so much is involved in the state
ment : The Word was God.
Whatever is essential to the Godhead of the

THE WORD MADE FLESH 201
Trinity, the three share in common. Whatever
is essential to their self-distinctions and to their
distinctive offices, they do not share. Whatever
was common to the Godhead, the Son of God
possessed in his divine nature ; but whatever was
special to himself, whatever belonged to his per
sonal distinction as the Word of God, — that was
the unity in which the human nature and the
divine nature centred in the incarnation. This
personal self-distinction of the Word of God as
Son of the Father did not, however, constitute
complete personality. Complete personality of
the Godhead, in the human sense, was in the
unity of the divine nature. There is only one
divine Person in this sense. Therefore it was
necessary that the Son of God should take up
into himself all those elements of personality
which are necessary to the integrity of an indi
vidual, as a distinct and separate being, which he
did not have as the Son of God, and which,
therefore, he must have as a son of man. Ac
cordingly we are compelled to think of a divine-
human personality for the God-man, that is, of
certain elements of human personality in which
the human nature was centred, as in organic union
with the central divine personal distinction of the
Word of God. Thus in the incarnation, the Son

202 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
of God, in the unity of his personal distinction as
the Son of the Father, combines two natures, a
human and divine, each nature separate, distinct,
entire, and complete in itself.
2. The Word dwelt among us. There can be
little doubt that the author had in mind the
Shekinah of the temple of the old dispensation.
Biblical history tells us that after the erection of
the tabernacle in the wilderness, the glory of God
descended with the pillar of cloud and took pos
session of the Holy of Holies, and abode there
upon the cherubic throne. So in the temple,
the God of Israel was enthroned in theophanic
glory in the Holy of Holies on the outstretched
wings of the cherubim. The tabernacle and the
temple, its historic successor, continued, until the
destruction of Jerusalem at the Babylonian exile,
to be the dwelling-place of God enthroned upon
the cherubim. Just as the temple was the
abiding presence of the theophanic God in the
old dispensation, just so the Word of God taber
nacled in the flesh of Jesus of Nazareth. The
Word of God had the same relation to the flesh
of Jesus as the Shekinah had to the temple. In
asmuch as the author of the hymn identifies the
word of God with the Shekinah and all the the
ophanies and manifestations of God, it is evident

THE WORD MADE FLESH 203
that his thought is that in the Old Testament
the Word of God dwelt for centuries in the
temple, in the incarnation the same Word of
God dwelt in the flesh of Jesus. In other words,
the flesh of Jesus is the temple of the new dis
pensation. This conception is not peculiar to
this passage, but is given elsewhere in the
Johannine writings, as, for example, in citing the
words of Jesus, "Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up." The evangelist
says : " He spake of the temple of his body.
When therefore he was raised from the dead,
his disciples remembered that he spake this ;
and they believed the scripture, and the word
which Jesus had said." !
We have then, in this thought, a clear indica
tion of the poet's conception of the incarnation.
The dwelling of the Word of God in the temple
of Jerusalem was temporary and preparatory for
his final dwelling in human flesh, that he might
ever after be the temple, the sacred place of
worship for all mankind. The Shekinah was the
most permanent and enduring of all theophanies,
and yet it still remained within the range of the
ophanic manifestations. It was, however, con-

1 John ii. 18-22.

204 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
fined to the Holy of Holies, and witnessed only
by the high -priest, according to the ritual of the
day of atonement, once in the year, when he pre
sented the atoning blood, enveloping himself in
a cloud of incense.
The glory of God from the temple was re
vealed to Isaiah, enthroned above the seraphim,1
and to Ezekiel,2 enthroned on the cherubic
chariot. Subsequent to the destruction of the
temple by the king of Babylon, it disappeared
from the literature, except in poetic conceptions
of a future advent. Indeed, the manifestation to
Ezekiel was a manifestation of the glory as it
was departing from the temple.
All that was glorious in the conception of the
Shekinah and the temple of the old dispensation,
became still more glorious in Jesus Christ ; only
that glory was veiled and hidden in his flesh, as
the Shekinah had been hidden in the innermost
throne room of the temple. But this veiling of
the glory of the Word was only a temporary
veiling, during his earthly life ; when the veil of
the temple of Jerusalem was rent by an earth
quake, the veil of the flesh of the Son of God
was also rent, and when his body arose from the

Isa. vi. 2 Ezek. i.-iii.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 205
tomb, the body of the risen Lord no longer
veiled the glory, but transmitted it in Chris-
tophanies to his disciples.
The tabernacling in the flesh of the Word of
God was to be a permanent, final dwelling for
which all the theophanies prepared. We have
to go back to the comprehensive doctrine of the
pre-existent Logos, and see that all the manifes
tations of God to the creature, in all times, every
where, and in every way are through the Word
of God. He was the Light and the Life and the
AVord of God to the creature. All of the mani
festations of Light and of Life and of Word prior to
the incarnation were preparatory to the incarnation
— the incarnation was the culmination of them
all. Accordingly, we have to see in the dwelling
of the Son of God in the flesh, the permanent,
final dwelling of the Light and Life, as well as the
Word of God, in the flesh, and so Jesus Christ's
flesh became the everlasting source of life, light,
and wisdom to mankind. In and through his
flesh, mankind enter into the heavenly life and
the presence of the Godhead, and worship in the
unveiled temple. Although the term used in
this line of our poem might favor the conception
of a permanent theophany after the mode of con
ception of the pastorals, yet the fact that it is

206 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
permanent and ultimate and everlasting leads us
to think of something more than a manifestation.
And then the previous line, as we have seen, in
dicates not merely a manifestation in the flesh,
but a becoming flesh. Accordingly we have to
think of the flesh of the man Christ Jesus, as the
real flesh of the Son of God, as in organic and
vital union with the Word of God, and of the
glory as gradually pervading it and filling it.
3. The glory of the Word was beheld. The
poet tells us :
" We beheld his glory,
Glory as of an only begotten from a Father,
Full of grace and faithfulness."
The conception that the Word of God dwelt in
human flesh as the glory of God in the temple,
leads to the thought of the manifestation of that
glory. Here, as in other passages we have
studied, it is necessary for us to think of the in
carnation as a gradual one, extending over the
entire earthly career of Jesus. We have seen,
in our study of the pastorals, that there is no real
inconsistency between a self-emptying of the
form of God and a manifestation in the flesh
of grace, salvation, and incorruptible life.1 But
1 See p. 131.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 207
here we have a beholding of the glory of the
Word in the flesh. Certainly there was no
such manifestation of glory in the period from
the birth of Christ until his resurrection, ex
cept in the single instance of the transfigura
tion. Then glory shone forth from the flesh of
Christ himself. But the privilege of seeing that
glory was limited to the innermost circle of
the Twelve. The transfiguration was indeed a
Christophany. The terms suggest that the
glory they saw was the glory from the Word of
God shining through the flesh. Therefore, when
the poet tells us, " We beheld his glory," we are
to think of the many Christophanies of the res
urrection as the manifestations bf the glory of
the Son.
The poet in the context has in mind not only
the antithesis between the temple and the flesh
of Christ, but also between Moses and Christ.
Thinking of Moses, he recalls that the Law was
given through Moses, and that there was a halo
of glory on the face of Moses, reflecting the
glory of the divine presence to which he had
been admitted.1 But the theophany through

1 Ex. xxxiv. 29-35; 2 Cor. iii. 13-18; Messiah of the
Apostles, pp. 127 seq.

208 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
Jesus Christ was a Christophany, and that not of
Law but of grace and faithfulness. The word
translated " truth " in our version should more
properly be translated " faithfulness " in accord
ance with the usage of terms in Holy Scripture.
The thought then is that the gracious love of God
and His faithfulness to His covenant were glo
riously manifested in the Christophanies of Jesus
Christ. The love of God reached its supreme
exhibition in the self-sacrificing death of the
cross, and the faithfulness of God gained its su
preme recognition in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead ; and so henceforth, through
out all time, the God-man became the full exhi
bition, pledge, guarantee, and assurance of the
love of God and His faithfulness in the full sal
vation of mankind.
" No man hath seen God at any time ;
The only begotten God,
Who went to be in the bosom of the Father,
He hath declared him." 1
4. The Word became flesh and identified him
self with the race of man. There can be no
doubt that the Gospel of St. John takes a com
prehensive view of the incarnation. The distinc-

1 John i. 1 8 ; Messiah of the Apostles, p. 509.

THE WORD MADE FLESH 209
tion between Jew and Gentile has passed out of
mind. The Logos is the light and life of man
kind. So the Gospel tells us, " God so loved the
world that He gave His only begotten Son."
" For God sent not the Son into the world to
judge the world ; but that the world should be
saved through him." x It is impossible to limit
the world here to the elect, or even those who
may be eventually saved. It is necessary to
suppose that there is a sense in which the Son of
God became, by his incarnation, the Redeemer
of the world.
In his incarnation he did not identify him
self with a part of the human race, or with
elect members of the race, but with the human
race as such. When he became man, he be
came organically and vitally one of the human
race. He identified himself with humanity to
redeem humanity. He entered into the world
and became a part of the world in order to save
the world. As the immanent God, he had
always been in the world and in all creatures, by
his omnipotent energy of life and light. He
had occasionally clothed himself in physical forms
in order to manifest himself in theophanies to

i John iii. 16, 17. 14

210 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the human senses. Now by the incarnation he
became flesh, and the physical universe was taken
into organic and vital union with him in his
human nature. He was ever intensely inter
ested in humanity, and in the world as creator
and governor, as the mediator between the tran
scendent God and the creature ; now he is iden
tified with humanity, as himself creature and a
part of creation. He is part of the organization
of nature and within the organism of humanity.
He so identifies himself with the world and man,
that he himself risks his destiny with the des
tinies of the earth and man. The salvation of
the world, therefore, not only depends on the
goodwill of the creator, in the wise government
of the universe ; but still more since the incar
nation upon the ability of the God-man to save
the organism of which he has become an es
sential part. By the incarnation he became the
guarantee and pledge of the ultimate redemption
of the world. Having accomplished his earthly
work as Redeemer, he is enthroned as Lord of
all, having himself achieved full redemption and
conquered all evil ; and this makes it certain
that eventually the race will be redeemed and
the world glorified in him.
The incarnation, from this point of view, is

THE WORD MADE FLESH 211
the guarantee of the salvation of mankind, and
is the great essential step in that salvation upon
which all others depend. And so to the Johan-
nine writings it is the cardinal doctrine. " Every
spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come
in the flesh is of God : and every spirit which
confesseth not Jesus is not of God." 1 The in
carnation of the Son of God as the responsible
head of the race does not imply that every one
will be saved, because faith in the Son of God
and holy love are essential to final salvation in
every individual of the sons of men ; but it does
mean that no human being can be lost simply
because he is a human being, a child of Adam,
inheriting a depraved nature. The incarnation
overcomes all the faults of original sin and hu
man frailty. No man need be lost because of
the failures and faults and sins of human life, for
the incarnation opened a fountain for sin and un-
cleanness in the rich, pure blood of the incarnate
God. He and he only will be ultimately lost, who
deliberately separates himself from redeemed
humanity, by rejecting the incarnate Saviour,
and refusing the light and the life with which
the God-man fills the Church and the world.

1 1 John iv. 2, 3.

X
BORN OF THE VIRGIN

X
BORN OF THE VIRGIN
The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee,
And the power of the most High shall overshadow thee ;
Wherefore also that holy thing that is to be born,
Shall be called the Son of God. Luke i. 35.
THE Gospel of St. Luke was written at a
much earlier date than the Gospel of St.
John, not far from the date of the Epistle to the
Hebrews. This Gospel, in its preface, recognizes
the use of written sources of an earlier date.
Among these we may easily determine the primi
tive Gospel of St. Mark, and the original Gospel
of St. Matthew in the Hebrew language, known
as the Logia, or Sayings of Jesus. Besides these,
St. Luke evidently used other documents for his
story of the birth and infancy of Jesus. The
main stock of the story is comprised in a series
of Christian poems, many of which have been
used from the earliest times, as the Canticles of
the Christian Church : such as the Ave Maria,
the Magnificat, the Benedictus, the Nunc Dimit-

216 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
tis.1 These were originally composed in the
Hebrew language, with measured lines and
strophical organization, and were, in all proba
bility, among the earliest, if not the earliest
Christian hymns. They were sung in Jewish
Christian congregations before the destruction
of Jerusalem, and therefore belong in the ear
liest group of Christian documents, the primary
written sources of Christianity.2 We have seen
that the doctrine of the incarnation as the divine
Word becoming flesh was first sung in a hymn
in the Greek congregations of Asia.3 The doc
trine of the incarnation as a virgin birth is in
a hymn of the Jewish congregations of Palestine,
at least twenty years earlier.
We have taken this statement of the incarna
tion out of its chronological order, for this reason.
The statements as to the incarnation, thus far
considered, subsequent to the teaching of Jesus
himself, all belong to the teachings of St. Paul
and his successors in the Greek world, and they
have been in the same line of development. The
incarnation as a virgin birth belongs to a differ
ent line of thought, which was entirely apart
1 See Messiah <of the Gospel, pp. 43 seq.
2 Messiah of the Gospels, pp. 42 seq.
8 Sermon IX.„ p. 191.

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 217
from the other line, namely, the Jewish- Christian
line in Palestine. There is no manner of con
nection between the two. There is nothing
whatever in any of the views of the incarnation
thus far considered which suggests the virgin
birth. All that we have thus far learned of the
incarnation, from the teaching of Jesus, and the
writings of St. Paul, St. John, and the Epistle to
the Hebrews, would stand firm if there had been
no virgin birth ; if Jesus had been born of Joseph
and Mary, having father and mother, as any other
child. Therefore the virgin birth is only one of
many statements of the mode of the incarnation.
It has no more documentary value, no more in
trinsic importance, than any other of the many
we have thus far studied. The doctrine of the
incarnation does not depend upon the virgin
birth. Since all the other passages relating to
the incarnation, except that of the Gospel of
the Infancy, know nothing of the virgin birth, it
is only a minor matter connected with the incar
nation, and should have a subordinate place in
the doctrine. That which is unknown to the
teachings of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John
and St. James and our Lord himself, and is
absent from the earliest and latest Gospels, can
not be so essential as many people have supposed.

218 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
At the same time the virgin birth is a New Tes
tament doctrine, and we must give it its proper
place and importance in connection with the
others. As has been said, this doctrine is in the Ave
Maria, or Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin.
This annunciation is in the form of a poem. It
was written by an early Christian poet. It was
certainly composed in the Jewish-Christian com
munity in Palestine, which was nearest to the
Virgin Mary. The author must, therefore, have
known the mind of the Jerusalem or Galilean
community as to the Mother of Christ Jesus.
This hymn belongs so near the life of our Lord,
and so near the immediate family of Jesus, that
its reliability ought not to be questioned. The
Jerusalem church under the headship of St.
James, the brother of the Lord, would not have
tolerated the Ave Maria, if it had not expressed
their devotional feelings towards our Lord and
his Mother.
Although the Ave Maria is not cited in the
Gospel of St. Matthew it seems to be presup
posed ; for the narrative gives in prose the same
idea of the incarnation which is given in the
Ave Maria as poetry.
" Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 219
wise : When his mother Mary had been be
trothed to Joseph, before they came together she
was found with child of the Holy Spirit. And
Joseph her husband, being a righteous man, and
not willing to make her a, public example, was
minded to put her away privily. But when he
thought on these things, behold, an angel of the
Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying,
Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto
thee Mary thy wife ; for that which is conceived
in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall
bring forth a son ; and thou shalt call his name
Jesus ; for it is he that shall save his people from
their sins. Now all this is come to pass, that it
might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord
through the prophet, saying,
" Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son,
And they shall call his name Immanuel ; 1
which is, being interpreted, God with us. And
Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel
of the Lord commanded him, and took unto him
his wife ; and knew her not till she had brought
forth a son : and he called his name Jesus." 2

1 Isa. vii. 13-17; Messianic Prophecy, pp. 195 seq.
2 Matt. i. 18-25.

220 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
This passage in St. Matthew represents that the
virgin birth was in fulfilment of the prophecy of
Isaiah. The original passage does not predict
the virgin birth of the Messiah ; the original
Hebrew word only means a young woman
whether married or single. But St. Matthew
quotes the Greek version of the Old Testament,
which uses a more specific term, which is trans
lated virgin.
The virgin birth, however, is not the point of
the prophecy, andit is by no means certain that
St. Matthew cites the prediction on that account.
The prophecy is cited as a prediction of the birth
of the child Immanuel, which is translated " God
with us." This justifies the name Jesus, which,
in translation, means " Yahweh is salvation." But
the prose narrative makes it very plain that while
Mary was the mother of Jesus, Joseph was not
his father, according to the flesh. Joseph fol
lowed the command of the angel, and adopted
the child as his own, recognizing in him a child
of Mary, conceived and born of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and in
the earliest writings of the New Testament, is the
energy j or power of God. The conception of
Jesus resulted from the putting forth of the vital
and reative energy of the divine Spirit. This is

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 221
the prosaic view of it which is given in the Gos
pel of St. Matthew. But the hymn in the Gospel
of St. Luke gives it in a more poetic form.
The poet sees a theophany. As in ancient
times the pillar of cloud which guided Israel in
his exodus from Egypt into the Holy Land, de
scended and enveloped the tabernacle with glory,
and entered in and took possession of the throne
room, the holiest of all ; so God descended in a
cloud of glory upon the Virgin Mary, over
shadowed her, and the power of the divine Spirit
took possession of her, and enabled her by his
quickening energy to conceive the child Jesus,
and bear him into the world. Thus the earthly
origin of Jesus began in a theophany, just as the
angel choir appeared at his birth in theophany,
the theophanic star led the sages to his cradle,
and the theophany of the voice and the dove at
his baptism consecrated him for his public min
istry. We have seen already, in several texts, that
the theophany was the mould in which the doc
trine of the incarnation was formed in the Chris
tian Church. We have seen that St. Paul in the
Epistle to the Corinthians regarded the ancient
theophanies as manifestations of the pre-existing
Christ ; ] that the pastorals view the entire first
1 Sermon IV., p. 85.

222 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
advent as essentially an epiphany or theophanic
manifestation of the pre-existent Christ,1 and that
the Hymn to the Logos 2 represents the divine
Word as dwelling in the flesh of Jesus Christ, as
the Glory of God in the ancient tabernacle and
temple. It was quite natural, therefore, that the
author of the Ave Maria should think of the con
ception of Christ as a theophanic coming of God,
with the vital power of the divine Spirit, and of
his taking possession of Mary as the temple of the
Son of God.
One of the evidences of the early date of this
doctrine, and of the hymn which enshrines it, is
that it sings of the virgin birth of the Son of God,
and seems to know nothing at all of his pre-exist
ence. There is nothing in the hymn to suggest
even ideal pre-existence. From this point of
view, this doctrine of the incarnation is more
primitive than that of the Epistle to the Gala
tians. Indeed, if there were any, even the slight
est, trace of the doctrine of the virgin birth in the
Epistle to the Galatians, or in any other of the
epistles, we might have made the virgin birth of
our Lord the first in the series of our discourses.
But, in fact, while it is a more primitive idea, so

1 Sermon VII., p. 130. 2 Sermon IX., p. 202.

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 223
far as the pre-existence of Christ is concerned,
and also so far as the theophanic phase of the
incarnation is concerned, there is yet in the vir
gin birth a doctrine of the incarnation which
must have been sufficiently late in the Pal
estinian community not to have influenced in
any way the writers of the epistles ; that is,
subsequent to the final departure of St. Peter
and St. Paul, and possibly also of St. John, from
Jerusalem. It would have been so natural for the author
of this poem to have brought in the pre-existence
here, if it had been at all in his mind. As the
author of the Hymn to the Logos thought of
the divine Word tabernacling in human flesh, so
the author of the Ave Maria might have thought
of the Son of God as coming in theophany, and
making the Virgin Mary his earthly temple, just
as in a primitive creed given by Tertullian,1 which
says that the Word of God was sent from the
Father into the Virgin, and was born of her. But
the Son of God is entirely passive here ; he is
simply the holy thing that was conceived. The
Spirit of God is the divine theophanic agent. In
view of all the facts of the case, it is noteworthy

1 Tertullian Adv. Praxeam, Cap. 2.

224 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
that the doctrine of the incarnation which has
been enshrined in the creeds is that of the Ave
Maria and not that of the epistles. In the
Apostles' Creed we say :
" Who was conceived of the Holy Ghost,
Born of the Virgin Mary."
This is based entirely upon the Ave Maria. In
the Nicene Creed we say :
" Came down from heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin
Mary,
And was made man."
This is a combination of the Hymn of the
Logos and the Hymn of the Virgin. But the
primitive form of the creed was, " Descended,
was made flesh, and was made man," which is
altogether in accordance with the hymn to the
Logos. The favorite idea of the incarnation among the
people has ever been the simpler one of the vir
gin birth, as in the Ave Maria. The theologians
have ever preferred the more profound doctrine
of the Hymn of the Logos.
No difficulty was found with the doctrine of
the virgin birth until recent times, when the

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 225
advanced knowledge of natural law made it
difficult to believe that God would violate law in
miracle-working of any kind. The scientific ob
jection to miracles has been avoided by calling
attention to the higher laws of the universe and
the latent powers of nature which were unknown
to the ancients, but which are gradually being
discovered in modern times. It does not destroy
the essential character of the miracles of the
Bible, if we suppose that the prophets were
guided by the divine Spirit to use the occult
powers of nature and the higher laws of the
universe, unknown to the men of their age.
There is no sufficient reason for us to reject
the virgin birth, because we may not be able
to explain it in accordance with our present
knowledge. We make a decided advance towards the re
moval of difficulties if we follow the poet's idea,
that the conception of Jesus was theophanic in
character ; that is, that God was present with al
mighty power when the Virgin Mary conceived
Jesus. For we have to consider, not the concep
tion of an ordinary man, but the conception of
the Second Adam, the Saviour of the world.
There was a special need, therefore, for divine
activity. As the ancient Jewish poet thought of
15

226 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
the divine Spirit as hovering over primitive chaos
with creative energy to bring light, life, and or
der out of it ; l as another Jewish poet saw God
Himself present in theophany, moulding the
body of man out of the clay soil, and breathing
into his nostrils the breath of life,2 — so an early
Christian poet conceived of the divine Spirit as
overshadowing the Virgin Mary, and imparting
His divine power to enable her to conceive the
man Jesus.
If with Tertullian we attach the virgin birth to
the pre-existent Logos, then we may start with
the doctrine of the divine immanence. The Son
of God as the immanent God is always in any
and every place. He may manifest himself any
where. He might, therefore, without the violation
of any law of nature or any disturbance of meta
physical relations, manifest himself in the primary
germ of human life.
A scholastic divine of the middle ages repre
sents that there are only four ways in which it is
possible to think of the origin of man : (1) of man
without father or mother — Adam; (2) of man
with both father and mother — the common ex
perience of men ; (3) of man without a mother —
1 Gen. i. 2 Gen. ii.

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 227
Eve formed from man. The only other possible
way was of man without a father. This last
was reserved for the seed of the woman, the son
of the Virgin. It was not necessary in order to
complete humanity that Jesus should be born as
other men, of father and mother. Eve was as
human as Adam, though she had no mother ; so
Jesus was as human as Adam, though he had no
father. Humanity was complete and entire in
all these cases.
We have been compelled to consider the ques
tion whether Jesus shared in sinful flesh, whether
he inherited in his flesh the hereditary taint and
defilement of original sin, with its tendency to
evil. In our study of the Epistle to the Hebrews
we have seen that though Jesus partook of flesh
and blood, we were not obliged to think that
he partook of any hereditary sin or corruption.1
When now we consider, not only that Jesus be
came flesh, but that he was born into this world,
of a human mother, we have all the more to con
sider how he could have been conceived and
born without sharing, with all others of the
human kind, in original sin and hereditary in
clinations to sin.
1 See p. 159-

228 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
This problem was not in the mind of the
author of this hymn, any more than it was in the
mind of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews.
The problem arises only when we think of it, in
view of the Pauline doctrine of original sin, as
connected with the first Adam. St. Paul, who
taught this doctrine of original sin, did not think
of the incarnation as a virgin birth or as a becom
ing flesh. The writers, who think of the incar
nation in these closer relations to humanity, know
nothing of original sin.
Nevertheless in Christian theology we are
forced to consider the problem. It was not con
sidered by the ancient Greek Church, which de
fined the doctrine of the Person of Christ in the
Creeds and at the Great Councils ; they had not
yet been called to study the doctrine of original
sin. But when the Latin Church followed the
lead of Augustine, in his doctrine of the original
sin of mankind, the problem emerged how to ex
plain the human nature of Jesus Christ as virgin
born, under these circumstances. Accordingly,
the theologians sought out many explanations.
They saw that in some way it was necessary to
remove the taint of original sin from the human
nature which the Son of God assumed when he
became man. There must have been such a sane-

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 229
tification of that flesh, at the time of the incar
nation, or prior to it, that Jesus Christ might be
conceived without sin. The older theologians
thought of a sanctification of the mother be
fore the birth of the Son. But it was difficult
to see how the sanctification of the mother could
remove inherited depravity. Accordingly, the
sanctification was pushed further back, and the
doctrine of the immaculate conception of the
Virgin was devised, which, in recent times, has
been defined as an infallible doctrine of the
Church of Rome.
Protestant theologians, who were unwilling to
recognize such a sanctification of the mother,
sought the sanctification of the flesh which the
Son of God assumed, either immediately prior to
its assumption by the Son of God, or else in the
very act of assumption itself, through the sancti
fying influence of the Holy Spirit. The objec
tion to these opinions of Protestant scholastics is
that it involves the removal of the hereditary
taint of original sin by a momentary act of the
divine Spirit in the flesh which Jesus assumed.
Such an act is purely mechanical, and has nothing
ethical in it ; and if such a thing was done for
the child Jesus, why does not the Holy Spirit
sanctify every man child when he is conceived,

230 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
and not wait for the sacrament of baptism, or for
his personal faith in Christ ?
Another opinion of some recent divines is that
the transmitted sin goes with the person, and not
with the nature, and inasmuch as the person of
the God-man was not derived from the human
nature, the taint was not communicated. But
this view does not suit the real situation ; for
although essentially the person is the person of
the Word of God, yet, in fact, important elements
of human personality were taken up into the
personality of the Son of God, to make up the
individuality of the theanthropic person,1 and
these carry with them inherited characteristics ;
otherwise the most essential thing in human
nature, namely, moral nature, was not in the
human nature which was assumed by the Son of
God, and the humanity was so far incomplete and
defective. It is possible to take a position somewhat
intermediate between the Roman Catholic doc
trine and that medley of opinions which Pro
testantism has produced but not yet officially
defined. Holding the Augustinian doctrine of original
1 See p. 201.

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 231
sin, and the theory of the transmission of intel
lectual and moral faculties and characteristics as
well as physical substance, we must recognize
that the good character is transmitted as well as
the evil ; that if, on the one hand, God visits the
iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generations of them that hate
Him, He yet shows mercy unto thousands of gen
erations of them that love Him and keep His com
mandments.1 We have to consider that Israel
was the chosen nation, the banner bearer of re
demption for mankind, and that the seed of the
promise was being prepared by a process of sancti
fication through the centuries for the time when
the Messiah should be born of it. We also have
to remember that the seed of David was the
Messianic seed, that God had promised that His
favor should never depart from it, and that
though He would discipline the seed His sure
mercies should abide with it.2 The seed of David
was transmitted in a succession of heroes of faith
and piety such as was unique in the world's history-
It was the holy seed of promise. The same is
true of the priestly line of succession. Though
the seed of promise was in obscurity for many

1 Ex. xx. 5, 6. 2 Messianic Prophecy, pp. 126 seq.

232 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
generations, when it appears in history, it all the
more surely, after such a quiet preparation, appears
in Joseph and in Mary, in persons of extraordinary
purity, simplicity, and devotion. May we not
suppose that the Holy Spirit had been sanctify
ing the holy line for generations, preparing it for
that fulness of time when the Messiah was to be
born of it, and that in Mary the Mother of our
Lord that sanctifying had reached the supreme
point of entire removal from her, even at her birth,
of all the taint and defilement of original sin, so
that she was fitted from her birth by her purity,
innocence, and consecrated sanctity to be the
Mother of our Lord. Such a view does no vio
lence to the Pauline doctrine of original sin, but
is in accord with the doctrine of a preparation
for the advent, which we have seen to be involved
in most of the texts dealing with the incarnation.
The holy Mother, pure and undefiled, immacu
late and altogether sacred, had been prepared
through many generations of holy ancestry, as
the consummate flower of humanity, to bear as
her fruit the holy child. And so the archangel
greets her at the annunciation :
" Hail thou that art endued with grace :
The Lord is with thee." 1

1 Luke i. 28.

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 233
Many in our times are so troubled by this doctrine
of a miraculous birth of Jesus, as unnatural and
in violation of the laws of nature, that they are
blinded to the sublimity of the poet's idea. I
have endeavored to show that it should be
classed with theophanies, rather than with mira
cles, and explained as the coming forth of the
immanent omnipresent Son of God into local and
material forms. From this point of view, it is in
some respects the most sublime of all the state
ments of the incarnation. It is often so, that the
Christian poet sees farther and deeper than the
prosaic theologian. If the Son of God was to
become fully, completely, and altogether man,
where was he to begin ? If a human body was
to be prepared for him, at what stage in the pre
paration of the body was he to assume it ? Every
possibility was thought out by Christian sects, in
the earlier centuries ; and all rejected by the
Church, as leading to serious error, except the
single one of the virgin birth. It was not suffi
cient that the Logos should assume the body of
a full-grown man at the time of the baptism in
the Jordan ; it was not enough that he should
assume the body of the boy Jesus when first he
visited the temple and was found with the doctors
of the law ; it was not sufficient that he should

234 THE INCARNATION OF THE LORD
assume the body of the babe when the star guided
the wise men to his cradle, or when the angelic
choir appeared to the shepherds, or at the very
moment of his birth, — it was necessary for the
completion and perfection of the incarnation that
he should begin with the very first beginnings
of human nature.
It is sublime to think of the Son of God be
coming man. Other religions think of the incar
nation of their gods. It is still more sublime to
think of him as a babe in the Virgin's arms. That
thought has been the favorite one in Christian
art. From the days of the mural paintings in
the Catacombs until the present day, the Ma
donna and her babe have been the noblest theme
of Christian art, and they have ever inspired its
greatest masterpieces. But vastly more sublime
is that doctrine which can only be represented
by the poet's art, the Son of God beginning his
earthly existence as a holy thing conceived by
the Virgin. The Son of God would begin at the
very beginning of human substance, and so live
through the whole life of man until death and
the abode of the dead, that he might consecrate
every moment of human existence, and redeem
all that belonged to human nature.

BORN OF THE VIRGIN 235
Therefore we believe, in the words of the holy
Creed of the Catholic Church :
" In one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God ;
Begotten of his Father before all worlds,
God of God, Light of Light,
Very God of very God ;
Begotten, not made ;
Being of one substance with the Father ;
By whom all things were made :
Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from
heaven,
And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin
Mary,
And was made man ;
And was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate ;
He suffered and was buried :
And the third day he rose again, according to the
Scriptures ;
And ascended into heaven,
And sitteth on the right hand of the Father :
And he shall come again, with glory, to judge both the
quick and the dead ;
Whose kingdom shall have no end."

INDEXES

INDEX OF TEXTS

Genesis. Page
i  226
i. 26  90
ii  226
ii. 7  01
iii. 5  109
iii. 1-1  72
xvi. 7 seq  87
xxii. 11-15  87
xxviii. 10-22  87
xxxii. 24-31  87
Exodtts.
iv. 22  34
xiii. 20-22  86
xiv. 19-31  86
xvi  86
xvii. 1-7  86
xx. 5, 6  231
xxiv. 3-8  22
xxxiv. 29-35  207
xl. 34-38  87
NUMBERS.
x. 34-36  86
Deuteronomy.
xviii. 16-19  22
n. Samuel.
vii. 11-10  35
I. Chronicles.
xvii. 10-14  35
Job.
xxxviii. 7  90
Psalms.
ii. 7  35
viii  90
viii. 4-6  5
xcviii  187
ex. 1  35
P&OVEBBS.
viii  192

Isaiah. Page
vi  204
vii. 13-17  219
xxxv  170
xl. 10-11  171
xlviu. 12  181
liii  110
Jeremiah.
i. 5  77
Ezekiel.
i-iii  87, 204
ii. 1  5
iii. 1  5
iv. 1  5
xxxiv. 11-31  180
Daniel.
vii  6
vii. 13  5
vii. 14  6
ix. 27  7
xi. 31  7
xii. 1  7
Hosea.
ii.-iii  186
Zephaniah.
iii. 8-20  186
Malachi,
iii. 1,2  177
Ecclesiasticus.
xxiv. 3-11  192
Wisdom op Solomon.
vii. 25-27  192
Matthew.
i. 18-25  219
ii. 1-12  129,137
iii. 3  175

Page
iii. 17  36
iv. 1-11  36
v. 11  20
vii. 21  41
vii. 29  21
viii. 17  159
viii. 20  16
viii. 29  36
ix. 6  3
x. 23  12
x. 32  41
x. 33  9,41
xi. 3  172
xi. 18, 19  17
xi. 27  33
xii. 8  17
xii. 31, 32  18
xii. 40  13
xii. 50  41
xiii. 37  12
xiii. 41  8
xiv. 33  36
xv. 13  40
xvi. 13-20  173
xvi. 16  36
xvi. 17  41
xvi. 20  28
xvi. 21  14
xvi. 27  39
xvi. 28  12
xvii. 1-8  36
xvii. 9, 12, 22, 23  14
xviii. 10  41
xviii. 11  19
xviii. 14, 19,35  41
xix. 28  11
xx. 18-19  14
xx. 23  41
xx. 25-28  14
xxi. 23-27  28
xxiv. 30  7
xxiv. 36  39,119
xxiv. 37-39  10
xxiv. 44  10
xxv. 31-33  10
xxvi. 2  14
xxvi. 24  15
xxvi. 26-29  22
xxvi. 29  41
xxvi. 39  41
xxvi. 45  14
xxvi. 51-53  116
xxvi. 63  41

240

INDEX OF TEXTS

xxvi. 63  36
xxvi. 64  10
xxvii. 40, 43, 54  36
xxviii. 18  52
xxviii. 19  41
Mark.
i. lHt  175
i. 7, 8  171
1.9-11  137
i. 11  36
i. 22  21
ii. 10-11  3
ii. 27-28  17
iii. 11  36
iii. 28-29  18
iv 26-29  13
v. 7  30
viii. 27-30  115, 173
viii. 30  28
viii. 31  14
viii. 38  9,39
ix. 1  12
ix. 2-8  36
ix. 9, 12, 31  14
ix. 29  36
x. 33-34  14
x. 42-45  14
xi. 27-33  28
xiii. 26  7
xiii. 32  39, 119
xiv. 21  15
xiv. 22-25  22
xiv. 36  41
xiv. 41  14
xiv. 47-49  116
xiv. 61  36
xiv. 61-63  116
xiv. 62  10
xiv. 65  116
xv. 16-20  116
xv. 39  36
Luke.
i. 15, 16  77
i. 28  232
i. 35  215
ii. 8-20,25-35  137
ii. 49  42
iii. 4-6  175
iii. 22  36
iv. 1-13  36
iv. 32  21
iv. 41  36
v. 24  3
vi. 5  17
vi. 22  20
vi. 35  103
vii. 33-34  17
viii. 28  36
ix. 18-21  173
ix. 20  36
ix. 21  28
ix. 22  14
ix. 26  9,39

Page
ix. 27  12
ix. 28-36  36
ix. 44  14
ix. 56  19
ix. 58  16
x. 13  19
x. 22  33
xi. 30  13
xii. 9  9
xii. 10  18
xvii. 22  20
xvii. 26-30  10
xviii. 8  11
xviii. 31-33  14
xix. 9-10  19
xx. 1-8  28
xxi. 27  7
xxii. 18-20  22
xxii. 22  15
xxii. 29  40
xxii. 42  41
xxii. 44  152
xxii. 49-53  116
xxii. 69  10
xxii. 70  36
xxiii. 34,46  41
xxiv. 7  14
xxiv. 44  22
xxiv. 49  40
John.
i. 1-18  191
i.3  196
i. 4, 5  197
i. 14  191,206
i. 18  208
i. 19-23  169
i. 19-28  172
i. 29  171
i. 34,49  36
i. 51  4, 11
ii. 18-22  203
iii. 13  4,26
iii. 14  4,15
iii. 16, 17  209
iv. 46-53  101
v. 17  45
v. 19-27  47
v. 21  140
v. 24  143
v. 25  37
v. 26  112
vi. 27  23
vi. 30-31  115
vi. 33-38, 42  54
vi. 46  49
vi. 51  54
vi. 53  23
vi. 62  26
viii. 23  54
viii. 28  15
viii. 54-55  49
viii. 56  55,72
viii. 57, 58  55
x. 14-15  49

Page
x. 17-18  112
x. 18  139
x. 36  37
xi. 4  37
xi. 27  36
xii. 1-8  101
xii. 23, 32,34  15
xiii. 31-32  16
xiv. 6  49
xiv. 9,11  56
xiv. 20  57
xv. 18-20  158
xvi. 12-14  64
xvi. 28  57
xvii. 1-2  48
xvii. 5  58
xvii. 19  122
xvii. 21  57
xvii. 24  59
xvii. 25  49
xviii. 10-11  116
xix. 7  36
Acts.
i. 7  40
iii. 22  22
ix. 1-9  67
xv  99
xx. 35  103
xxii. 5-11  67
xxvi. 10-18  67
Romans.
v. 17  74,109
vii. 14-1S  159
viii. 1,2  141
viii. 1-4  74
viii. 3  109
xi. 29  71
I. Corinthians.
viii. 5  95
viii. 6  78, 95
x. 1-4  86
xi. 3  78,89,109
xi. 7, 8, 9  89
xi. 23-26  22
xv. 24-26  139
xv. 45  109, 139
xv. 46-47  78,91
xv. 47  109
xv. 53-54  144
II. Corinthians.
iii. 13-18  207
viii. 9  78,83,99
Galatians.
i. 17-19  79
iii. 13  68
iii. 16, 17  71
iii. 24  67
iii. 26-28  73

INDEX OF TEXTS

241

Page
iii. 29  71
iv. 4-5  03
Philippians.
ii. 5-8  107
iii. 4-14  67
iii. 20, 21  143
Colossians.
i. 12-22  149, 179
i. 15-17  193
i. 15-20  114
iii. 4  .-  129
I. Timothy.
i. 15  128,130
iii. 16  128, 131
vi. 14  129

II. Timothy. Page
i. 8-10  127
i. 9  75
iv. 1  129
Titus.
ii. 11, 12  135
ii. 13  129
Hebrews.
i. 1-2  64
i. 1-14  149,180
i. 3  193
ii. 14-15  140
ii. 14-17  147
ii. IS  156
iv. 15  122, 157, 161
v. 7-8  152
v. 8-9  122

Page
vii. 20, 27,28  101
ix.26  138
I. Peter,
i. 20  75, 129,135
v. 4  129
II. Peter.
i. 16-18  86
i. 19  135
I. John.
iii. 5, 8  129
iv. 2, 3  211
Revelation.
i. 17-18  154
xxii. 12,13  181

IU

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Adam, the second, 26, 73, 91 seq.,
162 seq., 228 seq.
Advent of God, 169 seq.
Agony of Christ, 152 seq.
Angel of the Presence, 85 seq., 132
seq.
Angels, as capable of redemption,
148 seq.
Annunciation to the Virgin, 218
seq.
Apostles' Creed, 224.
Archetypal Man, 90.
Augustine, 228.
Authority of Son of Man, 21.
Ave Maria, 215 seq.

Born of a Woman, 63 seq.
Born of the Virgin, 215.

Charles, 25.
Christophany, 67.
Complexity of Messianic Idea, 172
seq., 183 seq.
Consciousness of Christ, 116 seq.
Consciousness of Sonship, 43 seq.
D
Death, abolition of, 139 seq.
Divinity of Christ, 179 seq., 196
seq.

Emptying himself, 108 seq.
Enoch, Similitudes of, 6, 25.
Epiphany of Christ, 127 seq. ; in
classic usage, 130 ; in ecclesiasti
cal usage, 128 seq. ; in New Tes
tament usage, 129.
Epistle to the Galatians, date of, 66.

Father of Israel, 34 ; of Mankind,
38 ; of Messianic dynasty, 34 ; of
the Son, 41 seq.
Flesh of Christ, 136 seq., 151 seq.,
162 seq., 198 seq.
Forgiveness of Sins, 4.
Form of God, 110 seq.
Fulness of the Time, 69.

Gildersleeve, B. L., 40.
Glory of God, 206.
Grace of God, manifestation of, 134.
Growth of Christ, 116 seq.

H
Headship of Christ, 88 seq.
Herald of the Advent, 177 seq.
High priesthood of Christ, 155.
Hymn of Logos, 191; of the Virgin, '
216 seq.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

243

Image of God, 90.
Immaculate conception, 229 seq.
Immanence of God, 194.
Incorruptivii, 138 seq.
K
Kenosis, 107 seq.
Knowledge of Christ, limitatimis,
119 seq.

Law, birth under, 68.
Logia of St. Matthew, 33.
Logos, 192 seq.
Lord, as used of Christ, 96 seq.
M
Made like unto his brethren, 147
seq.
Man of heaven, 93.
Mediator, of Creation, 95 seq., 149
seq. ; of Providence, 149.
Messianic King, 12, 28, 36 seq.
Mission from the Father, 76.
N
Nicene Creed, 224, 235.

Original Sin not in Christ, 160 seq.,
9.9.R.

Paraclete, 64.
Perfected by sufferings, 156.
Personal distinction in Trinity, 200
seq.
Personality of Christ, 201.
PAMo, 193.
Philosophy, Cliristian, 195.

Poverty, voluntary, 17, 85 seq.
Pre-existence, ideal, 55 seq., 92 sen. •
of Christ, 23 seq., 49 seq., 90 seq.,'
223 seq.
Prophet like Moses, 22.

Race, Christ identifies himself with,
209 seq. ; redemption of, 208.
Resurrection of Christ, 1 3 seq.
Reticence of Jesus, 27, 37.

Sanctification of Christ, 122 seq.
Saviour, of Christ, 136 seq.
Seed of Abraham, 70.
Self-impoverishment of the Lord, 83
seq.
Servant of Yahweh, 110.
Shekinah, 87, 204 seq.
Son of God, 34 seq.
Son of Man, 3 seq.
Son of the Father, 33 seq.
St. John the Baptist and Christ, 171
seq.
Sufferings of Clirist, 152 seq.

Temptation of Christ, 156 seq.
Tertullian, 223.
Theophanies, 86 seq., 130 seq., 192,
202 seq., 221 seq.
Transcendence of God, 194.
Trinity, 200 seq.

Virgin, birth, 220 seq. ; immaculate,
232. W
fForrf made flesh, 191 seq.

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