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Humanity and h^Hrinity tik.'Samr>Tning.

6

DISCQURSE

FEEACH& IN

T'HE WEST CHUB6H,

A1*D BEFOSfe THE

SUNDAY

SCHOOL TEACHERS' INSTITUTE,

>

IN BOSTON?

', . " ' vv / ,".
By C. A. rfAKTOL.
i BOST ON";
OFFICE OF THE QUA&TEELY /^UKU^
31 BBOWlt&D" STREET.
1856.
3*B
DISCOURSE.

" The Son op God  the Son of Man."
Johnv. 25-27.
So Jesus describes himself by these two opposite titles
in the same breath. What would he have us understand ?
that he was human, or divine ? Some insist on his humani
ty, others on his divinity ; others still, that, though his hu
manity and divinity must be regarded as contradictory ele
ments, yet they were somehow balanced and wrapped up
together, and he had indeed two natures in one form and
person. But if we are to take his own teaching about himself, he
certainly was not merely human, was not merely divine,
and was not, in any suspicion he ever himself expresses,
a twofold, inconsistent creature, half from above, half from
below, but one simple being. He has no double conscious
ness. An imperfect, sinful man may seem to himself to
1

2 CHRIST'S HUMANITY AND DIVINITY.
have two natures struggling together; but no internal war
was in the bosom of Jesus. How, then, shall we interpret
his declaration that he was Son of God and Son of Man,
human and divine ? I answer, by discerning that, in
speaking of his humanity after speaking of his divinity, he
meant not a different, but the same thing. "Is Christ
divided ? " cries the great Apostle. No, I answer : he
does not exist in parts and segments, but on earth and in
heaven, before time and after it, and through eternity, a
glorious unity for the embrace of our souls. Son of God
and Son of Man, his humanity and divinity are one. But,
you may say, what expressions could be more diverse and
contradictory? Let us see, my friends, if they are contra
dictory, or even so utterly diverse. To be the Son of
Man cannot, you say, be the same thing as to be the Son
of God. But have you ever thought what it is to be the
Son of Man? It is Christ's title, peculiar to him, not the
title of any other ; you cannot apply it to any beside. All
beside, that ever breathed, are children of men ; he alone
is the Son of Man. That is to say, he is, beyond all com
parison, the great descendant, chief specimen, noblest off
spring of our race. We speak of one child as the flower
of a family. He is the flower of the human family, of all
its diverse species, of all its successive -generations, of all
its myriad and ever-multiplied individuals, in every nation
and kindred and tongue and tribe, the finest illustration and
grandest result to which humanity has proved itself equal.
The natural philosopher, you know, delights to descant on
the curiously broad varieties of the one great order and
nature of mankind, accurately distinguishing and showing
us, in living specimens or the painted copies of art, their
diversities of intellectual and physical capacity and struc
ture. But out of all qualities of organization, all shades of

CHRIST'S HUMANITY AND DIVINITY. 6
color, all influences of climate, all agencies of education and
circumstance on the whole round earth, the Almighty leads
forth, through the portals of a Jewish ancestry and birth, this
one person, this head of his human family, this spiritual
chief; Lord of nature, and of all his fellows that wear a
mortal covering like himself ; " great David's greater Son,"
the Son of Man ; — Son of Man, because whatever grand
eur of thought, of temper, of virtue, of affection, of devo
tion, the human soul can be conceived capable of, supremely
clothes and amazingly shines out of him. The theory of
earthly kingship, that is, of one person to preside over the
rest, and be sovereign of an entire country, is that this one
should be of the purest line, and finest strain of birth and
origin, the real superior of all the millions he commands,
— though royal blood is often royal blood only in name, in
historic genealogy, and the chronicles of musty records, not
in deed and in truth.
But here is a man, who, as he told Pilate, the Roman
governor, is king indeed, not of the Jews alone, but of the
Gentiles ; truly King of Men ; the Teacher, Master, Sav
iour of the world. And he is so because his spirit, while
sympathetic with, and intelligible to, other spirits, having
with them a common mould and derivation, reaches in
breadth and towers in height beyond them all. His quali
ties are human, but exalted to an unprecedented pitch.
His lov.e is not an alien thing, quite other than your love
and mine, though it be wider, holier, more steadily burning
and blazing aloft. His purity is no unnatural, inhuman
purity, but akin both to a child's innocence and a chas
tened man's or woman's sanctity. Were it not, we could
not understand or admire or imitate it. His gentleness,
patience, humility, forbearance, forgiveness, faithfulness,
were not monstrous and magical, but human traits, features

4 Christ's humanity and divinity.
of humanity, though large and lustrous as earth before him
never saw, yet such precisely as we are called to aspire
after and show forth.
And now I ask, What were these, his human qualities,
but his divine ones also ? Will you divide and distinguish
between them ? Run the line of demarcation, and show
me where it runs ! Put ygur logical finger on anything in
him human that is not God-UJce too !
" His love and meekness so divine,
I would transcribe and make them mine."
You say, my Unitarian or humanitarian friend, that he
was a mere man. Will you please to tell me what it is to
be a mere man, a perfect, unadulterated, undegenerate
whole man, in all that manhood can reach, imagine, or be
unfolded into ? . I refer not to the form, the outside, the
hands and feet, the earthly and perishable garment of a
man ; that has nothing to do with a man's essence, — is
not the man himself. I refer to the mysterious soul, warm
with love, luminous with wisdom, expanded in power to the
uttermost, immaculate and complete. Ay, what is it to
be such a man ? There is but one such in all history, —
Jesus Christ. Will any of you say his soul was different
from other souls, in that it pre-existed, and was miracu
lously born, supernaturally introduced upon earth ? I an
swer, that no pre-existence or miraculous birth constituted,
however it might indicate, the character of the soul ; but
all souls, above or below, living before the morning-stars
sang together, or inspired yesterday, are of one family ;
and that Jesus Christ adopts, or is clad in, a human na
ture to publish this sublime, encouraging truth. While all
men fall below the standard, here is one who attains to the
idea of a man, and teaches that the name of man should

Christ's humanity and divinity. 5
be no longer a name for folly or sin, but for purity, and
truth, and love. Thus Jesus was the Son of Man.
And now I ask you, What was it for Jesus thus to be the
Son of Man but to be also the Son of God, truly, prop
erly, perfectly divine, a divinity on earth, a manifestation
of God in the flesh, all of deity that flesh can hold, or a
human form and person contain ? Marvel ye at this ? But
are not all men the offspring of God ? Are they not in
His Book called to be sons of God, as he was the Son of
God ? human creatures indeed, but called to be partakers
of the divine nature ? Alas for us ! alas for the follies and
sins that are in us ! that the wojrd human should have so
often, in our use of it, a low, unclean, earthy savor and
sound, when humanity itself, in its nature and plan, is
truly nothing else but the very breath of God, to make a
being that should hold with him everlasting communion !
Yea, I am bold to say, what is most human is also most
divine. Reason, conscience, love, swaying this frame of
ours, do not they make our humanity? And if a man de
scends from them to the dominion of his appetites and sen
sual passions, does he not sink out of his manhood into the
lower creation, into the rank of matter and the scale of the
brutes ? But if truth and love and duty are his law, he
is not merely the offspring of Mary, born of any woman
or begotten of any man, but the child of God. And O
then there is nothing on earth beside we can see or think
of so near to God as he is ! Beast or bird, tree or flower,
sun or star, in which God abides, is not so near to God ;
and there is no heaven in those blue, sparkling depths like
the heaven of the Father's dwelling in that filial human
soul. Jesus Christ, — whence or how I know not, first at
what time I know not (for the Eternal God has for his Spirit
no date in our memory or calendar, nor can be put into an
1*

6 Christ's humanity and divinity.
almanac), — some time, some how, Jesus Christ had this
perfect abode of God in him, the spirit without measure,
and so was Son of God and Son of Man, perfect humanity
and divinity. Sad it is that so seldom men should have
had any clear glimpse of this! But thanks to thee, John
Milton, greatest of religious poets, for the hint thou wast
inspired to give of this harmony of man with God, when
thou spakest of " the human face divine ! " There is
such a thing, and Christ had it.
But again, my friends, I must say, if our thought, travel
ling thus on the road of humanity, runs directly into divin
ity, — so, travelling by the road of Christ's divinity, it leads
us back equally into his humanity. It is the same thing.
He is man's' approach to God, — God's approach to man.
He is the way between both, and unites both in one. Do
you, my Trinitarian friend, assert his divinity ? I will as
sert his divinity with you. But I ask you wherein did his
divinity consist ? Was it not in this, that he embodied and
represented the beautiful and blessed and perfect attributes
of God, — God's holiness, goodness, justice, truth, and
love ? And what are these highest attributes but such as
God would have his whole intelligent creation emulate and
copy ? He would have them, certainly he would have
them, to be human qualities too ! Therefore it is the first
great record of the creation, he made man in his own
image, and in the last Revelation he calls us to be " fol
lowers of God as dear children." And, therefore, Christ's
humanity and divinity were not opposed, but identical.
It may be thought by some, that, in this doctrine of
Christ's nature, I am obliterating with my so broad general
ization all distinctions, and making a confusion of God and
man together. Observe, however, this doctrine that hu
man qualities may be also divine is not the pantheism that

CHRIST S HUMANITY AND DIVINITY. 7
would confound the person of all men orany man with
God's personality, or even Christ's personality with his
Father's ; but it asserts the kindred of the children, as well
as of the dearly beloved, only begotten Son, in his marvel
lous celestial primogeniture, with the Infinite Parent ; and
it affirms that, howsoever distinct man is from God, there
is a part of his nature where he actually meets him, a part,
(I shudder with reverence, I tremble with joy, to utter the
unquestionable truth ! ) — a part which is neither God nor
man alone, but both, a common spirit of life and eternity ;
for between God and man no boundary line of separation
can be drawn, — no spiritual surveyor can drop his meta
physical chain where the human nature ends and the
divine begins : all that we mean when we say, as we some
times do, with exaltation and eulogy, of some noble fellow-
creature, He was a man ! takes hold of the divine beauty
and excellence, is so cemented to it that the most cunning
eye can perceive.no partition line. I have seen two op
posite seas at high tide so flow over the ridge that united
their meeting, sloping beaches, smoothly bevelled by the
everlasting beat of the waves, that, in their commingling
waters, they became beautifully one. So, in every high
hour of inspiration and faithful virtue, is not man one with
God ? Verily, if Christ's own loftiest words be true, he is !
Not a grace or charm mortal ever displayed but was de
rived, borrowed from the sky. I have been fain to think,
and on the point to tell a friend sometimes, that his or her
countenance, when beaming, as I have seen it, with disin
terestedness, sincerity, love, or pity, was luminous to me
from no earthly light, but with the Holy Ghost ; and, there
fore, I say the splendor of humanity with which I am
irradiated by Jesus Christ was his divinity.
Indeed, can. there be any gainsaying of this? Is not

8 Christ's humanity and divinity.
what we call the spirit of humanity, of compassion, tender
ness, friendship for the suffering and needy, for the lost
and sinful, the very spirit of divinity ? Will the common
heart or common sense of mankind allow it to be anything
else ? or in the very terms of human thought can it be
otherwise conceived ? Was it not Christ's spirit, his and
God's holy spirit ? Or are there two holy spirits ? No ;
one, one for ever in God and man, on earth and in heaven !
" Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of
these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me ! " "I have
called you not servants, but friends." " O Father, that
they may be one, even as we are ! " What human virtue
ever brightened up the gloom of this world, and Tnade
cross or scaffold or dungeon-cell splendid to all ages, that
was not divine moreover ?
Therefore, again I say, Jesus Christ did not despise or
disparage, but in his person adopted and honored humanity,
and proved it in its essence and intention to be divine.
Think not, however, that, in joyfully declaring himself the
Son of Man, he knew not all the weakness and un worthi
ness of men ! Think not that, in reaffirming his position,
and repeating his doctrine, lam blind to the mournful cir
cumstances and ghastly facts which, in the degeneracy of
its line or the abuse of its freedom, have attended the
course of this human nature upon earth. I know the sins
that have scarred it ; I see the pollutions with which it is
stained ; I note the multitudes, you and me among them, that
wander from the heavenly fold. But I hear a Voice from
your bosom and mine declaring this is not our true and
proper humanity ; and I hear a voice from one who was
truly and properly human and divine, summoning the lost,
scattered, straying sheep, not to disown their nature, but to
return from their error. Again resounds from his lips the

Christ's humanity and divinity. 9
most ancient wisdom, " Unto you, O men ! I call, and my
voice is to the sons of men ! " Be just to your manhood,
and you will be just to its Maker ! Be filial, as God is
fatherly, and the Father's bosom is your rest, and his man
sion your home ! Divine and human are in you, as in
your Redeemer, reconciled and the same! My friends,
however we may speculate, this one great and undeniable
fact remains, namely, that Jesus Christ, in his own nature
and speech and chosen name, respected man, the being he
came to save. Beware then, I say, of him, whosoever he
may be, who really scorns and reviles human nature ! He
is not in his tone high and celestial like Jesus, but low and
earthly rather, a refined and cultivated worldling at the
best. He that implies in his talk, as, alas ! too many do,
that men are all venal, and women all corruptible, be he
theologian or man of the world, shall have no compliments
from me to the sagacity of his understanding, any more
than to the elevation of his principle. He has not seen
into the depths*of the human breast, or divined the myster
ies of the heart of all gentleness and love ; but scoffs at
what, of all we know, is most sacred. He sees the off
spring of God misled, prodigal, in sad. habiliments, or
wasteful ways ; but does not, like the holy, blessed Father,
detect in the palms of his hands and the lines of his face
the marks of the true heir to a throne higher than Caesar's,
or make ready gladly to welcome him as he arises and
returns. Neither sceptic nor satirist, but only lover and
believer, can discern the divine in the human, the human
in the divine. " Men are not worth saving," said once a
man to me, after listening to my discourse. Ah, did he see
what men are 1
Last, year, to clear up in the creed the original spotless-
ness of^fesus Christ, the papal organ of the Romish Church

10 Christ's humanity and divinity.
published an edict affirming the immaculate conception of
his mother, the Virgin Mary. Did that blessed, sainted
woman, think you, in heaven need the earthly indorsement
and official recommendation of her purity and exemption
from Adam's sin ? Nay, was not the undertaking of the
ecclesiastical power to such an end an insult, and no civil
ity, to her glorified spirit ? and an insult, moreover, I add,
to the very quality and genius of all womanhood ? an in
sult in its implication that every sister of Mary that has
borne her child in pain and love, as Mary did, has con
ceived that child only in a fatal corruption and sin ? Nay,
thou arrogant power, that didst invent surplice and mitre
and groundless claim to Peter's keys, I yield not the moth
ers, all the mothers, of mankind to the solemn slander of
thy slavish rebuke ! I pronounce the decree a libel upon
millions, pure and tender-hearted, of my race ! I consent,
mournfully but willingly, to the upbraiding sentence in all
the cases where impurity, of degree more or less heinous,
can be made out. But I tell you, Pope and cardinals, and all
lords over God's heritage, in your larger or smaller sphere
and diocese, that thousands and tens of thousands there are,
in every honest man's observation, who, with pure devo
tion of divine and human love, have stood in the dear rela
tions, and stretched out the lengthening lines of life, and
otherwise would not, would never have been instrumental
to multiply those relations or extend those lines at .all !
No, rather than separate Mary so from her sisters, let some
rays from the halo of glory round her head fall abroad to
touch countless meek and loving brows bending over hu
man offspring. Ay, let them stream back upon those
brows, for verily from those brows they originally came !
Let what was divine in her show itself also human :  for
in the human is always something divine ! is always and

Christ's humanity and divinity. 11
will be always in that other world of wonder to which ven
erated parents and unblemished babes, by what we call
death, continually go. The Son of God, Son of Man, is,
as he declares in the context, the announcer of resur
rection and judgment to come. He has power to make the
human divine. Men may fall, but man, human nature, can
not be lost, unless we lose it out of us, and so fall at once
from God and our manhood, from our place on earth and
our seat in heaven. Yea, men may fall, and multitudes of
men, Greeks and Romans, Franks and Britons, tribes and
populations on earth, may go down, and races disappear, —
but not man, the wonderful offspring of God, who will go
on to his perfection, and finally vindicate it, we trust, in
every individual breast. Not the smallest piece of human
ity would Jesus drop. Mother of what thou callest dead,
as'it lies with sealed eyes in the coffin beneath the pall, or
is covered up in the grave, in the faith of Jesus behold its
spirit alive ! Such as thine were those he blessed on the
other side of Jordan, in Judea : he can bless yet across the
river and Jordan of death ! For why is the canvas of the
old, inspired painters full of childish shapes of heavenly
cherubs, hovering round every scene of beauty or sublim
ity they would represent, but to signify that the spirits of
little children, clothed again in celestial bodies, make large
part of the population there ? Child of thy mother, whose
heart never left thee on earth, though now it has ceased in
the flesh to beat, — thy human mother she was ! — in the
name of Him that was human and divine, see her with
a divine glory in the land of promise ! May it be your
Canaan and mine, as the form of our human existence
melts into that divine glory !
I have thus maintained that Christ's divinity was his hu
manity, believing, in fact, they did not essentially differ,

12 christ's humanity and divinity.
and that there is not the slightest evidence they were not
in his own mind regarded as the same thing. But I am
well aware difficulties may be felt and objections arise in
the way of a doctrine so unusual, and sounding so like a
paradox. It may be said, admitting that the divine and
human in Jesus do at certain points seem to melt and run
into each other, it must be confessed some of his divine
qualities were not human, and some of his human qualities
were not divine. His miraculous power, his unmeasured
wisdom, his authoritative teaching, his office to administer
judgment, his prerogative to forgive sins and to bestow
eternal life, — what have these things to do with humanity ?
On the other hand, his sense of dependence, his expressed
feeling of inferiority to the Father, his prayers, his moral
struggles, his wish that the cup should pass away, his
submission of his will to God's, his bitter sufferings and
agonizing death, — what trait had these of divinity ? I an
swer, first, that, to prove the humanity of a thing, we need
not prove it to belong actually, in their practice, to all men ;
nor, to prove the divinity of a thing, need we prove it to be
the infinite, undisturbed, and unqualified consciousness of
Almighty God. Many men do inhuman things, and we say
they are inhuman in their spirit and character ; and many
other men breathe a temper and display a demeanor which
we know not by what word to describe but divine.
But, to proceed more closely in the argument as to the
divine things in Jesus that were not human, did he not tell
his disciples that they, men as they unquestionably were,
should do greater works than they had marvelled at in his
own hands, — works of might and mercy, in attestation of his
religion ? And do the works they or he indeed performed
violate the inward feeling in any soul of its own capacity
for action, should that capacity be unfolded in the pleasure

'christ's humanity and divinity. 13
of God ? As to the authority, whoever perceives one prin
ciple of truth or duty in the eternal light in which Christ be
held, and would have all behold it, does he not feel embold
ened to proclaim it with a divine authority which was the
Master's own ? As respects, too, the miracles, evidences as
they were of the presence and appointing will of the Su
preme, yet does that man yet know himself who feels
that these exhibitions of power are the highest things in the
universe ? « No ; that man is a stranger to his own heart
who has not become acquainted -with a spirit there that
bows not down before any mere material prodigies, as
such, but only before the infinite being of God, — a spirit
of truth, of purity, of loving, living, and dying for others,
which is as much above any mere marvels of strength, or
any kingly authority that should be wilful or arbitrary, as
the heavens are above the earth. And is not that spirit a
human spirit, according to the Creator's intention, in hu
manity ? Alas, I know that it is not universal, that in
multitudes it is dormant, and in the vast majority of men
scarcely developed ; and that hard and caustic critics of
mankind may smile with scorn at hearing it claimed as a
property of the race ! But is it riot the design, the original
plan of humanity ? the archetype of a man too, and not of
angels or deities only ? Are not the mean, selfish, sen
sual, cruel ways of men so many wide departures from that
plan, falsifying the Creator's idea in forming 'and in in
spiring his children ? If you will assert that these depart
ures are so many and so gross as to constitute, as you read
the record, a fall of man, I must still say it is a fall of man
out of his manhood, not into it, — a losing of his nature,
and not a finding it, — not a humanity developed, but an
inhumanity seized upon and superinduced. I will contend
further, that the ruins, so often spoken of, which we ob-
2

14 christ's humanity and divinity.
serve in human life and nature, are not all ruins of sinking
and decay, like the ruins of some great, ancient city, —
a Palmyra or a Thebes, — but, if they may so be called,
ruins of preparation to build and finish the vast and glo
rious structure of the human soul, like the ruins that lie
hugely and confusedly around in some place of building, of
houses for the land or ships for the sea. For such ruins
what pains have been taken, and faithful labor already
done ! The trees of the forest have been felled,the clay of
the ground has been broken and burned, the metals from
the bowels of the earth have been fused and recast ; a
hundred axes and hammers, and every sort of tool to cut or
strike, rend the air with their blows ; and if you visit the
spot, only a deafening din can be heard, and perpetual
, driving seen, as you stumble among rude blocks and rag
ged masses of half-hewn timber, that look as little as
possible like order or beauty, and promise anything rather
than the fine and perfect edifice, that shall rest on a rock,
resisting the winds and rains of heaven, or the ship, that
shall career, as a thing of life, proudly, to all success and
riches over the angry and turbulent deep. So, let me say,
what is called the ruined state of human nature, whatever
the extent of degeneracy may have been, is not mere deg
radation, but, in part at least, provision of means and
materials to build.
The material world has, no more than the spiritual, been
cut and scourged and broken for this end. How the flour
ishing hopes of men, in which first for a time they have
joyed and gloried, are blasted and levelled to the ground !
How their fondest desires are uprooted and scattered
abroad ! How the very foundations they rested on, as
though they were the solid globe, are ploughed up and rent
asunder ! How all the sharpest instruments of pain and

Christ's humanity and divinity. 15
destruction, which it would seem infinite knowledge itself
could devise, or the hand of Providence resistlessly wield,
have been set to work upon the living substance of our hu
man nature, to harrow and sift, to melt or hew, to mar and
transform, till the fair frame of man's original existence
seems to become a mass of ruins and a scene of desolation
indeed ! How whole kingdoms have a thousand times been
overthrown and countries laid waste, tribes dispersed or
proud races extinguished, cities that thought themselves
eternal mistresses of the world turned into wildernesses or
jatiere names, modes of thought, models of law, styles of
manners, forms of society, and types of civilization, long
prevailing, all slowly altered, or suddenly smitten as with a
thunderbolt; — as though God made no account of, but
despised them, or had no further use for them, and was
quite willing to throw them away ! But what is all this
downfall and ruin for ? For final wreck, absolute loss,
and everlasting decay ? Is it a ruin of degradation only ?
Then might we think we were the creation of some evil
power, the prey of mocking demons, with no Father but fate,
the world but the restless, wretched football of an almighty,
malignant sport. But not so ! The ruins are not of mere
decline and ultimate misery, but of provision and prepara
tion to build, and so they are magnificent ruins indeed !
If is a fall with reference to a new and better rising, as the
giants of the woods fall to reappear in the finest edifica
tions of the. world. In the greater world of spirit God is
the builder, and, as the Apostle says, " ye are God's build
ing." He is not yet ready to put the top-stone upon the
building, or launch his vessel on the eternal sea. The
Master-workman sees that there is more work, much more,
to be done, ere the structure he designed shall appear in
the perfect model first fashioned before the foundation of

16 christ's humanity and divinity.
the earth. Verily, that structure cannot be finished in one
day, or a thousand years ! But, when it is done, it will be
a human thing, and it will be a divine thing also ; there will
be no contradiction in its being at once' human and divine ;
and the morning-stars will again sing together over it, —
and in that day of blessed consummation, when man shall
show his manhood according to his Maker's intent, we shall
see, if we do not before, that Christ's humanity and divinity
were not indeed different, far less, inconsistent things ; but
that they were the same. There are heavens as profound
beneath, spite of our prejudice that the heavens are all
above ; and it matters not to our Lord's true divinity wheth
er we regard him as developed from man or let down from
God. It is the same.
There is not room in a pulpit discourse to show the con
sistency of this general view, with all the texts pertaining
to it in the New Testament. But I must at least" refer to
that remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Corinthians,
which can be considered nothing less than the most decisive
declaration of the view itself: " the first man is of the earth,,
earthy ; the second man is the Lord from heaven." That
is to say, man in his first estate is taken up with the exer
cise of his material senses upon the material world. His
thoughts, his inclinations, his affections, have an outward
and comparatively gross direction upon the things that per
ish. He is a stranger to the capabilities in him of be
holding, loving, and seeking after the invisible things of
God, — the transcendent charms of holiness and goodness,
the everlasting honors of duty and truth. This " first man
Adam is made a living soul indeed," according as it is writ
ten, — but a soul of carnal appetites, ungoverned lusts and
passions, as it too truly proved, and is so clearly told in the
veritable record or the significant allegory, as you may

christ's humanity and divinity. 17
choose to consider it, in Genesis. So that first Adam, who
has been theologically considered the very perfection of
manhood, was, in his weak, simple, and yielding, though at
first innocent, nature, the farthest possible from such per
fection. He was but the very beginning and rudiment of
humanity, like the little dot of organization which the natu
ral philosopher detects as the dim though promising com
mencement of the animal life which shall afterwards run
swiftly over the earth, or fly bravely towards heaven.
There is a most striking and eloquent sermon by Dr. South,
in which that great preacher describes the glory of our hu
man nature in its primeval and unfallen state, ascribing to
it whatever fulness and splendor of spiritual endowments
his imagination could conceive. But the description, which
is in many respects admirable for the last Adam, and there
fore a most valuable composition, claiming our heartiest
thanks to the masterly pen that wrote it, is, neither in Scrip
ture nor reason, a just account of the first feeble, fallible
creature, that so easily and instantly went down under the
smallest and most inconsiderable of the temptations to a
superficial taste and an inward vanity which Satan had from
his mighty magazine of seductions and huge quiver of ar
rowy assaults to propose. No, it is the second man, the
last Adam, born of the spirit, Son of God, the really noble
and fully regenerate creature, with his absolute type pre
sented in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, it is he that holds
forth the true humanity which is also divinity; for are not
these the very wonderful words, " The second man is the
Lord from heaven ! " The glory, unfolded from below or
let down from above, was the same thing. And this chron
ological regeneration, if I may so call it, of the race, as it
measures the distance from the garden of Eden to the gar
den of Gethsemane, is parallel with and expressive of the
2*

18 christ's humanity and divinity.
individual regeneration of the moral creature, that begins
innocently now with his senses and earthly inclinations to
act over again the first Adam's fall and experience, let us
trust, the last Adam's restoration.
But to go to the difficulties on particular points ; as to
what some might consider Christ's chief prerogative of exe
cuting present or final judgment upon men, I need, only say,
that cannot be considered exclusively divine, for, in the
context, it is expressly ascribed to Jesus on no other ground
at all than this very one, that he is the Son of Man. So in
regard to his other offices, if he is at the same time and in
the same indistinguishable character, the perfection of hu
man excellence and the manifestation of the divine attri
butes, he may well indeed be mediator, intercessor, recon
ciler, priest, and king. He may well provide an atonement,
or bringing together of God and man in one ; for he was
that very atonement and oneness, not merely in what he
suffered or did, but in what in himself he was. Are we
not in our own bosoms sensible of that very solicitation from
God, Jesus came to repeat and confirm, or awaken out of
sleep ? We read that the Indians, who were counselled by
the traveller Richardson, smote on their breasts, while tears
ran down their naked bodies, and said, " The good man
here told them what I said was all good."
But I must proceed to say, that if Christ had no divine
qualities that were not justly human, neither had he any
human qualities that were not justly divine. For, in speak
ing of Christ's divinity, I do not mean that Jesus Christ was
himself absolutely the infinite and everlasting One, all of
God, but only part or partaker of him. His nature was
common ground with God's, as far as it extended ; but
when he says, " My Father is greater than I," he com
mands and compels us, if we will not defiantly reject and

christ's humanity and divinity. 19
disobey his own words, not to regard his nature as co
extensive with God's, and covering the whole measureless
ground of his infinity. There may be, and is, a distinction
between being divine, or having something in common with
the great Parent of all, and being the Parent himself. In
the New Testament, we ourselves are called to be partakers
of the Divine nature, to receive his spirit, and to be filled
with his fulness, with as much of that unbounded ocean as
this little inlet of our capacity will hold. Peculiarly divine
indeed he was, to whom the Spirit was given without meas
ure ; yet not with a divinity that could not enter into and be
congenial with the qualities in him which we may consider
most human. His dependence on God was no outward,
material dependence, as of one body on another foreign
body, but the dependence of the offspring sharing the in
most being of that on which it depends. His prayer was
not the trembling and fearful petition of a subject to the
despot he feels to be far removed, alien to himself, perhaps
ready to deprive him of his substance or life ; but an inter
communion of trust, affection, peace with God, and joy in
the Holy Ghost. His prayer was divine. His expression
of inferiority was not, " My Father is distant, inaccessibly
above and out of my reach " ; but " My Father is greater
than I," has more of that of which I myself am also pos
sessed. 'As to the moral struggles of Christ, they are more in our
fancy and the liberty taken by our fanciful poetry, or the
dogmatism of our creeds, than in fact. He had struggles of
feeling, bitter trials of bodily anguish and wounded affection
to endure, an agony in the garden and on the cross, through
what seemed the hiding of God's face, as well as man's, from
him ; but these were not moral struggles of a hesitating and
well-nigh overmastered conscience, but the simple conflicts

20 christ's humanity and divinity.
of a loving, trusting, sorely afflicted heart. I cannot per
ceive that he struggled with the weight of a finger against
his duty, that he ever voluntarily, with any contradiction, for
a moment pressed upon, or went contrary to, the Divine will.
What we style his submission to God's will, or his resigna
tion to it, I must rather call cheerful though painful accept
ance of it. He was tempted, indeed, in all points; but
temptation did not for an instant gain upon him ; rather it
fell away baffled the moment it touched him. His feeling
about it, and his reply to it, are evidently instantaneous. If
all these, his most human qualities, — so human that it is
thought we cannot mean to assert their divineness, — were
not divine, what, I pray, within human conception or cogni
zance, can be denominated divine ? Nothing that we can
imagine, or love, or name, or worship. Will you say his suf
ferings and death proved that he was a mere man ? Nay, I
ask, where, more than in his sufferings and through his sub
lime and unparalleled death, did the loftiest qualities we can
find it in our heart to admire, shine forth in splendor com
plete and matchless ? so that some, in ecstasy at the spec
tacle, have doubted whether it be right to say God himself
cannot suffer, so incomparably exalted a thing, so worthy
even of God, such suffering seems ! Ay, the Divinity is
not on a great throne merely, out of sight, above the stars,
but comes down to the very earth, clothes itself in dust, and
moves with glory unquenched at our feet. It is not a light
shut up in the seventh heavens, or flung aloft from any
golden seven-branched candlestick of the temple ; but it
plays and sparkles in the lowest circumstances, and out of
the most forlorn doom, of our poor humanity. How it ran
and blazed through the very most mournful pain and igno
miny of Jesus, lit up the dark garden of Gethsemane, as the
midnight stars or noonday sun could not, and flowed, glis-

christ's humanity and divinity. 21
tening in drops of sweat and streams of blood, down the
rough cross upon Calvary ! Ah, that humanity of Jesus
did not refute his divinity : his divinity it was !
If some still object, that, after all this explanation, the
mystery of Christ's nature yet remains, I reply, most cer
tainly it does, and glad I am that the mystery remains, with
which for all the world I would not part. But I may be per
mitted to say, that, if the mystery of Christ's nature and
saving influence remains, the contradiction does not ; and
it is something, if not to solve a mystery, yet to do away
with a contradiction. Moreover, the mystery is not pecu
liar to his nature. It is also in ours. It is unfathomably in
God's. It is in all God's works, from the highest heavens
to the lowest depths, and, I repeat, glad I am for it all.
For this boundless mystery has infinitely precious moral
uses. The saying is not true, that where mystery begins
religion ends. The mysteries of creation and grace excite
our wonder and worship, and unfold, as clear knowledge
alone never could, our spiritual and immortal nature. If
there were nothing in religion we could not understand,
religion would be a cold matter of intellect, not a joy and
inspiration of the heart. Thus so a great man as Daniel
Webster well said : " I should be ashamed of a Saviour I
could comprehend ! "
This view of Christ's nature, as human and divine, and
identical with itself under either aspect or name, gives for
us, in fine, the most direct and touching power to his ex
ample. If he were essentially God alone, and had barely
the form and outside of a man, if he were, as an old sect
considered him, but a phantom mortal, it has justly been
asked, how could he be, in trials, duties, and sorrows, to us
an example at all ? But he is an example indeed, because
he shows no merely marvellous, heterogeneous excellence,

22 christ's humanity and divinity.
which we cannot understand or emulate, but God's very
plan of humanity carried out in one instance and fulfilled ;
and every trait and disposition which he showed we have
only to copy into our characters. The canvas within us is
broad enough on which to copy it, and, in copying, to be
what Christ was and we were made to become. Write dili
gently on the tables of your heart ; they have room for
everything the Son of God holds himself forth for you to
receive. If his conscience did not hesitate or struggle as
ours does, he is not the less but the more an example to
us to keep our conscience from hesitating or struggling.
Struggles and sufferings of natural pain and spiritual grief
he had as sore as ours. If you will say, he was not an ex
ample, because his moral nature was not overborne or racked
like ours, or like that of many persons, then, I must tell
you, you require, in order to his being a proper example,
the absolute impossibility of his having the same weak and
erring tendencies in his single nature that so variously ex
ist in the breasts of innumerable imperfect and sinful men.
He is not an example to any man, in being that particular
man's precise parallel ; for God, whose unity runs into end
less variety, never made one such parallel ; far less is he
such to all men. But to all men he is an example, in being
the model of every conceivable grace and virtue which they
may strive to attain. The builder of any earthly structure
wants not merely such a thing as any man has been hitherto
able to build, but a perfect model to build by. So for our
character do we.
If by any it be alleged he was elevated altogether beyond
us, because he was one with God, I will ask, what does he
himself pray for us, but that we may be one in God as he
was ? He is the Captain of our salvation ; but the soldiers are
not of a different nature and type of being from their leader.

christ's humanity and divinity. 23
He is " the first-born of many brethren." Indeed, I must
think this doctrine of Jesus only satisfies all Scripture, as
fully as it meets all reason, in our contemplation of our Lord.
But lastly, if any should say, We do not consider the
interest of Christ's life, and of his object in coming into the
world, as turning at all on this question of divinity or human
ity, but upon the simple fact of his being raised up, sanc
tified, and sent as a herald, an ambassador, a commissioner,
to treat with men, making them obedient to their sovereign,
and as returning prodigals to their Father, I reply, the word
of God only makes this purpose more emphatic and effectual,
in showing it was such a being, divinely human, humanly
divine, who was raised up for our Teacher, Redeemer, and
Lord. Now such a being as this may we not well take for
our Saviour, — a Saviour human, because he was in all
points tempted like' as we are, and so can be touched with
a feeling of our infirmities ? and divine, because he was
without sin, and yet making us feel that in us, as in him,
nothing could be so truly, nobly human as to be without
sin too, standing up men indeed in the sight of God ? His
salvation is thus a real salvation of the soul, not salvation
by logical contrivance and a deep-laid scheme, by a full
satisfaction of God's wrath, or a diplomatic getting round
his justice, not by shifting the burden of proof from the
guilty party, and transferring punishment wrongfully to the
innocent, not by a bargaining with God as a sharp creditor,
or a buying off from Satan of his due ; but a salvation of
us to ourselves, to the purpose of our own nature, by show
ing from God, in an illustration of spotless and absolute
glory, what that nature may become. The prodigal son
came to himself. So would Jesus have us all do, knowing
that thus we shall truly come to him and come to God, and
his imputed righteousness show and vindicate the only worth

24 christ's humanity and divinity.
it can have in its imputation, by being actually imparted
and becoming our own. This is a salvation according to
reason and equity, as well as according to grace and mercy.
It is not mere deliverance from an outward woe, but the
rescue of our very being ; for it is a poor, partial, and, in
itself, worthless redemption to keep the soul out of hell,
but a great and precious salvation indeed to bestow upon it
the possession of all its own latent affections and powers.
So may we be saved, by verily receiving the divine gift at
once proffered by Christ's hands and hidden in our own
frame !
For he is no such ambassador as has often been sent from
a royal court, with .his worth consisting only in his instruc
tions, his credentials, and his herald's coat ; but a spotless
and perfect one, a divine humanity, a human divinity,
— which I shall call him, I know not, — appointed to be
himself the faultless and glorious illustration of all his
lessons and commands. He brings no angry threats or
declarations of war, but invitations, with solemn yet gentle
warnings, to our souls. Graciously he admonishes us of our
offences. Tenderly his finger touches the stains of our
hearts, and defines the miseries of our lives. In all the
words of his lips, all the manifestations of his mind, all the
pattern of his conduct, he affirms his kindred with us, and
tells us he is speaking to beings who, in their liabilities and
capacities, can think neither too lowly nor too highly of the
nature in themselves given by God.

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