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YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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ALBERT H CHILDS
YALE '61
MEMORIAL COLLECTION

S.

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WHO IS JESUS?

Pilate asked the people of his time, " What
shall I do with Jesus ?"
We recall their answer, " Let him be
crucified." What shall our answer be ?
Everyone of the human race must at
sometime answer this question, for Jesus
IS THE UNESCAPABLE FACT OF HISTORY.
He must be accounted for.
Is he God ?
Or God in Man ?
Or Man only?

m
WALTER B. MURRAY
88

THE NUNC LICET PRESS
Minneapolis, Minn.

Copyright, 1915, by
The Nunc Licet Press

All rights reserved

Published November, 1915
Second impression February, 1916

Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me,
believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.
And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.
John XII: 44, 45.
Jesus answered, . .
I and my Father are one. Then the Jews
took up stones again to stone him.
JohnX: 30, 31.

CONTENTS

BOOK ONE
Part One: The Presentation of the Case
CHAPTER PAGB
I. A Fascinating Question  1 1
II. Opposing Views  14
III. The Search for Truth  19
IV. The Question Stated ....  23
Part Two: A Demonstration Based upon the
Facts
I. God is One  31
II. Who, Then, is Jesus ?  37
III. The Force of Facts  40
IV. Jesus the Messiah  45
V. Another View of the Messiah  53
VI. Jesus as Creator and Self-Existing  58
VII. Jesus as Saviour  62
VIII. The Importance of a Correct Idea of God . 66
IX. Have We Proved Our Position from the
Bible  72

6 CONTENTS
Part Three: The Application to the Statements
of Jesus Concerning Himself
CHAPTBR PAGB
I. How Can God Manifest Himself?  77
II. Jesus as the Special Expression of God ... 84
III. Confirmation from the Scriptures  90
IV. The Golden Key  94
BOOK TWO
The Virgin Birth and the Divine Humanity
I. What the Church Has Taught  107
II. The Contention of the Athanasians  120
III. The Human Planes of Life  124
IV. An Inmost Plane of Life  131
V. The Origin of the Soul  137
VI. Every Man the Son of His Own Father. . . 149
VII. Why Was the Virgin Birth Necessary? ... 163
VIII. The Glorification  172
IX. The Divine Humanity  194

BOOK ONE

PART ONE
THE PRESENTATION OF
THE CASE

WHO IS JESUS?

I. A FASCINATING QUESTION
I HAVE a very definite message to present
to the world, one that cannot fail to be
supremely interesting to multitudes, for it is
about Jesus, and beyond all controversy Jesus
of Nazareth, whom all good men admire, and
some men worship as the Saviour of the world,
is the most fascinating figure of history.
All men feel his uniqueness. We cannot resist
the appeal he makes to the nomest part of our
nature. He is not only the ideal man, but some
thing more. This is certainly the conviction of
our hearts, for "never man spake like this man,"
never did any one realize so perfectly in his daily
life such an ideal of unselfish living, one never
before even imagined by any mortal. More
books are written about him because men like to
study his character and his claims better than

12 WHO IS JESUS?
they care to study the character and claims of
any other.
Whatever truths other religions contain, —
and they all contain some, — it is certain that
the religion founded by Jesus, as given in his
life and words, makes the truest appeal to the
religious instinct, which is the highest instinct,
or motive force, of our lives. Nineteen centuries
have passed since he appeared upon the earth,
and the interest in him is as fresh as it ever was ;
indeed, it seems to grow stronger as time elapses.
It is as if his words had come true, "And I, if I
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto me." His enemies during the ages since
he came have been compelled to exclaim again
and again, with the Pharisees of old, " Perceive
ye how ye prevail nothing? Behold the world
is gone after him." ,
Critics have disposed of him and his claims
often enough to have eliminated any other man
from human interest; but somehow he is not
eliminated. When the mist of their criticism,
like the smoke of a fireworks display, has drifted
away, we still behold him looming up above
the plain, dominating the landscape like some
lofty mountain peak which lifts our thoughts

A FASCINATING QUESTION 13
to heaven even as it lifts itself in eternal beauty
to the sky. Even in his remoteness he is acces
sible; even in his sublimity he is not cold. Su
premely above us, he is intensely human. No,
the critics cannot destroy him. They may
temporarily in individual cases weaken his ap
peal, but he endures and overcomes. We can
not escape his spell. He fascinates us, compels
our attention, delights us, arouses our affections,
awakens our reverence. Who is he — this Unique
Man of History?
For he is unique. There is no doubt of it.

II. OPPOSING VIEWS
IT IS true that some evil men do not even
take the name of Jesus upon their lips except
by way of an idle curse, but even so, they pay
him an involuntary homage.
Some in their hatred insist that such a man
never existed, that he is a pure invention; but
the fact of Jesus as a historic personage does not
admit of serious question. Such an effect as he
has produced in human history cannot be ac
counted for except by an adequate reality back
of it. And, moreover, his historic existence is
proved to the satisfaction of mankind from pro
fane as well as from sacred sources. To doubt
it is to place oneself among the sophists, who end
by doubting everything, even themselves, and
who become at length incapable of passing a
rational judgment upon any matter.
Other men claim that Jesus uttered nothing
new, pointing to Confucius, Gotama, Zoroaster,
and other religious teachers whose teachings
h

OPPOSING VIEWS 15
teem with interesting truths, some of which re
semble those enunciated by Jesus. Is not this
resemblance a kinship inherent in the nature of
the truth? Perhaps for fair-minded men it is
needful only to submit the documents in the
case and leave them without discussion. Pos
sibly, indeed, the world has already decided this
question. It would seem so if we judge from the
scant attention which the sayings of Confucius,
Gotama, Zoroaster, and others obtain in the
world of thought. Are these latter not obsolete
and half-forgotten, merely remembered because
of an influence they once exerted ? The teach
ings of Jesus are the inspiration of our civilization,
the noonday splendor of a sun which illumines
with spiritual light every problem of humanity.
Still others, even though they admire the char
acter of Jesus, claim that the story of his life
is a gross exaggeration, as well as his reputed
claims concerning himself. It is, of course,
possible to assert that while such a man as Jesus
lived, the accounts given of him in the Bible are
highly exaggerated, written by people who lived
long afterward and who desired to throw around
the founder of their religion a glamour not war
ranted by the facts as they occurred. If this

16 WHO IS JESUS?
is true, it is remarkable what success they have
had in creating a character and a life so posi
tively unique that the whole world acknowledges
it to have been the greatest character and the
greatest life in history. If the Bible account of
Jesus was invented, herein is a marvel, for it
must have been invented in such a case by
ignorant fishermen or their unknown successors ;
if they are the creators of the character and life
of Jesus, we should find them out and honor them
as we now honor him, for it is Jesus as presented
in the Bible we admire and love; if perchance
any of us now worship him as Divine, we should
honor them instead; for, as some one has said,
only Divinity itself could have invented such a
character and such a life.
It must suffice here to say that the only docu
ments claiming to be authoritative which we
possess concerning Jesus are contained in the
Bible. There are traditions, and a few confirma
tory references in profane history, enough to
establish the general fact of the existence of
such a character, but nothing else which claims
to be authoritative as a statement of his life
and teachings. If the Bible contains exaggera
tion, it would be an extremely difficult task to

OPPOSING VIEWS 17
separate the exaggeration from the fact. Who
that claims there is exaggeration is fitted by
his lack of prejudice to do the work of separation ?
Is it not true that the claim of exaggeration
is merely an assumption, and based entirely
upon preconceived theories of critics whose
opinions vary with their prejudices ? They say
in effect: "According to my ideas the thing
cannot be true ; therefore it is not true." It is
the kind of reasoning which forced Galileo to
recant and has opposed all progress. These
critics have formulated their own theories of the
complete truth of the universe, and whatever
facts do not accord with their theories they ex
clude. Is not disbelief sometimes as bigoted
and dogmatic, as intolerant of inconvenient facts,
as were the opponents of Galileo ?
One of these critics has recently rewritten the
Gospels without the account of the virgin birth
and omitting John altogether. Does any one
fancy that this rewriting will fare better than
other attempts to discredit the /Bible story?
It is hard to believe that the world will ever be
satisfied with the Bible rewritten by its critics.
They do well to leave the original statements
alone. They have indeed the right of private

18 WHO IS JESUS?
interpretation; but the Bible they cannot de
stroy, nor can we accept their alterations.
The Bible has stood the test of time. It has
been chained, locked away from the sight of
men, torn to pieces, and burned, but it still
endures, and it gives every evidence of possess
ing a vitality as lasting as the ages. To class it
with the folklore, the myths, the traditions, the
sacred literature of other nations, is still to
place it first.

III. THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH
I CANNOT hope to have every one accept
my message as the truth, even if it be true.
Let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that
it is the very truth itself; that I wrote with the
eloquence of an angel, adduced the most con
vincing arguments, proved my case perfectly
for most men — there would still be many who
would criticize and find fault and reject, for
the possession of the truth may involve sacrifice
of cherished opinions.
There are men who love reasonings about the
truth; they delight in scientific processes of
thought, but they have somehow lost sight of the
object of their thought, truth itself, and the com
mon sense that ought to characterize the search.
Their critical faculty has become so highly de
veloped that it is excessively exacting in its
demands; it is critical beyond use or reason.
It cannot see the end or aim of their endeavor,
but loses itself in the processes of the study.
19

20 WHO IS JESUS?
They have lost their perspective. Great things
to them are small and small things great. And
of all men they are the most sure of themselves,
most satisfied with their ability as seekers after
truth. They know how to analyze, to examine
critically, and to define scientifically. They are
better satisfied with the minute study of a butter
fly's wing than they are with a satisfactory
theory of creation. It is indeed an endeavor and
a delight with them as a side issue to weave
theories of creation from the wing of a butterfly.
Even though all creation might be pictured in
the microcosm, it does not strike them that with
their imperfect equipment in the way of previous
knowledge and powers of observation it may not
be possible for them to perceive it.
They are those who refuse to consider the
factor of the unseen forces above or within
nature, the real causes of phenomena, reasoning
altogether from sense impressions, and they are
as unsatisfactory in their conclusions as were
those who accepted the rising and the setting of
the sun as real facts instead of as apparent facts.
The process of obtaining knowledge, it is true,
is from sense impression, thence worked over
into knowledges or related impressions, thence
worked over into reasonings based upon knowl-

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH 21
edges. By a posteriori processes we all form
theories from the facts of the world as we see
them, but the theories, once formed, are applied
a priori to all facts, new or old. If our theories
thus formed do not fit all the facts (and the
above-nature facts are often left out because
unseen, except in their effects) we are too often
prone to reject undeniable but undesirable facts.
Mr. Podsnap's method, with which Dickens
made us acquainted, of eliminating from our
consideration whatever we find inconvenient by
a simple wave of the arm, is possibly far more
prevalent with us all than we care to admit.
Do we love the truth sincerely and honestly,
love it for its own sake, love it in spite of the dis
agreeable things it may reveal ? Perhaps we are
a little cautious in our reply. We do not know
just what the possession of the truth involves.
It may mean that we shall have to regard things
differently from what we do now, and we are
pretty well satisfied with our present views.
The truth may be unpleasant to us in many
ways. Not only may it necessitate the giving
up of our present comfortable theories in the
domain of thought, but a possible change in our
present comfortable attitude toward life. We
do not like to change either our thoughts or our

22 WHO IS JESUS?
manner of life. We like the old ways. Like
old shoes, they are more comfortable. We would
probably declare, if asked, that we want to know
the truth, but we are pretty well satisfied that
we already know it. So if we chance to find that
a knowledge of the truth involves a giving up
or a laying down, a renunciation, a sacrifice of
something that we have learned to love because
we have had it in our possession a very long time,
we may decide that the new thing is not the truth
because it is not so comfortable as the old view.
This is the selfish spirit, the spirit that makes
old abuses of so long a life and reform so in
terminably tedious. The new thing may be
true, but it is new.
The message of Jesus to us is : " If ye con
tinue in my words, then are ye my disciples
indeed, and ye shall know the truth and the truth
shall make you free." It follows that in such a
case we shall see our errors and our evils, but at
least we shall get rid of them and be free men.
Let us then be brave men who, because we de
sire to be free, do not fear the light whatever
of sacrifice it may involve. If the thing is true,
we want to know it. The vision of it may so
entrance us that nothing will be accounted sacri
fice if so be that we at last possess it.

IV. THE QUESTION STATED
IN ASKING the question, "Is Jesus God?" I
do so prompted by the belief that this is one
of the most important as well as one of the most
interesting problems which can come before the
human mind. It is not my purpose to be contro
versial, but to show my own findings concerning
the truth. I have the profoundest respect for all
those who may differ from me in my conclusions.
I wish to consider only the facts in the case, and
to consider them in a frank, honest, straight
forward manner, and with love in my heart for
those who do not interpret them as I do.
Taking the Bible as we find it, whether we
admit that it is Divinely inspired or not, we must
admit that it is also unique — unique among
books by reason of its virility, its vitality, its
beauty, its satisfying spiritual power.
Now, accepting it as giving us practically all
the information which we have concerning Jesus,
and therefore providing in its unaltered form the
23

24 WHO IS JESUS?
only actual basis for a good or bad opinion of
him, what does it claim for him? My convic
tion is that it claims for him that he is God.
"Your conclusions are absurd," at once cry
out certain people. "We are ready to admit
that he was a great teacher — possibly the world's
greatest teacher, and also its greatest ethical
ideal. In no sense Divine, but merely a good
man." "No, no, not so far with your claims," say
certain others who admit a little more perhaps,
and make use of the Bible, with appropriate res
ervations and interpretations, as the text-book
of their religion. "We believe in the Father
hood of God and the brotherhood of man, and
also in the leadership of Jesus. We admit that,
as to his character and as to his teachings, Jesus
is unique, but it is impossible that a human being
can be God. We admit that he is Divine, as
you and I and all men are Divine, but we cannot
admit that he is God."
Looking on both these classes of friendly
critics, who are so nearly akin, we must admit
that we love them. They are so near to the
truth, and yet their intellectual difficulties in
many cases keep them content with shadows,

THE QUESTION STATED 25
preventing them from an attitude of perfect frank
ness toward the facts in the case. Their atti
tude is one of negation. Man cannot be God:
therefore Jesus is not God. His Divinity is a
stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
But permit me to call their attention to the
fact that they admit by implication the sub
stantial correctness of the Bible accounts of
Jesus, for, as we have already indicated, they
have no other basis upon which to form their
judgments. If the Bible accounts are gross
exaggerations or myths, they should not serve
as foundations upon which to establish con
clusions so important and substantial. Thus
we claim that whether they intend it or not, all
who admit that Jesus is unique in being the
world's greatest teacher or in being its highest
exemplar of ideal living admit the authenticity
of the Bible, since their opinion is a conviction
based necessarily upon their assumption of the
essential correctness of the Bible story.
If Jesus is not as the Bible represents him, we
know nothing about him — our opinion in the
matter is mere guesswork. If our opinion of his
teachings and character is favorable, it is be
cause of his words and portrait as given in the

26 WHO IS JESUS?
Bible. What right have we to interpret his
words to suit our fancies ? What right have we,
as fair-minded men, wishing to be honest with
the facts and ourselves, to exclude certain facts
presented there because they do not coincide
with our theories ?
The attempt to rewrite the Bible to conform
to the theories of its critics is to destroy it.
Try it for yourself, if you will, and see what re
mains. Jesus made the most colossal claims
for himself that any sane man has ever made.
The good opinion of the critics is based upon
these very statements ; therefore, again we say,
they accept the Bible as authentic. We have,
indeed, the right of private interpretation of the
facts, but we cannot, as honest men, so interpret
them as to destroy them or even to twist them
to fit our preconceived theories. We must be
fair. "You are quite right in your claims concerning
Jesus," declare certain others. "He is Divine.
He is unique. The Bible accounts of him are
true. He is the Son of God in a special and
unique sense. He is the Second Person of the
Blessed Trinity. God is made up of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. Thus Jesus is one Person

THE QUESTION STATED 27
of the Godhead. There are two other Persons,
the Father and the Holy Spirit."
I interpret this statement to mean that Jesus
partakes of a quality called Divinity or Deity,
which is shared by two other individuals of the
group; thus that he is God only in a partial
sense; while he is Divine in a unique sense, yet
he is not all of God, for it takes three separate
and distinct Persons to constitute God.
I read in the Bible that Jesus is the Son of God ;
but I do not find there the words "Blessed
Trinity," nor any statement of three Persons
in one God, that is, as three distinct individuali
ties or entities, as the Athanasian creed puts it,
but rather as three distinct phases or mani
festations of the one God, for God is one.

PART TWO
A DEMONSTRATION BASED
UPON THE FACTS

I. GOD IS ONE
CAN there be any doubt that God is one?
Only in degraded forms of religion do we
ever find men worshiping more than one God.
Plato and Aristotle confessed that the many
deities of the Greeks were only so many proper
ties, qualities, and attributes of the one God.
Reason revolts against the thought of more than
one God, confirming itself by the unity of nature
and the obviousness of this unity in the entire
created universe. For, since the universe acts
together as one great whole, as a cosmos not a
chaos, it is evident that there is only one creating
and directing force at the head of such a unified
system. Is it necessary in this our day to argue for
the existence of only one God ? Do not all men
admit it? They admit it as a general proposi
tion in theory, but their theologies have not al
ways been in accord either with reason or Scrip
tures in this regard. But it is indispensable for
31

32 WHO IS JESUS?
my purpose that this point shall be clear beyond
all question. To that end I shall put forth a
familiar statement of the case, which should put
the matter forever beyond controversy. It is
necessary that every mind shall give assent to
the fact of the impossibility of there being more
than one God.
Every one admits that in the very nature of
the case God is infinite. It is an attribute which
the adherents of all religions accord Him. They
cannot avoid it, for it requires an infinite being
to create and rule an immeasurable universe;
it requires an infinite being to be without be
ginning or ending in point of time; it requires
an infinite being to possess and be the source of
all love, all wisdom, and all power. We at
tribute all these things to God. We cannot con
ceive of two definite Divine beings existing from
eternity to eternity in the form of two creators
and two rulers of the universe. Such a thought
is as monstrous to the reason as it is foreign to
the Bible. Nor can we conceive of two who are
infinite in love, wisdom, and power, for infinity is
indivisible. The moment that we speak of two
infinites we are speaking of the impossible.
The very quality of infinity implies that the one

GOD IS ONE 33
who possesses it is unbounded as to place, as
to time, and as to quality. He is omni-present,
eternal, and complete or comprehensive. To
say that there are two infinites is to attempt to
bound the boundless, to limit the limitless. Two
infinites cannot exist together, for each would
limit the other, and hence neither would be infinite.
God must be one because He is everywhere-
present, always-existing, all-loving, all-wise, all-
knowing, all-powerful, uncreated, absolute, com
plete, unconditioned, infinite, hence indivisible.
The moment He ceases to be any of these things
He ceases to be God, and hence becomes a finite
being. The Athanasian creed says:
There is one person of the Father, another
of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit.
The Father is uncreate, infinite, eternal, omnipo
tent, God, Lord; so likewise is the Son, and so
likewise is the Holy Spirit.
Also, the Father was made and created of none,
the Son was born of the Father, and the Holy
Spirit proceeds from both. Thus there is one
Father, one Son, and one Holy Spirit, and in
this Trinity all the three persons are together
eternal, and are altogether equal.

34 WHO IS JESUS?
From these words it is impossible for any one
to think otherwise than that there are three
Gods. And this is shown to be the thought of
the makers of this creed, for it is added: "As
we are obliged by the Christian verity to ac
knowledge every person by himself to be God
and Lord, yet we are forbidden by the Catholic
religion to say there are three Gods or three
Lords." This cannot be understood in any other
sense than tihat we may acknowledge three Gods
and three Lords, but we may not name them
such; or that we may think of three Gods and
Lords, but we must not speak of them.
Is not this polytheism, pure and simple? Is
it not, therefore, necessary to argue to prove that
God is one ? I am aware that people of our day
will reject the Athanasian creed when it is
brought before them in this way. Each indi
vidual clergyman, for example, when con
fronted by such contradictory statements as it
contains, such obviously impossible things, will
either say that it is beyond our understanding,
yet true because the fathers of the Church have
hitherto accepted it, but that he himself believes
in only one God.
There are many things difficult for us to com-

GOD IS ONE 3S
prjehend^spe^i3JUy---in-4he realm of-the infinite^
but we certainly are not required to believe that
the infinite is divisible, for we immediately see
that it cannot, in the very nature of the case,
be true. God is one, complete and indivisible.
There cannot exist three Gods and three~LorcIs,
thus three Infinites. Any creed which so states
is untrue, it makes no difference what sanctity
it has acquired from long acceptance.
If asked, not only will every clergyman of
today, but also every Christian, declare most
solemnly that he personally believes in only one
God. If that is the case, why are such creeds
still permitted to exist as nominal fundamentals
of the Christian Church ?
It is not necessary, perhaps, to add the testi
mony of Scripture to refute such confusing, con
tradictory, and rationally impossible statements,
yet it is worth while to recall that both in the
New Testament and the Old we find it written :
"Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one
Lord." (Deut. 6:4; also Mark 12:29.)
And again : " I am Jehovah, and there is none
else, there is no God beside me." (Isa. 45 : 5.)
And again: "Am not I Jehovah? and there is
no God else beside Me." (Isa. 45 : 21 .)

36 WHO IS JESUS?
This is obviously an absolute, complete, and
indivisible being who is speaking.
And again in Isaiah: "Thus saith Jehovah,
the king of Israel, I am the First and I am the
Last, and beside Me there is no God." (Isa. 44:6.)
And in Zechariah: "In that day Jehovah shall
be king over all the earth; in that day Jehovah
shall be one and His name one." (14:9.)
The Bible certainly clinches the matter, and
for those who have hitherto accepted such creeds
its authority is final.

II. WHO, THEN, IS JESUS?
HERE, then, we are confronted by the crux of
the matter. It is the essential question.
If Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, is the
one only God of heaven and earth, as He has
proclaimed times without number throughout
the Old Testament; if He is absolute, complete,
indivisible, Creator and Ruler of the universe,
such as the world accepts Him, who, then, is
Jesus ?
The answer is plain and indisputable: If
Jehovah and Jesus are not identical, as we be
lieve they are, — not merely united as Father and
Son are united, by kindred interests ; if they are
not identical, unmistakably the same person
and being — then Jesus is not God. There is
no escape from this conclusion. For God is
one and indivisible. He cannot exist in two
separate and distinct persons, any more than you
37

38 WHO IS JESUS?
or I can. He must exist precisely as we do, one
soul in one body, except that the Divine soul
and the Divine body must be infinite.
The Jehovah of the Old Testament does not
leave any room for quibbling in this matter.
Not only does He insist that He is God alone,
but He says that He will not give His glory to
another. "I am Jehovah: that is my name: and my
glory will I not give to another." (Isa. 42:8.)
Nor will He permit any other to be called
Saviour or Redeemer. Think of the significance
of these statements :
"I, even I, am Jehovah; and beside me there is
no Saviour." (Isa. 43 : 1 1 .)
"I am Jehovah thy God, and thou shalt ac
knowledge no God beside Me; for there is no
Saviour beside Me." (Hos. 13:4.)
"That all flesh may know that / Jehovah am
thy Saviour and thy Redeemer." (Isa. 49:26;
60:16.) "Thus saith Jehovah, the king of Israel, and
His Redeemer, Jehovah of Hosts, I am the First
and I am the Last; and beside Me there is no
God." (Isa. 44:6.)

WHO, THEN, IS JESUS? 39
These statements would seem to be final in
the matter. We repeat:
If Jehovah is not identical with Jesus, then
Jesus is not God, nor is He Redeemer and
Saviour. We must accept the indisputable
documents in the case.

III. THE FORCE OF FACTS
THE obvious impossibility of dividing the In
finite enables us to perceive the force of the
Unitarian point of view. If we regard Jesus
as a semi-Divine being or only a man as other
men, in either case possessing a life independent
of the Father, then he is not God in any special
sense, and they are correct. The weakness of
their case is the assumption that God cannot
manifest Himself as a man, except as He mani
fests Himself through all men. It is true that we
cannot divide the Infinite, but it is not neces^

sarily true that'"God cannot temporarily limit
Himself in Manifestation and still~f5e7Godr^
The weakness of the Trinitarian position is
that they base their religion upon the assump
tion that the duality of personality in the
Father and the Son which is suggested in the
Old Testament and appears more definitely in
the New Testament is a fact, and not an appear
ance. We maintain that if this duality of per-
40

THE FORCE OF FACTS 41
sonality is a fact, a reality, and not merely an
appearance, then Jesus is not God — he is only
a man as other men, with a human father, and
the Unitarians and the other opponents of the
deity of Jesus are correct — for the Infinite is not
divisible. Now let us assume that it is difficult to under
stand how the Infinite God could temporarily
limit Himself and still be God. Let us also
assume that it is difficult to understand why the
Old Testament should suggest, and the New
Testament state, a duality of personality in the
Father and the Son if it is only an appearance.
In doing this we recognize the merits of both the
Unitarian and the Trinitarian positions, opposed
as they may be.
But we would suggest to both that there are
many things in outward nature which are diffi
cult to comprehend, but we accept them because
we know from experience that they are true.
We do not comprehend gravitation and elec
tricity, for example, except in their manifesta
tions, yet because of their manifestations we
acknowledge them as facts of life. I do not
insist that we shall accept the impossible, as,
for example, that the Infinite is divisible, or

42 WHO IS JESUS?
that two men are one man, or that three separate
and distinct Gods are only one God, but I do
insist that we shall accept the plainly demon
strated facts of life. A true science says, What
are the proved facts? A false science discards
the facts which it finds inconvenient. As honest
men, as men of common sense, it is our duty to
ask ourselves if the phenomena presented to our
attention are real facts or only apparent facts.
If what we perceive is real enough to be a fact
of life, we must be honest enough to give it due
credit. Now what are the facts in regard to Jesus ?
Perhaps we are all convinced that a man
named Jesus of Nazareth really existed. As we
have already suggested, such an effect as he has
produced in human history cannot be accounted
for except by an adequate reality back of it.
I think that we may safely label this as a fact.
If such a man really existed, as we have con
ceded, we will perhaps all agree that his life was
of such an unusually beneficent nature that most
men regard it as the most ideal life of history.
I find that even Jews are proud of him as the
most brilliant one of their race, and that Mo
hammedans give him high place in their limited

THE FORCE OF FACTS 43
galaxy of prophets; in fact, it would appear
that today most men, of whatever religion, rank
him either as one of the noblest in the list of the
world's benefactors, or easily and incomparably
first. Shall we call this another fact?
I do not know of any who suggest that he was
insane. May this not be another fact?
I do not know of any who call him an im
postor. There are those who assert that he
did not make the personal claims about himself
which are contained in the New Testament,
but no one today, so far as I know, calls him an
impostor. Another fact ?
Now, in resume of these four facts, we will
probably all admit that Jesus actually lived and
died in Palestine about the time he was sup
posed to have lived ; that he preached some kind
of doctrine to the Jews and was put to death by
the Romans; that his teachings and his life
were superior to the teachings and life of any
other man of whom we have any record, that
he was not insane, nor was he an impostor.
The next fact would be that all we know of
him is contained in the collection of writings
which we call the Bible, except for a few con
firmatory statements in profane history.

44 WHO IS JESUS?
The next fact is that the statements of the
Bible concerning him are either true or they are
untrue. If they are untrue, we do not know any
thing about him, and therefore can have no
definite opinion of him, but merely a conjecture.
If we have a favorable and clearly defined
opinion of him, it is because we accept the state
ments of the Bible as substantially true. If we
do not accept them as absolutely true, is it not
because they conflict with our personal theories ?
Yet the fact remains — and it is a fact — that
the man revealed by the New Testament ac
counts of Jesus is the most wonderful man in
point of character the world ever saw. If these
accounts are untrue, who was able to invent
the most surpassing character of history ? Could
his unlearned followers have combined to create
so consistent a unity, so Divine a man? Such
a conclusion would seem untenable.

IV. JESUS THE MESSIAH
THE word Christ is the translation into Greek
of the Hebrew word Messiah. The Hebrew
Messiah, or "Anointed One," was to be the de
liverer of their race. Jesus claimed to be that
Messiah. When the woman of Samaria said to
Jesus, "I know that Messiah cometh, which is
called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us
all things. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak
unto thee am he." (John 4:25-26.) His claim
to be the Messiah could not have been more
unequivocal. And his religion is founded upon that claim.
On one occasion he asked his disciples, "Whom
do men say that I, the Son of man, am ? And
they said, Some say that thou art John the Bap
tist; some, Elijah, and others, Jeremiah, or one
of the prophets. He saith unto them, But
whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter
answered and said, Thou art the Christ [the
Messiah], the Son of the living God. And Jesus
45

46 WHO IS JESUS?
answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou,
Simon Bar-jona, for flesh and blood hath not
revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in
heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou
art Peter; and upon this rock [evidently upon
this confession of Peter's faith in him as the
Messiah] I will build my church ; and the gates
of hell shall not prevail against it." (Matt.
16:13-18.) The religion of Jesus the Christ is the religion
of Jesus " the Messiah," of him who claimed to
be the deliverer of the Jews and who claimed to
come in fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies.
If there is one fact that stands out with more
distinctness in his claims than another it is his
assertion of his Messiahship. On his trial be
fore the Sanhedrin the high priest asked him,
"Art thou the Christ [that is, the Messiah],
the Son of the Blessed ? And Jesus said, I am."
(Mark 14:61-62.) Christianity as a religions
system is based upon the Messiahship ot Jesus.
INow let us look at some of the prophecies
upon which the Jews based their hopes of a de
liverer, an Anointed One, or a Christ — a Mes
siah. One notable thing which we shall find in re-

JESUS THE MESSIAH 47
gard to these prophecies is that the one who was
to come was to be born a man, of the seed of
Abraham and David.
To the serpent in the Garden of Eden the
Lord said, "And I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel." (Gen. 3:15.) We under
stand, of course, that the serpent was a type or
representative of the power of evil which was to
be at enmity with the human race; that there
should be a perpetual conflict between them;
but that the seed of the woman should bruise
the serpent's head, yet at great personal cost.
It is the first apparent prophecy of the coming
of a deliverer.
To Abraham the Lord said : " In thy seed shall
all the nations of the earth be blessed." (Gen.
22:18.) The Lord repeated this promise at
various times to Abraham and also to Isaac and
to Jacob.
Another prophecy is contained in Jacob's
blessing to Judah: "The scepter shall not depart
from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his
feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the
gathering of the people be." (Gen. 49: 10.)

48 WHO IS JESUS?
We recall also the prophecy of Balaam,
"There shall come a Star out of Jacob, and a
scepter shall rise out of Israel" (Num. 24:17),
and also tb,e search for this star ages later by
people who came out of the country of Balaam.
We likewise remember the prophecy of Moses
about the time of his departure, "The Lord thy
God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the
midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me;
unto him ye shall hearken." (Deut. 18:15.)
When the Jews sent priests and Levites from
Jerusalem to interrogate John the Baptist con
cerning his mission they asked him if he were this
great prophet which the nation was expecting,
and he answered, No. (John 1:21.)
We might sum up the promises to David in
this quotation from Jeremiah: "Behold, the
days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto
David a righteous Branch, and a King shall
reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment
and justice in the earth." (Jer. 23 : 5.)
It is undeniable that these prophecies were
uttered ages before the coming of Jesus, who
claimed to be their fulfilment. Of course, I
am perfectly aware that most of my readers

JESUS THE MESSIAH 49
are familiar with these prophecies; but they
are facts whose existence must be mentioned.
And furthermore it is my object to show that
as the coming of the long-promised Messiah
drew nearer the description of him began to
vary. In one set of passages it is shown that
he will be a conqueror and a deliverer, and in
another that he will be poor and despised. Let
us glance at some of them in order to under
stand why the Jews expected possibly two Mes
siahs in order to be able to combine the fulfil
ment of all the prophecies.
Concerning the Messiah as a conqueror and
deliverer, in the eleventh chapter of Isaiah we
read: "And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse,
which shall stand for an ensign of the people ;
to it shall the lientiles seek':" and" hrsrest shall
be "glorious. . . And '"he" "shall set up an
ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the
ou tcasts of Israel, and gather together the dis
persed ol judah from the four corners of the
earth/' *"Many of the glorious conditions foretold of
the reign of the Messiah are found in this chap-

50 WHO IS JESUS?
ter. It is a type of many prophecies. For ex
ample, we read :
"And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon
him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of
knowledge and of the fear of the Lord; and shall
make him of quick understanding in the fear
of the Lord: and he shall not judge after the
sight of his eyes, neither reprove after the hear
ing of his ears ; but with righteousness shall he
judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the
meek of the earth ; and he shall smite the earth
with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of
his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteous
ness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faith
fulness the girdle of his reins. The wolf also
shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall
lie down with the kid; and the calf and the
young lion and the fading together; and a
little child shall lead them."
Of the Messiah, who is often spoken of as a
servant, the thought of him as poor and de
spised appears in passages like the following:
" His visage was so marred more than any man,
and his form more than the sons of men." (Isa.
52:14.) And again we read :

JESUS THE MESSIAH 51
"He hath no form nor comeliness; and when
we shall see him there is no beauty that we should
desire him. He is despised and rejected of men ;
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and we hid as it were our faces from him; he
was despised, and we esteemed him not." (Isa.
53:2,3-) This description of the Messiah is to Chris
tians one of the most beautiful and affecting ones
to be found in all the world, but to the Jews
their Messiah, so pictured in the fifty-third chap
ter of Isaiah, was "a stone of stumbling and a
rock of offence." They rejected it, as they later
rejected him who so perfectly fulfilled it. They
esteemed him "stricken, smitten of God, and
afflicted." They saw to it that he was brought
"as a lamb to the slaughter," that he "was
taken from prison and from judgment," that
"he was cut off out of the land of the living."
But in spite of them he did "make his grave with
the wicked, and with the rich in his death."
And because he "poured out his soul unto
death," and "was numbered with the trans
gressors," and "bare the sin of many, and made
intercession for the transgressors," therefore
the Lord did divide him "a portion with the

52 WHO IS JESUS?
great," and he did "divide the spoil with the
strong." It was just because he fulfilled so
beautifully and unselfishly this ideal of the
Messiah that the world loves him. For he con
quered by bearing patiently and overcoming
lovingly rather than by might. It is because of
this that the world regards him as the most
Divine man of history.

V. ANOTHER VIEW OF THE MESSIAH
THERE can be no doubt whatever, as we have
seen, that the Jews expected a Messiah, and
it is equally certain that the kind of Messiah
that Jesus proved to be was distasteful to them.
Yet the important point for us is that he did
claim to be the Messiah; his religion is founded
upon this claim, and it is a claim that we see
was fulfilled in numberless ways.
Now we shall present another view of the
Messiah which is always slurred over by Chris
tians, but which is the most important view of
it, as we shall show ; for if Jesus is the Messiah,
as he claimed, and Christians believe, Jehovah
and Jesus are identical.
The view that we have in mind is this: Je
hovah said again and again that He Himself was
to come into the world as the Messiah, the de
liverer of the Jews. We shall prove it.
"O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee
up into the high mountains ; O Jerusalem, that
S3

54 WHO IS JESUS?
bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with
strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the
cities of Judah, Behold your God." (Isa. 40:9.)
There is no equivocation about this; their
deliverer, who was foretold, was to be God Him
self, the indivisible. That this was Jehovah
and not another is shown by what follows :
"Behold, the Lord Jehovah will come with
strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him:
behold, his reward is with him, and his work
before him." (Isa. 40: 10.)
And yet we immediately identify this picture
of Jehovah coming into the world with Jesus,
" the Good Shepherd," by what is related in the
next verse :
"He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he
shall gather the lambs with his arm, and shall
carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead
those that are with young." (Isa. 40: n.)
Jesus himself is our warrant for thinking of
him as the Good Shepherd: "I am the good
shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for
the sheep." (John 10:11.) And he tells us
very many other beautiful and affecting things
about himself as the true shepherd of the sheep.
But Jehovah, who has prophesied of Himself

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE MESSIAH 55
coming as the good shepherd, insists that we
shall think of him as he "who hath measured the
waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted
out heaven with the span, and comprehended
the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed
the mountains in scales, and the hills in a bal
ance." (Isa. 40:12.) Now if Jesus is the good
shepherd prophesied of here; if Jesus is this
Messiah foretold, he must be Jehovah. Jesus
must somehow be the manifestation in time and
space in the terms of a human being of Jehovah.
He must be identical with Jehovah, not a separ
ate being in harmony or agreement with him,
for Jehovah, as we have seen, is indivisible, com
plete in himself, nor will he give his glory to
another.
Another statement from Isaiah in regard to the
coming of the Messiah will bring this thought
of the identity of Jehovah and the Messiah to us:
" For the day of vengeance is in mine heart,
and the year of my redeemed is come. And I
looked, and there was none to help; and I
wondered that there was none to uphold:
therefore mine own arm brought salvation unto
me." (Isa. 63:4, 5.)
This thought is also brought to our attention

56 WHO IS JESUS?
by the prophecy in connection with the coming
of John the Baptist:
"The voice of him that crieth in the wilder
ness, Prepare ye the way of Jehovah, make
straight in the desert a highway for our GOD."
(Isa. 40:3.)
This forerunner is predicted as one who shall
precede the coming of Jehovah Himself, who a
little later says: "Behold, the Lord Jehovah
will come with strong hand, and his arm shall
rule for him." And there follow these words:
"And the glory of Jehovah shall be revealed,
and all flesh shall see it together." (Isa. 40:5.)
In the parallel passage in Malachi concerning
this forerunner of Jehovah we read :
"Behold, I will send my messenger, and he
shall prepare the way before me." (Mai. 3:1.)
Now Jesus tells us in Matthew that John the
Baptist was he of whom the prophecies in Isaiah
and in Malachi were written. This one of whom
John was to be the herald was Jehovah, for we
read in Malachi: "And the Lord, whom ye seek,
shall suddenly come to his temple." This
identifies Jesus with Jehovah, who promised to
come suddenly to his temple.
But we find that Jehovah was coming into

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE MESSIAH 57
the world in the person of a child born of a
virgin: "Therefore the Lord himself shall give
you a sign, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and
bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel."
(Isa. 7:14.) This we are told was fulfilled in
the birth of Jesus as recorded in Matthew, where
the meaning of the word Immanuel is brought
to our attention as " God-with-us." (Matt.
1:23.) This is made even stronger in Isaiah 9:6, 7:
" For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is
given: and the government shall be upon his
shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonder
ful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Ever
lasting Father, the Prince of Peace."
In other words, Jehovah was to come into the
world through the gate of human birth as a
little child, who would later be the servant fore
told in other places, yet who would always be
The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father,
identical with Jehovah.

VI. JESUS AS CREATOR AND
SELF-EXISTING
TAKING the Bible as our authority, — and
we have no other document upon which to
base any knowledge of either Jehovah or Jesus,
— we find that the God of the Old Testament,
Jehovah, claims to be the creator of the universe.
"In the beginning God created the heaven
and the earth." (Gen. 1:1.)
"To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I
be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your
eyes on high, and behold who hath created these
things." (Isa. 40:25-26.)
"Thus saith Jehovah, thy redeemer, . . I
am the Lord that maketh all things; that
stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth
abroad the earth by myself." (Isa. 44:24.)
"Thus saith God the Lord (El Yahveh) he
that created the heavens, and stretched them
out: he that spread forth the earth, and that
which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath
S8

JESUS AS CREATOR 59
unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that
walk therein." (Isa. 42:5.)
We find it written concerning Jesus in the New
Testament: "In the beginning was the Word
[logos, expression of God] and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God. . . All things
were made by him; and without him was not
anything made that was made. . . In him
was life [self-existent life], and the life was the
light of men. . . He was in the world, and
the world was made by him, and the world knew
him not. . . And the Word was made flesh
and dwelt among us." (John 1:1, 3, 4, 10,
I4-) Now if Jehovah was not Jesus, the same identi
cal being manifested to the world as a human
being, then this statement from the Gospel of
John is not true; but we have as much reason
to accept it as true as any other statement of the
Bible. Being true, it would appear that the
infinite and indivisible Jehovah expressed Him
self in a concrete and apprehensible form as
Jesus, but that this expression was God Himself,
the creator of all things. This expression of God,
or Word, — Jesus, — is God, and is the creator
"that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth

60 WHO IS JESUS?
the heavens alone; that spreadeth forth the
earth by myself."
Jehovah revealed Himself to Moses as the
eternal and self-existent one, under the name I
am. Jesus said to the Jews, "Your father Abra
ham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and
was glad. . . Before Abraham was, I am."
(John 8:56-58.) Was he not claiming to be the
same self-existing being? Certainly no mere
human being that ever lived could have made
any such statement. He said again, " If ye be
lieve not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins."
(John 8 : 24.) In Revelation he says of himself:
" I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was,
and which is to come, the Almighty." (Rev.
1:8.) If Jesus was God at all, he must have been in
the nature of the case the only God of heaven
and earth, for God is one and indivisible. When
he had forever put off the infirm humanity
assumed from Mary, the temporary limitation
indispensable to enable him to reveal himself to
men, he said, "ALL power is given unto me in
heaven and on earth." (Matt. 28:18.) "AH"
includes every possibility of power and excludes

JESUS AS CREATOR 61
any other being as Divinely wielding power.
In other words, this human manifestation in
time and space (Jesus) had ceased to be limited
in any sense; the Father and the Son had no
longer any apparent separateness ; the tempo
rary finite had been absorbed by or transformed
into the eternal infinite.

VII. JESUS AS SAVIOUR
WE ARE insistent that we shall perceive the
undeniable force of the fact that God is one
indivisible being, and cannot, in the nature of
the case, be two, even though He may manifest
Himself in such a way as to give that impression.
God must be one complete and undivided being.
This is the verdict of reason and the unequivocal
statement of God concerning Himself. Thus,
God is one and indivisible; hence two separate
beings cannot be God ; if Jesus is God at all, he
is the one and only God ; there is no other God
apart from him.
Of course, we can say that it was impossible
that a limited human being could be the infinite
Jehovah; but we are confronted by the state
ments already adduced that Jehovah prophesied
that He was coming into the world as a redeemer
and saviour, as a deliverer and a conqueror;
that He was to come as a child born of a virgin;
as a human being the heir of Abraham and
62

JESUS AS SAVIOUR 63
David ; as a servant who would be despised and
rejected by those to whom He came; that His
coming would be heralded by a messenger in the
spirit and power of Elijah.
And we are confronted by the fact of Jesus
himself. What shall we do with Jesus that is
called Christ? Shall we also reject him and cast
him out ? Has the world gotten rid of him by
rejecting him and casting him out?
Jesus not only insisted that he was the ful
filment of all the prophecies concerning the Mes
siah, but he lived a life which we have already
seen is universally admitted to be the most per
fect life ever lived upon this earth, and his teach
ings are the supremest expressions of spiritual
truth ever uttered. If God could manifest
Himself as a human being, it is certain that
Jesus perfectly fulfilled our ideal of what God
in the flesh would be.
We recall that Jehovah said, " I am Jehovah thy
God . . . , and thou shalt acknowledge no
God beside me." (Hos. 13:4.) Jehovah said
also in the passage we were quoting, "And
there is no Saviour beside me." And yet Jesus
allowed Thomas to call him, "My Lord and
my God." (John 20:28.) The angel announced

64 WHO IS JESUS?
to Joseph that the name of Mary's son would be
Jesus, because "he would save his people from
their sins." (Matt. 1:21.) The "good tidings
of great joy" which the angel announced to
the shepherds would be to all people were:
"For unto you is born this day in the city of
David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."
(Luke 2:11.) It fits in perfectly with the proph
ecy in Micah 5:2, "But thou, Bethlehem Ephra-
tah, though thou be little among the thou
sands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come
forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel ; whose
goings forth have been from of old, from ever
lasting." The whole life of Jesus proved him to be the
deliverer of his people from sin, sickness, error —
from evil of every kind. All of his work was of
a saving character. As he himself said, "I
came to seek and to save that which was lost."
And there are simply myriads of people today
who accept him as a personal Divine Saviour,
or deliverer from their evils and their spiritual
enemies. They claim the saving work of Jesus
has been continued through the ages since he
was upon the earth. There must be some basis
in fact for this limitless belief in him as Saviour.

JESUS AS SAVIOUR 65
And it cannot be denied that positive evidence
exists in the way of changed lives in confirmation
of this belief. Men from being apparently
hardened criminals, sinners of the worst type,
are changed, as by a miracle, when they look
to Jesus as an ever-present, ever-living Saviour.
It is one of the most positive undeniable facts
of history. And it has no parallel elsewhere.
The world knows no other similar saviour.
According to the repeated statements of Je
hovah, whom we all admit is the one God, the
Creator of the universe, no one is Saviour but
Himself. If Jesus is Saviour, He is Jehovah,
the one and only God of heaven and earth, the
Indivisible.

VIII. THE IMPORTANCE OF A CORRECT
IDEA OF GOD
I KNOW of but one sect or Christian denomi
nation in the world that worships Jesus Christ
as the only God of heaven and earth. This is
the so-called New Church, or Church of the
New Jerusalem, but more popularly known as
the Swedenborgian Church, from the fact that
its teachings were derived through the Swedish
scientist and theologian, Emanuel Swedenborg.
They claim that in the one person of Jesus Christ
men see all that they can know of God ; that in
this one personality exists the trinity of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father is the Divine
Soul, the Son is the Divine Body, and the Holy
Spirit is the Divine Proceeding or Divine Ac
tivity. They hold that this requires only one
personality, or identity, and fully conforms to
the Scriptures. In this one person we are to
perceive as the soul the Jehovah of the Old
Testament, as His expression in time and space
66

A CORRECT IDEA OF GOD 67
the man, Christ Jesus, and as to His activity or
proceeding life, the Holy Spirit; but there is in
these three phases or manifestations of God
only one identity or personality. They say
that if man was created in the image and like
ness of God, then God must be as the original
is to its likeness. A statuette of Abraham Lin
coln, for example, should give us a fair idea of
what Abraham Lincoln looked like. As we
behold in man a soul, a body, and a proceeding
activity of the soul operating through the body,
so the infinite God must be likewise soul, body,
and proceeding life, and these three phases or
manifestations are no more three separate per
sonalities than our soul, body, and activity are
three separate beings. They are three phases
of one being.
This seems to be a perfectly rational concep
tion of God as manifested in Jesus Christ. It
is not necessary that we shall here examine into
the claims of Swedenborg apart from these
views. His biography can be found in any
encyclopedia, and his writings can be found in
any public library. We are concerned only
with a correct conception of God in Jesus Christ.
But men of today argue that this endless dis-

68 WHO IS JESUS?
cussion of the question is unimportant. What
is the necessity, they urge, of exact definition ?
Whether Jesus is Divine in any unique sense, or
merely Divine as all men are claimed to be Di
vine; whether he is thought of as the Second
Person of a Trinity of Persons, or as a splendid
example to follow in life and teachings, what
does it matter?
This argument is very much like asking what
the advantage is of having a correct idea of our
solar system and of the universe about us. It
is true that men, before the discovery of the fact
that the earth was round and turned on its own
axis every twenty-four hours and circled about
the sun once in three hundred and sixty-five days
were just as happy and contented in many re
spects as afterward ; but without our knowledge
of the facts as they are Columbus could not have
discovered the new world, the globe would not
be circumnavigated as it is today, and all races
and nations brought together almost as one com
munity. The world of our day is not the world
that believed in the fabrications of the ancients
in regard to the earth and the sun and the uni
verse; the knowledge of the facts has not only
changed our conceptions, but also transformed

A CORRECT IDEA OF GOD 69
practically everything of our lives. It has
given us a new kind of world to live in and inter
related all human interests.
Without a correct idea of God in Jesus Christ
men cannot relate themselves intelligently to
the Divine Being. If God is the source and
center of all our life, it is indispensable that we
shall have clear ideas concerning Him.
Our Unitarian friends, for example, worship
an invisible God. The center of their solar sys
tem is invisible. They are like men who shut
themselves up in houses and never see the sun.
They do, indeed, perceive the sunlight as it
enters their homes through the doors and win
dows. They feel the warmth of spring and sum
mer and the cold of autumn and winter; but
they only imagine the source from which the
phenomena of light and heat and all consequent
activity proceed. How can men who have never
looked up at the heavens and beheld the roseate
hues of dawn, the splendor of noonday, and the
glories of the sunset know correctly of the world
in which they live ? What can men know of this
earth who have never seen the sun? So what
can men know of God who have never beheld
His glory in the face of Jesus Christ, the Sun of

70 WHO IS JESUS?
righteousness, the Dayspring from on high, God
made manifest to men who are not blind ?
Likewise, in what a topsy-turvy universe
must men live who think of God as existing in
three separate and distinct personalities? It is
as if they saw triple. When they look up at the
sun of their moral universe they behold three
suns, an appearance which they cannot compre
hend rationally and do not try to understand;
they content themselves with saying, Although
we see three suns, yet we know that there is
only one sun. But their religious theories, and
thus all the proceeding activities of their lives,
are based upon the appearance of three solar
centers. Into what lop-sided confusion must
their theories be thrown who argue or deduce
from three centers, each of which is equal in
every way to the other! There can be no true-
ness of motion in their orbits, for they behold
three orbits or paths not coincident. What
but falsities can result in a theology based upon
such a threefold center?
We are confronted every day with the inquiry
if Christianity has failed as a religious system,
since apparently it has not permeated the lives
of men seriously enough to produce a conformity

A CORRECT IDEA OF GOD 71
to the precepts of Jesus in any universal way
among men and nations. Mistaken notions of
Christianity have indeed failed to transform the
world. Is it not high time to obtain correct
ideas of God in Christ in order that a true
Christianity, based upon Jesus as God, may be
tried?

IX. HAVE WE PROVED OUR POSITION
FROM THE BIBLE?
I BELIEVE that everyone who has faithfully
followed our reasoning from the beginning will
admit that the Scriptures do indeed appear to
show that Jehovah was to come into the world,
as already indicated, in the limitations of a man,
and that this fulfilment has been realized in
Jesus Christ; thus, if God is one, as the Scrip
tures claim, then Jehovah must be Jesus ex
pressed in the terms of time and space.
In order to accept the fact of the solar system
as it really exists, not as it appears, it is not
necessary for us to know how the sun and our
earth and the other planets are suspended in
space, nor what law governs their activities.
They are suspended in space ; they move and act
as we see them. We can demonstrate the facts.
We perceive them to be unassailable.
Why did false conceptions concerning the
earth and the sun exist for so many thousands of
years? Why was the theory of Copernicus re
jected for so long after it was demonstrated?
72

PROOF FROM THE BIBLE 73
Simply because the sun appeared to move around
the earth. It did not seem reasonable to men
who were governed by the apparent facts in the
case that the sun was relatively standing still
and the earth revolving in space.
We have demonstrated a theory, which we do
not claim to be our own, to account for the fact
of Jesus Christ. It shows him incontrovertibly,
from the documents in the case, as well as from
experience, to be God — and if God, then the
only God of heaven and earth — Jehovah mani
fested in the flesh. In doing this we have given
a visible sun to our religious solar system, and
demonstrated that there is only one such solar
center, not three.
Because we do not as yet perceive how Je
hovah and Jesus can be the same identical being,
— because we cannot as yet understand the man
ner in which the infinite is finited, — let us not
deny the facts. The facts do not depend for
their existence upon our understanding of them.
We are sure that they are susceptible of rational
explanation. If we know anything at all of
Jesus, it is from the Bible; if we accept the state
ments of the Bible, confirmed by experience,
he is God. If he is God, he is the only God;
there is no God apart from him.

PART THREE
THE APPLICATION TO THE
STATEMENTS OF JESUS CON
CERNING HIMSELF

I. HOW CAN GOD MANIFEST HIMSELF?
ALL men will agree that God has mani
fested Himself in the creation of the uni
verse. Who God is or what God is is another
question, but every one who reasons at all can
not but perceive that creation did not evolve
itself spontaneously " by a fortuitous concourse
of atoms." If it did so, where did the atoms
come from? All men who reason recognize a
primal force, a First Cause, which is supremely
intelligent, and that cause they call God. It is
likewise evident that this First Cause, or God,
is Self-existent and Uncreated and Eternal.
We also call God Infinite, by which we mean
that He has no limitations. If He were limited,
He would be limited by another or by something
else, and He would not fulfil the indispensable
requirement of an Absolute, Unconditioned
Being behind whom and beyond whom no one
can go or imagine. He would not be the First
Cause dependent upon no being or thing outside
77

78 WHO IS JESUS?
of Himself; thus one who is Self-existent, Un
created, and Eternal.
. How can the Infinite manifest Himself?
We have already replied that He has mani
fested Himself in creation, and creation is limi
tation ; that is to say, created things are limited
as to quality and expression. In another sense —
a larger one — when we think of creation as the
self-realization of God we cannot place any
bounds upon it; yet in its existence in its units it
is in every way limited. And God has expressed
or manifested Himself in these limitations.
We thus see in a general way that God can
manifest Himself in limitation.
But the question before us is, How can God
manifest Himself in limitation, as, for example,
a concrete human being, and that human being
— limited — finite — be the Infinite God?
The reply is that this human being, as per
ceived by men in its limitations, cannot be all of
God ; yet it might be the manifestation of God
in a special, exceptional, unique, unparalleled
manner, so that it would be God manifest in the
flesh. Let us approach this question from another
angle.

GOD MADE MANIFEST 79
If God wanted to make Himself known to men,
how could He do it in any other way than by
appearing before them as a limited human being ?
As God is in Himself, it is perfectly obvious that
we cannot understand Him. We do not know
what an Infinite, Uncreated, Eternal, Self-
existent Being is in any comprehensible way,
except that the facts of the case in connection
with creation and other manifestations of a sim
ilar nature require a Supreme Being who shall
be all of these things. We know, for example,
that no human being, limited as we are, could
possibly create one little earth; nay, one little
animal, or vegetable, or mineral upon it. There
fore, the necessities require the existence of God.
While we cannot comprehend God, yet we
admit that such a being created the universe
and governs it according to a perfect order;
we realize that He created our little earth with
all things upon it, including ourselves. And
we perceive that we are the highest order of cre
ation ; but nevertheless painfully limited in many
ways. If this earth be created for man, as we per
ceive it to be; if we are created in the image and
likeness of God, as the Bible tells us we are, and,

80 WHO IS JESUS?
as we recognize, the most perfect receptacle of
the outflowing life of God in all created things ;
and if God wanted to reveal Himself to us as
beings created in His image and likeness, capable
of understanding Him at least in a way that no
other created thing can do, how would He pro
ceed to do it ? What would be the most probable
mode? Well, we have seen that we are made in the
image and likeness of God; hence we must re
semble the original, in whose image and likeness
we are made. Hence God must be man; God
must be essential Man — primal Man, because
of which fact all creation, a projection of the
Divine, is distinguishably in the human form,
and we, as its highest expression, are most per
fectly in the human form, but all fitted to re
ceive the Divine. Life flows into creation be
cause it is adapted to receive it — adapted by
likeness to receive and in its turn manifest it.
Man, as the most perfect recipient, gives us the
best idea of the Creator.
This does not mean that we are to think of
God in the terms of space, as a great physical
giant who presides over the destinies of the uni
verse. God is not physical at all, except as the

GOD MADE MANIFEST 81
universe is in a sense a body in which He dwells.
God is Spirit. He is infinitely more interior
and higher than matter — infinitely more in
terior and higher than the spiritual nature of
man or the spiritual world in which man's spirit
dwells. We cannot correctly think of God in
the terms of time and space at all.
Indeed, we cannot think of man's spirit as
limited by time and space. With our affections
and thoughts we can in an instant be on the
moon, or at the sun, or at the farthest star. No
limitations of time or space bind our affections
or thoughts. And our affections and thoughts
constitute the real man within our visible body.
In this way it is that all men are invisible to one
another, except as we can judge of their quality
or affections through their expression of thought
manifested in word or deed. We, indeed, live
as to our sight and hearing and other senses in a
material world, but yet we are not material.
We are truly spiritual beings. The real man who
thinks and feels is invisible in this material
world, except as he is expressed outwardly
through matter.
While God and man are in a sense both spirit,
and hence invisible as to their true character on
6

82 WHO IS JESUS?
the material plane, save as they are manifested
through matter, we must not think of them as the
same quality of spirit. God is pure spirit. Man
is spiritual, and indeed as to his interiors, spirit;
but He would appear to be of that quality of
spirit which has its own limitations, even if it
has not the limitations of matter; thus is created
spirit, a proceeding from the Infinite Uncreated
Spirit. It is necessary to make this distinction
in order that we may not think of God and man
as of the same quality.
In order that we as spiritual beings may make
ourselves manifest or apparent in the world of
matter, or of nature, as we call it, it is indis
pensable that we shall have organisms of a
material kind in which we shall dwell, and
through which we shall manifest our real or
interior spiritual life. In other words, the soul
requires its body.
In order that God may make Himself manifest
or apparent in the world of nature it is indis
pensable that He should have an organism of a
material kind, through which He may manifest
His real quality or character. Such an organism
would make it possible for Him to reveal Him
self. We could understand Him expressed in

GOD MADE MANIFEST 83
the terms of a man. Indeed, as we have already
seen, we could understand Him in no other way.
Such an organism would have to be a com
plete man, thus possessing an outward limited
body like our own, a natural mind, and degrees
or planes of life for the expression of his more in
terior spiritual life. In other words, it would
have to be as complete a man as man himself.

II. JESUS AS THE SPECIAL EXPRESSION
OF GOD
WE HAVE asserted that God is primal man
because we are made in His image and
likeness, and the original must be similar to
us. In seeing man, — not merely his material
form, but his intellectual and spiritual expression,
— we behold what God is essentially as well as in
manifestation. We have called attention to the
fact that if God desired to manifest Himself to
man, His creature, it would appropriately be by a
projection of Himself through the human form,
the highest form of His creation, and the one
best adapted and most adequate to express Him.
Following out our previous method of proving
the fact from the Bible and experience, let us
see what Jesus says of himself as a special ex
pression of God. In doing this it will be clearly
apparent that an ordinary man could not have
made these statements of himself, whereas Jesus
does so, and we accept them without question.
84

THE SPECIAL EXPRESSION OF GOD 85
Jesus said :
"No man hath ascended up to heaven, but
he that came down from heaven, even the Son
of man which is in heaven. And as Moses
lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so
must the Son of man be lifted up ; That whoso
ever jjelieveth in him should not perish, but have
eternajJile.^ ( John 3 : 1 3 , U, 1 S ¦)
HDoes this not appear to be stating that the
"Son of man" is a special expression of God,
an expression of such a character that whosoever
is conjoined to him by faith in him — by belief
in him as the special expression of God — is
saved ? Is this not more plainly evident in the
next verse ?
" For God so loved the world, that he gave his
only begotten Son," — the expression or projec-
tion of Himself in time and space, — "that who
soever believeth in him should not perish, but
have everlasting life." (John 3 :i6.)
Was this not a special provision made by God
whereby it would be possible for men to be turned
to Himself and be conjoined with Himself? Can
any of us truly say of ourselves that people are
saved by being conjoined to us through faith in
us as the special expression of God? Nor can

86 WHO IS JESUS?
we say that they will be condemned by refusing
to accept us as the special expression of God.
And Jesus further said :
"My Father worketh hitherto, and I work."
(John 5:17.)
The Revised Version has it: "My Father
worketh even until now, and I work." The
Jews resented this statement. We read:
" For this cause therefore the Jews sought the
more to kill him, because he not only brake the
sabbath, but also called God his own Father,
making himself equal with God. Jesus there
fore answered and said unto them, Verily,
verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of
himself, but what he seeth the Father doing:
for whatsoever things he doeth, these the Son
also doeth in like manner. For the Father
loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that
himself doeth : and greater works than these will
he show him, that ye may marvel." (John
5:18-20.) Are these not remarkable statements? Let
us fancy one of ourselves claiming equality with
God. It would appear that there was a close
ness of relationship, an intimacy, between the
Father and the Son like that between soul and

THE SPECIAL EXPRESSION OF GOD 87
body. The Son responded to the Father as the
body responds to its own soul, the Son being the
special expression of the Father in time and
space before the eyes of men, and not differing
from Him. Jesus continued :
" For as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth
them life, even so the Son also giveth life to
whom he will. For neither doth the Father
judge any man."
If we think of the Father as the Divine Love
and the Son as the Divine Truth, or the expres
sion of the Divine Love, we can understand this
statement more clearly. Thus, the Divine Love
does not judge any man ; it is not the nature of
love to judge; but the truth does judge.
Hence, "But he hath given all judgment unto
the Son; that all may honor the Son, even as they
honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son,
honoreth not the Father that sent him." (John
5:21-23.) Could he not well have added here,
as he did elsewhere, the reason for it, because
"I and the Father are one"?
Is not this, indeed, God expressing Himself on
the outward plane of nature that all men may
understand Him? If we think that this is not

88 WHO IS JESUS?
God in the flesh in a special manner, let us read
what soon follows :
"For as the Father hath life in himself" —
"Life in himself" is self-existent life predicable
only of the Infinite God — ordinary men possess
derived life only, — "So hath he given to the Son
to have life in himself!" Why? In order that
all men may see that he is the one and only God.
In other words, since there is only one Self-
existent life, does this not mean that the Son and
the Father, as body and soul, are one identical
being, and that the Son, as the special expression
of God, must receive the honor and homage we
pay to the Father, for he is the Father?
"And hath given him authority to execute
judgment also, because he is the oun ul Mill."
v. 27.
What does this mean but that the "Son" is
God working in the ultimates of life — on the
plane in which we are living ?
Jesus, moreover, says:
"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming,
in the which all that are in the graves shall hear
his voice, and shall come forth." (v. 28.)
Is not this God speaking? And did He not
raise the dead to life in this world, and does He

THE SPECIAL EXPRESSION OF GOD 89
not raise those "dead in trespasses and sins"
into spiritual life ? Is it not truly God ?
Jesus says:
" I can of mine own self do nothing : as I hear,
I judge: and my judgment is just; because I
seek not mine own will, but the will of the
Father who sent me. . . The works which
the Father hath given me to finish, the same
works that I do, bear witness of me, that the
Father hath sent me. And the Father himself,
which hath sent me, hath borne witness of me.
Ye have neither heard his voice at any time,
nor seen his shape. And ye have not his word
abiding in you : for whom he hath sent, him ye
believe not. Search the scriptures ; for in them
ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they
which testify of me. And ye will not come to
me that ye might have life." (vs. 30, 36-40.)
Is it not the Divine Love itself speaking out
through its human expression, an expression
which is not separated from it in identity, but
consciously one with it?
"Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on
me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent
me. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent
me." (John 12:44, 45.)

III. CONFIRMATION FROM THE
SCRIPTURES
JESUS called himself "the bread of life." What
is the nature of bread as it relates to man's
needs ? We call it the " staff of life." We mean
that it sustains life. Water refreshes and
cleanses and enters together with food, or
"bread," into the composition of man's body.
It is also indispensable, and Jesus said, "If any
man thirst, let him come unto me and drink."
Bread and water, or food and drink, are essen
tial to man's life. Jesus says that he is the
bread "which cometh down from heaven, and
giveth life unto the world." "I am the bread
of life : he that cometh to me shall never hunger;
and he that believeth on me shall never thirst."
(John 6:35.) Jesus is evidently making the
stupendous claim that he is the source and supply
of our spiritual needs. He could not make any
such claim if he were not God manifest in the
flesh. 90

CONFIRMATION FROM SCRIPTURE 91
Fancy any of us uttering such words as these:
"I am the light of the world: he that followeth
me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life!" (John 8:12.)
Or this, "If ye believe not that I am he, ye
shall die in your sins." (John 8 :24.)
We take them seriously; indeed, we do not
question them. Our opinion of him is based
upon just such statements. We cannot separate
them from the rest of the record, for they are
inextricably woven into its very mesh and fiber:
indeed, the entire record is in perfect harmony
with such statements.
Jesus says of his life, that which no one else
dares to say of his own life, a challenge that in
itself is astounding, and yet which we, as well
as his enemies who watched him with keenly
criticizing eyes, cannot take up: "Which of you
convicteth me of sin ?" (John 8 :46.)
Which of us can say, in any special sense: "I
proceeded and came from [literally "out of"]
God ; neither came I of myself, but he sent me ?"
(John 8:42.)
Or who can call his own words God's words,
thus, that he is God speaking? "He that is
of God heareth God's words : ye therefore hear
them not, because ye are not of God ?"

92 WHO IS JESUS?
Or who else could have said, "Before Abra
ham was, I am"? (John 8: 58.)
Let us refer to another familiar statement:
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door
of the sheep. All that ever came before me are
thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear
them. / am the door: by me if any man enter in,
he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find
pasture." . . Do we think him presumptuous
in this claim? No, we accept it. Why? "As
the Father knoweth me, even so know I the
Father:" Conceive the magnitude of this claim
which no one questions! "and I lay down my
life for the sheep. And other sheep I have,
which are not of this fold: them also I must
bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there
shall be one fold and one shepherd. . . I have
power to lay (my life) down, and I have power to
take it again. . . The works that I do in
my Father's name, they bear witness of me.
. . . My sheep hear my voice, and I know
them, and they follow me ; and I give unto them
eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither
shall anyone pluck them out of my hand. My
Father, which gave them me, is greater than all ;
and no one is able to pluck them out of my
Father's hand. I and the Father are One."

CONFIRMATION FROM SCRIPTURE 93
The tenth chapter of John, from which these
words are quoted, and which we accept unques-
tioningly, is one of the most affecting expressions
of the Divine love ever uttered; its statements
fully confirm our position. It unequivocally
makes the Father and the Son identical, thus ful
filling the prophecy of Isaiah 40:11, where Je
hovah says He will come as the Good Shepherd.

IV. THE GOLDEN KEY
IF WE realize that Jehovah and Jesus are identi
cal, do we not have a golden key to unlock the
Word? Its difficulties and apparent contra
dictions then disappear. Indeed, in no other
way can we understand the Scriptures. With
out this understanding we are perplexed, for we
seem to see two separate identities as God,
which makes two Gods — an obvious impossi
bility. With this new idea in our minds there
is no confusion of thought.
Let us apply this golden key to the familiar
fourteenth chapter of John. I contend that,
if we do not look upon the Father and the Son
as one, as soul and body are one, it has no mean
ing, but if we do so interpret it, or indeed any
other part of the New Testament, we shall find
no difficulties whatever.
We recall its reassuring opening, one that has
given untold comfort to the followers of Jesus in
every age : 94

THE GOLDEN KEY 95
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe
in God, believe also in me." Is not this an
invitation to think of him as their idea of God ?
Else why the connection? "In my Father's
house are many mansions: if it were not so, I
would have told you. I go to prepare a place
for you. And if I go and prepare a place for
you, I will come again, and receive you unto
myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."
Of course, no mere man who ever lived could
have spoken these words acceptably; we receive
them as we do because we know that Jesus spoke
them — he who was one with the Father as body and
soul are one.
How beautifully this is shown in this :
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth
and the life: no man cometh unto the Father,
but by me."
As no man can approach another's soul except
through his body, — that is, through his outward
expression in time and space, — so can no one
approach the Divine soul — the Father — except
through the outward expression of it in Jesus.
As we know one another only through these
outward expressions of our interior selves, so
we can know the Father — the unseen, invisible

96 WHO IS JESUS?
God — only through His manifestation in Christ.
Yet these two separate manifestations of body
and soul are not separated in fact, only in ap
pearance; they act as one, and are one, as our
bodies and souls are one being.
Jesus sometimes spoke as if he had a con
sciousness perfectly at one with the Father,
and then again entirely distinct from that of the
Father; but we can understand how that is be
cause we have an interior consciousness into
which we come and from which we speak; and
then again we are immersed, as it were, in the
things of sense, — of the outward world, — and
we feel our separateness from the things of the
spirit. This interior consciousness becomes
more and more clear in our own case as the in
terior life is more clearly developed and we act
more definitely from it. It is obscured as we
give way to the darkening processes of sin. We
all have this duality of consciousness, or con
sciousness according to our state as if on two
different planes of being. We can become a
Mr. Hyde or a Dr. Jekyll, according as we de
velop our lives, and we are as distinctly on one
plane or the other in consciousness as the char
acter in Robert Louis Stevenson's book. This

THE GOLDEN KEY 97
enables us to understand Jesus, for he also had
it as long as he was limited by the body and life
assumed from Mary.
Jesus was an expression in time and space of a
soul, similar to our own expression. The proc
esses of his purely human life must have been
similar to our own. In the fourteenth chapter
of John he appears to be in the interior con
sciousness, where he perceives his identity with
the Father. This is shown by what follows :
"If ye had known me, ye should have known
my Father also: and from henceforth ye know
him and have seen him."
This was a most remarkable statement, but
it fell on uncomprehending minds.
"Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the
Father, and it sufficeth us."
Are we not always looking for some expression
of the Father apart from the Son, and do we not
also have our answer in what follows ?
"Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long
time with you, and yet hast thou not known me,
Philip ? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;
and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father?"
From these statements can any of us ever
expect to see God in any other shape or form
7

98 WHO IS JESUS?
than that of Jesus ? Jesus is God made mani
fest to men. "In him," as Paul says, "dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." There
is no other God apart from him. The Father
is the indwelling Divine — the soul; the Son is
His expression — His projection — in time and
space. The Father and the Son are one, as
soul and body are one. Jesus illustrates this
in his endeavor to make his disciples more fully
comprehend him :
"Believest thou not that I am in the Father,
and the Father in me ?"
Was he not saying that his soul was the Divine
Father, acting as one with its concrete expression
in time and space ?
"The words that I speak unto you I speak
not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth
in me, he doeth the works."
Could we express the interaction between our
souls and bodies more perfectly? Do not our
words and deeds come from our souls acting
through our bodies ?
Let us consider these words:
"If ye shall ask anything in my name, that
will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the
Son."

THE GOLDEN KEY 99
What does this mean? Is it not this: If
ye shall ask anything according to the quality
of the life which I have manifested before you,
for a name expresses or connotes the quality of
one's life; thus, If ye shall ask anything accord
ing to the spirit which has actuated me, that will
I do, — not the Father, — that the Father may be
glorified, that is, may be "honored, ascribed
glory to, exalted, adored, worshipped," in the
Son. The Standard Dictionary gives us this
as the definition of "glorify." We claim that
we are to recognize the Father in the Son, and
to honor, adore, and worship him in the Son.
Is not Jesus evidently trying to give his disciples
to understand that their prayers will be answered
by himself directly, and hoping from this that they
will perceive that He and the Father are one
identical being?
Now here follow some statements which are
in the sense of the letter extremely confusing
if we think of God as existing in three beings or
as three beings, and yet which appear to convey
that idea :
" If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I
will pray the Father, and he shall give you another
Comforter, that he may abide with you forever."

ioo WHO IS JESUS?
Here are the three "Persons" of the Athan
asian creed. Jesus appears to be subordinate
because he prays to the Father, and the Com
forter appears to be subordinate because he
obeys the mandate of the Father. But let us
note that it is the Comforter, or the Holy Spirit,
who is to be sent. Immediately he tells us,
" / will not leave you comfortless : / will come
to you."
In other words, he at once identifies himself
with this Comforter. He confirms this a little
later by saying,
"He that loveth me, shall be loved of my
Father, and I will love him, and will manifest
myself to him."
But he modifies this by saying,
"If a man love me, he will keep my words:
and my Father will love him, and we will come
unto him, and make our abode with him."
First, it was the Holy Spirit who was to be
sent; then it was Jesus who was to come and
comfort his disciples ; then both the Father and
the Son are to come. Then he caps the climax
by saying,
" But the Comforter, which is the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name."

THE GOLDEN KEY 101
Now these varying passages must mean that
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are simply
different offices, functions, phases, manifesta
tions, of the One Divine Being, and not three
distinct beings or persons. Any other conclusion
leads to an absurdity.
Proceeding upon this assumption, the whole
matter is at once cleared up. Jesus has already
told them that if they prayed to him he would
himself answer their prayers. And later he
says, "And I say not unto you that I will pray
the Father for you." In these cases he is speak
ing plainly and openly. When he says that he
will pray the Father for them, is he not speaking
according tp the appearance in order that they
may not cease to have the idea of the Divine
back of him ?
He is trying to tell them plainly that he is
the Father. He has already told them so di
rectly: but they cannot comprehend it. He
keeps on trying to reveal himself as the Father;
but still they cannot comprehend. He tells
them that he will pray to the Father to send the
Holy Spirit, but then shows that He is the Holy
Spirit as well as the Father and the Son. In
other words, he has shown them that these three

102 WHO IS JESUS?
manifestations of God — Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit — are all in him as soul, body, and pro
ceeding life.
That the Holy Spirit is not a distinct person,
but an influence or effluence, or proceeding,
from him, is shown by the fact that after his
resurrection he appeared to his disciples and
breathed on them, saying, "Receive ye the
Holy Spirit." A person cannot be breathed
out from another person. The Greek word for
spirit, "pneuma," means "a current of air,"
"a breath." It expresses on the natural plane
its counterpart on the spiritual plane, namely,
the Divine breathing or the Divine proceeding.
Why did not Jesus state all these things plainly
in the letter? We answer that he did, but that
his disciples simply could not comprehend what
he was trying to tell them. He at last gave up
trying to tell them. He said,
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but
ye cannot bear them now."
He recognized, after much experiment, their
state to be such that they could not then un
derstand him. It was far more hopeless than
to try to enable them to comprehend at that
time the truth of and the laws governing the

THE GOLDEN KEY 103
solar system. He could do no more than state
the facts as plainly as he could, leaving the words
with them for future ages to understand, at the
same time trying to impress upon them, in
whatever way was possible, that he was some
how God. He recognizes that a time will come
when men will be able to understand, for after
many humanly disheartening attempts to en
lighten them he says :
"These things have I spoken unto you in
parables; but the time cometh when I shall no
more speak unto you in parables; but I shall
show you plainly of the Father." (John 16 : 25.)
Has that time not now come ?
In Revelation it is predicted, "Behold, he
cometh with clouds."
Has the trouble with the Church of the past
not been that it has seen him only obscurely in
the clouds of the letter? It has failed to see
him coming "with power and great glory" in
these very clouds of the letter as he predicted in
Matthew would be the way in which he would
come again. We must remember that it was
the glorified Jesus, after his ascension or perfect
union with the Father, when there was no longer
any apparent separation of identity, who said,

104 WHO IS JESUS?
"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the
ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was,
and which is to come, the Almighty." He was
plainly stating that he was all of God, the only
God of heaven and earth.
If we shall from henceforth see in him "all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily"; if we shall
approach him alone as the God of heaven and
earth, as he told us we must do, — "no man
cometh unto the Father but by me," — our
theology will be wonderfully simplified and the
Bible will become easy to understand in its
claims concerning the Messiah and concerning
Jesus as the fulfilment of these claims. The
power that inheres in Christianity results from
the acknowledgment of Jesus as God, and it is
the unequivocal teaching of the Bible, as we
have seen, that he is God.

BOOK TWO
THE VIRGIN BIRTH AND THE DIVINE
HUMANITY

I. WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT
THERE can be little doubt that the
writers of the New Testament teach the
deity of Christ, even though they did not, and
could not, in their state, perceive how Father
and Son were united. They accepted the deity
of Christ as a fact of experience and belief in
a decidedly practical way; but there are many
evidences to show that they regarded Christ,
in spite of what they themselves put down con
cerning his deity, as somehow subordinate to
the Father. For example, John, whose Gospel
teaches the deity of Jesus most unequivocally,
states near its close : " But these are written that
ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ (the
Messiah), the Son of God; and that believing,
ye might have life through his name." (John
20:31.) This is precisely the statement upon
which Jesus himself told Peter that his church
was to be founded, namely, that he was the
Messiah, the Son of God. 107

108 WHO IS JESUS?
It is evident that Jesus regretfully accepted
that which their limitations made necessary,
although Divinely he foreknew it would be so,
namely, that they should teach that he was
merely the Messiah, the Son of God; but he
did so, as we have already seen, because they
could not receive the fuller truth of his identity
with the Father. That he actually taught this
identity we have shown, and there can be no
other rational explanation of him, for his deity in
any degree means his absolute oneness with the
Father. His own statements concerning him
self can be reconciled only by the possession of
this knowledge. And he provided in the docu
ments that were written concerning him the
basis for the completer revelation of himself
at a later time, promising that the later and
fuller revelation would be given. "These things
have I spoken unto you in parables: but the
time cometh when I shall no more speak unto
you in parables, but I shall show you plainly
of the Father." (John 16:25.) We believe
that the time has come when it is no longer
necessary for men to perceive the reality only
dimly by the light of parables, but openly and
fully, upon the basis of his parabolic statements,

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT 109
and it is for this reason that men today are be
ginning to worship the Lord Jesus Christ as
God and Saviour with a fulness and complete
ness that they never did before.
It was infinitely better that men should look
upon Jesus as the Son of God, as subordinate to
the Father, if in this way they regarded him as
truly Divine, rather than that they should re
ject him altogether because of their inability
to accept as the very God of heaven and earth
one whom they had known intimately as a
teacher and companion. There can be little
doubt that his disciples, even though they per
ceived the fact of his Divineness from experience
and teaching, and later gave their lives in de
fense of this belief, would have rejected the fact
altogether in view of their Jewish ideal of Je
hovah if Jesus had demanded that they accept
him as the Father. He plainly told them the
fact, but when he saw they could not receive it,
he allowed them to continue to think of him
merely as the Son of God.
It was essential to the salvation of men that
they should look upon Jesus as somehow God,
and certainly Saviour. "Except ye believe that
I am he, ye shall die in your sins." It is

no WHO IS JESUS?
essential today, and it was no less so then, for
without this belief in him as somehow Divine,
but nevertheless as essentially Divine, and hence
a Saviour, there would have been no Christian
church. The Jewish idea of God was inexpres
sibly more imperfect than the new and yet still
imperfect one of the disciples, but God had to be
satisfied with the imperfect reception of the
knowledge of Him by both Jews and Christians.
The teaching of the Apostles and of their
immediate successors evidently confined itself
to the simple statement of the facts and prophe
cies about Jesus. It was a simple Gospel that
they preached, despite Paul's eloquent and
elaborated arguments in his epistles. The the
ology involved did not greatly trouble the masses
of the early Christians. They worshipped Jesus
as a unique person, Divine as men never were
and never could be Divine, as essential God.
Pliny's letter to the emperor Trajan confirms
this when he tells us that " they met before day
break and sang a hymn to Christ as God." We
know, from innumerable testimonies, that they
prayed to Christ as God, but we also perceive
that they always thought of him as the Son of
God. Polycarp, at his martyrdom, exclaims:

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT in
"For all things, 0 God, do I praise and bless
and glorify thee, together with the eternal and
heavenly Jesus Christ, thy well-beloved Son, with
whom to thee and the Holy Ghost be glory both
now and forever." This prayer, whether authen
tic or not, is an example of the theology of the
Church as it began to shape itself in the first
Christian centuries.
When the Greek philosophic mind took up
the new teaching it was already accustomed to
the doctrine of the Logos as a lower expression
of God, as an emanation of God below the plane
of the Infinite One, and yet incomparably above
men — an intermediary between them. And the
whole heathen world was adjusted to the idea of
a still lower manifestation of God, which was
that of God expressing Himself temporarily in
the human form. The prevalence of these two
general ideas made it easy for the world to accept
the new and rather vague teaching of the deity
of Jesus. Neither the philosophic classes nor
the unreasoning masses found it necessary to
make any sharp mental readjustment; the new
teaching fitted in with their previous education
in such matters; they needed only to think of
the man Jesus as either the Logos or God in-

112 WHO IS JESUS?
carnate. They had heard of such things be
fore ; this was the one true concrete example that
superseded all previous philosophic concepts or
reputed incarnations.
Yet there were those who were not satisfied
with the tendency toward polytheism exhibited
in such utterances as the prayer of Polycarp
just quoted. Celsus, for example, in criticism
of the Christian position, said: "The worship
of Christ is fatal to the Christian doctrine of the
unity of God, while they offer an excessive adora
tion to this person who has lately appeared in
the world. How can they think that they com
mit no offense against God by giving these
Divine honors to his Son ?"
Celsus was right in stating that the worship
of Christ, if it is a worship of Christ as a being
apart from God, and not a worship of the one and
indivisible God of heaven and earth, is fatal to
the Christian doctrine of the unity of God. If
Jesus was anything less than or not identical
with the Father, it was wrong to worship him
as God; the saving part of their position was
that, even though they did not comprehend it,
Jesus and the Father, even as he said, were one.
It matters little that Origen, the most brilliant

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT 113
of the early Christian fathers, defended the
Christian position ably, for Origen, because of
supposed doubtful orthodoxy, was soon rele
gated to the position of being no authority.
Most of the heresies that developed proceeded
from the inability of men to comprehend that
a mere man, as they saw him, could be Divine.
Men were willing to admit that Jesus exhibited
qualities which put him in a class apart from
other men; but then, they reasoned, God is
one and indivisible, hence Jesus cannot be
Divine, for the Father is God. Among these
sects it is not necessary for us to differentiate
in this discussion between those who, like the
Ebionites, denied his divinity altogether, while
admitting his Messiahship, and the Arians, who
denied his co-equality with the Father, but
taught that he was Divine and different from
other men, a subordinate deity.
Those who denied his divinity altogether were
logical so far as the facts of Divine unity are
concerned, for the Divine essence cannot be
divided, but they left out the facts of Christ's
personality and his claims concerning himself.
The Arians were logical in realizing that the
Divine essence cannot be divided, and they tried
8

114 WHO IS JESUS?
to be just, at the same time, to the facts of
Christ's life and utterances, and so made him
semi-Divine. Their idea is at least conceptually possible,
for it was the Greek concept of the Logos, and
it is conceivably what multitudes of others in
all ages, nominally orthodox and followers of
Athanasius, have held, despite their nominal
orthodoxy and formal acceptance of Athan-
asianism. The Athanasians who prevailed, and who
hence call themselves orthodox, were wholly
illogical in declaring that God could exist in
three persons; but we must believe that they
prevailed and were considered orthodox by the
will of God, in spite of their defective logic,
indeed, in spite of absolute irrationality, because
they defended the essential deity of Christ.
Although they did not understand how Christ
was Divine, — of the same essence as the Father,
— and although logically he could not have been
Divine if existing apart from the Father as a
separate personality, as they stated in their
creeds ; yet because of their dogmatic statements
that he was truly God the Church as a whole
believed in Christ's deity. And that was, after

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT 115
all, the most important thing, and their illogical
belief the best choice out of many imperfect
beliefs. There were those who, like the Patripassians,
in order to defend the doctrine of Christ's
essential deity, went so far as to insist that
Jesus, even as to his assumed humanity from
Mary, was the one and only God. They per
ceived that God is truly one and indivisible;
hence they claimed that the human being who
walked the roads of Palestine as Jesus of Naza
reth was even as to his limitations Divine. God
must exist in one person; hence if Jesus was God
at all, he was at all times and in all places and
under all circumstances and in all parts God.
These people were logical within certain
limits. But they left out some of the facts,
and without all the facts no correct conclusion
can be obtained. They left out the obviously
limited conditions of the purely human nature
assumed from a human mother, the material
body and its associated planes of life, which pro
vided a temporary vehicle for the indwelling of
the Divine.
They were soon brought to confusion. If
their theory was correct, then God suffered on

116 WHO IS JESUS?
the cross, God died, and God cannot be imagined
as suffering in such a way, nor can He die. The
Patripassians were reaching out for the truth,
and they almost grasped it; but they failed be
cause they did not differentiate between the two
natures in Christ, the purely human and the
Divine. The limitations of Jesus were not
Divine, for the Divine cannot be limited, even
though it may limit itself in manifestation and
usually has to do so when dealing with men.
Jesus as a person was Divine, for he was Je
hovah manifesting Himself in accordance with
prophecy; but he was not Divine in the limita
tions that were necessary to be assumed in
order to manifest himself. He very evidently
had two natures — a lower and purely human
one, and a higher and Divine one, and a con
sciousness manifesting itself first on one plane
and then on the other, and when it manifested
itself on the higher plane, it was one with the
permanent, non-fluctuating Divine conscious
ness. The difference between him and us is that his
higher nature was Life-in-itself, self-existent
life, Jehovah, whereas our higher nature is life
derived from Jehovah. As his higher nature,

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT 117
his essential nature, his true soul, was Jehovah,
when he had put off forever his earthly limita
tions by "glorifying" or making them Divine,
he was wholly Divine, but possessing a Divine
Human nature which is infinite and makes
permanent his residence with men. "Behold,
the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will
dwell with them, and they shall be his people,
and God himself shall be with them, their God."
(Rev. 21:3.)
It was the lower, purely human nature, that
suffered, and it was merely the material body
that died. The death of that body did not
affect the indwelling Divine, nor was it the Di
vine that suffered, but the human consciousness
on the still existing limited human plane of
consciousness. It was this consciousness that
cried out on the cross : " My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me!" It was about at this
time that the purely human, limited body, with
its planes of consciousness, was put off forever,
and the Divine Human plane took its place,
so that God forever dwells directly with us.
Sabellius endeavored to avoid the error of the
Patripassians, but he tried to get out of it by
saying that there was no real incarnation.

118 WHO IS JESUS?
The appearance of Christ in the flesh was merely
a Theophany similar to the Theophanies of the
Old Testament, when God appeared before men
in the quiescent form of an angel. The incarna
tion was thus not real; it was temporary, not
permanent. There was no actual assumption
of the human, no glorification of it, no resurrec
tion and ascension.
Sabellius was also grasping at the truth, but
he did not grasp it, for Christ was an objective
reality. His life and death were real. John
insists that this is so when he says in his epistle,
"That which was from the beginning, which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon, and our hands have
handled, of the Word of Life (for the life was man
ifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness,
and show unto you that eternal life, which was
with the Father, and was manifested unto us) ;
that which we have seen and heard declare we
unto you." (I John 1:1,2.) We also recall
this statement: "Every spirit that confesseth
that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God."
(I John 4:2), and he declares that he who denies
it is anti-Christ.
Sabellius taught that the Trinity of Father,

WHAT THE CHURCH HAS TAUGHT 119
Son, and Holy Spirit is not existent inherently
in God, but in His revelation or manifestation
of Himself in the Law, in the Incarnation, and
in the Holy Spirit. He failed to see that the
substance or quality of God, the Father, is
Love or Good ; that His form, the Son, is Wis
dom or Truth, and that His manifestation, the
Holy Spirit, is Use or Power, and as such they
are permanent. These three phases of Sub
stance, Form, and Proceeding are the three
essentials permanently existent in the nature of
God, as indeed they are in the nature of all
created things, and as in created things, so in
God, they make a one, not three equal ones, as
the Athanasians leave us to infer, but three com
ponent parts or phases that make a one, as soul,
body, and proceeding life together make one
man. The man re-created into the image and
likeness of God is loving, wise, and useful, an
image and likeness of these three phases of
Love, Wisdom, and Use in the one and in
divisible God. The Trinity is not existent
merely in manifestation, but also in permanent
reality. Now let us take up again and anew the conten
tion of the Athanasians, whose views prevailed
and dominated the entire Christian Church"

II. THE CONTENTION OF THE
ATHANASIANS
WE HAVE already devoted a great deal of
time and attention to the Athanasian con
tention that God exists in three persons, and we
have shown that such a belief logically means
polytheism in spite of all declarations to the
contrary, and since polytheism is ruled out of
the possibilities, so must Athanasianism go. We
have, however, claimed that it was Divinely per
mitted to continue as the dominant faith of the
Church in spite of its implied polytheism, because
it was the only faith which emphasized the essen
tial deity of Christ at the same time that it
insisted upon the dual nature of Christ. We
do not mean at all to say that the followers of
Athanasius in the Christian Church have con
sciously been polytheists. They have insisted
upon the formula that God is one, in spite of
the fact that their creed, logically viewed,

THE ATHANASIANS' CONTENTION 121
asserted the contrary. They have thought of
themselves as monotheists, and conscientiously
so proclaimed themselves; but the simple fact
is that if they believe the assertions of their
creed, they are not. It is highly probable that,
as we have previously indicated, many of them
are actually Arians, thinking of Christ as really
subordinate to the Father, although of the royal
family of heaven. Jesus to them is a prince.
God, the Father, is king. But this is not
Scriptural, for Jesus is " King of kings and Lord
of lords."
It is certain that they think of the Trinity as
a trinity of persons — as three different persons.
They think of God as existing in three separate
identities, in three separate and distinct persons,
each of whom is of the same God-essence, and is
"by Himself God and Lord"; thus in three
co-equal Gods. This makes three Infinites —
an absurdity, since we know that only one Infi
nite can exist. Three Infinites make three
finites, one limited by another, hence no Infinite.
But the Athanasians condemn the belief of
God in one person. They think that it is im
possible, under such a theory, to avoid the error
of the Patripassians, that of the Father suffer-

122 WHO IS JESUS?
ing and dying on the cross, or the error of
Sabellius, that His suffering and dying was only
an appearance, not a fact. They think that
Christ must have been in the very nature of the
case a different person, and they have founded
their doctrine of salvation wholly upon the con
dition that Christ and the Father, although re
lated as Father and Son, are unequivocally two
different beings.
It may not be so difficult as they fancy to show
that while Jesus is " King of kings and Lord of
lords," thus the only God of heaven and earth,
in whom all power in heaven and earth inheres
because he is this only God, in whom "dwelleth
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily," yet he
was, after all, in his earth life, perfect man with
a reasonable soul, and not distinct from the
Father as from another person or identity.
Even they must realize the great confusion
which exists in their thought concerning the
person of Christ. They sing —
"All hail the power of Jesus' name;
Let angels prostrate fall ;
Bring forth the royal diadem
And crown him Lord of all."

THE ATHANASIANS' CONTENTION 123
And they mean the thought and spirit of this
and innumerable other songs where Jesus is
praised as God, supreme over all. Let us see
if, in other chapters, we may not perceive just
how Jesus is God and man.

III. THE HUMAN PLANES OF LIFE
THE first step in order to perceive how Jesus
is God and man is to understand first what
man is, and then to understand, so far as we can,
what God is. It is better in the very beginning
of such a discussion to make clear the meaning of
the terms we use. We shall proceed, first of all,
to a consideration of man, or the human nature.
It is perfectly obvious, first of all, that man is
a creature. We do not make ourselves, nor do
our parents create us; they are simply instru
mentalities through which we come into being.
The simplest classification of man is as follows:
Above SOUL of SPIRIT
P I ^F^> =C ATAT-TITP = CREATED MAN
Below BODY of MATTER
Diagram i
The soul is of spirit, or spiritual, and the body
is of matter, or material, and the two together,
soul and body, make created man.
The body denotes simply the material part
124

HUMAN PLANES OF LIFE 125
of man in the plane of nature or matter. All
that our natural eyes ever behold of our loved
ones or friends or neighbors is the material body
that they inhabit.
Yet the real thing that distinguishes those we
know from one another and causes us to like or
dislike them is not the body chiefly, but the
spiritual part of them that we cannot see with
our natural eyes. We recognize that the
spiritual part is the part that really lives, and
acts through the material body. This part we
perceive with the eyes of our mind or our spirit.
Let us make the distinction very clear and
marked between the material and the spiritual.
They are totally distinct in kind, although act
ing together as a one.
Matter has in itself fixedness or immobility.
It is perceptible to the senses. It is subject
to the limitations of time and space. It is
capable of being weighed and measured in very
material ways.
Affection and thought, which constitute the
quality and expression of the spiritual part of
us, cannot in themselves be perceived by the
five senses ; their effects upon the material body
may be observed, but not the things themselves.

126 WHO IS JESUS?
Affection and thought are not limited by time
and space. They cannot be weighed or measured
by any material standard.
Spirit and matter are distinct in kind. We
cannot justly think of spirit, or the spiritual,
as refined matter, — etherealized matter, — matter
so attenuated that it is only a finely diffused
mist or essence.
Matter and spirit, we repeat, are distinct and
on distinctly separated planes. Even if we
think of two of the most etherealized forms of
matter, gravitation and electricity, we cannot
think of them as on the same plane as affection
and thought. This is clearly shown by apply
ing material standards of weight or measure
ment to spiritual things. We cannot say that
an affection or thought weighs so many pounds
or ounces, or is so many inches or yards long,
whereas the attraction of gravitation can be so
weighed and electrical current definitely meas
ured. The physical energy or atomic displace
ment caused by affection and thought may be
measured, but not the things themselves.
In speaking of spirit we have purposely thus
far included mind with spirit, for the mind is
also spiritual, but it will be more illuminating

HUMAN PLANES OF LIFE 127
if we distinguish between them, and call all that
is spiritual back of the material body by the
word soul, referring in this way to the body's
interior life. A new diagram will elucidate our
idea:

spirit
mind BODY

}

SOUL realm of the spiritual
body realm of the material
Diagram 2

Now let us go a step further and define mind
as the natural mind, a part of the natural body
by association, similar to the mind of an animal,
both belonging to the realm of the "natural"
(a new term), and yet the body belonging to
matter and the mind to spirit, the body perish
able, and the mind and spirit immortal and
capable of continuance apart from the body.
"Natural" and "material" are not wholly
identical or coincident, although "material"
belongs to the realm of the natural. We would
better record this new phase:

natural

spirit )
mind BODY

Constituting SOUL BODY

Existent in the
REALM OF THE
I SPIRITUAL
REALM OF THE
MATERIAL

= MAN

Diagram 3

128 WHO IS JESUS?
We do not like to be diffuse in this analysis,
but without it we cannot understand our sub
ject. We are arriving somewhere.
Let us now take up the third division which
we have indicated on our diagrams as "spirit."
By spirit we refer to a still higher plane of man's
being, which all men refer to and yet think of
variously. We are all sure that man has a distinctly
marked plane of his nature — or faculty, at least
— above the merely natural or animal mind. It
is known from its manifestations. The natural
mind is the "carnal" mind, to which Paul refers.
The spiritual plane we also know from him.
"To be carnally minded is death; but to be
spiritually minded is life and peace." (Romans
8:6.) The mere animal, and the animal man, the
man of the carnal or fleshly mind only, is guided
by selfish motives altogether — motives of self-
protection, self-preservation, self-indulgence, self-
enjoyment, self-exaltation; in a word, by self-
love. This operates with the material body in
the realm of the natural (here plainly recog
nized). "The carnal mind is enmity against
God." (Romans 8:7.)

HUMAN PLANES OF LIFE 129
The man in whom the spiritual plane is
opened acts from superior motives. The mere
animal may indeed forget itself in the protection
of its offspring, but that is in itself a natural or
selfish motive — it is its own life by perpetuation
and extension that it is protecting.
The spiritual man, or the man in whom the
spiritual plane is opened, can forget self for those
who are not related to him by ties of blood or
selfish interest. He is willing to lay down his
life, if need be, for those who need his aid and
have no other claim upon him. He is capable
of renouncing self-indulgence, self-enjoyment,
self-exaltation, for the sake of others and for his
God. It would seem that we are entitled to call this
the plane of heavenly life, or "eternal life," as
Jesus called it, into which we come by regenera
tion, or the "new birth," or by being "born from
above." It represents a new life, capable of
being opened in every man by his acceptance
of its governing principles, which are those
enunciated by Jesus. He accepts those prin
ciples in theory, first of all, when from his spirit
ual plane he is enabled to acknowledge them as
true and worthy of his obedience. He accepts

130 WHO IS JESUS?
them in fact when he brings them down by the
cooperation of the Divine power to dominate
his natural mind and body.
We can never understand the Incarnation
until we perceive the correctness of these classi
fications of man's life into these planes ; therefore
he who would understand it should be patient.

IV. AN INMOST PLANE OF LIFE
WE HAVE outlined man as consisting of
three definite and distinctly marked planes
for the reception of life from his Creator. The ma
terial body is the lowest of all. It is the founda
tion upon which the superstructure is built and
is indispensable in order that mental and
spiritual life may be manifested in a material
universe; but it is perishable and eventually
disappears into new forms when the soul in
habiting it no longer needs it.
Directly in connection with the material body,
but consisting of something distinctly different
in kind, higher, finer, and interior to it, is the
natural mind, but these two, the natural mind
and the material body, work together as a unit.
Although different in kind and operating to
gether by analogy or correspondence, the body
serving the mind as a vehicle for manifesting
itself on the plane of nature, they both belong
to the realm of the natural. Animals also
131

132 WHO IS JESUS?
possess the material body and the natural mind,
and belong wholly on the plane of the natural.
Since animals do not possess the capacity for
becoming spiritual or opening up the spiritual
plane, we assume and are sure that they do not
possess the next plane of spirit. Because even
naturally minded men (the "carnally minded"
man of Paul) do possess the plane of the spiritual,
even though it remains undeveloped, we believe
that they continue forever in some state of life,
whereas animals, because of the absence of
the superior and distinctively spiritual, perish
wholly at the death of the body.
The plane of spirit, as we have indicated, is
the true and proper plane to be developed, for
the development of which men are born, the
development of which brings them into the
kingdom of heaven, or of God, while still on earth,
and into a visible heaven hereafter. "The
kingdom of heaven" is the constant theme of
the discourses of Jesus, and we learn that it is
within us. (Luke 17:21.)
Thus we have a view, and one that is entirely
verifiable from the experience of mankind and
the statements of the Bible, of man as body,
mind, and spirit; the mind and spirit consti-

AN INMOST PLANE OF LIFE 133
tuting the soul which endures forever because
it is capable of becoming fashioned into the
moral image and likeness of God.
But there still remains a plane of life belong
ing to man above even that of the conscious
spiritual. We might call it the Unconscious
Spiritual, but it is better perhaps to term it the
Inmost, where life is received from its source.
This Inmost of the soul we may look upon as
the very Holy of Holies of man, where God
dwells directly with him, even if not openly to
his consciousness.
That it exists is shown by these facts: Life
is received from God; because of its nature it
must be received interiorly; it is not received
consciously, that is, on the plane of man's
consciousness: hence it must be received on
an interior plane within or above man's con
sciousness. Are we not justified in saying that man's soul,
or his interior life, consisting of these three
planes of mind, spirit, inmost, where God's life
is manifested in him as his very own, is the real
man? The material body drops off at death
and complete conscious life continues without
it. Even the life that manifests itself while

134 WHO IS JESUS?
man still lives in his material body on earth
is wholly of the soul.
These three planes of reception of Inmost,
Spirit, Mind, are the real man, and are a picture
of the Tabernacle in the wilderness and the
Temple at Jerusalem, with the Holy of Holies,
the Holy Place, and the Outer Court. With
man God dwells in his Inmost or Holy of Holies,
in what is to him the silence and obscurity of
his soul.
Into the Holy of Holies once a year came the
High Priest, the type of Christ penetrating as
the mediator between God and man into the
realm of the Divine. At Christ's death the veil
that shut it out from man's view was torn in
twain, representing the opening up of the Divine
Nature as revealed in Jesus — God made mani
fest. The Inmost plane is thus the Holy of
Holies. The Holy Place in man's temple is the sacred
region of the heavenly life, the plane we call
Spirit. The Outer Court is the region of the
Natural Mind, into which all may come. Jesus
referred to his body as the real Temple of God,
superseding the temple at Jerusalem. Paul
says that our bodies are also temples of God,

AN INMOST PLANE OF LIFE 135
and having this view of man's soul as the re
ceptacle of life from God, its tabernacle, we can
perceive just how it is true.
How shall we think of the receptacle of life
from God, the soul-form, which, with the soul's
life from God, is the real man ? Is it not proper
to regard it as in the human form — as in as com
plete a form as the outward body, which is,
after all, only its covering ? Shall we not think
of that receptacle, the soul-form, as in the
human form because it is in the image and
according to the likeness of God? If that be
true, it would seem to follow that God is, there
fore, in the human form, that is, innately, as
He is in Himself as well as in His manifestation.
This is a new thought of God to many; but if
God speaks as a man, and His face and His arms
and His hands are referred to in the Bible; if
He hears with His ears and sees with His eyes;
shall we not think of Him in the realm of the
highest as Primal Man, because of which we, as
being in His image and likeness, are men?
We must ever think of Him as ineffably superior
to men or angels, without the limitations of time
or space ; and yet, after all, in the human form —
not a vast giant, for that concept implies a

136 WHO IS JESUS?
material thought of Him; but nevertheless
essentially Man. When it became necessary
to manifest Himself to men, would it not be
natural for Him to enter into the form of a man
on all its planes of manifestation?
What would be the distinction between God
manifesting Himself in the form of Jesus Christ
and manifesting Himself through any other
man? That is our problem, but we are near
to its answer in comprehending in what man
proper consists. We believe that the correct
answer is found in the difference between the
receptacle known to men as Jesus Christ, —
the man Jesus of Nazareth, — and other recep
tacles of life from God in the form of men. We
feel that, with the explanations about to be
made, the difficulties involved in the question,
How can Jesus be both God and Man ? will dis
appear.

V. THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL
SUMMING up : If all our life is from God, it is
evident that the life existing in and manifest
ing itself through the human soul is life derived
from God the Creator, and as we have also seen,
the soul-form is only the receptacle of this life.
With this idea in mind, let us make another
diagram representing the various planes of life
and its manifestation from the original source
in God down to its lowest manifestation in the
outward bodily form of man :

GOD

THE DIVINE

S
MAN °

INMOST SPIRIT

L

MIND

B

0 D

PHYSICAL

Y

MATTER

INMOST RECEPTACLE OF LIFE
FROM GOD
PLANE OF THE SPIRITUAL OR
HEAVENLY LIFE
PLANE OF THE NATURAL OR ANI
MAL MIND

MATERIAL BODY IN
IN SOLAR SYSTEM

Diagram 4
137

NATURE OR

138 WHO IS JESUS?
Man rests upon matter, has his roots in it,
and draws his physical sustenance from it,
like a plant, but his soul reaches up through the
realm of the spiritual plane by plane to the Di
vine, from which it draws its entire life.
We can conceive that the Divine influx into
man's soul is direct from above, whereas it
would appear, from the influx of heat and light
and power through the natural sun of our solar
system into the solar realm, that the material
body receives its life from God through the
natural sun. As the material is grosser than the
spiritual, or soul life, there would not be any
penetration of the spiritual by the grosser influx
from the material, whereas there could be and
obviously is a penetration of the material by
the spiritual. Spirit can in a sense flow into
and manifest itself through matter, while matter
cannot flow into spirit.
We are discussing the origin of the soul, and
we have urged that, if the soul's life is from God
— if, indeed, all creation is from Him, then the
soul-form itself, which we have seen is man's
receptacle of life, is also from Him. As man con
tinues to be man after the death of the material
body, and lives as a man forever when the

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL 139
material envelop has perished, it is evident
that his soul is in the man form even here and
now. Thus, there would seem to be an inner
or spiritual body composed of spiritual sub
stances in order to exist in and function in the
spiritual world. This is the real, substantial
and persisting form in which men live to eter
nity. The natural body is merely a replica of
it, its temporary outer clothing, to put man into
touch with the material universe in which he
for a time dwells. The soul's interior and
permanent expression is the spiritual body —
its outward and temporary expression is the
natural body.
That there is such a "spiritual body" Paul
asserts in the fifteenth chapter of I Corinthians,
verse 44: "There is a natural body, and there
is a spiritual body." It is impossible to con
ceive of organized spiritual life existing without
an appropriate form. Everything must exist
in some form, and the obvious form of the soul
is the human form, for it produces in its extension
into nature the human form. It will be remem
bered that Paul is explicit about the difference in
kind between the natural body and the spiritual
body, using many comparisons. In speaking of

140 WHO IS JESUS?
the resurrection he says: "It is sown in corrup
tion; it is raised in incorruption ; it is sown a
natural body; it is raised a spiritual body."
The natural is visible in nature, but the spiritual
is always existing, for "there is a natural body,
and there is a spiritual body." "Flesh and
blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God,"
hence the soul-form, without the material body,
but in its spiritual organized body, will do so.
Let us not then think of man's soul, or re
ceptacle of life, as a formless something, but
as in an organized human form. When in the
hereafter it appears, we know from many
instances in the Bible that it will appear in
the human form, as, for example, when the dis
ciples saw Moses and Elijah on the Mount of
Transfiguration, or when the spiritual world
was opened to John in the Isle of Patmos.
There is evidently a vegetable soul, an animal
soul, and a human soul, for all outward life
must have of necessity its above-nature cause,
and its inward spiritual form, that causes it to
take form in the outward, to grow, and to de
velop into the likeness of that from which it
proceeded. The material world is merely the
world of effects, the spiritual, the world of causes.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL 141
Any other view is insufficient to account for
the effects.
We can imagine the vegetable soul, while
inspired from the realm of the spiritual, yet
belonging in origin to the lowest unconscious ex
ternal plane of the spiritual. For the vegetable
has no conscious life, no mentality, nothing that
pertains to the spiritual, except the instinct to
grow. We can imagine the animal soul because it
develops life on the plane of the Mental and
Sentient, but not on the plane of Spirit, or
regenerate life, to have its soul only in the realm
of the spiritual embraced by the Natural Mind
in the diagrams we have made.
We perceive that the human soul is, as we
have described it, a receptacle of life on the plane
first of the Unconscious or Inmost Spiritual,
thence upon the plane of Spirit, thence upon
the plane of Mind, and manifesting itself
through the physical body on the plane of
Matter. Now whence do these receptacles of life come ?
The vegetable soul, while a result of creation
and continued by its processes, comes from and
exists in the seed.

142 WHO IS JESUS?
The animal soul is likewise a result of an orig
inal act of creation, and continued by its proc
esses through the parents, who are now more
markedly male and female. The animal seed
or germ comes from the male, and the egg in
which it grows — corresponding to the earth
in which the vegetable seed grew — comes from
the mother. The life that is manifested pro
ceeds from the male as to its interior form, for
it becomes the replica of the father, but it is
modified or qualified by the nature of the mother,
just as the seed that falls into the earth, while
becoming a replica of the parent plant which
grew it, is modified or qualified by the condi
tions of the soil which receives it.
The earth, in the case of the plant, is the
mother, the plant which grew the seed is the
father, or serves in that capacity. I know that
there will arise in the mind the idea of the male
and female function in the flower by means of
which the seed is fertilized; but in the truest
and most fundamental sense the earth is the
mother, for the earth receives the seed, protects
it, warms it, nourishes it, modifies it according
to its own quality, and thus performs all the
mother-function except the preparatory one of

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL 143
aiding in the fertilization of the seed, which may
be, after all, only a preparatory process within
the male. In the case of the reproduction of
vegetable life we shall consider the sowing of
seed as the fundamental one, and not the new
plant resulting from the transplanted offshoot
of the parent tree ; the latter is rather a continu
ation of the process of growth; but in every
case I feel that the tree or plant serves the
father-function, and the earth always the
mother-function.*
* While scientific men may insist that in vegetable
reproduction the apparent male and female elements
in the plant represent more nearly the father and mother
elements, I submit that the earth more perfectly performs
the true mother function. While the correctness of this
assumption does not appear necessary to prove our funda
mental position later developed, still the confirmation of
this point by Swedenborg, in his True Christian Religion,
No. 585, clearly indicates the analogy and may prove of
interest. He says:
"It has been taught by many of the learned that the
processes of plant growth, not only of trees, but also of all
shrubs, correspond to human prolification. I will, there
fore, add something on this subject by way of appendix.
In trees and in all other subjects of the vegetable king
dom there are not two sexes, a masculine and a feminine,
but everything there is masculine; the earth alone or the

144 WHO IS JESUS?
There are many methods or variations of
method in the reproduction of created life,
whether on the vegetable or animal plane; but
in the animal kingdom the process is carried on
soil is the common mother, and is thus, as it were, feminine;
for it receives the seeds of all fruits, opens them, carries
them as it were in a womb, and then nourishes them
and brings them forth, that is, ushers them into the light
of day, and afterward clothes and sustains them.
"When a seed is first opened by the earth, it begins with
a root, which is a kind of heart; from this it emits and
transmits sap, like blood, and so forms, as it were, a body
provided with limbs; its body is the trunk itself, while
the branches and their branchlets are its limbs. The
leaves which it puts forth immediately after its birth
serve as lungs; for as the heart without the lungs produces
no motion or sensation, and it is by means of these that
man is made alive, so the root without leaves does not
cause a tree or shrub to vegetate. The blossoms which
precede the fruit are means for purifying the sap, the
tree's blood, for separating its grosser from its purer
elements, for forming a new little trunk for the influx of
these purer elements contained in the bosom of this sap,
through which trunk the purified sap may flow in and thus
initiate and gradually form the fruit (which may be com
pared to the testis) in which the seed is perfected.
"The vegetative soul which inmostly governs in every
particle of sap, or which is its prolific essence, is from no
other source than the heat of the spiritual world; and

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL 145
by male and female in sexually separated
individuals. Certainly when the reproductive function is
more clearly distinguished in higher forms of
as this heat is from the spiritual sun there, it aspires to
nothing but generation, and a continuation of creation
thereby; and because it essentially aspires to the genera
tion of man, it induces upon whatever it generates a cer
tain resemblance to man.
"That no one may be astonished at this statement;
that the subjects of the vegetable kingdom are masculine
only, and that the earth alone, or the soul, is like a common
mother, or is like the feminine, let it be illustrated by some
thing similar among bees. According to the observation
of Swammerdam, reported in his Books of Nature, bees
have only one common mother, from which the offspring
of the entire hive is produced. As there is but one com
mon mother for these little insects, why not the same for
all plants?
"That the earth is a common mother may also be illus
trated spiritually; and is so illustrated by the fact that in
the Word 'the earth' signifies the Church, and the Church
is a common mother, and is so called in the Word. . .
"But the earth or the soil can enter into the inmost
of a seed, even to its prolific principle, calling this forth
and giving it circulation, because every least particle
of dust or powder exhales from its essence a kind of subtle,
penetrating effluvium, which is an effect of the active force
of the heat from the spiritual world."

146 WHO IS JESUS?
life we perceive that there is the germ of life
proceeding from the male deposited in the
female, who protects it, warms it, and nourishes
it from her own life.
In general we may say that the process of
reproduction is carried on in the vegetable
kingdom by the planting of the seed in the earth
as a mother, and that a similar process is car
ried on in the animal kingdom by a distinctly
indicated male and a distinctly indicated female.
The germ of life contained in the seed of the
plant or animal would seem to contain what we
have called the soul-form, a spiritual something
capable of reproducing itself in a new individual
of the same species. This soul-form is from the
father, and the body which clothes it from the
mother. We are perfectly aware that scientific men will
contest our position, insisting that both mother
and father contribute equally to the offspring.
We admit that they do so in a sense and yet
we insist that there is a difference in their
contribution. It is the father's soul-life that
is perpetuated or reproduced. The mother
loses her name in a human family, and her
identity is merged into the family of the male.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SOUL 147
She becomes, as it were, a helper to the male
to reproduce himself. We all instinctively
recognize the justice of speaking of the sons of
Abraham and Jacob rather than of the daughters
of their wives. The inheritance is through the
sons. The human soul is reproduced in precisely
the same way that the mere animal soul is re
produced, through the instrumentality of par
ents, the father's life providing the life-germ,
or seed, that in which the germ of life exists
capable of reproducing itself, and the mother's
life providing the soil in which this new germ
of life grows. This seems to us entirely self-
evident, and it accounts for numberless facts.
It is confirmed by reason, and is to us the ob
vious basis for the perpetuation of human life.
The thing which we wish to emphasize is this :
The soul in its incipient form comes from the
father and is a projection of the father's life. It
is the life-principle capable of reproducing itself.
It is the father's life in miniature, shaped in a
rudimentary way as a receptacle for the devel
opment of a new life. In the ground of the
mother's life it receives its physical or material
body, plus the modifying influences from her

148 WHO IS JESUS?
reacting upon the soul-form from the father.
This gives a duality to inheritance, but a differ
ence in kind.
The life that flows down from God into this
soul-form from the human father is like solar
life flowing into the plant organism: it is modi
fied and qualified by the character of the re
cipient vessel into which it flows. The soul-
form from the father planted in the mother
reproduces itself under the modifications re
ceived from the mother, but it becomes an
image or likeness of the father modified by the
mother. It is the father that is reproduced,
modified by the mother.
Both the life of the human soul and the soul-
form itself are actually from God. No human
parent creates the soul-form. It is provided
by the Creator through the instrumentality of the
human father in the human seed, and is a rudi
mentary reproduction of the father s soul-life.
It is, we claim, one of the innumerable facts of
life that we know to exist whether we know how
to explain it or not. The soul-form is a fact,
and we believe it to be as a spiritual entity in
the human form, although rudimentary, be
cause it reproduces the human form in its ex
tension into matter.

VI. EVERY MAN THE SON OF HIS
OWN FATHER
IT IS entirely obvious that every man is the son
of his own father; that is, he is like his father
— a reproduction of him, of a similar essence,
type, and character. This is more than a truism
in the discussion of our subject; it has a most
important bearing as a self-evident fact upon the
discussion. For it follows that if Jesus is the
Son of God in any special sense, he is entirely
distinct from us.
In what sense can we justly and properly be
called the children or sons of God? Is it not
only when we are recreated through regenera
tion into His image and likeness? Of course,
in the most general sense every one is the off
spring of God, but he is not so in the Biblical
sense until he is recreated into the image and
likeness of God, for it is this sonship to which
reference is so often made. But when a man is
so changed from his carnal mind as to become
149

ISO WHO IS JESUS?
spiritually minded, is he more than an angel?
Obviously not.
Yet we know that he does become an angel
in the hereafter from the Book of Revelation,
where John falls down at the feet of the angel
who had been showing him the glories of the
New Jerusalem, and we hear these words:
" See thou do it not; for / am thy fellow-servant,
and of thy brethren the prophets, and of them
which keep the sayings of this book." From this
we deduce that angels are regenerated men.
But he never becomes more than an angel, and
thus always remains a finite being.
But we find that Jesus is called the Son of God
from the beginning, and finally has all power
lodged in his hands, as we read in Matthew
28:18. He is thus the Son of God in a special
sense from his birth, and in the end announces
himself as one with the Father, and finally as
the Father. (John 10:30 and John 14:7-10.)
His case is unique and wholly different in many
respects from our own. He not only becomes
like the Father, but eventually proclaims his
identity with the Father.
The human being, with a purely human soul,
becomes only a replica of its own father morally

HIS OWN FATHER'S SON 151
as well as physically, within limitations. His
degree of perfection or imperfection in living
the father's life may be and is modified by his
own acquiescence or active interference. But
he is never more than a human being, and he is
always a being distinct from his father. Jesus
as the Son of God became a replica of his Father,
and eventually insists that he and the Father
are one — identical. "He that hath seen me
hath seen the father." (John 14:9.) No other
man could make this claim concerning himself
and his father. Jesus could do so because the
Divine Essence is indivisible. If he were a son
of God, as we are the sons of our human fathers
and so became a distinct being, he would be
another God, and there would be two Gods,
which is impossible.
While Jesus is called the Son of David many
times, we realize that it is only through his
mother that he is so called. He insists that he
is the Son of God. His repudiation of the claim
that the Messiah was to inherit his soul from
David as a man inherits his soul from his human
father is indicated in the following passage :
"While the Pharisees were gathered together,
Jesus asked them, saying, What think ye of

152 WHO IS JESUS?
Christ? Whose son is he? They say unto
him, The Son of David. He saith unto them,
How then doth David in spirit call him Lord,
saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou
on my right hand, till I make thine enemies
thy footstool? If David then call him Lord,
how is he his son ?"
This was the insistence upon the fact that his
soul was from the Divine Father, and not from
any human father. He admitted only the modi
fying influence of his mother as an external
thing, for he always repudiated the claims of
Mary when she attempted to press or emphasize
an enduring relationship.
The announcement of the angel Gabriel to
Mary is a proof of his conception in a wholly
different way from other men, in order to become
a being, while resembling as to his external life
other men, yet distinctly different. "Behold,
thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring
forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He
shall be great, and shall be called the Son of
the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto
him the throne of his father David." He was
David's son only in the matter of his material
form from Mary, not as to his soul, for he is dis-

HIS OWN FATHER'S SON 153
tinctly called the Son of God in a special sense,
thus receiving his soul-form directly from the
Divine Father.
Continuing the quotation we read: "And he
shall reign over the house of Jacob forever;
and of his kingdom there shall be no end,"
thus showing his unique immortality as differ
entiated from every mere earthly king. "Then
said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man?" asking the eternal
question as to the possibility of generation with
out a human father. And the reply comes with
authority: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall over
shadow thee; therefore also that holy thing
which shall be born of thee shall be called the
Son of God."
From this we are to understand that a human
child was to be born to Mary, but that its soul-
form should be provided by the Highest Him
self. In other words, that a receptacle of life
was to be supplied from the Divine Father,
which should be a projection of the very Divine
itself into the realms of the spiritual and material.
Now we must realize that if this Son of the
Highest was to be a human being, it would

154 WHO IS JESUS?
needs have a soul-form similar to the souls of
other human beings. It would need to have a
receptacle of life from the spiritual plane, from
the mental plane, and it would also need an
actual material body from the material plane.
This latter we know that Mary provided.
Through this body was also provided a conscious
ness upon the plane of the natural which re
mained with Jesus until his crucifixion, that is,
from her was provided a plane upon which that
consciousness manifested itself. Into this plane
of consciousness temptations entered, for Jesus
was "tempted in all points like as we are."
In our study of the constitution of the human
soul-form we saw that the first plane of all is
the Inmost or Unconscious Spiritual. It is
there, as in a Holy of Holies, that the Divine
life is received by the created soul-form. It is
there that God dwells directly with man. Now
we must believe that in the soul-form which the
Divine provided for His own manifestation in
time and space, which was to be an extension
of Himself, and not a separation from Himself
as in the case of man the creature, that inmost
plane is represented, not by a separated re
ceptacle as in the case of man, but by the very

HIS OWN FATHER'S SON 155
Divine itself. The Inmost in the case of Jesus
was Jehovah. Jehovah flows into men as into
something which He has separated from Him
self and yet to which He is adjoined, i. e., is in
juxtaposition, but into the soul-form which He
provided for Himself He dwelt directly without
separation ; for it was God manifesting Himself,
extending, projecting Himself. And on this
highest plane God always dwells as complete
within Himself, " in the light which no man can
approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can
see," "the King eternal, immortal, invisible."
Let us now see an illustration of the projec
tion of God in Jesus Christ :

GOD

INFINITE

HIS SOUL FORM
OR PROJECTION

/ SPIRIT \
\MIND /

AT FIRST
LIMITED

OUTWARD BODY

MATTER
Diagram 5

LIMITED

Comparing this with diagram 4 we perceive
that in the case of Jesus the plane of the In
most does not appear. Yet in a later chapter,
where the Divine is divided into its own ele
ments of Good and Truth, this Inmost is repre
sented by the Divine Truth, the form of the
Divine Good.

156 WHO IS JESUS?
The first plane of the soul-form provided by
Jehovah for His extension into nature would be
the plane of "Spirit," or that of the heavens
where angels dwell, and we can understand that
He assumed this plane from the spiritual atmos
pheres of the heavens, for it was, even in Christ
at the very first, limited as angels are limited.
It was imperfect as angels are imperfect, and
yet more perfect than angels because it had
God more directly resident in it than even the
angels have. It was necessary that Christ
should have this plane of created life in order
to be perfect man with man's planes of life, in
order to be a complete man.
The next plane which Jehovah provided in
His assumption of an outward form would be
that of the mental, or the natural above the
body, the plane of the natural human mind;
and we can assume that He provided this from
the substances of its atmospheres.
We must bear in mind that it was proper and
orderly and in harmony with all methods for
the extension of life from the highest into lower
forms for the Lord so to provide a form for His
own extension into nature, providing it from

HIS OWN FATHER'S SON 157
the different planes through which it was to pass
and in which it would later manifest itself.
God as He is in Himself could not directly
come from the highest into the lowest. He had
to come down through intermediate planes of
creation. Yet we must believe, and we have
abundant warrant for so believing, both from
reason and the Word of God, that God was
always potentially a man in the last things of
nature. Nature is but the shadowing-forth,
the projection of God, into ultimate forms, and
all nature reflects the man-form. Trees with
their branches and tops appear to strive to
realize the human figure with its arms and
head. Animal life in its progress upward grows
more and more distinctly into the human form.
Human society arranges itself into an approxi
mation to the human form. All nature is thus
the adumbration of the Divine, and suggests
that the inmost soul of all is essentially Man.
Yet we can perceive that God in the creation
of the natural universe separated it from Him
self as it proceeded downward and outward, so
that we can never correctly think of nature
itself, or created forms, as being God. They
are from God, but separated distinctly from Him.

158 WHO IS JESUS?
Yet it is obvious that God might proceed down
ward into the realms of lower created things by
the projection of Himself. But in order to do
this it would be inherently necessary for Him
to provide a way for doing it, and the way He
provided we may believe was by this assumption
of the human soul-form and being born as to
this outward form a man on the plane of matter.
This would be but a step or a means by which
He was later on coming directly and fully into
all realms of creation. So that the soul-form
provided, the life manifesting itself as an ordi
nary man would be only a process of extension
of Himself, and an orderly one.
It is necessary to pause here for a moment to
reply to difficulties that naturally arise in the
human mind.
For example, we are asked, Was not God
always present on the different planes of cre
ation? Yes, for God is omnipresent. But we
can comprehend that before the Incarnation
He was present mediately, not immediately.
Thus, in the creation of the universe, both
spiritual and material, we can perceive God
creating all things through atmospheres thrown
off from Him. He obviously created a spiritual

HIS OWN FATHER'S SON 159
universe as well as a natural, for we are to live
hereafter in a spiritual universe, and man lives
now more or less consciously in its atmospheres,
and more distinctly and perceptibly after leav
ing the world of nature or the natural universe.
We can perceive how this creation was prob
ably effected in the spiritual universe by its
reproduction on the plane of the natural.
We can see it imaged most perfectly in a single
solar system. The sun, as a distinct initial
manifestation of creative life on the natural
plane, has its three atmospheres or aura, ether,
and air, and in these atmospheres creative energy
proceeding from the Lord through the sun
operates to create a visible material world.
We see that creation proceeding downward
by atmospheres to the lowest comes to rest in
gross matter — the mineral kingdom; and then
we witness its ascent upward in created forms
of mineral, vegetable, and animal to man.
God, before the assumption of the human, was
in this lowest activity of the sun's in nature, for
all life must inevitably proceed from its original
Creator, God. But He was not there directly,
or immediately, but indirectly and mediately.
By this inward projection of Himself through

160 WHO IS JESUS?
the soul-form taken from interior spiritual
atmospheres downward into nature He provided
the way, as we have already pointed out, to
come eventually directly and immediately into
the lowest plane of being, the natural universe,
just as man, His image and likeness, is in it.
We have said that He was always potentially
on this natural plane; for if He were not, He
could not have descended into it; but He could
not descend actually into it until He had pro
vided in nature a form receptive, and directly
and immediately receptive, of the very Divine
itself. This was a necessary mode of manifestation
also because of man's fall from his original state
of orderly life. We can understand that the
pre-Adamite man was merely an animal man,
but yet a distinct creation from the higher forms
of animals below him, because he had the spiritual
plane of life capable of receiving and manifesting
the life of God as an image and likeness of God.
He had not only the animal mind, but the
spiritual mind, or plane of being, with the in
most within that. Because of this he grew
upward until he became heavenly, or truly
spiritual, in the Garden of Eden state. Yet

HIS OWN FATHER'S SON 161
he fell from that lofty estate and became wholly
evil; and in order to save him and lift him up
again into the true order of his being it became
necessary for the very Divine to descend into
human life and rescue man from himself, to
reveal God to man and help him upward. This
is a condescension that is predicable only of
infinite Love and Wisdom, and yet is in harmony
with His benevolent purposes obvious in crea
tion. We have shown previously from the Word of
God that Jehovah said that He was so coming
into nature, into the natural world, to rescue
man. We have shown repeatedly, and we think
conclusively, that He was to come in the form
of a servant, despised and rejected of men, and
yet that He was to be "the mighty God, the
everlasting Father." And we have seen that
Jesus could have been no other than God in the
flesh. "In the beginning was the Word," or
Logos, or Expression of God — existing from the
beginning of all things — "and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. . . And
the Word (or God) was made flesh." This Word
is the Divine Truth, the form of the Divine
Good, always existent, corresponding, in the

162 WHO IS JESUS?
projection of God — the Divine Good — into na
ture to the plane of the Inmost in man. This
Divine Truth, having as its inmost or soul the
Divine Good, and in actual fact identical with
it as form and substance are always one, clothed
itself with a temporarily limited soul-form and
fleshly body.

VII. WHY WAS THE VIRGIN BIRTH
NECESSARY?
THERE are many earnest, honest Christians
in these modern days, when naturalistic criti
cism is at work to destroy the very foundations
of human belief, who feel that the virgin birth
of Jesus was unnecessary. They ask in all sin
cerity, Why could not Jesus be Divine, the Son
of God, the Saviour of the world, and still be
the son of Joseph ? They urge that perhaps the
Bible account was a later invention of men,
and say frankly that they do not see any need
of it.
The question implies a lack of careful, dis
criminating thought. It arises from the desire
to hold on to the truth of the deity of Jesus
which they recognize, and to explain away the
apparent difficulties which spring from ma
terialistic conceptions.
We have already answered the question, but
we shall do so again : The answer is, Jesus being
163

164 WHO IS JESUS?
what he is, the Son of God, the Saviour of the
world, Divine as no other human being ever
was or can be Divine, one with the Father as to
essence and being, unavoidably had to have a
soul-form from the Divine directly. If he had
been the son of Joseph, he would have had a
soul-form from Joseph, fashioned from the inner
spiritual substances of Joseph's being, and he
would have grown in manhood to be only the
son of Joseph.
Let this thought penetrate deeply into our
souls: Every man is the son of his own father,
from whose being he receives his soul-form or
rudimentary receptacle of life, and he becomes
only a reproduction of his father, of a similar
essence, type, and character.
Upon the assumption that Jesus was the son
of Joseph it could not have been written of
him, "In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and The Word Was God.
. . And the Word (or God) became flesh."
If Jesus had been the son of Joseph, he could
never have said, " Before Abraham was, I am,"
or, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,"
nor the thousand and one other things where
he claimed his absolute uniqueness and differ-

WHY THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 165
entiation from all other men who have ever
lived. As the son of Joseph, Jesus would simply
not be Jesus. We cannot imagine even an
ordinary man being the same man if born of
any other than his own father. Much less
could he who proved himself to his disciples
and is accepted by so many myriads of men as
the actual Son of God be different from all other
beings if he were not born of a virgin the son
of the living God.
Any man born of a human father has forever
human limitations. He could not develop ever
into "The Alpha and the Omega, the first and
the last, the Almighty." The human essence
cannot be mixed with or transmuted into the
Divine. The Divine can dwell directly and
immediately only in its own things.
The descent of the Lord through the heavens
in order to dwell in the flesh was an orderly
descent, but the soul-form by means of which
it was accomplished was taken from the Divine
things found in its descent, first those existing
in the minds of angels in the angelic heavens,
then in the natural minds of those in the lower
spiritual world corresponding to the human
mind, and then in the knowledge of the In-

1 66 WHO IS JESUS?
carnation known to men through prophecy
and the Word of God in its letter. This latter
existed on the material plane.
It is true that in taking a soul-form in this
way this soul-form was tainted on every plane
by the imperfections of angels and men, for the
Divine is never fully and perfectly received by
any creature; but nevertheless it was a soul-
form which could receive the Divine life di
rectly and not indirectly; into which the Di
vine could flow as into its own, and gradually,
but surely, drive out the imperfections, substi
tuting therefor the absolute Divine, and thus
enable the very God of heaven and earth to
descend in this way into the natural plane of
life, its ultimate. In this way Jesus could be
God and Man, eventually the God-Man, wholly
Divine on every plane of being, present on every
plane in fullness.
As the Divine Being cannot be divided,
any more than a human essence existing in an
individual can be divided, this projection of
God into nature, known on earth as the man
Jesus of Nazareth, was always and essentially
God. To appearance Jesus was one person
and the Father another, but reason shows us

WHY THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 167
that if he as the Son of God were a different
being than the Father, there would be two
Gods, and that means polytheism, the im
possible. The Infinite could not beget another
Infinite, since neither then would be infinite;
but by extension God could project His life
directly down into nature and become present
in His own things there.
Now, some minds find it disorderly for God
so to have projected Himself into nature. Of
course, it is not more impossible for God to do
this if He had desired it, than to effect creation
on any other plane or in any other way. The
creation of the spiritual universe involved in it
the creation of the natural universe. The crea
tion of the mineral kingdom, the grossest form
of matter, provided a basis from which the
Divine influx into nature could work upward
again to its source. But each separate step in
the program of creation was a separate and dis
tinct act of creation. The creation of the
vegetable kingdom, with its innumerable species,
was at every step a new act of creative activity,
as was the creation of the animal kingdom. And
man was as distinctive a creation as anything
that preceded him, for, as we have seen, there

168 WHO IS JESUS?
was created in him that which had not existed
in vegetable or animal, the plane of the spiritual,
with its inmost receptacle of God to enable
him to become the moral image and likeness of
his Creator. He who created all things could
create anything He desired in any manner or
according to any mode that seemed useful.
There was no precedent for the sending of the
Son of God, or projection of God into nature,
and inherently there could be no repetition of
it, for once here in His infinitude God is for
ever with us on the plane of the natural. Thus
the possibility of the virgin birth is seen to exist
if the Creative Power saw it to be essential.
It is idle to assume that it could not take
place because it is not the mode followed in
other cases. The creation of the soul-form
from the spiritual substances of the human father
is a distinct act of creation on the part of the
Divine; but it is a projection of the human
father's life, or life through the human father,
and hence like the human father as a type. The
creation of the soul-form by means of which
God came down into the kingdom of nature
directly, as the man Christ Jesus, was similarly
a projection from the Divine, but instead of

WHY THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 169
being through a human father and hence
through a permanently limited soul-form, the
soul-form provided was a projection of the very
Divine itself by means of its own things existing
on the various planes of life through which the
descent into nature was made, in order that God
might have ultimately an unlimited medium
for His immediate presence in nature. Thus it
was most orderly.
Nor can it be urged successfully that the act
of a virgin giving birth to a child is in the case of
Mary immoral. The fact is no one is ever dis
tressed by its immorality except those critics
who would destroy the foundations of all re
ligious belief. Singularly enough, it is an event
which seems the purest and holiest that ever
took place.
There was no violation of Mary's freedom.
While it perhaps cannot be definitely proved
historically, yet because of prophecy it is highly
probable that Jewish maidens expected the
Messiah would be born of a virgin. The angel
in his announcement to Mary left her free to
act as she desired, for her reply indicates it:
"Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto
me according to thy word." The whole world

170 WHO IS JESUS?
has admired this voluntary acceptance of the
Divine honor conferred.
It was not something which could come with
out Mary's perfect acquiescence, any more than
the fact of motherhood ever normally comes to
women without their consent.
Nor was there any violation of Joseph's
conjugal rights. He was fully informed of the
condition that was to be achieved, the coming
to earth in fulfilment of prophecy of the Messiah
to be born of a virgin. It is perfectly evident
that he regarded it, as all sincere men regard
the birth of any child, as an act of God, mysteri
ous, relatively inexplicable, but God's way of
working, and yet in this case necessarily effected
without His instrumentality in order that Mary's
son might be the Son of God.
Both Mary and Joseph were sincere and
honest people whose lives, as to their minutest
detail, had been known from eternity. In the
sight of Him who exists apart from space or
time all things past or future are as present.
God knew from the beginning the characters
and dispositions of Mary and Joseph. They
were prepared by the Lord for this very mission
long before the time of Abraham, through whom
the promise of the blessing first openly came.

WHY THE VIRGIN BIRTH? 171
They were indeed prepared for it in Eden when
the Lord promised the woman that her seed
should bruise the serpent's head.
The secret of the mysterious birth was prob
ably known to only a very few. No public
feeling was offended, for Joseph took Mary to
wife; they were publicly married. Joseph knew
that that which Mary had conceived was to be
the Son of God, the Messiah of his race, the de
liverer of mankind, as did Zacharias and Eliza
beth, and those nearest to them. But there
was no suspicion of scandal; instead, over
whelming gratitude that, through them, God
was fulfilling prophecy. Mary treasured all
these things in her heart in order to give them
to future generations, and all generations have
indeed called her blessed. Through Mary as a
chosen instrumentality of the Lord the Messiah
came into the world, from her as a virgin in
whom the Divine soul-form was Divinely
placed. "The Holy Spirit shall come upon
thee, and the power of the Highest shall over
shadow thee: therefore also that holy thing
which shall be born of thee shall be called the
Son of God." God could not come directly into
the world in any other way. It was orderly,
pure, chaste, holy, holier than any other birth.

VIII. THE GLORIFICATION
HAVE we not shown that the soul-form which
manifested itself through human birth to
men as Jesus of Nazareth was true man, for it
had all the planes of life that man has, with God
dwelling within? Jesus of Nazareth was per
fect man, with a rational soul, for on the merely
human plane he was tempted, grew tired, and
manifested other limitations of the human taken
on from Mary.
But do we not perceive that he was true God,
not indeed at the first as to the outward form
taken on from Mary, or in the limitations taken
on from the angelic life, but nevertheless he
was God, essentially, even from the first, God
manifesting Himself, God dwelling in His own
things within the flesh, within limitations volun
tarily accepted, in order that He might later be
present on the plane of the natural in all His
fullness ?
Now upon the assumption of the human planes
172

THE GLORIFICATION 173
began that process to which Jesus referred as
his glorification.
Let us see what glorification means.
To "glorify" means, according to the Stan
dard Dictionary, "to exalt to a state of glory;
raise to power and happiness; especially, to
uplift to celestial honor and blessedness." But
it also has a reciprocal meaning, as when there
is a descent of glory upon common things and
we speak of them as glorified. We say that
glory is shed upon them; but the two definitions
are the two sides of the same idea.
This process, in the case of Jesus, was recipro
cal, proceeding from Jehovah initially, and in its
turn "exalting to a state of glory; raising to
power and happiness; especially, uplifting to
celestial honor and blessedness," the assumed
human. In the case of man we call this process "re
generation." It is the process to which Jesus
refers in his conversation with Nicodemus as
"being born again," or "born from above,"
or "born of the Spirit." Its initial source is in
God ; it is God operating in the heart of man,
uplifting him into a new life, where he becomes
the moral image and likeness of God. It is

174 WHO IS JESUS?
indeed the opening up of that spiritual plane of
life, or of life on the plane of the spirit, to which
we have so often referred, by means of which
one becomes an angel of heaven. It is developed
through unselfishness, the voluntary laying
down of the selfish life, the determined following
out of the commandments of Jesus, the executed
resolve to love others as we love ourselves.
And yet, after all, it is Divinely effected. One
can no more be born by his own effort into the
plane of the truly spiritual than he can be born
by his own effort into the plane of the material.
The Divine works within us to bring it about,
but with our consent and cooperation. With
out our consent and cooperation it cannot be
brought about. We are acted upon by the
Divine, and we react to it, and our reaction to
the Divine influences is similar to the reaction of
the mother to the father; the material or natural
plane being, as it were, the mother that co
operates in bringing forth to life the new spiritual
seed from our Heavenly Father.
This process of regeneration is the process
to which we were destined from our birth.
Without it we are undeveloped men, living here
and hereafter the half-life, the imperfect, in-

THE GLORIFICATION 175
complete life of selfish beings, voluntarily re
jecters of God's life, of the true life of heaven,
which Jesus calls "eternal life." Without the
development of life on the spiritual plane we
can never be fashioned into the moral image and
likeness of our Heavenly Father. To live
spiritually, or on the spiritual plane, is to truly
live. To refuse to live on that plane is never to
be really born into the image and likeness of
God. It is the equivalent of moral death, for
it means the separation of the unregenerate
man from God through refusal to receive His
life. The supreme effort of our lives should,
therefore, be "to follow the Son of man in the
regeneration." Jesus called the process in his case glorifica
tion. Let us note some of the passages where
reference is made to it:
The first reference is John 7:39: "But this
spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe
on him should receive : for the Holy Spirit was
not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet
glorified." John evidently refers to that state of complete
union with the Father when the Son was "glori
fied," completely exalted, and made one with the

176 WHO IS JESUS?
Father, when he had "ascended to the Father."
The "ascension" was indeed nothing more than
the glorification or completeness of union of the
Father and the Son, when the "Father" de
scended, as it were, lower and lower into out
ward things, as the "Son" by reciprocation
ascended into the very Divine itself. Our re
generation is indeed an image of it, but the
glorification of Jesus infinitely transcended our
regeneration; for we never ascend into oneness
with the Divine that dwells in our Inmost, or
Holy of Holies, whereas Jesus ascended into the
bosom of the Father, and, as "sitting on the
right hand of the Father," exercises all Divine
power — is, in other words, the one and only
Divine. He who has "all power in heaven and
earth" is the only God of heaven and earth.
We in our regeneration go up step by step
into higher and higher planes of spiritual living;
but we never commingle with God as one with
Him ; we never go above the highest plane of the
angelic heavens into oneness or identity with
God. We remain forever creatures with life
derived from God, never having life in ourselves,
or self-existent life. And while God mediately
descends through us as we become regenerated

THE GLORIFICATION 177
until He manifests Himself through us even on
the natural plane of living, it is not God in His
fullness in us, as He dwelt in the Divine Human
when that was "glorified." God as He is in
Himself is forever back in the recesses of our
being — in our Holy of Holies. He is never
identical with us in our external life, so that we
never have life in ourselves — self-existent life —
as Jesus had it. In other words, we are never
commingled with the Divine. We are never
Divine. Another passage from John (12: 16) emphasizes
the same idea as the preceding quotation:
"These things understood not his disciples at
the first, but when Jesus was glorified, then re
membered they that these things were written
of him, and that they had done these things
unto him." "When Jesus was glorified" here
evidently refers to his exaltation at his ascension,
the "ascension" being the complete union with
the Father, when he reigned openly as Divine.
Now there are two states of consciousness
manifested in the Lord's life on earth— the one
when he spoke as man only, with the conscious
ness on the plane received from the natural;
that which theologians call his state of ex-

178 WHO IS JESUS?
inanition (of emptying himself) or humiliation;
and the other state of consciousness, which we
may refer to as the state of glorification, when
he spoke as absolutely and consciously Divine.
On the plane of the natural, in his states of
humiliation, he spoke of the Father as greater
than he; he prayed to the Father, and spoke
of Him as if He were a distinct being from him
self; and yet again in his states of glorification
he spoke of himself as one with the Father.
There was usually an adaptation of this latter
consciousness to the states of his hearers, so
that they might better understand him. He
could never, as we have seen, speak with utter
disregard of the states of his hearers. There
was always an effort at accommodation or
* adaptation. It is entirely evident, from the
accounts of his life, that the consciousness on
the plane of the Divine grew more and more
prominent as he progressed, as he threw off the
merely human and limited, as the Divine de
scended lower and lower into the outward.
If we will read the passage in John 12:23-33,
we shall see the idea of the Lord's glorification
more prominently brought out:
"And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour

THE GLORIFICATION 179
is come, that the Son of man should be glorified."
Let us here think of the dictionary definition,
and read the sentence in this way: "The hour
is come, that the Son of Man should be 'exalted
to a state of glory; raised to power and happi
ness; especially, uplifted to celestial honor and
blessedness." Is not that the true meaning?
Now how was this to be accomplished ?
This brings out a most important phase of
the matter, demonstrating that the Lord's
glorification and man's regeneration are similar,
both requiring temptation combats to accom
plish them: "Verily, verily, I say unto you,
Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and
die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth
forth much fruit." Here the Lord was evidently
under the stress of temptation. He continues
by turning his own temptation into good coun
sel for his followers :
"He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he
that hateth his life in this world shall keep it
unto life eternal. . . . Now is my soul
troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save
me from this hour? But for this cause came I
unto this hour. Father, glorify thy name."
These latter words are the evidences of vie-

180 WHO IS JESUS?
tory. The name of a person is the expression
of his character or quality. All names were
given so in the beginning, and even now they
indicate to the hearer the personalities of the
ones who bear them. By asking the Father to
glorify the Father's name, Jesus was asking
that he himself should be exalted as to the Di
vine Human ; that the Divine should flow down
into and infill the Son as the outward expression
in time and space of the Divine, as the Father's
"name" or expression, and so exalt him into
oneness with the Father. And his victory over
the temptation to resist the natural death which
he saw so clearly to be imminent and yet in
dispensable actually brought about this fuller
union of the Son and the Father, for immediately
we hear:
"Then there came a voice from heaven, say
ing, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it
again. The people, therefore, that stood by
and heard it, said that it thundered: others
said, An angel spake to him. Jesus answered
and said," — and his answer is very pertinent
to our discussion, — "This voice came not be
cause of me, but for your sakes."
Jesus continued, and what he says is an evi-

THE GLORIFICATION 181
dence of the effect of his temptation combats,
namely, his victory over the evil forces that
strove to destroy him and which had almost
destroyed the human race: "Now is the judg
ment of this world : now shall the prince of this
world be cast out."
By meeting the infernal hosts as a man, as
the son of Mary, on their own plane, admitting
them into himself through the planes of life he
had assumed, he conquered them, gained the
victory which should forever set men free from
their power as men voluntarily followed him in
the regeneration.
The consciousness of his victory is still more
apparent in what follows: "And I, if I be lifted
up from the earth, will draw all men unto me."
It was the Divine consolation after victory that
comes indeed to every human soul. It was in
this case even more — it was the Lord's rejoic
ing over the salvation of a world. He looked
through all the future ages and saw this triumph,
the fulfillment of that for which he had so hum
bled himself. It was a song of victory, the joy
of which was not personal, but lay in the realiza
tion of the welfare of his creatures whom he was
now rescuing.

182 WHO IS JESUS?
Another passage from John (13:31, 32) —
for John's gospel is the one which most fully
and intimately records the inner psychologic
states of the Lord — has the following statement,
made at the time that Judas leaves the table at
the Last Supper to go out and betray Jesus to
his enemies:
"Therefore, when he was gone out, Jesus
said, Now is the Son of man glorified," i. e.,
lifted up, exalted, — "and God is glorified in
him," i. e., the Divine brought down into the
Son. "If God be glorified in him," i. e., brought
down into the Son, — "God shall also glorify
him in himself," i. e., exalt the Son into oneness
with Himself, — "and shall straightway glorify
him." Is not this the obvious meaning of what
is sometimes a difficult passage? "Little chil
dren, yet a little while I am with you. Ye shall
seek me; and as I said unto the Jews, Whither
I go, ye cannot come; so now I say to you."
"The little while" to which Jesus referred is
the time remaining before the glorification was
completed. Soon they should not behold him
as they had now done daily for so long; for the
glorification would be complete. At that time,
or in that state, they could not find him as they

THE GLORIFICATION 183
had hitherto done, for he would have departed
out of the limited finite. Yet in that glorified
state he would be with them forever: "Lo, I
am with you always, even unto the end of the
world." The going out of Judas to betray meant the
early consummation of the processes of glorifica
tion, when the human from Mary would be for
ever put away; for the merely external human,
the material, would die upon the cross; and the
Lord realized it perfectly. Therefore, as he had
triumphed in the thought or anticipation of this
final victory he exclaimed, "Now is the Son of
man glorified," — lifted up, exalted, — "and God
is glorified in him," — the Divine is brought
down into the plane of the natural. The ex
ternal limited was to be put off, and in its place '
the Divine, even as to ultima tes, — or in the last
things of human life,— was to be put on — Godi
was to glorify the Son of man in Himself. They
were to be made forever one. God was to dwell
forever on the plane of the natural, as well as
on higher planes. Jesus saw prophetically that
which was about to occur. The process was
almost finished. In a little time he would be
able to say from the cross, "It is finished."

1 84 WHO IS JESUS?
Let us consider for a moment the Lord's
intercessory prayer after the Last Supper:
"These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his
eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is
come; glorify thy Son," i. e., descend into the
Son, or ultimate plane, — "that thy Son may also
glorify thee"; i. e., ascend into perfect oneness
with the Father, — "as thou hast given him power
over all flesh, that he should give eternal life
to as many as thou hast given him. And this
is life eternal, that they might know thee the
only true God, [the internal of God] and Jesus
Christ, [the external of God] whom thou hast
sent. I have glorified thee on the earth : I have
finished the work which thou gavest me to do.
And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine
own self with the glory which I had with thee
before the world was."
Here was Jesus, almost at the last moment of
his earthly life, praying to the Father as if the
Father were distinct from himself. And the
Son was still distinct from the Father, in spite
of their approaching union or perfect oneness.
It is possible to understand the deep mystery
involved in this relationship as here exhibited.

THE GLORIFICATION 185
Let us for a moment think of God's essential
being. What is God? The very form of the word
indicates that the minds of the Anglo-Saxons
and related races perceived that God is essential
Good, the Supreme Good. It is a high ideal of
God, but a proper one. God alone in the su
preme sense is Good.
Accepting this idea of God, we find back of
the word Good the essential quality of Love,
a higher concept of God, for Love is the source
of Good. We are entitled to think of God as
Love, Love being His essential quality. But
a quality cannot be manifested except in form;
and thus we next think of God as Wisdom,
which means merely the form of Love on the
same plane. When we think of God as Good,
actually a lower perception of Him, we think of
God's expression or form as Truth.
We thus perceive that God has two phases
at least of being, Love and Wisdom, Good and
Truth, or, in general, Being and Coming-Forth,
or Quality and Form. Jehovah, or the Father,
seems to be Essential Being, and Jesus, or the
Son, God-Coming-Forth-to-View, God-manifest-
ing-Himself. Thus, there are not two beings,

186 WHO IS JESUS?
but one Being. Just as our soul as it is in itself
needs to have a body through which it can mani
fest itself to the world, so the Infinite God,
Essential Being, needed to have a body or pro
ceeding in form in order to make Himself mani
fest in time and space. But let us bear in mind
that Essential God and God-Coming-Forth-to-
View would not be two Gods, but merely two
phases of the one only God.
When we think of the quality of God, His
inmost character of Love, — or as perceived as
the Divine Good, — we think of the Father;
but we cannot see that inmost quality except
in its form of the Son, the Divine Wisdom, or
the Divine Truth. While this coming forth to
view in time and space created the impression
of two separate beings, they were not two, but
one, as Jesus said, "I and the Father are one" —
identical. "He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father."
When God would manifest Himself in time
and space He provided, as we have seen, a soul-
form taken from the truth as it existed in the
angelic heavens and in the minds of good spirits
and men. It was truth from the Divine as it
existed in the heavens in the minds of others;

THE GLORIFICATION 187
thus it was His own with them ; but it was not
the actual Divine Truth as it exists in its per
fection as the body or form or interior expression
of God. It was not the Logos of John 1:1,
i. e., the Divine Wisdom or the Divine Truth.
The Logos was the first expression of the Di
vine in its emanation; it was the Divine Wis
dom or Truth ; it was the interior form of God-
Coming-Forth-to-View. This is Truth in the
Divine Form, and it is not, as we have indicated,
the imperfect form of truth as it exists in the
minds of angels and men.
Jesus was most interiorly the Divine Love,
or the Divine Good; then He was the Logos,
or the form or expression of God on the most
interior plane; then he was for a time in the
descent to earth truth as it is received by angels
and men; then he was that which men saw, a
man among men, a flesh-and-blood man, with
consciousness on every plane of proceeding.
He was all of these things when men saw him
on earth. His human mind, from which he so
often spoke, had at least two planes of conscious
ness — one of the lower plane of the human mind
when it is shut out from the perception of its
higher nature, the other the upper plane of the

188 WHO IS JESUS?
regenerating human mind when it perceives and
speaks from the plane of the spiritual, or the
plane of the angelic heavens. Then he had a
plane of consciousness above even this upper
human, the plane of the Logos, or Divine Wis
dom or Truth above the heavens.
The process of glorification was this: The
Essential Divine, Jehovah, manifested Himself
first as the Logos, or the Divine Wisdom or
Truth. When it would appear before men a
soul-form was taken from the things of God, or
the Divine Truth, as received by the angels and
men. This was to provide a receptacle fitted
by its quality to receive and contain the Divine
in limitation. This receptacle or soul-form be
came in its outmost manifestation on earth
Jesus of Nazareth. It was not separated from
Essential God; it was merely a covering or
projection of the Divine; it was actually God
dwelling in His own things on lower planes.
As Jesus was humanly perfected, that is, as he
lived the life of overcoming, the Inmost Divine,
Jehovah or the Father, descended. God as
the Logos cast out from the soul-form, or plane
of reception, on the level of the angelic heavens,
i. e., the plane of spirit, — the imperfect reception

THE GLORIFICATION 189
of God on that plane by substituting therefor
the Divine Wisdom or Truth, or God in His first
emanation. Then God dwelt directly on the
plane of the heavens in His infinity.
Then God as the Logos descended as the
processes of glorification continued into the
plane of the natural mind. It was at this time
that we have the intercessory prayer recorded
in John 17. It was the Son speaking on the
plane of the Logos addressing the Essential
Divine, the Father. By the "glorification"
he was referring to the perfect union of the Di
vine Good and Divine Truth which was now
about to take place on the lowest plane of the
natural life, when the Logos would entirely
supersede the plane of the maternal human
and even the Father, or Essential Divine,
would be united with the Son, and the Divine
Good and the Divine Truth would be one on the
plane of the natural.
There was still left something of the maternal
human, for Gethsemane and the cross were yet
to be endured. It would still be possible for
consciousness, therefore, to be manifested on
that plane. But at the time when Jesus prayed
his intercessory prayer, it is evident, from cer-

190 WHO IS JESUS?
tain considerations, that he was speaking as the
Logos or Interior Divine Truth.
The question occurs, Why were these different
planes of consciousness existent? There can
be little discussion of the fact that they did
exist. The purpose was that there might be the
effort toward reciprocal union from the lower
planes of life, action and reaction. God, in
order to come before men, assumed an imperfect
receptacle of His life. It was necessary to cast
out the imperfections in order that He might
finally descend in His very fullness on the lowest
plane, and be forever God with man. The
man Jesus of Nazareth represented at first the
Divine dwelling in an imperfect receptacle,
limited by the material conditions it had as
sumed. The only normal way by which these
imperfections could be put off was by bringing
down the Divine as it could be received. This
was by temptations admitted into the maternal
human. The Divine descended as it overcame
the devils who did the tempting; it descended
and replaced the imperfect. Jesus overcame,
as all men must overcome, by the power of the
Divine, but he could not have been tempted
had he not had a plane of consciousness at the

THE GLORIFICATION 191
time of temptation like our own. God was not
tempted, but the man-plane did receive tempta
tions and it overcame, as every man must
overcome. That made Jesus complete man —
thoroughly a human being. What overcame
in him is what overcomes in man, the Divine
power; the difference was that God dwelt
directly in him as His very soul, whereas God
is only adjoined to us, dwelling in us as a sep
arate entity in our Inmost.
We now hear the words: "Father, the
hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son
also may glorify thee." This was the Logos
speaking, that was in the beginning with God,
who was God, and that for which he prayed was
the reciprocal union of the Divine Good and the
Divine Truth, God and the Logos, the Father
and the Son. These elements in God had been
to appearance separated by the Incarnation;
they were now to be reunited. That it was this
interior Divine Truth or Logos speaking is
shown by what follows: "And, now, O Father,
glorify thou me, with thine own self, with the
glory which I had with thee before the world was."
The outward man Jesus had not existed before,
but the Logos had always existed. This effort

192 WHO IS JESUS?
toward union resulted in the complete glorifica
tion, or perfect union on the plane of the natural
of Father and Son, when the essential Divine
infilled the form of the Son, when the Divine
actually dwelt in its fullness in His own things
on the plane of the natural, no longer as hitherto
mediately in the assumed human from Mary.
In the twenty-fourth verse of this same chap
ter Jesus said :
"Father, I will that they also, whom thou
hast given me, be with me where I am; that
they may behold my glory, which thou hast
given me : for thou lovedst me before the foundation
of the world." The Divine Good always loves
the Divine Truth, or Logos. The exaltation of
the Divine Truth (not the son of Mary) would be
into its primitive union with the Divine Good.
Good and Truth mutually love each other; but
both are capable of existing in one being, and
they did so exist in the case we are considering,
for Good was the quality of the Divine of which
the form was Truth.
Jesus spoke as he did here in order that men
might understand His essential Divineness, his
oneness with the Father in spite of appearances,
and he spoke as if there were two in order that

THE GLORIFICATION 193
they might believe at all. And yet, after all,
it was a speaking according to the fact, for the
Divine Good had not yet descended to this lower
plane from which he spoke. It was the effort
to bring down the Divine Good to the plane
where the Divine Truth, the Logos, had pre
ceded it — it actually helped to bring it about;
but it was at the same time an accommodation
in appearance to the minds of his hearers, and
for their benefit; for he knew that he and the
Father were one, as soul and body are one, just
as he had said so many times.

13

IX. THE DIVINE HUMANITY
WHILE it may seem to some that we have
elaborated our idea of the deity of Jesus at
great length, it is perfectly proper to say that
what has been said upon the subject is in compari
son with what might be said upon the basis of the
Scriptures, merely the barest outline — a sugges
tion ; for it would be possible to begin "at Moses "
and continue through "all the prophets"; in
deed, to take the Word from Genesis to Revela
tion, and show that all things therein relate to
the Lord and his incarnation and redemptive
work. It would be interesting and profitable
to take all the prophecies and all the statements
of Jesus himself in the New Testament, as well
as the statements made about him, and show
that they are all perfectly explained by the
interpretation which we have given of him. It
would be found to be a key to unlock the Scrip
tures from beginning to end.
We would see that the "seed of the woman"
194

THE DIVINE HUMANITY 195
who was to bruise the serpent's head, the heir
of Abraham and David, the "servant" told
about in the later prophets, was the man of
Nazareth, the son of Mary, the one who, be
cause of this assumption of a limited human
covering, with its planes of life, was tempted in
all points like as we are. We would perceive
how this outward expression in time and space
could grow tired as other men, and be tempted,
whereas the eternal God is never weary and can
not be tempted of evil. We would perceive the
steps by which this "servant" overcame, on
their own plane, the hosts of evil who were in
this way admitted into combats with him, and
how he at last rescued man from their power
and holds man in such a state of balance be
tween good and evil forever that men can of
themselves freely choose the good and reject
the evil. It would be interesting and profitable,
as we have said, to do this and many other things
relating to our subject; but they are not perti
nent to show who Jesus of Nazareth was in
himself. This explanation of him that we have offered
would show why God in the Old Testament is
sometimes spoken of as Jehovah (often trans-

196 WHO IS JESUS?
la ted "Lord"), and sometimes as Elohim (trans
lated "God"); as Jehovah, when God in His
essential nature is spoken of, or as the Divine
Good; and as Elohim, when He is spoken of
in His Divine Proceeding, or Going-forth, or
the Divine Truth, as the creative activity of the
universe. This would make clear, what is now
confused to many, that the writers of the Old
Testament, when they sometimes used Jehovah
and sometimes Elohim, were speaking — and
from Divine dictation — in accordance with the
phase of being or activity that was referred to.
The so-called Higher Criticism would fall com
pletely to the ground.
This would relate Jehovah to the "Father"
of the New Testament, and Elohim to Jesus,
thus to the Logos, or the Divine Truth, or to
the "Son." Two Gods would not be referred
to by the names Jehovah or Elohim, or Jehovah
and Jesus, or Father and Son, but one only God
in His two phases of Being and Coming-forth ;
in the nature of the case, of one Essence; in
the nature of the case, Indivisible, and only di
vided by men in their thought of these two
phases. The world would in this way perceive that the

THE DIVINE HUMANITY 197
Son of God as the Logos, or the Divine Truth,
was never weary or was never tempted ; for the
Son of God is God Himself.
We would see in the "Son of God" or the
Logos, the son from eternity; not, indeed,
"born" from eternity; for the Infinite could
never be born, but always existed in the bosom
of the Father, — "who is in the beginning with
God," and God Himself, the Divine Truth,
one with the Divine Good. We would be able
to differentiate between the son born of a virgin
in time, perceiving this not to be a separate
being, but merely the outside envelop, as it
were, of the Son of God. We would perceive
how this limited human was not God, and yet
was a temporary medium through which God
could manifest Himself on the natural plane of
life. It was God as much as our outward bodies
are ourselves; but as our outward material
bodies are not essential to our complete life as
men, except as they serve as the material basis
of our lives in order to put us into contact with
the material universe around us, so the outward
form of Jesus was only temporarily useful.
There was this difference between men and
Jesus in the resurrection. Men forever cast

198 WHO IS JESUS?
aside their natural bodies at death. Jesus,
indeed, put aside his outward physical material
body, but there was provided in its place a form
of Divine substances which enabled him forever
to dwell with men on the plane of the natural.
Unlike men, he is forevermore on even the
lowest plane of being, as the disciples saw after
the resurrection. Jesus did not actually go
away. He, indeed, disappeared from the sight
of men as a material man in limitations; but
we learn from him that he is always with us,
"even unto the end of the world." His ascen
sion, as we have seen before, was the perfect
union of the Divine Truth and the Divine Good,
the Son and the Father, on every plane of being.
What was accomplished by the glorification?
As the darkness and cold of the night are dis
sipated by the sun at dawn, so the descent of the
Divine into the heavens enlightened and purified
them, and in the world of spirits, or Hades, it
drove out the false and evil, effected a judgment.
We read in Luke 10: 17-19:
"And the seventy returned again with joy,
saying, Lord, even the devils are subject unto us
through thy name. And he said unto them,
I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.

THE DIVINE HUMANITY 199
Behold I give unto you power to tread on ser
pents and scorpions, and over all the power of
the enemy." And in John 12:31: "Now is the
judgment of this world: now shall the prince of
this world be cast out." And in John 19:30:
"It is finished."
That a last judgment was an object of his
coming into the world is shown by the passage
in Matthew 12:18-20, where the prophecy in
Isaiah 42 : 1 is said to be fulfilled : " Behold my
servant, whom I have chosen; my beloved, in
whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my
spirit upon him, and he shall show judgment to
the Gentiles. ... A bruised reed shall he
not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench,
till he send forth judgment unto victory." And in
John 9:39: "And Jesus said, For judgment I
am come into this world."
£ It became possible, because of the judgment
effected, because of the Lord's victory over the
forces of evil, for men once again to act freely
as of themselves in the rejection of evil. At the
time he came the devils had taken almost full
possession of the human race. It was one of his
chief works to cast them out, and we can under
stand that he did, not merely in the individual

200 WHO IS JESUS?
cases mentioned in the New Testament, but as
would be fitting and proper for the Divine Truth
descending into lower planes of life, cast them
out en masse, so that mankind would be set at
.liberty, for his mission was "to preach deliver
ance to the captives, ... to set at liberty
them that are bruised."
Ascending into heaven and sitting at the right
hand of God is, as we have seen, to reign as God ;
for all power was given unto the Son, so that after
the resurrection he said, "All power is given
unto me in heaven and on earth," showing con
clusively that there was no other being or person
who exercised power. Can any one imagine
for an instant that by this statement it is meant
that the Father voluntarily resigned Himself
to a condition of innocuous desuetude ?
In Revelation He said: "I am Alpha and
Omega, the beginning and the ending." What
does this mean but that Jesus, who was then
speaking to John in his glorified humanity, was
claiming that he was Jehovah, the very beginning
of life, and also its ultimate on the natural plane,
the first and last things of creation? And he
ends by calling himself " the Almighty." Could
anything be plainer than that Jesus of Nazareth,

THE DIVINE HUMANITY 201
in his glorified humanity, is the only God of
heaven and earth ?
It is true that in Revelation Jesus is often re
ferred to as the Lamb, but is this not merely a
symbol of his outward projection into time and
space as the Divine Innocence? He is also re
ferred to at the same time as the Lion of the Tribe
of Judah, which symbolizes the Divine Strength.
As the Lamb he sits upon the throne of God and
reigns, as God alone can reign. As the Lamb he
receives Divine honors and adoration. The
Lamb, "as it had been slain, having seven horns
and seven eyes," can be nothing else than a
symbolization. When we read of the millions
who surround the throne, "saying with a loud
voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to
receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and
strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing,"
shall we think of more than one God on the
throne? We read further:
"And every creature which is in heaven, and
on the earth, and under the earth, and such as
are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I
saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and
power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne,
and unto the Lamb forever and ever."

202 WHO IS JESUS?
Shall we not rather think of this adoration
of God and the Lamb as the adoration of the one
God of heaven and earth in His two phases of
Being and Coming-forth ? That only one being
or person is referred to is shown by what im
mediately follows, where it is said, "And the
four beasts," also representatives or symbols,
"said, Amen. And the four and twenty elders
fell down and worshipped Him (not them) that
liveth forever and ever."
And it is right and proper that we should wor
ship and adore God in His two phases of Being
and Coming-forth, and that we should join in
the ascription of praises to Him who, for our
sakes, came into the world in the flesh to save
us from our deadly enemies of hell. For us
indeed the phase of Coming-forth is absolutely
essential to our salvation. For it is this phase
of Coming-forth that enables us to approach the
Father, or Essential Being. "I am the Way,
the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto
the Father but by me." It is useless in view of
this and other similar statements to think that
we can approach the Lord except through His
Coming-forth, or in His Divine Humanity.
For the Son and the Father are one as body and

THE DIVINE HUMANITY 203
soul are one. "If ye believe not that I am he,
ye shall die in your sins." In other words, we
cannot approach substance or quality except
through Form; we cannot approach the Divine
Good except through the Divine Truth. It is
idle to think of any other kind of approach to
the Divine except through His manifestation;
for we cannot conceive of Him, have any idea of
Him in a definite way, except as He is mani
fested in form.
The glorified humanity, the Divine Humanity,
is truly justified by its results. Immanuel,
God-with-us, means to us heaven on earth and
heaven hereafter, for God's presence makes
heaven. Let us not think again of a divided
God, but remembering that "he that hath seen
me hath seen the Father," let us approach to the
Lord Jesus Christ as the only God of heaven and
earth, our Saviour, and realize that we shall
never know any other God.
"And I heard a great voice out of heaven say
ing, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,
and he will dwell with them, and they shall be
his people, and God himself shall be with them,
their God."

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