mil 1st of his argument turning back again to simple statement, as if, like his Lord, he would have asked, " Do ye now believe ? " ^
2. The faith of the Church in our Lord's humanity rests primarily on experience — the experience of those who knew Him during His earthly life. And their experience must also deter- mine our whole conception of the Incarnation. Our theory must be governed by the facts ; we shall go far astray if we attempt first to construct a theory and then to force the facts into agree- ment \^ ith it. What, then, are the facts ?
Mary, His mother, was the friend of the original apostles and disciples of our Lord, and after His crucifixion, she lived with the Apostle John. She would tell our Lord's friends how He grew from infancy to childhood, and childhood to youth, increasing in wisdom as well as in height and strength with His increasing years, — a child and a youth to attract the favour of both God and man. Nor was it Mary alone who could tell them of our Lord's childhood, youth, and manhood. James and Jude, to whom two Epistles, bearing their names, are attributed in the New Testament, but who do not appear to have become His disciples till after His resurrection, were His " brothers." Salome, the wife of Zebedee, was, in all probability, the sister of Mary His mother, and was therefore His aunt. Her sons, the two Apostles James and John, were His cousins ; and it was this relationship, as well as the special confidence with which our Lord had treated them, that, perhaps, suggested the request that they might sit, one on His right hand and one on His left hand, in His Kingdom. All these relatives of His, who were well known to the first generation of Christians, could recall our Lord's life in Nazareth before His public ministry began ; and it is certain that they never doubted that He was really man. Nor were there any signs during His public ministry that our Lord had lost any of the characteristics of humanity or had been liberated from any of its limitations.
TU Man has always found it easier to see a Divine element in the strange and awlul and supernatural, and to picture his Deity as living above liim in the high mountains, or the unknown depth of sky, than to lind Him in the near and the accustomed. Now in the fulness of time he has been called upon to see Him in the " Word made flesh," dwelling among men " in fashion as a man,"
* Mrs. Olipliant, Life of Edward Irving, ii. 109.
ST. JOHN I. 14 43
not taking upon Him the nature of 'tngels, but the nature of suffering humanity. The Greeks might indeed conceive of their gods, their Apollo or Athena, taking some part in the affairs of men, and jealously watching the interests of their worshippers; the Egyptian might picture Horus or Osiris, experiencing like men the triumph of victory or the ignominy of defeat ; but the Christian has a more difficult, but a far more glorious, conception to which he may rise. He may see his God as manifested in terms of his own life, becoming his Comrade in temptation, and his Example in humility. Here is one who undertook, not to govern the world from afar, but to overcome it from within, who calls Himself not high and lifted up, but meek and lowly, the servant of all. As a shepherd He goes before His sheep to make the crooked paths straight, and the rough places smooth, and in His own experience He conquers death and triumphs over the grave.^
^ In deep spiritual temptations nothing has helped me better, with nothing have I heartened myself and driven away the devil better, than with this, that Christ, the true Eternal Son of God, is " bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh " ; and that He sits on the right hand of God, and pleads for us. When I can grasp this shield of faith, I have already chased away the evil one with his fiery darts.^
3. Why do we insist upon the humanity of Christ ?
(1) First, there is the sense of our loss should the doctrine be obscured. Such comfortable words as these — "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered ; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him " : " V/e have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities ; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin " — would lose their meaning.
(2) And, secondly, we should fall back into the old error about the character of God. It was because men thought it degrading to the Son of God to have become flesh that they denied it. St. John knew that humiliation is not degradation; pride degrades. The imperfect soars or stands aloof. "The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords," can only reveal Himself by stooping. We shall never know by our experience the glory and the bliss of immeasurable con-