3. The veiled glory. — Christ was the revelation of God in the sphere of time and sense. The splendour of Jehovah was veiled by the seamless robe ; under the mechanism of frail flesh throbbed the energy which built the world ; the gentle tones of the voice unheard in the streets disguised the accents of the thunder; and beneath the weakness which slept, fainted, and expired was hidden the might of Omnipotence. That Christ was God, that He became man, possessing a true human body and a true human soul, is the distinct teaching of the evangelic narrative. God manifests Himself in nature, history, and conscience ; but here is a supreme, personal, and unique revelation of Himself — the Divine clothing Himself with the human that He might redeem the human.
1 fL. Scott HoUancl.
374 THE MISSION OF THE SON
Is it possible for the Infinite God to become expressed in human form ? Is not the idea self-contradictory ? Certainly it is if we think of the Infinite as physical or as quantitative. But if we think of it as spiritual and qualitative — of the ethical In- finite, which God is — of perfect righteousness and love, and believe that the human personality is in the image of the Divine, we can see that the essential life of God can be as fully expressed in a human as in any conceivable form.
If there is nothing derogatory to the honour of God in His dwelling within the physical universe, and in manifesting Himself through suns and stars, hills and seas, forests and flowers, there cannot be anything contrary to the Divine glory in assuming that He should take up His special abode in a human body, and reveal Himself through its marvellous organs. There seems, indeed, no shrine so fitting for the Divine indwelling and manifestation as a pure human body. " The human face divine " can express more than a gun, the rounded forehead speak more than arched skies, the eyes shine out deeper things than stars, the lip reveal secrets which winds and waves can never utter, and the actions of human life are rich in suggestion hidden from the foundations of the world. The human body is less bright than the heavens, less large than the earth, but, to utter things deep and high, a finer organ than either.
^ After referring to man being fearfully and wonderfully made — the body "the tent-like habitation in which he journeyed through the wilderness which lay between the two eternities," — Dr. Eobertson pointed out the fitness of the comparison of the human body to a house or temple ; spoke of its flesh-built walls being covered with skin, richly tapestried ; he described it as colonnaded with bones, fitted with a frame-work, vault-like, marble white, that bore up, and over-arched the chambers of the hidden life within, and with conduits that sent forth red streams which ebbed and flowed from the heart's cistern, and conduits of the subtle nerves, strung from side to side, from wall to wall, from the lowest basement to the loftiest pinnacle, along which telegraphic messages were sent with more than lightning speed. It was, too, a house in motion, and, pertaining to it, what dignity, what majesty ! how exquisite in form and symmetry ! so delicate and tender, like David's harp of many strings, like the seolian lyre, vibrating to the wind's slightest breath.^
* ▲. Guthrie, Hobertson of Irviiie, 321,
GAL. IV. 4, 5 375
Thou inmost, ultimate Council of judgment, palace of decrees, Where the high senses hold their spiritual state,
Sued by earth's embassies, And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create;
Create — thy senses close With the world's pleas. The random odours reach Their sweetness in the place of thy repose.
Upon thy tongue the peach. And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose.
To thee, secluded one, The dark vibrations of the sightless skies. The lovely inexplicit colours run;
The light gropes for those eyes, 0 thou august ! thou dost command the sun.
Music, all dumb, hath trod Into thine ear her one effectual way; And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod,
Where thou call'st up the day, Where thou awaitest the appeal of God.^
III.
The End for Which Christ Came.
"That he might redeem them which were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."
In how sharp a contrast the Divine method of reform, of revolution, stands to the declaration of the greatest of the idealists in the days before Christ. Plato, as he sorrowfully reviewed the actual Athens with which he found himself encircled, pronounced, in his prophetic work on human society, that its true reformer and saviour would be known by this mark — that he would demand for himself " a clean canvas " before he consented to begin. He could do nothing unless he were allowed to remove from out of the influence and tradition of their home a whole generation of children ; only thus could he obtain the clean canvas
^ Alice Meynell, Poems, 111.
Z^^ THE MISSION OF THE SON
he needed. If only the weary burden of our inherited complica- tion could be thus freely cast off! If only we could lay hands, in the violence of love, on the little children, and sweep them off into some new Garden of Eden ! If only we could run a sharp dividing knife between us and the rueful past ! Surely there is in that demand a deep and touching pathos which stirs us into tender admiration of the noble-hearted genius who made it. But its pathos must not disguise from us that it is a confession of failure, of impotence, of despair. The reformer who asks first for a clean canvas to begin upon is a reformer who refuses to grapple with his task, refuses to face his facts. He condemns himself by making the demand ; for what is asked of him is that he should help us to better the life that now is, the situation in which he and we find ourselves. We do not need him to tell us how well he could construct another form of life under changed conditions. No ; it is the very note of all the old failure to redeem the world by philosophy which is struck in the sad Platonic phrase, " Give me but the children — give me a clean canvas ! "