^ J. Oswald Dykes. EPH.-COL. — 30
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which sets a limit to the infinite by proclaiming its inability to enter fully a finite being. Does not the infinity of God involve, not the distribution of innumerable parts through all space, but His presence wholly in every region of the universe ? "Why, then, cannot He manifest His presence in a peculiar way in one being ? Moreover, if God, who is always infinite, can dwell in man at all, that fact is a mystery which seems to foreshadow the greater mystery of His full dwelling in Christ. The humanity of Christ is real and pure and perfect humanity, and God who dwells in Him is still perfect God. This is very different from the metamorphosis of a God into a man that is described in heathen mythologies. It is to be practically learnt from this Christian mystery that God is now very near to us in a brother man ; that we can be raised to God and become one with Christ and God through Christ's oneness with us and God.
^ The Incarnate Logos is human ; for how could He in whom men are constituted be other than human ? But He was not and is not a man. He is the constitutor of man, entering into a new relation to that which He had constituted like Himself, in order that, instead of losing its likeness to and vital union with Himself, and thereby its very existence, through sin, it might throw off sin, and resume the character it had borne and re-enter on the development for which it was intended. He could not have discharged this function had He and humanity not been essentially akin ; it would have been equally impossible for Him to discharge the function had He been a man. He was the Divine Logos, self-limited; and as such doubly akin to, though not one with or of, humanity — self-limited in order to save that which had its life through, and was, in a very real sense, part of Himself.^
3. All the fulness of God is permanent in Christ. " In him dwelleth." The word " dwelleth " means more than a temporary sojourn. It means to live as in a house abidingly. To a Christian there is nothing more delightful than the thought that the Son of God, the Eternal, now dwells in the bodily manifestation which He took with Him to glory. We shall see Him, we shall know Him, for He is the God now dwelling in the body.
^ The most deeply affectionate natures are limited in heart- power. Their love will languish under shock and cool in frigid ^ D. W. Simon, Eeconciliation by Incamation.
COLOSSIANS II. 9, lo 467
atmospheres. In Christ love's fulness dwells. His compassions fail not. The drain upon His sympathies in the days of His flesh was continuous and tremendous. The world to Him was as the daughter of the horse-leech crying " Give, give ! " Yet it was ever met by a full response. Even that awful frost which descended on Calvary, when the treachery of one disciple and the desertion of others, coupled with the mockings of enemies, drove the temperature about Him down to arctic depths ; when even the gates of heaven seemed to close against Him and He was left for one terrible space uncomforted of God, the fountain of His grace stood at the full. It still pulsed on undiminished. No drain could lower it, no frost could seal it. Whilst His enemies mocked His agonies He could pray, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." With the heavens black and seemingly pitiless above Him, He could cry with loving confidence and filial submissiveness, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Under every circumstance we find Him a fountain " full of grace and truth." ^
^ It is a person, not a dogma, which invites my faith ; a person, not a code, which asks for obedience. Jesus stands in the way of every selfishness ; He leads in the path of every sacrifice ; He is crucified in every act of sin ; He is glorified in every act of holiness. St. Stephen, as he suffered for the Gospel, saw the heavens open and Jesus standing to receive him, St. Peter, fleeing in a second panic from Eome, meets Jesus returning to be crucified in his place. Conscience and heart are settled on Jesus, and one feels within one's soul the tides of His virtue. It is not the doctrines or the ethics of Christianity that are its irresistible attraction. Its doctrines have often been a stumbling-block, and its ethics excel only in degree. The life-blood of Christianity is Christ.2
II.
Our Sufficiency.
"In him ye are made full."
1. Apart from Christ we are empty, incomplete. — All men are in themselves imperfect, incomplete, mere fragments as human beings and moral creatures.
^ J. D. Freeman, Concerning the Christ, 197. ^ John Watson, The Mind of the Master.
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^ Man's life on earth is incomplete because it contains an explicit contradiction between his conception of what he is and of what he ought to be. His distinctive mark is the possession of an ideal in the light of which he can always condemn his actual condition. The disparity between actual and ideal is never removed on earth, since, however steadily the man advances, his ideal continually recedes before him ; and in this he may esteem himself fortunate, since otherwise there would be no more reason for predicating immortality of him than there is for predicating it of the beasts which perish.^