^ A. Plnmmer, The Pastoral Ejnstles, 133.
I TIMOTHY III. i6 105
^ For many years the great Alexandrian MS. was supposed to read Tlieos, 05, and scholars who examined it were confident they saw the line across the middle of the 0. It now turns out — and the discovery is a curious one — that the supposed line is really the shadow of another letter on the opposite page showing through it, and tracing out the apparent stroke exactly across the middle of the 0.^
4. It is remarkable how many arrangements of these six clauses are possible, all making excellent sense. We may make them into two triplets of independent lines ; or we may couple the two first lines of each triplet together and then make the third lines correspond to one another. In either case each group begins with earth and ends with heaven. Or again, we may make the six lines into three couplets. In the first couplet flesh and spirit are contrasted and combined ; in the second, angels and men ; in the third, earth and heaven.
I.
"He who was manifested in the flesh."
This clause of the text is one of many witnesses to the double nature of our blessed Lord — His Divine nature as existing before all worlds in union with the Father, and His human nature as actually " manifested in the flesh."
1, If the Person spoken of in the text had had no existence before His birth, it would not have been natural to speak of Him at His birth as being " manifested in the flesh." When an infant is born in any of our families, we do not say that it is " mani- fested in the flesh." Why not ? Because, although that infant now has an immortal soul distinct from its body, although linked with it, and in a certain true sense manifested through it, that soul had no existence independent of and before the body of the infant. We do not speak of a thing being " manifested " at the moment of its beginning to exist. The idea of manifestation is not opposed to non-existence, but to hidden existence ; indeed, manifestaLiou takes for granted a previous unmanifested existence. ' G. S. Barrett, The Earliest Christian Hymn, 27.
io6 THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS
And therefore the phrase, " manifested in the flesh," would be inappropriate and absurd as applied to an ordinary infant at its birth. We might just as well speak of a house being " mani- fested " in stone or brick when it is built, or of a railway embankment being " manifested " when it is thrown up. Mani- festation implies the previous existence of the thing or person manifested ; it marks a point in the history of the thing or person, at which it passes out of hidden, into public and visible, life. If, then, the text speaks of a manifestation in the flesh, whether it describes the person so manifested as " God " or not, it must at least mean that He existed before this manifestation took place, or, in other words, before His birth. And apart from all that follows in the later clauses of the quotation, and which at every step rivets and intensifies the argument, this description can be true only of Him who alone in Scripture is said to have existed before His birth into this world. Scripture knows nothing of any Indian doctrine of the transmigration of souls. But He who was before, and therefore greater than, St. John the Baptist; He whose glory Isaiah saw, not merely by anticipation, but in actual vision ; He who already exists before Abraham was ; He who was in the beginning, and with God, and by whom all things were made — He did at length, by " being made of a woman, made under the law," make Himself manifest to the senses of man. " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."
2. What were the limits, what the nature, of this manifesta- tion ? It is true, for instance, to say that God is manifested in nature; His attributes shine through His works. Again and more strikingly, He is manifested in the human conscience. That sense of right and wrong which every man finds within his soul, whether it be well-informed and educated or not, speaks of an Author. Once more, God is manifested in the course of events, in history. The action of His attributes may be traced, through slow transitions and developments, from one polity to another, one ascendancy to another, one civilization to another.
But the manifestation spoken of in the text is clearly distinct from God's self-manifestation in nature, in conscience, and in
I TIMOTHY III. i6 107
history. It is " in the flesh." That expression ties it down to human nature as the medium of the manifestation, and identifies it not merely with the spiritual but with the bodily part of man's composite being. It is a question here, not of a voice in conscience, still less of inferences, however legitimate or irresist- ible, drawn from nature and history, but of a revelation clothed in flesh and blood, and addressed to sense. The text does not itself say that this manifestation was exhibited in a single life — the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Yet the rest of the passage makes it certain that this was the writer's meaning. Unless the whole race of man was " justified in the spirit, believed on in the world, and received up in glory," it is impossible to avoid restricting this manifestation in the flesh to the human nature, the body and soul of Jesus of Nazareth. The Apostle means that God was manifested in this one member of the human family (we may truly so speak of Him) as in no other. Others had illustrated and reflected some one or more rays of the Perfection of God ; ITis lovingkindness, or His justice, or His veracity. In Jesus God's moral life was manifested, not partially or in piecemeal, but in its integrity and completeness. The whole range of the Divine attributes was there ; and when our Lord acted and spoke, God, in His perfect nature, became manifest to those who witnessed Him. Instead of saying that in Christ the intelligence or thought of God was pre-eminently embodied, it being implied that other elements of the Divine life were not equally so, St. Paul says that in Christ dwelt " all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Instead of saying, " He that hath seen Me must have learnt something of what God's mercy is, or something about His truth," Christ our Lord says absolutely, and without any limitations or reserve, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."