§ 1. Includes his Incarnation.
The Apostle tells us that Christ humbled Himself. In answer to the question, Wherein his humiliation consisted? our standards wisely content themselves with the simple statements of the Scrip- tures : " Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing tiie miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross ; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time."
On all these points the schoolmen and modern philosophical the- ologians have indulged in unprofitable speculations. All that is known, or can be known respecting them is the facts themselves.
The person of whom all the particulars above enumerated are ]»redicated, is the Eternal Son of God. It was He who was born, who suffered, and who died. It was a person equal with God, who, the Apostle says, in Philippians ii. 7, 8, was made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man. It was the Son of God who was born of a woman, and made under the law. (Gal. iv. 4.) In the Old Testament it was predicted that a virgin should con- ceive, and bring forth a son, who should be called Immanuel, the mighty God. In revealing these facts the Scriptures reveal all we can know concerning: the birth of Christ. He was born of a woman. In the i)irth of an ordinary human being there are mys- teries which neither speculation nor science can solve. All we know is that in conception an immaterial principle, a human soul, is joined in unity of life with the germ of a human body, and, after a given process of development, is born a perfect child. In the case of our Lord, by the immediate or supernatural power of the Holy Ghost, these elements of humanity, material and imma- terial (body and soul), from the beginning of their existence were in personal union M-ith the Logos, so that the child born of the Virgin was in a true and exclusive sense the Son of God.
In opposition to the early heretics, some of whom said that