assumed generic humanity into personal union with Himself, in- cludes in a still higher sense a world of other personalities. " He was Himself the race." He has assumed generic humanity into personal union with Himself and thereby rendered it divine ; it is indeed a true human life, but it is nevertheless divine. It is one life ; not the life of the Logos separately considered, but the life of the Word made flesh. He was man more perfectly than Adam himself, before the fall ; humanity stood revealed in Him under its most perfect form. The humanity which He assumed was not new, but the humanity of Adam raised to a higher character, and filled with new meaning and power, by its union with the divine nature. The identity of Adam and his race is not material. Not a particle of Adam's body has come into ours. The identity re- solves itself into an invisible law ; and it is not one law for the body and another law for the soul ; but one and the same law in- volves the presence of both, as the power of a common life. Where the law works, there Adam's life is reproduced, body and soul together. And still the individual Adam is not blended with his posterity in any such way as to lose his own personality or to swallow up theirs. His identity with his posterity is generic ; but none the less real or close on that account. The case in regard to Christ and his people is analogous. His life, generic humanity as united in one life with the divine in his person passes over to his people. And as the race of individual men is developed by a regular, natural, organic process from the generic humanity in the person of Adam, so the life of Christ rests not in his separate person, but passes over to his people ; this takes place in the way of history, growth, or regular living development. In regenera- tion we become partakers of this new principle of life, that is, of generic humanity as united with the divine nature, which involves a participation of the entire humanity of Christ. We are not joined in a real life unity with the everlasting Logos, apart from Christ's manhood, in the way of direct personal in-being. This would make us equal with Christ. The mystical union would then be the hypostatical union itself repeated in the person of every believer. It is not the divine life of the Logos as such, but the theanthropic life of Christ which passes over to his people. " The personality of the Son," says Olshausen 2 " as comprehensive, in- cludes in itself all the personalities of his people and pervades them with his own life, as the living centre of an organism, from which life flows forth and to which it returns."
1 John xiv. 20; Commentar, 3d edit. Konigsberg, 1838, vol. ii. p. 352
654 PART HI. Ch. XX. — the means of grace.
The life which is thus conveyed to us is a true human life, con- trolling not only the soul but also the body. It is corporeal as well as incorporeal. It must put on an outward form and project itself in space. It is to be remembered that human life is not to be split into two lives, one of the body and another of the soul, thus constituting a dualism in our nature, instead of the absolute unity which belongs to it in fact. Soul and body, are, in their ground, but one life ; identical in their origin ; bound together by interpenetration subsequently at every point, and holding together in the presence and power of the same organic law. The life of Christ, lodged in us, works in us according to the law which it includes in its own constitution. That is, it works as a human life ; and as such becomes the law of regeneration in the body as truly as in the soul. This does not suppose any actual approach of Christ's body to the persons of his people ; nor any ubiquity or idealistic dissipation of that body ; nor any fusion of this personal- ity with ours. We must distinguish between the simple man and the universal man, here joined in the same person. Adam was an individual and the whole race. There is no dissipation of Christ's personality into the general consciousness of the Church involved in the affirmation that his person forms the ground, out of which and in the power of which only, the whole life of the Church con- tinually subsists. In this view Christ is personally present always in the Church, that is, of course, in the power of his divine nature. But his divine nature is at the same time human, in the fullest sense, and wherever his presence is revealed in a real way, it in- cludes the person necessarily under the one aspect as well as un- der the other ; with all this, however, which is something very dif- ferent from the conception of a proper ubiquity in the case of Christ's body, we do not relinquish the thought of his separate human individuality. We distinguish between his universal hu- manity in the Church, and his humanity as a particular man, whom the heavens have received till the time of the restitution of all things. His glorified body, we doubt not, is possessed of qualities, attributes, and powers, that transcend immeasurably all we know or can think of a human body here. Still it is a body, a particular human body, having organized parts and an outward form. As such of course it must be defined -and circumscribed by local limits, and cannot be supposed to be present in differ- ent places at the same time.
The life of Christ as communicated to his people is a true hu- man life ; and all life, in the case of man, is actualized, and can be