SERMON VI.

THE INCARNATE GOD VINDICATED.

1 TIM. iii. 16.

"GOD WAS MANIFEST IN THE FLESH, JUSTIFIED IN THE SPIRIT."

“I wish,” observes one of the profoundest philosophers that this country has produced, "I could say that there were no mysteries in Scripture. I acknowledge there are to me, and I fear always will be. But when I want the evidence of things, there is yet ground enough for me to believe, because God has said it." In this statement there is much to condemn as well as to admire. Why should man wish that there were no mysteries in religion? Could there be a religion without the premises of a necessary self-existent and eternal Cause? Could there be a redemption of our wicked race without the motive of an inconceivable pity? When such mysteries are revealed, they are revealed as mysteries, intended to be so regarded and allowed. It is not an obscurity which they assume, a concealment which they desire to promote : it is an excess of light, it is an unsusceptibility of solution. To the Infinite Intelligence, and within the Divine Consciousness, mystery is unknown: and therefore those perfect ideas must, to our minds, be overpowering. What God sees clearly, we must see confusedly. But in the language of the philosopher there is much to applaud. He has defined the exact warrant of faith. Could Christianity find analogy, it would not be that analogy, -could it be shown probable, it would not be that probability, -could it be proved reasonable, it would not be that reasonableness,-on account of which it ought to be believed. Belief of this kind would render no respect to the "faithful Creator."

• Locke.

It would be independent of his character. His testimony, otherwise than it was proved by indifferent witnesses, would pass for nothing. We should believe Him no more readily than we must the unworthiest of his creatures. Whom do we not credit when his allegations are sufficiently attested? The ground of belief in God is his simple saying as the God of truth. If a religion came from Him which was obvious and palpable at once, faith would have little scope, and yield him little glory. It would make it appear that He was like ourselves. The condition of assent would be that every part could be immediately and perfectly understood. But this is to forget the highest evidence of a Revelation, its sublime originality, its disclosure of what could never otherwise be known! We look for the awful marks of the Understanding which is infinite.

We are not then surprised or revolted by the earliest notice which Christianity affords us of its profound mysteries. We have but to think of the necessary conditions of a Divine revelation to creatures such as we are, to perceive that the absence of mysteries would be to stamp an unreasonableness upon it. It must resemble its Author. It must involve the relations of man to his Creator. Its worth must be measured by its communication of absolutely new ideas and facts. Christianity, therefore, avouches itself to be the Great Mystery of Godliness.

We need not to urge any further the figure which is employed. It has been amply explained. The Christian System is likened to a Temple, beautiful and massive. It has pillar and foundation. Whatever a pillar is to an edifice, whatever a foundation is to a pillar, such is the Mystery of Godliness to the Dispensation of evangelic truth and grace.

This Temple invites us in. It is a holy place. It strikes with awe. August and ineffable are its wonders. We may behold what we cannot explore. The profoundest of all is proclaimed the first. The spectacle of a descending Deity rises We follow Him through the scene of his incarnation. The mystery continues insuperable, but all inconsistency imputed to it, all prejudgment cherished against it, is triumphantly refuted and disproved.

upon us.

1. THE FACT OF A DIVINE INCARNATION IN THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.

The Proposition is complex, and we will, in the first instance, reduce it to its parts.

1. The Manhood of Messiah.

This is not often placed in modern controversy. But it is a most important article of the testimony given for our faith. Deity is uncreate and unchangeable: this is an effect of formation, having a beginning, and that which is supposed at a given time to be assumed. We mark a distinct act of Divine power in its production. "He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death." "That holy thing" "was conceived of the Holy Ghost." This is the fact which is naturally the most interesting and significant: it is becoming, as thus strangely new and transforming, that it should be made most prominent: it is more imperative in this stage of the announcement to aver that the God became man, than that the man was also God. The Jews, therefore, first stumbled at His humanity. "Whom makest thou thyself?" "For a good work we stone thee not, but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God." They looked for another manifestation than of God in the flesh. They asked a dreader sign. True, He did the works of his Father, the demonstrative tokens of equality. But they would have seen Israel's Holy One in his ancient manner of descent, when there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphires, and as it were the body of heaven in its splendour. They would that the trumpet might sound long and loud, that from some hoary summit there might be promulgated a fiery law, that the voice of words, the thunder-accents heard of old, might be renewed. They would that the Lord of hosts should have taken possession of the Holiest place in a cloud of glory, enthroning himself between the mysterious cherubim, and speaking from off the mercy-seat. These were the symbols by which He erst was known. But had they not deprecated them? Had they not "entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more," when accompanied with those portents? And this "manifestation in the flesh" was an answer to their prayer.

K

Mild and gentle was the form. Meek and lowly was the vehicle. Yet, be it remembered, the challenge of Divinity was not suspended, and in the very terms of this consecrated yore. For the first revelation to Moses, which he was to report to the people, was: "I AM hath sent me unto you." When Jesus was asked of his enemies, "Who art thou ?" he answered: "Even that I said unto you from the beginning." That "beginning" was to the shepherd-prophet beneath the precipices of Horeb. From a glory enveloping the bush the voice resounded. It was the angel of the Lord who spoke. It was still the Lord. It was God. It was, then, a messenger; but of co-ordinate majesty. Who was He? Jesus claims to be that appearance, that authority, that Lord and God. He repeats, in immediate connection with such claim, the awful appropriation of this Style. And inasmuch as the I AM had combined with himself another representation, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob,-He who came in the flesh thus stretches back his being: "Before Abraham was I AM."*

The earliest Antichrist directed its assault against this fact. It" denied that Christ was come in the flesh." Phantasma was supposed to have covered and beguiled all his acts and sufferings. The higher nature was allowed. But it was held incredible that his blood was really shed, and that he really died. Certain impressions, utterly fallacious, it was contended, were made upon the senses of beholders: He, it was argued, only seemed to be crucified. A power preserved him from the agony and strife and shame which had outward semblance: and his actual form was unsubstantial as his deeds and woes. The incarnation was considered as a cloud upon which appearances were reflected

No idiom will account for the frequent recurrence of this avowal, always without the pronoun, though our translators have generally added it. There is no necessity for one to be understood. In the quoted passage, they did not attempt it. It ought not to be supplied when He thrice proclaims himself in Gethsemane with such terrific effect. It is further vindicated. "I am the first and the last." "The Living being." The periphrasis of “¿ wv xa, i nv xai ò sexoμsvos" is the perfect Greek translation for the Jehovah, I, The ερχόμενος exceeds the simple idea of being. It seems to imply the infinite activity of the Divine Nature. It may answer to "ny.—Micah v. 2.

and images were drawn, which had all the effect of exciting attention, but which commanded no influence of living and personal events.

The argument, since this doctrine of the Shadow is not now seriously asserted, has fallen into disuse. None deny, so far as we have heard, that it was "His own body on the tree." We have principally to differ with the Psilanthropist who maintains that Christ was no more than man. Yet, in this matter, we may not be quite free from the ancient error. Are we satisfied with every statement of our Lord's humanity? Do we glory in its plain and frequent avowal? Do we embrace the avowal without regret, without limitation, without exception? Do we as greatly value the proofs that "He grew in wisdom," that he "learned obedience by the things which he suffered," that he "marvelled," that he "begun to be amazed," as the glimpses of a higher being? Do we receive with perfect conviction, and share with perfect gratulation, passages which speak of Jesus "a man approved of God," which declare that the judgment is committed to "that man whom He has ordained," which nakedly set forth that the one Mediator between God and man is "the man Christ Jesus?" We have marked a disposition to slur over these texts: a state of mind that evidently wished to extenuate them, and that would not have mourned their suppression. And the same error is repeated whenever our impressions of the Saviour's sufferings are attempered by the recollections of an impassive We are bound to conceive of them in their utmost severity, without abatement and relief. They were all that ordinary humanity can undergo. Every peculiarity of His human condition was but an increase and excitement of his griefs and pains. If, therefore, we are tempted to wish an abridgment of the testimonies to His manhood in its most certain truth, and in its most perfect comprehension of all that manhood, as we know it, involves, because we fear its incompatibleness with something which we otherwise maintain,-if we more lightly survey His privations, his conflicts, his tortures, his regard to life and his aversion to death, because of any relative considerations,—we need to be schooled again in this first principle of the doctrine

nature.