ing Himself in the flesh, and living our life, and dying our death. Already of our nature, He took our flesh, "that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb. ii. 14, 15). "He suffered, being tempted, that He might succour those that are tempted" (Heb. ii. 18); and that we might know that "we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are," and might "therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb. iv. 15, 16). It has been observed above (Chap. II. sect. 7) how the human life of God, the child of a human household, the intimate of human families, the equal associate of human labours, trials, griefs, and pleasures, made the long-used revealing names of father, husband, physician, shepherd, &c., no longer symbolical terms of indefinite though exceeding great love, but the representatives and assurances of degrees and manners of loving-kindness familiar, particular, definitely present to the thoughts, the coin of that manner of affection which is needed by and lived upon by man. The short life of Jesus of Nazareth engraved the reality of God's human love upon the imagination and the memory of man. The incarnation made the heavenly Father of prodigal man known and His love appreciable, familiarly understood, beyond all that believers previously could represent to themselves as the love of God's fatherhood; even as the meaning of His name Jehovah had been made "known" to Moses and Israel as even Abraham had not known it. John's words as to the Christian revelation remind us of that old advance of man to "know Jehovah. No man hath seen God at any time; the onlybegotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him" (John i. 18). Paul's words point out the greatness of that advance in faith's possessions: "Great is the mystery of godliness, who was manifested in the flesh, was justified in the Spirit, was seen of angels, was preached among the nations, was believed on in the world, was received up into tion with man. glory" (1 Tim. iii. 16). It was looked back upon by those to whom it came as that which-" we have seen with our eyes, and have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life" (1 John i. 1); "no cunningly-devised fable of the power of the Lord Jesus;" "we were eyewitnesses of His majesty, . . . when there came such a voice from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; and this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with Him in the holy mount" (2 Pet. i. 16-18). Progress of 28. The nearness with which the incarnation brought God's identificalove to the comprehension of mankind, like all preceding revelations of the great fact that "God so loved the world," advanced through progressive steps-His showing Himself theirs in nature-His making Himself one of them by their own family relationships-His taking their position in the troubles of their condition in every way that could assure them of His being one who could have a feeling of their infirmities. The last perfecting completing act of His incarnated love was so much in advance of all that had gone before, as to mark a new stage in God's coming nearer to mankind. It unveiled the perfectness of His taking His guilty offspring to Himself which faith needed to have for its peace. Human ways of thinking could come up to believe in great compassion, very tender love from so self-accommodating love as God had first declared under so expressive names, and then made actually visible in a human life; but it may be doubted if human ways of thinking could get rid of fear on account of guilt. In man's experience even a parent's love cannot ward off retribution; and penitence always needs more than compassion and sympathy; it needs a salvation by restoration or deliverance. In the finishing act of the work of holy saving love to man which God had set before Himself faith was invited to look upon a new sight. In that act God advanced, as if passing over a great boundary, beyond all purely objective transitive love, all even His richly-furnished love of compassion, tenderness, even sympathy with man; and became suffering guilty man Himself as much as one person could in these respects become another. He took man's place as Him self willingly the bearer of the consequences of his sin. He approached man more and more tenderly before to comfort and assure him; He became one with him in the last otherwise impassable stage of his escape from his fallen state; becoming" sin for us " (2 Cor. v. 21), "a curse for us," to redeem us from the law's curse (Gal. iii. 13). "As it is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and unto them that wait for Him shall He appear the second time without sin unto salvation" (Heb. ix. 27, 28). "Christ hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God" (1 Pet. iii. 18). In that going beyond all objective appearance of love, that perfectness of showing Himself one with the object of His saving grace, He was "lifted up so as to draw all men unto Him." The most guilty, fallen, frightened penitent could thenceforth think of the saving love he had to trust to as being as assured, as thoroughly protective to him, as if his father, healer, comforter, judge in one were loving, thinking for, suffering for, providing for no worm of the dust but for Himself. That substitutionary death passed through by God-man, and His rising again when the work given Him to do was finished, gave defined clearness and logical assurance of reality to the vision of faith unveiled by Him immediately before He went forth to that death: "Because I live ye shall live also" (John xiv. 19). human 29. A strange but impressive illustration of this identifying Peculiar Himself with sinful condemned man is presented to faith's ancestry thoughts by the particular human ancestry through which the of Jesus. Messiah appeared as the Son of man. In no way, perhaps, so fitted to satisfy our needed thought of His becoming one with us could He who " was made sin for us, though He knew no sin," have taken our fleshly state upon Himself. His bodily life was a link in a chain of human nature which contained the most illustrious cases of man's imperfect faith and holiness, but contained also the grossest human corruptions— viz., incest, adultery, and murder; and the greatest human shortcoming in or sin against faith-viz., heathenism near religious light and apostasy from known truth. The Amorite The Propitiation. ties from Rahab, and the Moabite Ruth, the latter of a race debarred to the tenth generation from the congregation of Israel (Deut. xxiii. 3), were in the ancestry of His flesh as well as the mothers of Israel. The blood of Tamar and Bathsheba, as well as of Mary, of Ahaz as well as of Abraham, flowed in His veins. He was the son of Manasseh as well as of David, the descendant of Egypt and Canaan as well as of the chosen people. He came after the flesh through moral disgrace as well as honoured virtue; a representative of fallen human nature, universal as mankind could have wished for, but could not have dared to think of; yet perhaps only such as was needed to be the trust of the poor and needy, the sin-stained and despised—the substitute and elder brother of all ranks of earthly condition, and all diversities of moral estate in the "seed" which "He took up" or undertook for (Heb. ii. 16). 30. Difficulties have been imported into the question of the Philosophi- propitiation oppressive to a good man's subjective notions of cal difficul- God's goodness, by an unphilosophical assumption of a distincoverdrawn tion between the individuality of the heavenly Father and analogy. that of the only-begotten Son, such as would admit an element of antagonism so far as if a righteous father were exacting punitive satisfaction from an innocent son for the faults of guilty brethren. It is impossible to place the Father and the Son of Scripture language thus, two historical persons distinct in individuality as are the most united human father and son. Historically, the Father and the Son are one (John xiv.), and the Father is in fact suffering, in fact Himself meeting the penalty of His guilty children's sins; an idea which suggests no moral difficulties. We cannot explain to our human ways of thinking how the Father and the Son can be one, and yet make two so distinct ideas as Scripture presents to us; but we are carefully taught to keep their unity in mind, and that fact obviates all obnoxious antagonisms. To our faith, to our power to think with comfort of our transgressions being blotted out by ample satisfaction, the assurance is given to be as great as if a father should lay on a willing son the unavoidable penalty incurred by a helpless one. Scripture speaks clearly as if the divine Father laid on His only divine Son the iniquities of us His human children, who were without strength. We cannot understand the manner in which such action could be, as if it were between two separate identities; only the grace to us bringing salvation is to be as sure as if we could understand all, and we are to believe that love, and return to our waiting Father in penitence, and trust and believe, seeing in this how He "loved the world." with man's 31. But if we study the saving love of God to man as it is God's sufferings of historically set before us in the Word, the sufferings arising in fatherhood the divine relationship because of man's sin, and those under- the same taken in it to make an end of man's sin, are things of a kind experience. familiar to the comprehension of human love; and should be effectual in impressing their declared lesson upon human feelings-the impossibility of God simply ignoring sin, passing it by from mercy, even to those most beloved by Him. God's love to man, from His creation to His everlasting redemption of him, we are to think of as all being "in His Son," man's creator, providence, peacemaker, hope of glory, and judge; and God's education of the world to faith, presented from the beginning to mankind's thoughts, both through experience and revelation, this particular suffering because of sin—the sufferings of fatherhood. Historically, and in no metaphor, sin had cost Him bereavement of His created son, man, Adam and his seed, whom He had made in His own likeness to indulge His love unconfined upon him, His own nature placed in a home of its own—another heaven to the heavenly Father. And the peculiar suffering was set before man's eyes through all the course of his training to true thoughts, as human nature's (i. e., the communicated nature's) most remarkable misery in connection with sin; while it arises, as if a thought inherent in that nature, into fearful prominence in man's own thoughts of expiation. The first pains of outward death which Adam reaped as the wages of his sin, was the violent death of a good son by the crime of a bad one. That blood of Abel, at the beginning of human history, was a writing which was to be brought into clear significance in the fulness of times, when the blood of God's own well-beloved Son, shed by His brethren, was to speak better things-words of forgiveness and congru |