nature were transubstantiated into the Divine, then all that temptation, all that conflict with evil, all that agony and effort, all that "prayer and supplication, with strong crying and tears," all that "learning of obedience by the things which he suffered,”—all was unreal (for the Divine Nature is impassible). And what then? Why this : that we have no high priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, in all points tempted like as we are, though sinless. Ah! what a loss to us if this were really so! But, thank God, it is not so. And the Church was guided so to define Christ's nature and incarnation as to preserve to us the faith to which we cling.'

One short verse in our Athanasian Creed sums up the clear teaching of Scripture on this point :-" Perfect God and perfect Man." We must mark well and try to grasp this double truth :—

(1.) He who was born of a woman, and suffered and died on the cross was perfect God (therefore we are redeemed).

(2.) He who is now at God's right hand, making intercession for us, is perfect man (therefore we have a Mediator).2

On these two vital truths, that the Son of God assumed human nature to die for us, and in that same

1 The Apollinarian heresy was condemned at the Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381; the Nestorian heresy at the Council of Ephesus, A. D. 431; the Eutychian heresy at the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451.

2 For an explanation of what Theologians call "communicatio idiomatum," see the extract from St. Augustine's Epistle to Dardanus, given in the Appendix, p. 263.

human nature is now interceding for us, hang all our hope and all our comfort.

We have endeavoured to set forth briefly the doctrines of our Lord's Divinity and of His Incarnation.

To some the mystery of the Father and the Son being one God may seem greater than the mystery of the Son's Incarnation, and yet surely it is not so when we come to consider it. The difficulty of conceiving how two persons should be one in substance without loss of individuality, is not really greater than the difficulty of conceiving the converse, how two substances (the Divine and human natures of our Lord) should be combined in one person, each substance retaining its distinctness. Only this last appears to us easier of apprehension, because (as the Athanasian Creed reminds us) we are familiar with something of the same kind in ourselves, our body and soul forming one person, yet remaining distinct, as all true physiology teaches.

Indeed the facts which the Church asks us to believe about God's nature are not more mysterious than the facts which the philosopher is compelled to admit respecting his own nature. Science is obliged to acknowledge mystery. What is matter? A mystery. What is

life or soul? A mystery.

"A

What is God's nature? We can only answer, mystery," albeit theological science, having the inestimable aid of revelation, has been able to define this last mystery with far greater precision than natural science has yet attained in defining those other mysteries.

Now let us gather up the four grand truths, which

the first four Councils of the Church established, and which the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds embody. We are, from childhood, so familiar with the words which convey them, that they enter into all our thoughts. about our Lord; and sometimes, perhaps, we forget that we owe them not to the Apostles' Creed, but to the Nicene, and still more to the Athanasian Creed.

I. The first truth is this: that Christ is God in the very highest sense, and may therefore be worshipped without any surrender or compromise of our belief that there is but one God.

II. The second truth is this: that though Christ be thus essentially one with His Father, yet is He personally distinct, standing to Him from all eternity in the relation of a Son. Therefore, while we believe Him to be God, we need not surrender our faith that He is our Intercessor.

III. The third truth is this: that it was none other than this eternal Son of God who was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, thus becoming a second Adam, in whom mankind is created anew.

IV. The fourth truth is this; that this human nature thus exalted to the right hand of God in the person of Christ remains a perfect human nature, not merged and lost in the Divine, but retaining all its human sympathies and all its human associations.1

1 Hooker sums up the four dogmas in four words :—“ ¿λŋ0ŵs, teλéws, àdiaipétws, dovyxúτws, truly, perfectly, indivisibly, distinctly; the first applied to His being God, and the second to His being Man, the third to His being of both One, and the fourth to His still continuing in that one Both."-Ecc. Pol. v. liv. 10.

CHAPTER III.

The Doctrine of the Atonement.

FROM the doctrine of Christ's Person we pass on to

the doctrine of Christ's work. And by the work of Christ we mean that portion of His work on which alone the Creeds insist, namely, His work of suffering and death. It is most noticeable that both the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds pass at once from the mention of the Nativity to the mention of the Sufferings and Death. All between,-Christ's Baptism, Ministry, Teaching, Miracles,-drop out, and find no mention in our Creeds. The essential work, on which our faith is centred, is His Death. On this let us now fix our thoughts.

The death of Christ! When we wish to speak of this -we poor sinful men speaking of an act of God on which depends our eternal weal or our eternal woe-it may well seem to many that any mere doctrinal statement of it must be cold and hard even to profaneness! All our words should shape themselves into prayers or hymns of adoration; our only attitude should be that of worship; and indeed we cannot be too mindful that "to speak of these things merely in the way of explanation, without stopping to dwell more fully on the thoughts and feel

ings which they ought to awaken, may seem almost to encourage that dangerous habit of listening unconcernedly with unmoved consciences to truths which should be most humbling and most awakening." Still it is not

less true, that the more we try to understand God's deeper dealings with mankind, the more we shall know of His goodness and wisdom, and the more reasonable will be the service that we render Him. So, certainly, seems St. Paul to have thought when he wrote, "I will pray with the Spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also."2

With all reverence then let us seek to enter into the deeper revelations of God's Word respecting that Death of Christ in which the Creeds intend us to find His chief work for man.

And this is first to be observed, that any view of Christ's redeeming work which finds it in His life, rather than in His Death, is out of harmony with the Creeds and with Scripture. For our Creeds are here in accord with the four Gospels. Of the space occupied by the Gospel narrative about one-third is given to the

1 Arnold's Sermons on the Epistle to the Romans.

2 I Cor. xiv. 15. How nobly does Bishop Butler express his conviction that Scripture is rational, though not rationalistic: "Let reason be kept to and if any part of the Scripture account of the Redemption of the world by Christ can be shown to be really contrary to it, let the Scripture, in the name of God, be given up; but let not such poor creatures as we go on objecting against an infinite scheme, that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of all its parts, and call this reasoning."-Analogy, ii. 5.