The conception of God as Father was not at all new. Malachi said, 'Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us?' Here he connects Creator and Father in one Person, and it is very certain that he saw that their Father meant the same kind of nature as God their Creator; and Isaiah says, 'Doubtless Thou art our Father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not; Thou, O Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer; Thy name is from everlasting.' In the book of Numbers, God is named 'the Father of the Spirits of all flesh.' Those words certainly expressed a vital union between God and man, and meant that God was more to them than a being beyond, or somewhere in a region far above them as a mere onlooker ; besides, there are references to the Spirit of God being a comfort, strength and joy to them, and also statements that God dwells in the humble and contrite heart.

Among the benighted heathen, in spite of their idol worship, there is a dim conception of a great Spirit being somehow in close connexion with men, and mysteriously controlling the material objects around them. This perception has its seat in man's spirit, and science cannot destroy it, but rather tends to show that spirit and thought are at the root of all things, as their formative matter and power.

No mere analysis in chemistry can show what matter is as an object of sense-perception. The words of the prophet still hold their ground in human reason, 'He hath made the earth by His power, he hath established the world by His wisdom, and hath stretched out the heaven by His understanding.' 'Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment'; 'that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and

spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in.' Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, they are created, and Thou renewest the face of the earth.' 'There is a spirit in man, the inspiration of the Almighty giveth Him understanding.' Touching the unity of the Divine and human, Christ, on different occasions, seems to have put the question, 'If David in spirit called Him Lord, how is He then his son?' He revealed to them a new and unexpected light in these words, and in other expressions from their own scriptures, bearing on this same doctrine of the identity of divine and human nature, and also on the question of the Trinity in unity. That Christ was both David's son and Lord, is the essence of Christianity and philosophy.

Hegel considers that the definition of God in what is called Deism, is a false view of God, whereas we have in Christianity, in which God is known as the Trinity, the rational notion of God. The real point here is that there could not be the relation of Father in time unless God is an Eternal Father of an Eternal Son. And why ?-because God could not be an Eternal Creator unless He was an Eternal Father creating the universe in and through the generation of an Eternal Son in His own image, an eternal incarnation; without a world God could not be God, He would only be an empty, void abstraction. To be God, He must be both Eternal Creator and Eternal Father. This is the teaching both of the Bible and of logical philosophy. The relation of Father and Son is a matter of general rational experience in time; and in this relation the identity of man with the eternal nature of God is proved from the nature of the Ego. As Hegel says, the Son is a necessary element in the true being of God.' This is how Christ, as man, is both 'David's son' and 'David's Lord'; and how Christ is 'Everlasting Father'; 'Immanuel-God with us.'

What is called 'the mystery of godliness, God manifested in the flesh,' is, with Paul, in perfect analogy with the mystery concerning Christ and the Church, parents and children, husband and wife. They are substantially all one flesh and spirit. He says, 'We are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.' For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery : but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.' For the Church is the Bride, the Lamb's wife. Paul tells us, 'He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,' just as 'there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.' Adam is called 'the son of God': thus God is at once his Creator and Father.

Of course, we are not taught that all men are one with God in the spirit of love and truth. Men may have their understandings darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them.' The Jews claimed to be both the children of God and of Abraham. According to their natural birth, they were still as rational moral beings the children of God and of Abraham, but in righteousness and holiness of faith and truth, they were spiritually children of neither. In this latter sense, Christ told them, 'Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.' In one sense He no more denied that they were children of God, than children of Abraham, yet he said, 'If ye were the children of Abraham, ye would do the works of Abraham.' On this ground Paul demands that men 'put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.' Thus, though man in his intellectual nature is a moral being 'in

the image of God,' he may be immoral in his character and require a great moral change of disposition; only a moral being can become immoral, for only a moral agent can know God. If man's eye is evil, his whole body is full of darkness, but if it is single, he is full of light.

The key for the right understanding of the nature of man, as related in the three first chapters of Genesis, is found in the nature of the Ego, because man is an Ego. Men, being the sons of God by creation, are capable of receiving the Spirit of His Son, which is the spirit of love, into their hearts, crying, ‘Abba, Father,' and of being restored to God's moral image of truth and love, for he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him, for God is love.' Herein we see that love is the identity of thought and feeling, subject and object, God, Christ, and man, and likewise the absolute nature of Christ as God-man, a fuller exposition of which is given in the next chapter.

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It will be seen that the exposition of the intellectual nature of man and Christ in their essential relation to God rest to a great extent on the same logical process. The chief difference is this: ' without a world, God is not God' (for without a world God could not be Eternal Creator), so without 'an Eternal Son' God could not be Eternal Father, nor Creator and Father in time, because the very idea of eternal creation rests on the logical threefold unity of the Godhead in three Persons, Father, Son, Spirit. Viewed otherwise, God would be only an empty, truthless abstraction. An abstract God is no God. In Christianity God is known as concrete Spirit, not as a Being outside of the world and outside of self-consciousness. As Spirit He is actual self-consciousness in man's spirit.

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CHAPTER IX

CHRIST THE GOD-MAN

E take it for granted that no one refuses to believe that Christ was really and truly a man. He claimed to be in His personality essentially and absolutely one with God, as God-man. The great question, then, is, How can Christ as God-man be presented as a logically demonstrated truth? The knowledge of this can only be realized in the human consciousness by a proper understanding of the personality of Christ as God's eternal Son.

The greatest, deepest and most comprehensive problem in philosophy is, What is Personality? We have already stated that if this can be logically and satisfactorily answered we are furnished with a key whereby all other mysteries can be ultimately unlocked. A mystery is not something which is, in its nature, unknowable; it is only a mystery to man so long as it is unknown to him. When properly explained and brought into the light of the intuitive, reflective and logical understanding, then it ceases to be a mystery. It is well known that human thought has discovered and brought to the clear light of the human understanding many of the once-hidden mysteries of nature. We are told in the Bible that the deepest mystery of Christianity itself, the mystery of God, of the Father, and of Christ, was hidden for ages and generations, but is now made manifest to