than man; and therefore when He purposed to constitute a new head of the race, He actually made it on the first plan. But whereas the first man was made only in the image and likeness of God, the second man was God Himself, the Lord from heaven. Jesus Christ adopted a remarkable method in the treatment of His own humanity; He challenged men to destroy it, and He would raise it up again in three days; He said that it was His Father who did the works, at the very moment that He was in the act of doing them Himself ; He said that He came from God and went to God. So the alphabetic letter says—“I am but a form, a medium; I do not give wisdom, the Spirit which I represent gives life and understanding: the wise man uses me, and so does the fool, yet how different the spirit of the one from the spirit of the other! When the eyes of your understanding are enlightened you will see me as I really am, and then, having seen me, you have seen my spirit and meaning also." The treatment of His personal humanity which Jesus Christ adopted was more needful and important than may at first sight appear. Why did He so carefully separate it from godhead? Why did He show His exhaustion, His hunger, and weakness to the men who were round about Him, and openly say that He had not where to lay His head? Because it is in human nature to worship itself, and to look no farther than the range of its own power and wisdom. From the very beginning this has been its On this temptation "Ye shall be as gods." ground, therefore, it became Him who was the second Adam, and the head of a new race, to define the proper limits of human nature, to separate the formal from the essential, and to be for ever pointing men away from the physical and the visible to Him who is a Spirit and must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. Jesus Christ was so careful to assert His proper humanity, that he called Himself by no less singular a name than "the Son of man," a name which is not only most distinctive, but one which by its very delicacy admits of easy perversion and impoverishment. Its meaning would be destroyed were it a son of man, or the son of a man. The fact is, the name so precisely expresses what it was intended to convey, that it cannot be re-arranged or varied in any degree without sustaining injury and dishonour. If we want God's idea of man we must go back to the creation of Adam, (God created Adam [man] in His own image, in the image of God created He him), and then the name "Son of man" will be equal to son of Adam, and the meaning of the name will probably be that Jesus Christ was, merely as regarded His bodily manifestation, what the son of Adam would have been had the estate of innocence been retained. That is to say, he was God's ideal of humanity realised in all points; as human as any other man yet without sin, really and properly human, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, Р 四 WE are so accustomed to connect the word "mira- ee byy much surgery on be momentarily been taken from her dominion. The lame man was restored, but in the long run nature smote him with a deadlier infirmity. The dead body was reanimated, but nature waited and won. Let this be thoughtfully observed, as not only explaining the cessation of what is called the "age of miracles," but as showing the worthlessness of the physical wonders which once made men wild with much astonishment. Jesus Christ did no physical miracle which remains until this day: lameness, blindness, deafness, are still at hand, and the sea is as noisy as if He had never spoken to it. In effect, Jesus said about His own mighty signs and wonders, “You see that these things do not satisfy you. I no sooner do one miracle than you ask Me to do another, and the more miracles I do the greater is your bewilderment, and not a whit E the less is your scepticism. Now let Me tell you the i meaning of what I do, and so lead you away from the outward to the inward-from the sign to the thing signified. I have healed, for a while, your lameness, blindness, and dumbness, but all your physical disadvantages will recur with aggravation n the hour and article of death. The thing I aim is spiritual restoration, spiritual completeness, biritual immortality. I have come to give you fe, and to give it more abundantly; and if you iss this meaning of My miracles, your vague and multuous wonder will do nothing for you. I gave u bread in the desert, but you must eat Myself you would hunger no more. My Father giveth A and in all points temptable though invulnerable. beautiful condescension this, on the part of God; coming all the way to us, and actually laying hold of our very nature. And a marvellous answer to the difficulty of sin! An answer after this fashion "Sin has brought human nature into captivity and death, and so far has to all appearance successfully challenged my divine dominion; I first set up humanity in my own image and likeness, and sin has defaced the work of my hands. But the day shall be surely turned upon the enemy: through this self-same humanity shall come redemption and immortality, and the serpent shall be crushed by the seed of the woman,-the Son of man shall be the Saviour of man, and human nature shall thus be protected from the charge of weakness and failure." So it can only be a false theology which puts into a secondary place the proper human nature of Jesus Christ. separate ourselves from His most helpful influences by magnifying His divinity at the expense of His humanity; and by our very eagerness to worship His godhead we exclude that subtle and tender sympathy by which He seeks to get His first hold of our confidence and love. We are, too, tempted to narrow the term Godhead, and to set up unitarianism on another than the common basis; that is, we are so vigorous in our assertion of the proper Deity of Jesus Christ, that we overlook both the Father and the Spirit. Probably the principal reason why the humanity of Jesus Christ We |