The mystery of the Incarnation.
Christianity starts with a miracle. It is a miracle altogether so stupendous and so unique that its reception settles the whole question of the possibility of the miraculous. He who can believe that God shadowed himself to our apprehension in the likeness of a man, he who can recognize in the Babe of Bethlehem, both the Son of God and the Son of Mary, will find that no equal demand is ever afterwards made upon his faculty of faith. Both Testaments begin with a miracle. A world of order and beauty arising out of chaos is a miracle as truly as is the birth of a divinely human Saviour by the Divine overshadowing of Mary. We ask how these things were done, but the mystery eludes all human explanations. In the whole circle of causes yet searched out by man, there are none which help us to trace the mystery. We ask why, and then for us the mystery of wisdom and grace is allowed to unfold a little. Two influences affected the truth of the Incarnation in the time of the apostles—Judaism tended to overpress the mere humanity of Christ; Gnosticism tended to dissipate the humanity into a mere appearance.
I. ON WHAT PRINCIPLE is THE INCARNATION FOUNDED. It is essentially a revelation, and it rests upon the principle that man can only be taught the truth concerning God, and saved from his sins, by a revelation. Man is made a moral being by receiving a revelation of the will of God. Man is redeemed by receiving a revelation of the-mercy of God. What man precisely needs is a revelation of God's character; it must be shown to him in human spheres. That is the Incarnation, "God manifest in the flesh."
II. WHAT FORM DID THE INCARNATION TAKE? We may gain the best ideas by noticing what it was not.
1. God did not put on the mere appearance of humanity. This was the error of the Docetae. To correct this the evangelists give details of our Lord's birth into veritable humanity.
2. God did not assume to himself a human body. That is, he did not find a human body, and come into it, as the hermit-crab will find, and enter into, an empty shell. Scripture says he was made man.
3. God did not take any particular class or kind of humanity. He was just the world's Babe, the world's Man.—R.T.