Article March 7, 1908 Issue

FROM OUR EXCHANGES

with contributions from George R. Varney, Paul Winthrop Brown

[The Church Standard.]

The Eternal Son was not manifested in a man, but as a man,—in a real personal manhood; therefore the Incarnation is to be taken in earnest. Bodily, intellectually, morally, spiritually, he was human like ourselves.... He learned by effort and increased in understanding and wisdom. He felt and thought and pondered. He communed with nature, and studied the Scriptures, and absorbed ideas, just like one of ourselves.

His moral advance was similarly natural and human. He was innocent, but he learned obedience; he was sinless, but not at the beginning perfect in righteousness. He was free in will and he used his freedom; he was tempted and remained true; he believed and prayed and struggled until he became the captain of our salvation—but he was perfect only at the end of his course, just like one of ourselves. Spiritually, too, he was not as fully conscious of his Sonship during his infancy as at the close of his ministry. He needed and received grace, and increased in favor with God. He grew in the knowledge of the Father and in consciousness of himself in the ordinary gradual way, the incident at his twelfth year and the occasion of his baptism apparently being notable stages in his realization of his relation to God and man. But the sense of the meaning of all these things came to him step by step, just as it would have happened to us if we had been the very image of the thing which God destined us to be.

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