asy thing at any time--is
another permanent feature of Christian experience. The psychological
value of what Dr. Chalmers called "the expulsive power of a new
affection" is not enough studied by us. Look at the freedom, the
growth, the power of the Christian life--where do they all come
from? We cannot leave God out of this. At any rate, there they are
in the Christian experience; and where does anything that matters
flow from but from God? There is again the evidence of Christian
achievement; and it should be remarked that the Christian always
tells us that he himself has not the power, that it comes from God,
that he asks for it and God gives it. As for the easy explanation of
all religious life by "auto-suggestion," we may note that it
involves a loose and unscientific use of a more or less scientific
theory--never a very safe way to knowledge. In any case, it has been
pointed out, the word adds nothing to the number of our facts; nor
is it quite clear yet that it eliminates God from the story any more
than the term "digestion" makes it inappropriate to say Grace before
meat. All these things--peace, joy, victory, and the rest--follow
from the taking away of sin, and imply that it no longer stands
between God and man. All this is the work of the historical Jesus.
It is he who has changed the attitude of man to God, and by changing
it has made it possible for God to do what he has done. If God, in
Paul's phrase, "hath shined in our hearts" (2 Cor. 4:6), it was
Jesus who induced men to take down the shutters and to open the
windows. It is all associated, historically, with the ever-living
Jesus Christ, and with God in him.

This brings us to the central question, the relation of Jesus with
God--the problem of Incarnation. After all that has been said, we
shall not approach it "a priori". We are too apt to put the
Incarnation more or less in algebraic form:

x+y=a,

where a stands for the historical Jesus Christ, and x and y
respectively for God and man. But what do we mean by x and y? Let us
face our facts. What do we know of man apart from Jesus Christ?
Surely it is only in him that we realize man--only in him that we
grasp what human depravity really is, the real meaning and
implications of human sin. It is those who have lived with Jesus
Christ, who are most conscious of sin; and this is no mere morbid
imagination or fancy, it rests on a much deeper exploration of human
nature than men in general attempt. Not