every fault is a virtue set amiss; and
the very faults of men have in them something that interprets the
power and will of God, as the very faults of a boy interpret the
virtues of his father. All through the Old Testament God manifests
Himself through human experience. He speaks in the hearts of men; He
dwells in the experience of men; He interprets Himself through the
life of men; and, finally, when this one selected nation which has a
genius for spiritual truth has been so far educated that there is no
danger that it will go back and worship man, that it will become a
mere hero-worshiper, when it has been so far educated that there is no
danger of that, then Jesus Christ comes into the world--God manifests
Himself in human life.

Who, then, is Jesus Christ? Let John tell us. The Oriental world was
puzzled about the question of the origin of evil. They said, in brief,
a good God cannot make a bad world. Out of a good God, therefore,
there have emanated other gods, and out of these gods other gods,
until at last there came to be imperfect gods or bad gods. And the
world was made, some of them said, partly by a good god and partly by
a bad one; and others by an imperfect god who was an emanation of the
perfect one. Of these emanations one was Life, another was Light,
another was the Word. And John, writing in the age of Oriental
philosophy, uses the phraseology of Oriental philosophy in order that
he might tell mankind who and what Jesus Christ is. "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was God." God never was an abstraction;
from the very beginning He was a speaking God, a living God, a
manifesting God, a forth-putting God. "The same was in the beginning
with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not
anything made that was made. And this Word became flesh and dwelt
among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten
of the Father), full of grace and truth." Let me put this into
modern language. What is it but this? From eternity God has been a
manifesting God. When the fulness of time came, God, that He might
manifest Himself to His children, came into a human life and dwelt
in a human life. He that had spoken here through one prophet, there
through another prophet; He that had sent one message in this
direction and another in that; He that had spoken through signs and
tokens, as the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says, in divers
manners and in fragmentary utterances--when