incarnation is seen at a glance; for the former, at best, were mythical incarnations of beauty and power, sometimes of passion, carnal and evanescent; the latter is a real incarnation, a divine embodiment of purity and love. In Prometheus we see strength of will, in Apollo beauty and wisdom; but in Christ we see "all the fulness of the Godhead." The former were symbols and myths, the latter is "God manifest in the flesh."

But what do we mean by an incarnation? Not the limitation, or humanization, (forgive the word,) of an infinite Essence, for that is impossible; but the special presence, energy, or manifestation of that Essence, itself boundless and unutterable, in an exterior human form. It is thus that God reveals himself in all outward things, though here in Christ, by a special impersonation. Each spring, however, is but a "renewing," by means of a spiritual presence beneath the surface," of the face of the earth." The poor Indian sees the Great Spirit in the thunder cloud; we ourselves devoutly acknowledge him as the light and life of all we see. The heavens and earth are. his garment, according to the lyric poetry of the Hebrews, the outer costume in which he robes himself.* The doctrine of a presence in nature, belongs not merely to the

Psalm civ.

ology, but to science. And what is that idea of presence but the prelude, or intimation of a more specific advent, or presence among men? Why should not the Deity become visible before our eyes? Why should not the infinite Spirit, as well as the finite spirit, be capable of an embodiment? Certainly, with all our science and mechanism, our outward notions and carnal views, we cannot be averse to this; for as a matter of fact, the spiritual comes into this world only as a birth-the soul is born into the joys and sufferings of this material sphere, of this carnal and mortal life. Spirit is ever superior to matter- comes to it, not from it. It is a cause, not an effect; a power independent and immortal; an essential and vital force, created, indeed, but still essential and vital, which wills and acts, in and through the material organization. sensual philosophers teach that it is not primary, but secondary, a mere product of mechanism, or organization, evolved, as some of them say, from the action of the body, like the electric or magnetic forces from a common battery, and so passes away with the organism which gave it birth. But this is to confound cause and effect and not only so, but it is to confound cause and occasion; for even the electrical or magnetic machine may simply supply the occasion or me dium through which acts that all but spiritual

The

force which we call electricity or magnetism. But the soul is a productive cause a dweller in

the body, controlling that body, and using it for its purposes, by the force of its original will. Besides, we are plainly taught in the word of God, that the spirit was imparted to the bodily organization, when formed and fitted for its dwellingplace, and that the spirit through that body communicates with the external world of forms. Spirit, then, is superior, not inferior or posterior to the body; and thence is a proper incarnation.* Every man coming into the world, by birth, comes into it just as Jesus did; and the only difference between them is, that the one comes as a spirit finite and feeble, because created and dependent, the other as a spirit infinite and immortal, because uncreated and divine. Besides, 'that spirit of ours, made visible in human form, though dependent and limited, is vastly more than the body; it is, so to speak, of grander dimensions, of more stupendous powers. And yet, there it gleams through its narrow dwelling, there it loves and acts, grows and expands in its

* If any one prefers to say that the body is first created, or produced, and that then the soul is given to it by a divine act, be it so; the force of the argument remains the same. But the vital force and interior spirit one would think necessary to the very possibility of organization and growth. Our own opinion is, that though created by God, spirit is first, and that it is necessary to human exist

ence.

fleshly tabernacle, from which, by and by, sublimated and glorified by the change which men call death, it will pass, once more, into the spiritual and immortal state.

Why, then, should it be thought a thing incredible that the Divinity should become incarnate, that the eternal Spirit should take up his dwelling, and perform his high work for humanity, in the limited, but fitting form of the man Jesus Christ? Nay, is not this the most natural, the most credible thing in the universe? What were a body without a soul? and what were Christ without the indwelling God? What, on the other hand, were the soul to us without the body; and what to us even the invisible God, without the manifestation of himself in the man Jesus Christ? We might have known him dimly and distantly, as the heathen know him, but never as we now know him, the Father, the Friend, the Redeemer of us all.

In the estimation of the sceptic and the worldling, the advent of Christ may seem a small event; nay, more, a thing impossible and incredible. "Yet it was the turning-point of the world's history," as Schelling, the greatest of the modern German philosophers, cheerfully avows. the "Day-star" from on high visited us. the "Sun of righteousness arose with healing in

Then

Then

his wings." Then sprang to life a form of civilization, which was to penetrate the nations with an invisible but resistless force, and which, at the present time, as Jouffroy, one of the clearest and profoundest thinkers of the French eclectic school, has demonstrated, is the only thing active and diffusive in society, constituting, in fact, what Vinet terms the gravitation of the moral world.*

Thus the birth of Christ, insignificant in its seeming, was inexpressibly great in its reality. Apparently the advent of a simple child, it was the incarnation of the Godhead. A mere incident, in an obscure corner of the earth, which disturbed neither the course of nature nor the course of society, it was the origin of untold revolutions, the beginning of a new civilization and a new religion, of a new world and a new heaven. No wonder, then, that it was hymned by angels, as was the creation of the world at first, when the morning stars sung together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy. Not only on the plains of Bethlehem resounded the glad acclaim, but in the realms of glory. For as soon as the news was announced to the shepherds, "suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying, Glory

* See Jouffroy's Melanges Philosophiques; Vinet's Essais de Philosophie Morale, p. 189,