revealed himself to men?" they would open the Scriptures and turn to the theophanies and the story of the burning bush from which he spake, saying, “I AM THAT I AM." But the boy would ask again, "Has he ever bowed the heavens to come down, so that men could behold him?" And they could only say, "No, never. He is the transcendent, the absolute, the invisible One."

And the boy of twelve in their midst was the incarnate God! A miracle? Yes; more wonderful than all others, yet the one miracle necessary to the welfare of man. Inexplicable? Yes; "great is the mystery of godliness, God is manifest in flesh;" yet no more inexplicable, in its last reduction, than any other divine work, as, for example, the union of Matter and Spirit in the human constitution. We gain nothing by too close scrutiny on the one hand, or by minimizing the mystery on the other. The fact itself is so closely interwoven with the fabric of the Scriptures that they become as meaningless as the unintelligible Oracles of Delphos unless we are prepared to say that Christ is

very God of very God." And just there he meets the necessity of the race. It is not enough to say, as the Ritschlians do, that the incarnation is merely a " value judgment" and that Jesus is God because to our inner consciousness he answers the purposes of God. You may paint a picture of the sun on a great canvas and cover it with radiations of gold; but no night is illuminated by it, no flower blooms under it, no shivering people warm themselves before it. Christ is not a pictured sun, but the veritable Sun of Righteousness with healing in his beams. He is "the brightness of the glory of God." The whole world feels his warmth;

in his light we see light; if he lay his quickening hand upon us we straightway cry," My Lord and my God!"

Second: Man. Here is the complementary problem. It was the business of the distinguished Rabbis in Gazith to solve it. They were anthropologists; they were familiar with metaphysics and ethics. The two schools of Hillel and Shammai, opposed in many particulars, were agreed in these: that man was originally created in the divine likeness, that he had fallen from his high estate through sin and that his chief concern is to regain his forfeited birthright.

The boy in their midst may have been moved to ask, "Has this recovery ever been realized? Is there an instance of one who has so far delivered himself from the bondage of sin as to enter fully into the inheritance of God?" And what could they say? If they mentioned Abraham, he would answer, "But did not the faith of Abraham, on occasion, fail him ?" If Noah, "Did he not lie drunken in the entrance of his tent?" If Moses, "Was he not betrayed by anger and so forbidden to enter the Land of Promise?" If David, "What means this cry from his closet on the housetop; 'Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness and according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions! For I have sinned and done evil in thy sight'?" They must have admitted that never once had there been an illustration of the Ascent of Man. The Lord looked down from heaven to see if there was any that wrought righteousness; and he sadly said, "There is none that doeth good, no not one!"

But the dream was realized in this boy of twelve. His birth was the descent of God; his life was the

ascent of man. Alone and solitary in a world of sinners, he was the Perfect One. There was no guile in his lips, no guile in his heart. The challenge of his later life was, "Who layeth anything to my charge?" And neither then nor during the succeeding centuries has there been any to accuse him.

The character of Jesus was as really the result of development as is the character of any common man. True, there was no inherent sin in him; but his circumstances were such as to make his conflict a very real one. It was one of the purposes of his human life to show how a man can get the better of his environment and keep himself unspotted from the world. But for this he might have come down from heaven a mature and perfect man. The monk Tauler, a Dominican mystic who wrote five hundred years ago, represents his advent in this wise:

There comes a galley laden,

A heavenly freight on board;
It bears God's Son, the Saviour,
The great Undying Word.

And proudly floats that galley,
From troubled coast to coast:

Its sail is love and mercy;

Its mast, the Holy Ghost.

Now earth hath caught the anchor,
The ship hath touched the strand;
God's Word, in fleshly garment,-
The Son,-steps out on land!

But had he appeared in such manner, he would have separated himself from all mankind by an omission of

the formative processes of life. In order that he might know and sympathize with our upward struggle, he must pass through it; wherefore it is written, "He grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man." At every stage of this development, however, he was the Sinless One. His was the development of a perfect nature limited by the conditions of a sinful world. It was like the development of a fountain, which is as perfect when it issues from the rock as when it rolls in a torrent to the sea. Or, like that of the oak, which is as perfect when it shoots from the acorn as when it lifts its mighty arms to grapple with the storm. Jesus was not hurt by his environment; sin never touched him. As child, youth, man, he was always sinless; and thus he stands as a perpetual illustration of the Ascent of Man.

Third: Reconciliation; the reconciliation of a holy God with sinful men. At this point Messiah enters, "the hope of Israel"; one hand clasping the hand of God and the other the hand of man. The earliest of Jewish writers called him "the Daysman"; that is, the Reconciler. The prophecy of his coming runs uninterruptedly through Holy Writ. It would be scarcely possible for a company of such learned Rabbis as sat in the Hall Gazith to refrain from discussing it.

The boy in their midst would ask, "Who is this Messiah? When he cometh, how will ye know him?" And they would answer, "He is to be King of Kings, 'great David's greater Son.' In the fulness of time. he will appear to deliver Israel; and he will reign in glory among us." The boy would ask, "What then is the meaning of this scripture, ‘A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call his name Immanuel,

which being interpreted is, Ciod with us'; or of this, 'He is a man of sorrows arid acquainted with grief, and we hid as it were our faces from him; he is wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, that by his stripes he may be healed; or what is the meaning of your sacrifices? Why is the blood of the Paschal lamb sprinkled on the lintel of every door and upon all th sacred things of the temple? Why this blood, blc od, blood everywhere?" And they could only say in their bewilderment, "It is written that if a man sin and bring a lamb without spot or blemish to the altar, his sin is taken from him." But how can the blood of a lamb atone for sin? How can it wash away the crimson stain? They knew not.

This boy of twelve was their Messiah; and they did not recognize him. He was the antitype of all their sacrifices. His was the blood that should cleanse from sin. Was he aware of his personality and mission? Aye; always. The realization of his mission began with dawning consciousness. He knew who he was, whence he had come and what his errand was. Else what did he mean when he said to his mother, "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" It is true that, in assuming mortal form, he emptied himself" of the outward tokens of his Godhood; but never for a moment in such manner as to become ignorant of his mission or impotent to perform it. He "laid his glory by," but never so that the scepter was not within reach, and never so that the shadow of the cross was not over him.

He returned to Nazareth after this incident and became an apprentice in Joseph's shop. As the years passed on, he grew in stature and wisdom and in favor