CH. iv] Some Implications of the Incarnation \ 1 7 



ing were dissevered whblly from the prophetic tradition. 

 God took the form of man, not manhood itself. 



Happily, in England, the last quarter of a century 

 has seen a great change a return to the doctrine of 

 Kenosis which is emphatic in St John and St Paul, 

 traceable in Irenaeus, fundamental in Luther, and over- 

 developed in igth century German theology 1 . We see 

 the Godhead now in Christ become true Man, accepting 

 all the limitations of manhood in order to make the 

 fellowship of man with God complete and eternal. We 

 see the Christ, not disgraced by the limitations of 

 humanity, but pointing the divinity of manhood's 

 spirit. We see His Godhead, not in His miracles, but in 

 His teaching, and above all in His personality; we know 

 it within ourselves through the sense of union*with God 

 which acceptance of Him brings; we know it in the fall- 

 ing away of the burden of sin. 



Yet even to-day, though we recognise that no atone- 

 ment could have been wrought if Christ had not emptied 

 Himself of Godhead, accepting the full limitations of 

 fallen manhood, we hardly yet realise the complete 

 meaning of what we say, and its deep significance for 

 the relations between the Transcendent God and an 

 evolving world for the doctrine of the Holy Trinity 

 and the doctrine of Immanence. Our purpose in the 

 present chapter is to try to search out something of this 

 meaning, as far as one or two of the leading facts of 

 evolution and of human psychology are concerned. 



Jesus was born a child, as man is born a child (we 

 will for the moment leave on one side the question of 

 the Virgin Birth). Now a human child, in passing 

 through its embryonic development, recapitulates, in 

 brief and incompletely, the whole history of its evolu- 

 tion. Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny, is the form of 

 statement of this Law of Von Baer familiar to students 

 1 Cf. Mackintosh, The Person of Jesus Christ. 



