1 20 Some Implications of the Incarnation [CH. 



overshadowed, however, by a feeling of the nearness of 

 God, due in large measure to the fact that imagination 

 plays so large a part in child-life that the unseen is as 

 real as the seen, as long as the imaginative stage lasts. 



Then comes the time when facts have to be corre- 

 lated. This is often a time of scepticism, or at least a 

 time of doubt, when there seems little to link spiritual 

 teaching with practical facts. And finally, arising out of 

 this comes the stage of fuller spiritual experience. (As 

 with all generalisations, individual cases often occur 

 which refuse to fall into line; facts are obstinate 

 things. But in the main what we have said is true.) 



Now, if we accept the true humanity of Christ, if we 

 believe in His Incarnation in any real sense; we must 

 believe that He went through the same stages of physi- 

 cal development as an ordinary child does. As we hope 

 to show, there is nothing irreverent, but rather some- 

 thing singularly beautiful, singularly helpful and sug- 

 gestive, in the knowledge that He, like ourselves, 

 passed through a protozoan-stage, a shark-stage, and 

 the rest. But dare we draw the line even here? Does 

 not our mind urge us to make the plunge, to say that He 

 must have gone through all the psychical, the mental 

 and spiritual, stages of familiar childhood, as well as the 

 physical? May not our boldness bring a great reward 1 ? 

 For the course of boldness is the course of honesty. If 

 we really mean that Christ was Very Man we must be 

 honest with our own thought, nor fear the truth that 

 comes. Must we not say that in mind and spirit Christ 

 passed through the stages of primitive man just as any 

 child passes through these stages, though at each stage 

 He showed Himself the highest possible manifestation 

 of that stage? Must we not admit that the full realisa- 



1 Take, for example, the singular freshness and beauty and 

 stimulus of Glover's The Jesus of History, in which the humanity 

 of Our Lord is treated as really human. 



