132 Some Implications of the Incarnation [CH. 



aside even the perfection of manhood at its then stage, 

 and through the act of His Will, identified Himself com- 

 pletely with fallen manhood. His own manhood re- 

 mained perfect, but He laid it aside, ceased to experience 

 it, and so identified Himself wholly and completely with 

 the human race as it actually was. We can therefore 

 be entirely united with His experience, we can pass 

 through death with Him ; and because His own manhood 

 was perfect, and so not alienated from God, with Him 

 man passes into union with God. 



At first sight this view may appear to be tinged with 

 docetism. It may be said that we are making the sub- 

 stantial reality of His manhood an appearance only, 

 not a reality, when we claim that He only identified, 

 Himself with isolated manhood. The answer to this 

 objection is twofold. In the first place we contend that 

 He did actually, and not merely in appearance, experi- 

 ence manhood, becoming in very fact man ; perfect man, 

 however, yet with all a man's possibilities of failure and 

 imperfection. There is nothing docetic in this. In the 

 second place He identifies Himself with fallen manhood, 

 even though He Himself is the perfection of manhood, 

 by an exercise of His own Will. His Will makes Him 

 Man in the great kenosis of the Incarnation; His Will 

 makes Him experience man's isolation from God, though 

 He is not isolated in His own nature. And note that 

 this is a real isolation, and not an appearance only. 

 Through the penetrability of perfect humanity He can 

 enter into, and take His stand at, the position of the 

 sinner, making the sinner's experience His own, while 

 yet He remains Himself 1 . And the converse process, 

 which completes identification, the sinner making the 

 experience of Christ his own, we have held to complete 

 the essential moment of the process of atonement, man 



1 See the discussion on penetrability in Evolution and Spiritual 

 Life, ch. vi. 



