iv] Some Implications of the Incarnation \ 47 



useful out of the storehouse of memory, to meet some 

 eventuality, and yet have resigned His Godhead and 

 become completely man? 



Unquestionably, any of the views we have suggested 

 leaves us faced with a very grave difficulty, and one 

 which we cannot really solve. Perhaps we cannot do 

 more than say He must have been Perfect Man, and that 

 the record seems to show that such memoriesdid exist for 

 Him, during His earthly life, leaving all possibility of solu- 

 tion on one side. It is possible, of course, that the re- 

 cords wrongly import some of His own post-resurrection 

 teaching into the years of His ministry. But it is at 

 best a supposition a pis-atter. Again, one may say 

 that the whole process of the Incarnation is outside our 

 understanding, and that things which seem incompati- 

 ble to man may not really be so to God. But this evad- 

 ing of the issue is even less satisfactory than the last. 

 Even God cannot make a contradiction true, and it is 

 exactly a contradiction with which we seem to be faced. 

 True, opposites may be reconciled in a higher synthesis, 

 but the higher synthesis of Manhood and Godhead is 

 transcendent union, which is precisely what we do not 

 want here. We are concerned with Christ's Manhood, 

 and His Manhood alone, in the present connection. 

 Let us then attack the problem from the side of ordinary 

 manhood, as we have done before, and follow further 

 an argument we adumbrated a few pages back. 



Men are intuitively conscious of union with God. In 

 some sense the kingdom of heaven is within them here 

 and now. They are conscious that they share the activi- 

 ties of a Spirit that is higher than themselves, and that 

 they have a life that is not purely material. In Christ 

 this intuition must have been far freer and purer; and 

 one can readily believe that it extended to the realisa- 

 tion of real and complete union with the Father, except 

 in the timeless moment of isolation. With the complete- 



