1 70 Some Implications of the Incarnation [CH. 



propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He 

 himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to suc- 

 cour them that are tempted." "We have not a high- 

 priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our 

 infirmities." 



This it is that is the glory of the Christian certainty, 

 that we know that all our Saviour's human past endures, 

 not as transcendent memory an impossible thing, 

 since memory is directed towards activity in the con- 

 ditions of limitation 1 but as an ever-present reality of 

 eternal Manhood. 



Before leaving this part of our subject we may refer 

 briefly to a somewhat peculiar difficulty which most of 

 us feel at one time or another the difficulty of the 

 historic Christ, and the historic Pentecost. We may 

 be ready to admit as an abstract proposition that the 

 coming of the Godhead as individual Man is the only 

 means we can see of securing perfect union between men 

 and God through unity of experience. But none the less 

 it is rather a shock to find our abstract conceptions 

 actualised in the concrete, even though, or perhaps it 

 would be truer to say especially as, the concrete fact 

 occurred before our own abstract thought. It would be so 

 much simpler if our thoughts had come first, the histori- 

 cal event after. In fact our over-emphasised indivi- 

 dualism rather resents being forestalled in any of its 

 activities, and we forget that other individuals of many 

 creeds and races had reached much the same abstract 

 formula that we ourselves have achieved, even before 

 the Event. 



We cannot help wondering, in short, how much our 

 own thought has been influenced by the traditional 

 interpretation of the historic Jesus. Abstract thought 

 does not seem to have received altogether fair play. 

 And perhaps this is even more true of the historic Pente- 

 1 Evolution and Spiritual Life, ch. vi. and supta, ch. iv. 



