1 74 Some Implications of the Incarnation [CH. 



necessarily temporal, and the activity of which it is the 

 expression is certainly not temporal. There is no real 

 contradiction in the idea of an Eternal Series; for Eter- 

 nity is not merely all-at-once-ness; neither, of course, 

 is it mere duration without limits. Simultaneous 

 activity perhaps gives us as true a conception of eternal 

 life as any other phrase does, for in the term activity is 

 implicit the idea of order, purpose, an end achieved 

 through succession, while in the term simultaneous is 

 suggested, not exactly timelessness, but the all-em- 

 bracedness of the Activity in the Nature of the Eternal 

 Being. Christ's incarnation is an Eternal Datum of 

 God's Being. His coming in clock-time is our appre- 

 hension of Him, and His answering apprehension of our 

 needs; the centre of material disturbances whose spread- 

 ing waves, as they touch each human life, make it shine 

 with the Christ-light ; enabling us to see the thing hidden 

 from us before, that Christ is God Incarnate in every 

 man. The Incarnation is an eternal fact perpetually 

 renewed. Christ taught this; Paul taught it God in 

 us ; Christ in us. The Incarnation is an eternal process, 

 manifested perpetually in the human, creaturely being. 

 The Atonement is an eternal process, perpetually re- 

 newed as each soul finds its divinity, its union with 

 God, in self-abnegation. But both had to be perceived 

 as events in a temporal series : the light could only travel 

 in a suitable medium to set the matter gleaming; the 

 Nature and Being of God as Love, as self-surrender, had 

 to be brought into the temporal series of Becoming, in 

 the Atonement of the Divine Man, Christ Jesus. 



The same sort of difficulty arises for our rough and 

 ready theology, in regard to the coming of the Holy 

 Spirit at Pentecost; but popular thought is perhaps 

 nearer to the truth here than it is in its attitude to the 

 Incarnation, because the conception of the Spirit seems 

 less defined. Christ is such a very definite and tangible 



