time but also the Self itself, there would be no consciousness of events. The very power to distinguish between past, present and future would vanish; the man himself would be rolled along the flood of time as consciousless of it as is the plant torn up by the river and washed down in its current. There must be a stable point to enable us to approach unstability, a resting-place outside time to enable us to know time. So then, if this is true for God, it is also true for the spirit of man.

But this thought, though it is no help to the Muslim Deist (but the contrary), does greatly assist the idea of Incarnation. For it shows that man has an extra-temporal element at the core and base of his selfhood, which perhaps gave the point whereat the divine and human natures come together in the indissoluble union of the Incarnation. We, therefore, conclude by saying that the Incarnation is only a particular case of the general difficulty; a particular phase of the general mystery; a continuation of the initial act of condescension involved in the creation of the world of God and its governance by His hand.

v. The Incarnation involves attributing passivity and weakness to the Almighty Godhead.

We shall not spend very much time over this objection, partly because it has been several times noticed already, and partly because it must be more deeply examined in the next section, on the Atonement.

It will be enough to remind ourselves that:

(1) Passivity, as such, has already been shown to be a necessary correlative of activity, and a Living God must in Himself possess both the one and the other. And the Triune God of the Christian has been shown actually to possess both. Therefore the objections that the Incarnation involves passivity, as such, falls to the ground.

(2) We have already seen also that relation implies passivity; that a Creator's relations to the created in general, and created intelligence in particular, was not, could not be wholly one-sided. Action implies reaction, activity passivity. Therefore the bare idea of Creation involves what is here objected to Incarnation as such.

(3) As regards weakness, we have already shown that the moral sphere is not identical with the physical, and that what is weakness in the one may be strength in the other and vice versa. The Incarnation is an act primarily within the moral sphere, and, therefore, it is to be expected that many aspects of its enormous moral power will, in the physical sphere and to the natural eye and to the natural or carnal heart, appear to spell weakness. But 'the weakness of God is stronger than men!'

Passivity—weakness—suffering (which means bearing); it is plain that we have now passed to another subject, an extension of that of the Incarnation, namely, the Atonement. And this we proceed in conclusion to examine, holding on fast to all our dearly-won gains in preceding discussions.