We have hitherto mused on the Divinity, as on Spirit invested with
attributes: and this idea of His nature was enough for all requirements
antecedently to a creation. At whatever beginning we may suppose such
creation to have commenced, whether countless ages before our present
[Greek: kosmos], or only a sufficient time to have prepared the crust of
earth; and to whatever extent we may imagine creation to have spread,
whether in those remote periods originally to our system alone and at
after eras to its accompanying stars and galaxies and firmaments; or at
one and the same moment to have poured material existence over space to
which our heavens are as nothing: whatever, and whenever, and wherever
creation took place, it would appear to be probable that some one person
of the Deity should, in a sort, become more or less concretely
manifested; that is, in a greater or a minor degree to such created
minds and senses visible. Moreover, for purposes at least of a
concentrated worship of such creatures, that He should occasionally, or
perhaps habitually, appear local. I mean, that the King of all spiritual
potentates and the subordinate Excellencies of brighter worlds than
ours, the Sovereign of those whom we call angels, should will to be
better known to and more aptly conceived by such His admiring creatures,
in some usual glorious form, and some wonted sacred place. Not that any
should see God, as purely God; but, as God relatively to them, in the
capacity of King, Creator, and the Object of all reasonable worship. It
seems anteriorly probable that one at least of the Persons in the
Godhead should for this purpose assume a visibility; and should hold His
court of adoration in some central world, such as now we call
indefinitely Heaven. That such probability did exist in the human
forecast, as concerns a heaven and the form of God, let the testimony of
all nations now be admitted to corroborate. Every shape from a cloud to
a crocodile, and every place from Æther to Tartarus, have been peopled
by man's not quite irrational device with their so-called gods. But we
must not lapse into the after-argument: previous likelihood is our
harder theme. Neither, in this section, will we attempt the
probabilities of the place of heaven: that will be found at a more
distant page. We have here to speak of the antecedent credibility that
there should be some visible phase of God; and of the shape wherein he
would be most likely, as soon as a creation was, to appear to such his
creatures. With respect, then, to the former. Creatures, being finite,
can only comprehend the infinite in his attribute of unity: the other
attributes being apprehended (or comprehended partially) in finite
phases. But, unity being a purely intellectual thought, one high and dry
beyond the moral feelings, involves none of the requisites of a
spiritual, that is an affectionate, worship; such worship as it was
likely that a beneficent Being would, for his creatures' own elevation
in happiness, command and inspire towards Himself. In order, therefore,
to such worship and such inspiration acting through reason, it would
appear fitting that the Deity should manifest Himself especially with
reference to that heavenly Exemplar, the Three Divine Persons of the
One Supreme Essence already shown to have been probable. And it seems
likeliest and discreetest to my thinking, that, with this view, the
secondary phase, loving Obedience, under the dictate of the primary
phase, a loving Will, and energized by the tertiary or conjoining phase
a loving Quickening Entity, should assume the visible type of Godhead,
and thus concentrate unto Himself the worship of all worlds. I can
conceive no scheme more simply profound, more admirably suited to its
complex purposes, than that He, in whom dwelt the fullness of the
Godhead, bodily, should take the form of God, in order that unto Him
every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and
things in regions under the earth. Was not all this reasonably to have
been looked for? and tested afterwards by Scripture, in its frequent
allusions to some visible phase of Deity, when the Lord God walked with
Adam, and Enoch, and Abraham, and Peter, and James, and John--I ask, is
it not the case?
The latter point remaining to be thus briefly touched upon, respects the
probable shape to be assumed and worn, familiarly enough to be
recognised as His, by Deity thus vouchsafing Himself visible. And here
we must look down the forward stream of Time, and search among the
creatures whom thereafter God should make, to arrive at some good reason
for, some antecedent probability of, the form which he should thus
frequently inhabit. Fire, for example, a pure and spirit-like nature,
would not have been a guess unworthy of reason: but this, besides its
humbler economic uses, would endanger an idolatry of the natural emblem.
So also would light be no irrational thought. And it is true that God
might, and probably would, invest Himself in one or both of these pure
essences, so seemingly congenial to a nature higher than ours: but then
there would be some nucleus to the brilliancy and the burning; these
would be as a veil to the Divinity; we should have need, before He were
truly visible, that the veil were laid aside: we should have to shred
away to the nucleus, which (and not the fire or light) would be the form
of God. Similar objections, in themselves or in their idolatrizing
tendencies, would lie against any such shape as a cloud, or a rainbow,
or an angel (whatever such a being may resemble), or in fact any other
conceivable creature, whether good as the angelic case or indifferent as
that of the cloud, which the Deity, though assuming often, would
nevertheless in every instance assume in conjunction with such his
ordinary creature, and could not entirely monopolize. I mean; if God had
the shape of a cloud, or of a rainbow, common clouds and rainbows would
come to be thought gods too. Reason would anticipate this objection to
such created and too-favoured shapes: more; in every case, but one, he
would be quite at a loss to look for some type, clearly apt and
probable. That one case he might discern to be this. Known unto God are
all things from the beginning to the end: and, in His fore-knowledge,
Reason might have been enlightened to prophesy (as we shall hereafter
see) that for certain wise and good ends one great family out of the
myriads who rejoice in being called God's children, would in a most
marked manner fall away from Him through disobedience; and should
thereby earn, if not the annihilation of their being, at least its
endless separation from the Blessed. Manifestly, the wisdom and
benevolence of God would be eager and swift to devise a plan for the
redemption of so lost a race. Why He should permit their fall at all
will be reverentially descanted on in its proper section; meanwhile, how
is it probable that God, first, by any theory consistently with truth
and justice, could, and next by power and contrivance actually would,
lift up again this sinful family from the pit of condemnation? Reason is
to search the question well: and after much thought, you will arrive at
the truth that there was but one way probable. Rebellion against the
Great and Self-existent Author of all things, must needfully involve
infinite punishment; if only because He is infinite, and his laws of an
eternal sanction. The problem then was, how to inflict the unbounded
punishment thus claimed by justice for a transgressional condition, and
yet at love's demand to set the prisoner free: how to be just, and
simultaneously justifier of the guilty. That was a question
magnificently solved by God alone: magnificently about to be solved, as
according to our argument seemed probable, by God Triune, in wondrous
self-involving council. The solution would be rationally this. Himself,
in his character of filial obedience, should pay the utter penalty to
Himself in his character of paternal authority, whilst Himself in the
character of quickening spirit, should restore the ransomed family from
death to life, from the power of evil unto good. Was not this a most
probable, a most reasonably probable scheme? was it not altogether wise
and philosophical, as well as entirely generous and kind to wretched
men?
And (returning to our present topic), was it not antecedently to have
been expected that God the Son (so to put it) should, in the shape He
was thereafter to assume upon earth, appear upon the eternal throne of
heaven? In a shape, however glorified and etherealized, with glistening
countenance and raiment bright as the light, nevertheless resembling
that more humble form, the Son of Man, who was afterwards thus by a
circle of probabilities to be made in the form of God; in a shape, not
liable, from its very sinfulness, to the deification either of other
worlds or of this [hero-worship is another and a lower thing altogether;
we speak here of true idolatries:]--was it unlikely, I say, that in such
a shape Deity should have deigned to become visible, and have blazed
Manifested God, the central Sun of Heaven?--This probability, prior to
our forth-flowing thoughts on the Incarnation, though in some measure
anticipating them, will receive further light from the views soon to be
set forth. I know not but that something is additionally due to the
suggestion following; namely: that, raise our swift imagination to what
height we may, and stretch our searching reason to the uttermost, we
cannot, despite of all inventive energies and powers of mind, conceive
any shape more beautiful, more noble, more worthy for a rational
intelligence to dwell in, more in one Homeric word [Greek: theoeides],
than the glorified and etherealized human form divine. Let this serve as
Reason's short reply to any charge of anthropomorphism in the doctrines
of his creed: it was probable that God should be revealed to His
creation; and as to the form of any such revealed essence in any such
infinite beginnings of His work, the most likely of all would appear to
be that one, wherein He, in the ages then to come, was well resolved to
earn the most glorious of all triumphs, the merciful reconciliation of
everlasting justice with everlasting love, the wise and wondrous scheme
of God forgiving sinners.