We have to insist that the truth of the Incarnation is the corner-stone
of Christianity. If that is struck out the whole fabric falls. Without
it there may be a Christ who is the loftiest and greatest of men, but
not the Christ who 'saves His people from their sins.'
That being so, and Christianity having this feature in common with all
the religions of men, how are we to account for the resemblance? Are we
to listen to the rude solution which says, 'All lies alike'? Are we to
see in it nothing but the operation of like tendencies, or rather
illusions, of human thought--man's own shadow projected on an
illuminated mist? Are we to let the resemblance discredit the Christian
message? Or are we to say that all these others are unconscious
prophecies--man's half-instinctive expression of his deep need and much
misunderstood longing, and that the Christian proclamation that Jesus
is 'God manifest in the flesh' is the trumpet-toned announcement of
Heaven's answer to earth's cry?
Fairly to face that question is to go far towards answering it. For as
soon as we begin to look steadily at the facts, we find that the
differences between all these other appearances and the Incarnation are
so great as to raise the presumption that their origins are different.
The 'gods' slipped on the appearance of humanity over their garment of
deity in appearance only, and that for a moment. Jesus is 'bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh,' and is not merely 'found in fashion as a
man,' but is 'in all points like as we are.' And that garb of manhood
He wears for ever, and in His heavenly glory is 'the Man Christ Jesus.'
But _the_ difference between all these other appearances of gods and
the Incarnation lies in the acts to which they and it respectively led,
and the purposes for which they and it respectively took place. A god
who came down to suffer, a god who came to die, a god who came to be
the supreme example of all fair humanities, a god who came to suffer
and to die that men might have life and be victors over sin--where is
he in all the religions of the world? And does not the fact that
Christianity alone sets before men such a God, such an Incarnation, for
such ends, make the assertion a reasonable one, that the sources of the
universal belief in gods who come down among men and of the Christian
proclamation that the Eternal Word became flesh are not the same, but
that these are men's half-understood cries, and this is Heaven's answer?
'THE DOOR OF FAITH'
'And when they were come, and had gathered the church together, they
rehearsed all that God had done with them, and how he had opened the
door of faith unto the Gentiles.'--ACTS xiv. 27.
There are many instances of the occurrence of this metaphor in the New
Testament, but none is exactly like this. We read, for example, of 'a
great door and effectual' being opened to Paul for the free ministry of
the word; and to the angel of the Church in Philadelphia, 'He that
openeth and none shall shut' graciously says, 'I have set before thee a
door opened, which none can shut.' But here the door is faith, that is
to say faith is conceived of as the means of entrance for the Gentiles
into the Kingdom, which, till then, Jews had supposed to be entered by
hereditary rite.