to any other name which is applied to God. It expresses the humility of our Lord in His Incarnation, by which, as the Apostle says, "He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the Cross. For which cause God also hath exalted Him, and hath given Him a name which is above all names; that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that the Lord Jesus Christ is in the glory of God the Father" (Philip. ii. 7-10). It is in consequence of the special honour that God requires us to show to the holy Name, that we bow the head as often as it is repeated. Jesus is a name of salvation; for, as St. Peter assures us (Acts iv. 12), "there is no other name under heaven given to men, whereby we must be saved." Through this name we may obtain all that we ask for: 66 Amen, amen, I say to you, if you ask the Father any thing in My name, He will give it you. Hitherto you have not asked any thing in My name. Ask, and you shall receive, that your joy may be full" (St. John xvi. 23, 24). It is a name of power which works the most wonderful miracles: "In My name," says our Blessed Saviour, "they (His disciples) shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover" (St. Mark xvi. 17, 18). Hence, the holy Name is invoked with well-placed confidence in the time of temptation, a number of indulgences are attached to its devout use by the faithful, and a special festival instituted in its honour.

"His only Son, our Lord." These words are used, in reference to the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, in the same way that the word 'Father' is applied to the first Person. They imply that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, proceeds from the Father by an eternal generation, and is consubstantial and coeternal with Him. If we are asked to explain more distinctly the manner in which

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the Son proceeds from the Father, we answer, this is a part of the hidden mystery of the Blessed Trinity, which must for ever remain incomprehensible to our finite understanding. "Who," exclaimed the prophet Isaias, 66 shall declare His generation?" (Is. liii. 8.) But though we cannot hope to fathom this divine mystery, the following comparison will perhaps bring the doctrine more clearly before our minds. When a person looks at a mirror, an image is immediately formed, which represents with the greatest fidelity not only every feature and lineament, but even every action and motion of the body. This image is produced without time, without labour, without instruments. A simple momentary glance is sufficient to complete it in all its perfection. So the Father, contemplating Himself from all eternity in the mirror of His divine nature, produced a living and most perfect image of Himself. Unlike any thing which we behold, this image is real and substantial; yea, of the selfsame substance as its prototype, yet distinct in its personality or mode of existence. Hence the Father and the Son are equal in all things, or, as our Lord says, "I and the Father are one" (St. John x. 30). That is, though distinct Persons, both possess one and the same divinity.

Finally, in the second Article, Jesus Christ is called our Lord.' As He is one and the same God with the Father, He is equally with the Father, our Lord and Master, by reason of creation, and of the sovereign dominion which God possesses over all things. But Jesus Christ is in a more special sense our Lord, because He has redeemed us from the curse of the fall. By sin we had become the slaves of the devil, but, by undergoing the penalty which we had deserved, Jesus Christ has restored us to our liberty as the servants and children of God. By the ransom which He has paid for us, He has acquired a new title to our love and service. He is likewise called our Lord, because He has been given unto us: "for God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him may not perish, but may have life everlasting" (St. John iii. 16). It is, therefore, by His Incarnation that He has become our Lord. In

the time of the Mosaic dispensation, we never speak of our Lord, but of God, the Lord God, the Almighty, the promised Messiah, or some equivalent expression, because at that time our redemption had not yet been accomplished.

CHAP. XIII. Of the Incarnation.

BEFORE entering on the explanation of the following articles of the Creed, it will be well for us to have before our minds a clear idea of the great mystery of the Incarnation. As all mankind descend from Adam, all are involved in the consequences of his fall. We all come of a corrupt stock, and, being conceived and born in sin, the sentence of death is registered against us from the first moment of our existence. Had not the divine goodness interposed in our behalf, we must have been for ever excluded from the kingdom of heaven. But the Eternal Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, was moved with compassion towards us, and took to Himself a body and soul like ours, in the unity of His one Divine Person; and in this His human nature He offered Himself a sacrifice to God for our sins. He substituted Himself in our place, and of His own free will underwent the penalty which we had deserved by our transgressions. He poured out the last drop of His most precious blood on the Cross to redeem and save us.

To enter more fully into the nature of this divine mystery, we should consider the guilt from which we have been redeemed. The grievousness of an offence increases according to the dignity of the person offended, and to the claims which he possesses to our love and service. Thus, for example, if we show marked disrespect to an inferior or an equal, it would of course be wrong; but still it would be a pardonable offence compared with the crime of showing the same disrespect to our sovereign. But if that sovereign had heaped all kinds of favours upon us, and we were indebted to his royal bounty for every thing which we possessed, our crime would be of the blackest dye. Applying this principle to

God, who is infinitely exalted above the highest of His creatures, and whose claims to our love and service infinitely transcend all other claims, we see that an offence against Him is not merely incomparably greater than an offence against any creature, but it contains, so far as is possible, an infinite malice, because it is an offence against a Being of infinite goodness and holiness. When once, therefore, we had fallen into the guilt of sin, we incurred a debt of infinite satisfaction to the Divine Majesty. We could not of ourselves attempt to discharge the obligation which we had contracted, because, before we could appease the outraged justice of God, we must needs be free from sin, and because any satisfaction which we could offer would necessarily fall far short of our debt.

It is commonly held that God might have granted us a free pardon, without requiring any satisfaction to be made to His offended majesty; but it seems more consonant with His infinite justice, and certainly displays in a more wonderful manner His infinite goodness and mercy to us, to accomplish our deliverance, and, at the same time, to make an act of reparation strictly adequate to the demands of His justice.

God having therefore determined to exact an adequate atonement for the offence committed, it became necessary that one of the three Divine Persons should assume our nature, and make satisfaction for us. For as the offence was infinite, no merit of any mere creature would be sufficient; because no creature, however exalted, or however holy, could offer more than finite satisfaction. It was necessary, therefore, that our Redeemer should be at the same time God and man;-God, otherwise the satisfaction would not be infinite, and consequently would not be equal to the offence; and man, otherwise He could not immolate Himself for our ransom,-He could not suffer and die for us. The second Person of the Blessed Trinity, therefore, became man for us. After His Incarnation, He is perfect God and perfect man; that is, still retaining His divine nature in all its integrity, He took to himself, in the unity of His one Divine Person, all that is required to constitute a perfect and complete human nature. He

became in all things like us, excepting sin. He assumed a real body like ours, and not merely the outward semblance of a body, such as the appearances with which angels were sometimes clothed when they were sent to execute the commissions of God to men. He assumed a real soul like ours, and a human will; for otherwise His human nature would have been incomplete, and the satisfaction which He offered imperfect. For our Lord came to join unto Himself that humanity in which Adam had sinned, in order that He might heal in His own person all that had been vitiated in the person of Adam. Now, as the soul and the will had the chief share in the sin of the fall, so likewise was it necessary that they should have the chief share in the act of reparation. Thus we learn from the sacred Evangelist, that the sufferings of our Saviour's passion and death commenced with His soul. "My soul," said He to His disciples, "is sorrowful even unto death" (St. Matt. xxvi. 38). And in the prayer which He made immediately afterwards He distinctly refers to His two wills: "My Father, if it be possible, let this chalice pass from Me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt" (St. Matt. xxvi. 39). As God He possesses the selfsame will as His Father; and when His human will prompted Him to pray to be delivered from the bitterness of His passion, by an act of heroic resignation He immediately conformed it to His divine will: "Nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt." He suffered hunger and thirst, heat and cold, and was tired and wearied as we are by labour and fatigues. He had human affections like us. He loved with a special affection the virgin disciple St. John. He compassionated the suffering and afflicted. He wept over the grave of Lazarus, and over the city of Jerusalem, whose destruction He foresaw. He has two natures, therefore, the divine and human; two wills and two distinct operations; but still He is one Christ,-one, not by the two natures being in any way blended together, nor by one absorbing the other, but, both remaining perfectly distinct, they are united by subsisting in the one Divine Person of the Word. As in man there is a spiritual