Page:IncarnationofJesus.djvu/27

 cold for Jesus; for you know not how to warm Him in that damp cavern, where He is now shivering with cold; but you are fire and flames for us, since you supply us with a flame of love which rivers of water shall never quench."

It was not enough, says St. Augustine, for the Divine love to have made us to His Own image in creating the first man Adam; but He must also Himself be made to our image in redeeming us. Adam partook of the forbidden fruit, beguiled by the serpent, which suggested to Eve that if she ate of that fruit she should become like to God, acquiring the knowledge of good and evil; and therefore the Lord then said, Behold, Adam, is become one of us. [Gen. 3:22] God said this ironically, and to upbraid Adam for his rash presumption; but after the Incarnation of the Word we can truly say," Behold, God is become like one of us."

"Look, then, O man," exclaims St. Augustine, "thy God is made thy brother;" thy God is made like thee, a son of Adam, as thou art: He has put on thy selfsame flesh, has made Himself passible, liable to suffer and to die as thou art. He could have assumed the nature of an Angel; but no, He would take on Himself thy very flesh, that thus He might give satisfaction to God with the very same flesh (though sinless), of Adam the sinner. And He even gloried in this, oftentimes styling Himself the Son of man; hence we have every right to call Him our brother.

It was an immeasurably greater humiliation for God to become man than if all the princes of the earth, than if