Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/53

Rh grandeur of the ocean, the lightning or the star-lit sky—not here do we behold Him ministering to the soul's deepest wants. Not here do we see Him living, laboring, battling and suffering for us; freely giving Himself—his unspeakable love and wisdom—for us; resisting and overcoming selfishness and every inherited tendency to evil; working out a glorious redemption for us; developing the grandest and divinest life under adverse conditions; revealing that sweet and tender, yea, that divine humanity which is our solace and our hope, and is to be our heaven and joy and crown of rejoicing. But in the person of Jesus Christ, God is revealed in a form perfectly adapted to our condition and needs. Here we behold Him in the most intimate and vital relation to mankind; clothed in our frail, finite and perverted humanity; Himself a man among men; yet, as to his internal, the supreme and only God. Here we behold Him in a form that we can approach and understand, and that our affections can lay hold on. Here we see Him living and acting in our human conditions and relations, laden, too, with all our hereditary proclivities to evil; "God manifest in the flesh;" feeling as we feel, tempted as we are tempted, suffering as we suffer, and triumphing over death and hell as it is now possible (through his Divine assistance) for us to triumph. We see Him born