Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/55

Rh sensuous realm. It was ever the same benignant spirit—love speaking, love acting, love suffering. Christ was the visible embodiment in human form, of the perfect Divine Love. He was God come down to earth and subjected to our earthly conditions and limitations; God brought into states of darkness and suffering and fierce temptation,—an experience made possible only through his organic connection with our sin-laden humanity.

And here is precisely where we, as weak, erring and sinful creatures, need to see and know God. We need to know Him in his humanity; that is, we need to know what He would do if placed in our circumstances and invested with our finite and grovelling nature; made to feel the fire of evil passions and the cravings of selfish and worldly loves; subjected like us to the malignant assaults and terrible goadings of infernal spirits. And in Jesus Christ He has shown us just what He would do—just what He has done, indeed. Here we see the true God, not as He is in his Infinity or absolute Divinity—for in this He is unapproachable and incomprehensible by finite minds—but in his tender and beautiful and comprehensible, yea, in his Divine Humanity. Here we see Him ministering, weeping, sorrowing, praying, suffering, tempted, struggling, like ourselves—but never sinning, never yielding to the tempter. Here, therefore, our God is brought graciously