Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/37

 took not on Him the nature of angels (as he had before done); but He took on Him the seed of Abraham."

From these considerations we learn that the phrase, "Son of God," does not mean a Divine person separate from "the Father;" but that it properly denotes the humanity of the Father; that in which mankind could see His glory—the "glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." And this agrees with the Lord's words, "The Father in me;" "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;" "I and my Father are one." Thus the Father and the Son are no more two distinct Divine Persons, than the soul and body are two separate men. The terms express distinctions in the Divine nature; but, together, they indicate only one Divine Person, the humanity being the out-birth of the Divinity, in other words, that ultimate manifestation of His essential nature, by which men may have access to some intelligible idea concerning Him who creates, redeems, and saves. Hence. Jesus Christ—that new name of the Supreme—expresses the final and the fullest revelation of the infinite God to finite man.

The angelic forms in which Jehovah was pleased to manifest himself to men, before the incarnation, were temporary assumptions of regenerated humanity as it exists in heaven, for the purpose of approaching the interior or spiritual sight of those who saw Him; and so to keep alive in the Church, with men in the world, some intelligible idea respecting Him. The angelic nature is human nature in a state of glory. But when, by incarnation, God took upon Himself, "not the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham," "made of a woman under the law," it was for the purpose of meeting the degraded conditions into which