singing down the ages.[36] The victory over sin—­no easy thing at any time—­is another permanent feature of Christian experience.  The psychological value of what Dr. Chalmers called “the expulsive power of a new affection” is not enough studied by us.  Look at the freedom, the growth, the power of the Christian life—­where do they all come from?  We cannot leave God out of this.  At any rate, there they are in the Christian experience; and where does anything that matters flow from but from God?  There is again the evidence of Christian achievement; and it should be remarked that the Christian always tells us that he himself has not the power, that it comes from God, that he asks for it and God gives it.  As for the easy explanation of all religious life by “auto-suggestion,” we may note that it involves a loose and unscientific use of a more or less scientific theory—­never a very safe way to knowledge.  In any case, it has been pointed out, the word adds nothing to the number of our facts; nor is it quite clear yet that it eliminates God from the story any more than the term “digestion” makes it inappropriate to say Grace before meat.  All these things—­peace, joy, victory, and the rest—­follow from the taking away of sin, and imply that it no longer stands between God and man.  All this is the work of the historical Jesus.  It is he who has changed the attitude of man to God, and by changing it has made it possible for God to do what he has done.  If God, in Paul’s phrase, “hath shined in our hearts” (2 Cor. 4:6), it was Jesus who induced men to take down the shutters and to open the windows.  It is all associated, historically, with the ever-living Jesus Christ, and with God in him.

This brings us to the central question, the relation of Jesus with God—­the problem of Incarnation.  After all that has been said, we shall not approach it “a priori”.  We are too apt to put the Incarnation more or less in algebraic form: 

  x+y=a,

where a stands for the historical Jesus Christ, and x and y respectively for God and man.  But what do we mean by x and y?  Let us face our facts.  What do we know of man apart from Jesus Christ?  Surely it is only in him that we realize man—­only in him that we grasp what human depravity really is, the real meaning and implications of human sin.  It is those who have lived with Jesus Christ, who are most conscious of sin; and this is no mere morbid imagination or fancy, it rests on a much deeper exploration of human nature than men in general attempt.  Not until we know what he is do we see how very little we are, and how far we have gone wrong.  It is his power of help and sympathy that teaches us the hardness of our own hearts, our own fundamental want of sympathy.  Again, until a man knows Jesus Christ, he has little chance of even guessing the grandeur of which he himself is capable.  A man has, as he says, done his best—­for years, it may be, of strenuous endeavour; and then comes the new experience of Jesus Christ, and he is lifted high above his record, he gains a new power, a new tenderness, and he does things incredible.  We do not know the wrong or the right of which man is capable, till we know Jesus Christ.  The y of our equation, then, does not tell us very much.