theory the other way—­that the Divine Word assumed a human body and a human soul, and himself took the place of a human spirit.  So far we see no great advance on the Arian theory of the incarnation.  If the Lord had no true human spirit, he is no more true man than if he had nothing human but the body.  We get a better explanation of his sinlessness, but we still get it at the expense of his humanity.  In one respect the Arians had the advantage.  Their created Word is easier joined with human flesh than the Divine Word with a human body and a human soul.  At this point, however, Apollinarius introduced a thought of deep significance—­that the spirit in Christ was human spirit, although divine.  If man was made in the image of God, the Divine Word is not foreign to that human spirit which is in his likeness, but is rather the true perfection of its image.  If, therefore, the Lord had the divine Word instead of the human spirit of other men, he is not the less human, but the more so for the difference.  Furthermore, the Word which in Christ was human spirit was eternal.  Apart then from the incarnation, the Word was archetypal man as well as God.  Thus we reach the still more solemn thought that the incarnation is not a mere expedient to get rid of sin, but the historic revelation of what was latent in the Word from all eternity.  Had man not sinned, the Word must still have come among us, albeit not through shame and death.  It was his nature that he should come.  If he was man from eternity, it was his nature to become in time like men on earth, and it is his nature to remain for ever man.  And as the Word looked down on mankind, so mankind looked upward to the Word.  The spirit in man is a frail and shadowy thing apart from Christ, and men are not true men till they have found in him their immutable and sovereign guide.  Thus the Word and man do not confront each other as alien beings.  They are joined together in their inmost nature, and (may we say it?) each receives completion from the other.

[Footnote 16:  Gal. v. 19-21.]

[Sidenote:  Criticism of Apollinarianism.]

The system of Apollinarius is a mighty outline whose details we can hardly even now fill in; yet as a system it is certainly a failure.  His own contemporaries may have done him something less than justice, but they could not follow his daring flights of thought when they saw plain errors in his teaching.  After all, Apollinarius reaches no true incarnation.  The Lord is something very like us, but he is not one of us.  The spirit is surely an essential part of man, and without a true human spirit he could have no true human choice or growth or life; and indeed Apollinarius could not allow him any.  His work is curtailed also like his manhood, for (so Gregory of Nyssa put it) the spirit which the Lord did not assume is not redeemed.  Apollinarius understood even better than Athanasius the kinship of true human nature to its Lord, and applied it with admirable