the Life could conquer death.  Therefore the immortal Word took human flesh and gave his mortal body for us all.  It was no necessity of his nature so to do, but a pure outcome of his love to men and of the Father’s loving purpose of salvation.  By receiving in himself the principle of death he overcame it, not in his own person only, but in all of us who are united with him.  If we do not yet see death abolished, it is now no more than the passage to our joyful resurrection.  Our mortal human nature is joined with life in him, and clothed in the asbestos robe of immortality.  Thus, and only thus, in virtue of union with him, can man become a sharer of his victory.  There is no limit to the sovereignty of Christ in heaven and earth and hell.  Wherever the creation has gone before, the issues of the incarnation must follow after.  See, too, what he has done among us, and judge if his works are not the works of sovereign power and goodness.  The old fear of death is gone.  Our children tread it underfoot, our women mock at it.  Even the barbarians have laid aside their warfare and their murders, and live at his bidding a new life of peace and purity.  Heathenism is fallen, the wisdom of the world is turned to folly, the oracles are dumb, the demons are confounded.  The gods of all the nations are giving place to the one true God of mankind.  The works of Christ are more in number than the sea, his victories are countless as the waves, his presence is brighter than the sunlight.  ’He was made man that we might be made God.’[2]

[Footnote 1:  Gen. ii. 17, LXX.]

[Footnote 2:  Ath. De Inc. 44:  [Greek:  autos gar enenthropesen hina hemeis theopoiethomen].  Bold as this phrase is, it is not too bold a paraphrase of Heb. ii. 5-18.]

[Sidenote:  Its significance.]

The great persecution had been raging but a few years back, and the changes which had passed since then were enough to stir the enthusiasm of the dullest Christian.  These splendid paragraphs are the song of victory over the defeat of the Pharaohs of heathenism and the deliverance of the churches from the house of bondage.  ’Sing ye to the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously.’  There is something in them higher than the fierce exultation of Lactantius over the sufferings of the dying persecutors, though that too is impressive.  ’The Lord hath heard our prayers.  The men who strove with God lie low; the men who overthrew his churches have themselves fallen with a mightier overthrow; the men who tortured the righteous have surrendered their guilty spirits under the blows of Heaven and in tortures well deserved though long delayed—­yet delayed only that posterity might learn the full terrors of God’s vengeance on his enemies.’  There is none of this fierce joy in Athanasius, though he too had seen the horrors of the persecution, and some of his early teachers had perished in it.  His eyes are fixed on the world-wide victory of the Eternal Word,