inhabited by the descendants of Adam. This evidently was a very large portion, it was their world.

This understanding of the Scripture relieves the difficulty in reference to the size of the ark. It was a refuge for the men and animals of the world of the Adamites.

We are treating the headship of Christ and it matters not how many nations there are in this world, or any world, Christ is their Head. All have sprung from Him. The text, "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” becomes larger and grander than is usually imagined. The two clauses are more than an equation, for there are far more in Christ than in Adam. These words are a simile and a comparison. Adam carried death to all who were in him, whereas, Christ carries life to all who were in Him. As Adam and all his descendants were in Christ, life is brought to all of them; and no matter how many other races were in Christ, salvation has been wrought out for them. The redemption, instead of being decreased, is increased to include every creature and the whole creation of God.

Let us remember that not Adam, but Christ, is "the Head of every man" (1 Cor. 11:3); and the Head of every angel (Col. 2: 10); the Head of the Church (Col. 1:18); the Head of the whole creation (Eph. 1:22; Col. 1:16). In this way alone will we appreciate Him in His greatness and as the vital center of Christianity and its complete redemption.

XVII

THE ETERNAL HUMANITY OF CHRIST

THE Contents of this chapter do not have to be accepted for the general argument of the book to stand, but if the considerations here presented are understood, they carry with them a tremendous additional confirmation to the truthfulness of the conclusions reached.

Professor Laidlaw of Edinburgh wrote in The Bible Doctrine of Man:

"Earnest thinkers in theology have often sighed for some pathway that would lead direct from an original relation of the eternal Logos with the human race to the actual incarnation of the Redeemer. Some have even said that the theory of expiation can not retain its place in the thoughts of the Church unless it can be shown that the death of Christ as a propitiation and a sacrifice for the sins of men is the highest expression of an eternal relation between Christ and the human race.

"Doubtless there is something more in the great texts (Col. 1:15-17; Eph. 1:10-22; Rom. 8:18-23, etc.) which combine the relation of the Son to the universe with that of the glorified Redeemer to the 'restitution of all things' than the Church has ever formulated. In that direction there is theological territory to be possest."

R. W. Dale to the same point wrote in his work on The Atonement:

"The relation of Christ to mankind is, however, only part of a larger question-the relation of Christ to the created

universe. The Church has been content to acknowledge that Christ created all things, and that in some sense He upholds all things. It has never felt any keen and practical interest in the nature of His permanent relation to the universe. In the dread of Pantheism, and in its eagerness to maintain the freedom and personality of the living God, it has rather shrunk from conceiving any other kind of relation between the Creator and the creation than that which exists between the builder of a house and the house he has built. But there are many passages in the New Testament which are inconsistent with such a conception as this."

We desire to study for a little the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, for "in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," and we doubt not that in Him will be found the solution of every difficulty and every mystery.

In respect to the great mystery of the God-man we have always felt it to be a difficulty to accept the usual doctrinal statement that He was not man until He "was made flesh, and dwelt among us" and that ever after He had the indissoluble personality as the God-Man. It seemed to us as if the Godhead, in the Person of the Only Begotten Son, added something that it did not have before, and, as a consequence, was not absolutely complete in the past.

The text (John 6: 62), "What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where He was before?" rather startles us. We take the title "Son of man" as especially emphasizing His humanity. We have had no difficulty in accepting the preexistence of His deity, but this Scripture seems to

assert the same of His humanity, viz., that as "Son of man" as well as "Son of God" he had a preexistence.

John 3: 13 deserves notice. It asserts that "no man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." This is ordinarily taken as spoken by our Lord to Nicodemus; but we believe that a careful study and exegesis of the context, as well as the text, will clearly indicate that this verse marks a new paragraph which was spoken by the evangelist. The fact of its beginning with the word "And," signifies nothing from a Hebrew standpoint and John wrote from that standpoint. Look at almost any chapter in Genesis and see the use of "And," it will be found that "And" frequently begins new paragraphs. Without stating all our reasons, we understand the latter phrase, "even the Son of man which is in heaven," to mean that John says that the Son of man is in heaven when he is writing.. To us this verse has the same fundamental truth as in John 6:62, that the Son of man first came down and then returned to heaven.

Eph. 4:9, 10, contains the same remarkable teaching: "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things." The identity of the Christ,

that is, the divine-human personality, is the same in coming down from heaven and in ascending into heaven. Not only His divine nature but His divine-human nature must have pre-existed.

These considerations are strengthened by the fact of the persistence and continuance of His human nature, as well as His divine, after His return to heaven and after His glorification. At His Second Coming, which has not yet taken place, He will be identical in personality, the divinehuman Jesus, for Acts 1: 11 declares, "This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen Him go into heaven." The Lord Jesus always will be the God-man. He must have pre-existed, in fact, must have always existed, not in our fallen flesh, but in a truly spiritual and potential humanity, inseparably and vitally joined to His deity. These facts do not imply, as many of the Church Fathers and others assert, that His deity became human and His humanity became deity; for His deity was absolute; His humanity was relative. The relative can never become the absolute. His deity was uncreated, His humanity of necessity was created, even tho its creation was before time. The created can never become the uncreated. Creation can never become the Creator in the absolute sense. Our Lord's humanity was always and everywhere perfectly dependent upon the Father. All other of humanity and creation have access to