To say this does not mean however that the world was not in any way prepared for the coming of Christ. On the contrary, the traces of that preparation are clear throughout the Old Testament, from beginning to end. If the Old Testament is read in the light of a progressive revelation of God's Nature and Being, and His relations with mankind, its difficulties disappear, and it is seen to point clearly to the full revelation of God in Jesus Christ. But the method is that of God pointing out the way to man, not of man's discovery of it for himself. When almost the whole of the then known world had been brought under the sway of the great Roman Empire, the time was ripe for a World Religion. So "when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth His Son" to bring the message of salvation to the whole of mankind. THE PRE-EXISTENCE AND INCARNATION OF CHRIST. The Christian Creeds make it clear that the coming of Christ was the fulfilment of God's plan when they state, as does the Nicene Creed, that our belief is in "One Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, Begotten of His Father before all worlds, ... Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, And was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, And was made man". The Church plainly teaches the belief in the pre-existence of the divine person from the beginning, as alone meeting all the facts, and has steadily rejected every other belief, in spite of all difficulties. That Jesus was man was perfectly clear: His Godhead was much more open to attack. So the belief that in Jesus Christ God became man is put in the very forefront of our confession of faith. THE VIRGIN BIRTH. The belief that Jesus Christ was born of a pure Virgin is entirely in keeping with the belief in His pre-existence as God. There is no space to set forth here the weighty reasons for the importance of this belief. It is sufficient to say that it is inseparably interwoven with the whole Christian conception of His Incarnation, namely, that in Jesus Christ we have perfect God and perfect Man. The Virgin-Birth keeps the balance even between His Deity and His humanity. This article of the Creed, which is based on the direct statement of two of the four Gospels, is therefore most helpful in enabling us to understand that in Jesus Christ we behold Divine and human nature joined in perfect unison, He being "God of the substance (essential nature) of the Father, begotten before the worlds, and Man of the substance (essential nature) of His Mother, born in the world". GOSPEL PROOFS OF THE GODHEAD OF CHRIST.