The tendency of the minds of men at that day towards the discussions of metaphysical and unintelligible subjects, soon led to endless disputes, growing out of this new feature of the Christian faith. How this mysterious union of God and man could and did exist, and when and how it was dissolved, were questions which caused much angry feeling and acrimonious discussion among Christians, which continued through the second, and even to the fourth century, when, according to the learned author of the "Decline and Fall," they died out by "the prevalence of more fashionable controversies, and by the superior ascendant of the reigning power." (Gib-bon, vol. I. p. 257.) The idle and profitless disputes of the second era of Christianity were forced, at a later day, to give way to those of the third. Cerinthus, and other Gnostics, maintained that the Son of God descended on the day of baptism in the form of a dove, and remained in its human receptacle until the time of the crucifixion, when it took its flight, leaving to the human form all the agonies and sufferings of death. If this were so, there is no atonement: the Son of God has not offered himself as a sacrifice. The Gnostics had the advantage of consistency. If Christ was a creature, like other men, when the Spirit descended upon him, and existed apart from the flesh, then death could only reach the body, and when that was put to death, or about to be, and the Spirit lost its tabernacle or abiding-place, it must again return to the celestial abode. The perplexities and interminable disputes, caused by such unintelligible subjects, at last led to the third period in the Christian religion: the doctrine of the _incarnation_. "The _Word_ was made flesh and dwelt among us, who was not born of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God." (_John_ i. 13, 14.) God took upon himself the form of man, and was God in man. The Logos of Philo has become an hypostasis, and walks upon the earth. The war with the Gnostics has changed ground. The Son of God did not come down and take up his abode in the mortal form of Christ, but was Jesus himself, and when he came to suffer death there was no separation of divine and human natures, but the real Son of God shed his blood, suffered, and died on the cross as a sacrifice for the sins of our race.