The Incarnation doctrine is the glorification of human effort, and the sanctification of childhood and simplicity of life; but it is a pity to reduce it to a dogma. It is well to leave something to intuitive apprehension, and to let the life and death of Christ gradually teach their own eloquent lesson without premature dogmatic assistance. From that event we date our history, and the strongest believer in immanent Godhead can admit that the life of Jesus was an explicit and clear-voiced message of love to this planet from the Father of all. Naturally our conception of Godhead is still only indistinct and partial, but, so far as we are as yet able to grasp it, we must reach it through recognition of the extent and intricacy of the Cosmos, and more particularly through the highest type and loftiest spiritual development of man himself. The most essential element in Christianity is its conception of a human God; of a God, in the first place, not apart from the Universe, not outside it and distinct from it, but immanent in it; yet not immanent only, but actually incarnate, incarnate in it and revealed in the Incarnation. The nature of God is displayed in part by everything, to those who have eyes to see, but is displayed most clearly and fully by the highest type of existence, the highest experience to which the process of evolution has so far opened our senses. “’Tis the sublime of man, Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves Part and proportion of one wondrous whole.” The Humanity of God, the Divinity of man, is the essence of the Christian revelation. It was truly a manifestation of Immanuel. The Christian idea of God is not that of a being outside the universe, above its struggles and advances, looking on and taking no part in the process, _solely_ exalted, beneficent, self-determined, and complete. It is also that of a God who loves, who yearns, who suffers, who keenly laments the rebellious and misguided activity of the free agents brought into being by Himself as part of Himself, who enters into the storm and conflict, and is subject to conditions as the soul of it all. This is the truth which has been reverberating down the ages ever since; it has been the hidden inspiration of saint, apostle, prophet, martyr, and, in however dim and vague a form, has given hope and consolation to the unlettered and poverty-stricken millions:—A God that could understand, that could suffer, that could sympathise, that had felt the extremity of human anguish, the agony of bereavement, had submitted even to the brutal hopeless torture of the innocent, and had become acquainted with the pangs of death—this has been the chief consolation of the Christian religion. This is the extraordinary conception of Godhead to which we have thus far risen. “This is My beloved Son.”