he 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