into close union with God,
can never differ in kind from any saint. He can never benefit
the race of men save by way of example. His death can never
effect our redemption, for it does not differ in kind from the
death of a martyr. Being only a great saint himself, he cannot
represent mankind either on the Cross or before the Throne. One
man has been assumed into heaven. But this is wholly a different
thing from the Faith of Christendom, which is that God has taken
human nature into union with His Divine Person, in that nature
God died upon the Cross, and in that nature He pleads before the
Throne for the race of men. It is because Christ's Person is Divine,
that His life means to us Christians what it does.

"No person," says Hooker, "was born of the Virgin but the Son of
God, no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of God
condemned, the Son of God and no other person crucified; which one
only point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the Son of
God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning life
and salvation by that which Christ either did or suffered as man
in our behalf."* "That," says Bishop Andrewes, "which setteth the
high price upon this sacrifice is this, that He which offereth
it to God is God."+

--
* Eccl. Pol., v. 52. 3.
+ Second Sermon on the Passion.
--

"Marvel not," says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, "if the whole world
has been redeemed; for He who has died for us is no mere man,
but the Only Begotten Son of God."^ "Christ," says St. Cyril
of Alexandria, "would not have been equivalent [as a sacrifice]
for the whole creation, nor would He have sufficed to redeem the
world, nor have laid down His life by way of price for it, and
poured forth for us His precious Blood, if He be not really the
Son, and God of God." #

--
^ Catech., xiii. 2.
# De Sancta Trinitate, dial. A. (quoted Liddon, B. L., p. 477).
--

How different is all this from the language of those who would
deny or question the Virgin-Birth! With them the Resurrection is
denied as a literal fact; the whole meaning of the Atonement as
being a real sacrifice for sin, a real propitiation, is
eviscerated of its meaning, and is reduced to a moral appeal to
man; and finally, we find that whereas Christians have been
thinking and speaking of Christ as truly God, who in becoming man
"did not abhor the Virgin's womb," modern writers really mean a
very good man who does not, however, differ in kind but only in
excellence