on with God, and enabled to live the new
life as it has been revealed in Christ. This reconciliation implies a
twofold movement--a redemptive action on God's part, and an
appropriating and determinative response on the part of man.

I

THE DIVINE POWER

The urgent problem of the New Testament writers was, How can man
achieve that good which has been embodied {165} in the life and example
of Jesus Christ? A full answer to this question would lead us into the
realm of dogmatic theology. And therefore, without entering upon
details, it may be said at once that the originality of the Gospel lies
in this, that it not only reveals the good in a concrete and living
form, but discloses the power which makes the good possible in the
hitherto unattempted derivation of the new life from a new birth under
the influence of the spirit of God. The power to achieve the moral
life does not lie in the natural man. No readjustment of
circumstances, nor spread of knowledge, is of itself equal to the task
of creating that entirely new phenomenon--the Christian character.
There must be a cause proportionate to the effect. 'Nothing availeth,'
says Paul, 'but a new creature.' This new condition owes its origin to
God. It is a life communicated by an act of divine creative activity.

But while this regenerative energy is represented generally as the work
of God's spirit, it is more particularly set forth as operating through
Christ who is the power of God unto salvation.

There are three great facts in Christ's life with which the New
Testament connects the redemptive work of God.

1. _The Incarnation_.--In Christ God shares man's nature, and thus
makes possible a union of the divine and human. On its divine side the
incarnation is the complete revelation of God in human life, and on the
human side it is the supreme expression of the spiritual meaning of
human nature itself. Christ saves not by a special act of atonement
alone, but emphatically by manifesting in Himself the union of God and
man. In view of the fact of the world's sin, the Incarnation, as the
revelation of the divine life, includes a gracious purpose. It
involves the sacrifice of God, which theologians designate by the
theory of _Kenosis_. The Advent was not only the consummation of the
religious history of the race; it was also the inauguration of a new
era. The Son of Man initiated a new type of humanity, to be realised
in increasing fullness as men ent