_, since He is
not so present either in nature or in man? And assuming that such a
supreme and full revelation of God has been given in history, shall we
not do well to distinguish in some manner between it and every lesser
manifestation of immanence? Mr. W. L. Walker has admirably pointed out
that while {39} God is personally present _to_ everything, and entirely
absent from nothing, yet it is certainly false to imagine that He is
"personally inside of everything." "Nothing can happen wholly apart
from Him--He is in some measure in everything and being"; but where
shall He Himself be found, where shall we look for His very fulness?
"He cannot," says Mr. Walker--and we shall not attempt to better his
words--"be personally present in anything, or in any being, till there
is a being present in the world capable of containing and expressing
Him in His essential truth; and that we do not have till we come to
Jesus Christ."

And thus we may perhaps claim to have shown, however briefly, in what
direction we must look for the solution of our problem of universal
immanence--a problem unnecessarily complicated by a plausible but false
construction of that doctrine. We conclude that every portion of the
cosmos, including our conscious selves, manifests so much, and such
aspects, of God as it has the capacity to manifest--His Power, His
Purpose, His moral Law, which vindicates its sanctity upon whosoever
would violate it; but His own Essence, His Character, could be revealed
only in One whose soul harboured no single element at variance with the
Divine Goodness, One who could be described as "God manifest in the
flesh"--even that unique Son whose oneness with the Father was {40}
undimmed and unbroken by any diversity of will. It required the
perfect Instrument to give forth the perfect Harmony.

And here a final but important point arises. If the Incarnation of God
in Christ is in one sense the highest example of Divine immanence--just
as man represents the highest form of animal life--yet in another sense
it transcends mere immanence just as truly as humanity transcends the
animal creation. We leave this as a suggestion which the reader may
develop for himself. So much is certain, that in Christ alone does the
edifice of faith reach its culminating point--in Him our questionings
receive their complete and final answer, because what we see in Him is
not a stray hint or broken gleam, but the pure and quenchless light of