Page:What Is The True Christian Religion?.pdf/12

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CHAPTER III


GOD REVEALED IN JESUS


The second great objective of the coming of the Lord into human life through the assumption of a human form on the plane of nature was to reveal God to man. God as He is in Himself is invisible. He dwells on a higher plane, indeed the highest plane of being, on the plane of Infinity and Eternity. As Paul said, "who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, not can see." Being Infinite He cannot be understood or conceived of by finite beings; for we can understand and conceive of an Infinite Being only by thinking of Him as being out of our bounds of thinking. We can think of anything only on the plane of finiteness, in defined terms or conditions, which bring a thing to us as an object of thought. The word "finite" means limited or bounded. We cannot conceive of the infinity of space, to our minds it must end somewhere. We cannot conceive of the phrase "from eternity" because we cannot conceive of anything not having had a beginning. Thus we cannot think of God either in His infinity or eternity. He must reveal Himself to us, and the only way in which He can do so is by coming into defined conditions, or into objective form. We may in out blindness deny that such a Being can exist but we cannot rationally deny Him as First Cause and as the Preserver of creation who must have made the laws of the universe and who needs must operate them.

God tried in Old Testament times to reveal Himself through the mediation of angels, who ate good men and women gone out of this life, or through the prophets who are the recipients of the Divine influx, but the time came when man became too gross and materialistic to be able to receive Divine enlightment from within. God had to become objective, an object of thought. God could reveal Himself only in human terms. And it was natural that He should so reveal