possibility. The mould into which the soul of the Son of God was now to enter was of the same form, though of infinitely slighter proportions than that in which He had hitherto dwelt.

There is a phrase in Mark 14:33 which may aptly be transferred to the time before the Incarnation. It is said there that when the shadows of Calvary began to fall upon Jesus of Nazareth He began to be amazed. So different is realisation from anticipation, even to God Himself! The Lord Jesus had been contemplating, facing, foretelling and explaining Calvary throughout His ministry, but the first actual approach of the fact so far exceeded His thoughts as to beat Him to His knees in an agony of conflict.

There must have been some such experience for the Son of God when the time came for Him to implement the promise made before Creation. Hitherto it had been words and thoughts; now it was to be actions and feelings. No doubt the Moravians had thought it all out upon their knees in their own chambers, but it was different when the money was paid, and the manacles clamped, and the whips might fall!

There lay before the Son of God a mighty change of experience. Hitherto His person had been inviolate. His home secure. His vision of His Father unobscured. Now He was to lay aside His immunity from pain and suffering, from the unforeseen chances of human life, and launch His frail barque upon an unknown sea of untasted experiences. Above all, He was to put Himself into such a position that Death itself should be His portion. The Son of God was to lay aside not only His Body but also His Spirit, and enter into the sufferings of the damned, before He could again revert to the Glory which He shared with His Father from the Beginning.

To sustain Him in this fearful adventure was the knowledge that He came not of Himself but was sent by His