CHAPTER VII.

THE PERSON OF JESUS.

GOD prepared the body of Jesus for his spiritual Son, as we learn from the Scriptures before cited, in this wise, viz., he gave it existence in the mass and germinal state as one of the species of earthly humanity, of which Adam was the head; that existence consisting in a human immortal soul and fleshly body, which soul and body came by the lineal descent of Abraham to the Virgin Mary, and was born of her, the conception being miraculously the result of divine creative power. Thus that conception was holy, and yet the child born inherited from Adam the fleshly, sinfully inclined lusts to which, as we have shown, the entire race of the earthly humanity was made subject, as saith the Scripture, "He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and was tempted in all points as all mankind are tempted." Of the first thirty years of his life, his record shows only "that in his twelfth year he astonished the people with his wisdom and answers in a controversy with the doctors in the temple; that he was filled with wisdom, that he grew in

stature, and in favor with God and man; and that he was subject to his parents, who dwelt in Nazareth." We know of no public or official act of his life, until he presented himself to John for baptism or washing, preparatory to his anointing, as we have shown, with the holy spiritual Son of God, and his union and oneness thereby with him.

Immediately after that union was perfected, we learn from the record that "that holy spiritual Son of God led Jesus up into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. For we believe and shall show hereafter, that the being who descended from heaven and rested upon the Son of man (Jesus), and who is called the Holy Ghost, was no other than the spiritual Son of God. A ghost is a spirit, and he was a spirit, though having a spiritual body, and by his union with Jesus he had a fleshly body also, and was no longer a ghost, but the fleshly Son of man, and Jesus, by the same union and oneness, became the Son of God. Now we do not understand that the tempter of Christ in the wilderness, called the devil, was anything more than an adversary, which is certainly the true scriptural meaning of the word in many places; all manner of diseases are in the New Testament called devils, so are bad men and bad principles. An apostle was called 'Satan,' because he "savored the things that were of men, and not of God." And as we understand the Scriptures, the popular, and we may say the orthodox devil of these seventeen centuries is himself but an apocryphal being. Christ had a lust for worldly aggrandizement and power to tempt him to set up

an earthly, instead of a spiritual kingdom; also for the luxury, ease and vain show and grandeur of a temporal prince, and to cause him to shrink from a suffering life and the cruel and ignominious death of the cross, all which and more than these by the power of his love of the Father and delight in his Father's will, he triumphantly resisted and vanquished. Thus it is seen that the spiritual Son of God commenced to sanctify the earthly humanity immediately after he had become their head, by his perfected union with the person of Jesus, whom Paul designated as "the second Adam," by resisting and vanquishing, as we have said, the lusts of that nature which he had by that union made his own. He began the contest between the spirit and the flesh by a "fast of forty days and forty nights," and the fleshly lusts contended for the supremacy by tempting him to avail himself of his great power, by assuming the government of all the kingdoms of the world, and taking advantage of extreme hunger after fasting, tempting him to make a vain show of that power by "commanding the stones to become bread," and again to indulge the same pride by "casting himself down from the pinnacle of the temple," all which he rebuked and utterly condemned by the written word of God. It was then and there in that wilderness, about the four thousandth year of the world, that the son of God, by and for whom the worlds were made, and who had become one with God's earthly Son, Jesus, began to live in that person the life of perfect obedience to his Father's will, which obedience was the per

fect "righteousness which came upon all men (the members of his body), to justification of life," and returning from the scene of that great conflict "in the power of the spirit" (the spirit of the Son of God), he continued to do the work and speak the words of God among the people of the house of Israel, to whom only he was sent "as to lost sheep," preaching the gospel, especially to the poor, healing diseases, suffering great privations, persecution and contradiction from sinners; and at the end of about three years, the ignominious death of the cross. All that preaching, healing, suffering and death being acts of obedience to the Father's will, yielding to God what neither the first Adam nor any of his descendants could do, viz., perfect obedience to God and to his law, which, as we have shown, is simply the law of love; God's paternal love alone to the humanity moved him to require of his Son all those acts of mercy, all his sufferings and his death; which death, being as we have shown, that of "the head of every man, took away the sin of the world," and by which death it is also written, that God reconciled the world unto himself, no longer imputing their trespasses unto them.

Before we proceed to speak of the resurrection of Christ, and the glory that followed that great event, we offer some remarks on the peculiar relation of the Messiah to the nation of Israel, and her amenability to the laws and ordinances of Moses, which law and ordinances were instituted by God's command; and Jesus being of the seed of Abraham, was a Jew born, and was therefore circumcised and

bound thereby to keep the law and observe all its rites and requirements. No Israelite, whatever might be his office, honor or glory, was exempt from those requirements until that institution was abolished and superseded by the coming of the Messiah, or Christ in his kingdom, and Jesus was not Messiah, nor Christ until he was anointed, nor could he be anointed till he was baptized or washed, as the law required. His status therefore before that anointing was simply that of an Israelite, sustaining no office, attempting neither to preach or teach, but immediately after his anointing, as we have seen, with the holy spiritual Son of God, and his return from the scene of his temptation in the wilderness, he began at Galilee to "preach and to say, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Now that kingdom was, as we show, no other than the kingdom also called the church of the Messiah Christ, and was to be a kingdom so great, so blissful, and glorious, to the subjects of it, as to be like a heaven upon the earth, and so much greater and spiritually glorious than the Mosaic or the legal church and dispensation, that the former was called heaven, and the latter, earth. The church of Moses was a glorious symbol, which glory the church of Christ exceeded as doth the perfect day that of the earliest dawn. Such was the "kingdom of heaven," for the attainment of which both John the Baptist and Christ called upon the people of Israel to "repent" and turn from their iniquities, and from the figurative and sym