iniquities. Wherefore the Apostle often exhorts the Jews not to glory in the law, for the law did not suffice to justify and to make alive. Do you desire a figure of this mystery? Listen to that of Elisha. He was asked to come and call to life a child which was dead: he sent his servant first with a staff, which he was to lay upon the dead child; but neither servant nor staff were of avail. Then went he himself, and see what he did: ‘He went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands:’ contracting himself to the form of the child; ‘and the flesh of the child waxed warm … and the child opened his eyes.’ You see the figure, attend to the verity. God sent Moses His servant, and the Prophets, with the staff of the law; but neither they nor the law could avail to restore man to life from the death of sin. It was necessary, therefore, that He Himself should go to man, and bow Himself to man by the assumption of man’s nature, and contract Himself to the form of a child by the Incarnation, not only casting Himself on this our dead nature, but taking our nature, hands, arms, mouth, and soul to Himself. .... This circumstance of the closing of the door that none might see, when Elisha stretched himself upon the child, is not without significance. For as none discerned how Elisha, that great man, was able to contract himself to the form of a little boy; so no one can comprehend how the Son of God, so high and so mighty, could unite, and apply, and abase, His nature to ours; so that He became mortal Who was immortal, passible Who was impassible, infant Who was God. In all these the mystery is great,
