assumes a fiery appearance to one who views it through amist. The change is not in God, but in the mind itself.
Hence, God never was angry with the world. On the contrary, it was, to use a plain expression, the world that was angry with God: and the great object was not to propitiate God, or make Him merciful, but to persuade the world to be reconciled, and to open a way by which this reconciliation could be effected. In order to place man in a state of salvation, it was necessary that he should be joined in spirit to his Maker, that there should be a real conjunction of heaven with earth. But man had himself departed from God and brought himself under the dominion of the powers of hell. He was their slave and their captive, "led by them at their will" Neither had he the power to release himself; for having yielded himself a servant of sin, he lay bound in every power and fettered in every work, "bound hand and foot" by the chains of evil and falsehood. In this state he could not come to God; he had no inclination to approach him; and, even had he possessed the desire, there is that eternal opposition between good and evil, that would effectually have debarred his approach. Where good reigns, evil cannot dwell; but man was evil, therefore where God was, he could not come. If ever, therefore, the salvation of man be effected, it must be by God himself approaching to man. Yet, in his unveiled glory, in the brightness of His Godhead, the Deity could not do this; infinite good would have consumed the workers of evil; for the Lord our God is a consuming fire. There was only one way to effect it, and that was by an assumption of the human form; and, as man, redeeming man.
