Page:The Doctrines of the New Church Briefly Explained.djvu/43

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The Central Doctrine.
37

nature with its vast accumulation of hereditary evil proclivities; had experience of its weaknesses and trials, its doubts and fears, its darkness and conflicts, its poignant griefs and agonizing sorrows; bore the assaults of all the hells by which humanity was ever assailed—and conquered them while glorifying or making Divine his assumed human. And this, in order that He might come nearer to the children of men, and enter into more full and perfect sympathy with them; might more effectually redeem them from their spiritual thraldom; might communicate to them more abundantly of his own unselfish love; might more surely draw and more securely hold them within his own tender embrace.

Here, then—according to the New Theology—in the divinely-begotten and glorified Man of Nazareth, the infinite Father stands revealed. He came, as He said, to bring the Father forth to view. He declared to Philip: "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father;" "I am in the Father, and the Father in me." He was the visible manifestation of the Divine Being here on earth; the Infinite revealed in the finite; "God manifest in the flesh;" Divinity in such vital and organic union with humanity as to have experience of all its obscurity, weakness, want and woe, and so be able to deliver it from its spiritual