Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

94 THE FIRST AND THE SECOND MAN.of the Father for his race, since it is his wife whobears every child to him. Why is the whole forceof human language exhausted, and the wholestrength of the several human affections accumulated,in this manner ? It is to express the super-eminent work, of God made flesh, who, when Hetook a human body, created in correspondence toit that among men and out of men in which thevirtue of His Incarnation is stored up, the mysticalKingdom, Temple, Body, Bride, and Mother.No one of these titles could convey the full richesof His work, or the variously wrought splendour ofHis wisdom, which the angels desire to look into ;therefore He searched through human nature andsociety in all its depth and height for images whoseunion might express a work so unexampled andunique. Rather, it is truer to say that these naturalaffections themselves, the gift of that mostbountiful giver, were created by Him originally tobe types, foreshadowings, and partial copies of thatmore excellent supernaturalove which He had decreedto show to man, since first of all things inthe order of the divine design must the Incarnationhave been. The whole structure of the family,and the affections which it contains, mustspring out of this root, for nature was anticipatedby grace in man's creation, and must ever havebeen subordinate to it. And now, ' when the fulltime of grace is come, these titles of things whichby His mercy have lasted through the fall, serve