In Both Worlds

by William H. Holcombe

“My difficulty is increased when I remember that Jesus in his earth-life is accustomed to call himself the Son of God. Although he said plainly that he and the Father were one, yet he sometimes speaks of the Father as greater than himself: of praying to the Father for his disciples; and of ascending to the Father on the consummation of his work.”

“He has certainly left the impression upon his hearers that there are two persons in the Godhead; one higher, superior, interior; the other, a man among men; and that between these two there is some mystical union incomprehensible to the human mind.”

“Most of his disciples accept this idea blindly, as a holy mystery. Persons of philosophic culture, who have studied Jesus as a phenomenon, regard him as a Son of God, or rather an emanation from God, in the same sense that Brahma, Osiris, Zoroaster, Moses, and Plato, are sons of God, or manifestations of divine truth. The mystical union between Father and Son is supposed to be [pg 199]an incorporation of the soul of man, by a life of obedience and goodness, with the essential Divine nature from which as a parent it was derived.

“In estimating the difference,” said John, “between Jesus and other teachers of divine truth, the fact of deepest significance is, that he was born of a virgin. The soul of man is derived from his father. Jesus Christ had no earthly father; therefore, as to his inmost he was different from all other men. He was not some angelic form returning into the flesh, or let down from heaven into it; for that is impossible. And if it were so, his claims to omnipotence, infinity, eternity, the Godhead, would be preposterous. No: the soul of Jesus Christ was not introduced into his earthly body through the agency or intermediation of any created intelligence. His soul is the Divine Life, the Supreme Spirit.

“Seen from this earthly side, Jesus has no father. Seen from the spiritual side, he is the Father. Spirits and angels know Him only as the Father. They have never heard the term Son, in the earthly sense, applied to Him. There is no Father beyond him or above him. Here he never prays to the Father. Here he is himself recognized as the Father, Jehovah, the I AM.

“The term Son of God is used in accommodation to the sensuous states of the natural mind. It is peculiar to the earth-life, and cannot rise above the plane which separates the spiritual from the natural. It is only the human natural mind, divorcing the spiritual from the natural, that sees God in a double form, calling Him when invisible, the Father, and when visible, the Son.”

“These things are wonderful,” said I; “but how to [pg 200]explain them to men, who cannot think spiritually, however much they may think about spiritual things?”

“There is another and profounder reason,” continued my instructor, “why Jesus speaks of himself on earth as the Son of God, and so frequently prays to an invisible Father. By subjecting himself in a finite form to the limitations of time and space, he subjects his own spiritual consciousness, so far as it is united, to obscuration. In his human body he thinks and feels as a finite being, the Son; while at the same moment in his spiritual form here He thinks and feels as the Divine Wisdom itself.

“The grand purpose of the incarnation was, to assume a human form in which he could be tempted as we are, in which he could be assaulted by evil spirits and devils; in which he could conquer death, hell and the grave, and become the Mediator, the Way, the Life and the Resurrection. The infestations of evil ones obscure his mental vision and take away from him at times his perception of identity with the Father. Thus he has two earthly states of life, one of glorification or spiritual insight, when he feels conscious of his Fatherhood; and one of humiliation, when he is sorely tempted and tried, and when he lifts his heart in prayer to that Fountain of love and light which is the centre of his own infinite bosom.”

“These things amaze me,” said I, “beyond expression. Nor do I believe that any human being has any true conception of the character of Jesus, of the mission he is filling, or of his plan of redemption. Certainly none of the thoughts you have communicated to me have ever dawned on the minds of his disciples.”