V. THE INCARNATION The human race then had broken its right relation of friendship with God: men had lost the way^ because they had lost the life (without which the way cannot be followed) and the truth without which the way cannot even be known. To such a world Christ, who had come to make all things new , said, ‘T am the Way, the Truth and the Life.” In those three words — way, truth, life — Christ related Himself quite precisely to what man had lost: as precisely as a key fits a lock. In the precision of that threefold relation, we are apt to overlook the strangest word in the phrase — the word “am.” Men needed truth and life : what they might have expected was one who would say “I have the truth and the life” : what they found was one who said “I am the truth and the life.” This strange word forces us to a new mode of approach. If a man claims to have what we want, we must study what he has. If a man claims to be what we want, we must study what he is. With any other teacher the truth he has is our primary concern — the teacher himself is of no importance save as the bearer of truth, and his work is done when he has given it. With Christ, the teacher is primary: He cannot simply give us the truth and the life, and then have done with us. He 45