principle-in this case the principle of the Incarnationwithout supplying what was already current and well known, the record of the fact. The denial of the fact had been but the result of the denial of the principle. Granted the principle, the belief in the fact would follow inevitably. (2) He does give indications that he recognized the fact. In the scene of the marriage-supper at Cana, before the first miracle had yet been wrought, he shows Mary, our Lord's mother, manifestly expecting of her son miraculous action, manifestly regarding Him as a miraculous person1. There is no such natural explanation of this as that St. John regarded her as conscious from the first of His miraculous origin and nature. Once more: St. John's mind is full of the correspondence between the Son' and the other 'sons' of God, between Christ and the Church. One main motive of his Apocalypse is to exhibit the Church passing through the phases of the life of Christ. Like Him it is born, suffers, dies, rises, ascends. When St. John then gives us the picture of 'a woman arrayed with the sun and the moon under her feet,' who brings forth a son, a male thing,' and other 'seed' besides 3, he is probably presenting the idea of the true Jerusalem, 'the mother of us all,' bringing forth into the world the Christ and His people. But there is a retrospect, or dependence, which can hardly be disputed, upon Mary the actual mother of Jesus, the Christ. The more sure one feels of this, and the more one dwells upon the parallelism exhibited throughout these chapters between the Head * Rev. xii. 5, 17, xi. 7–12.

1 St. John ii. 3-5.

Rev. xii. 1, 5, 17.

and His body, the more disposed one is to see in the picture of the dragon who watches to destroy the newborn child and the flight of the woman into the wilderness1 a mystically-worded 2 retrospect upon the hostile action of Herod who sought the young child's life to destroy him3, i.e. a recognition of the history of the nativity as given in St. Matthew. (3) It would have been impossible for St. John, consistently with the main purpose of his Gospel, to have recorded the Virgin Birth, for his Gospel is, before all else, a personal testimony. It is the old man's witness to what he saw and heard when he was young, and had brooded and meditated upon through his long life. This witness he now leaves on record, at the earnest request of those about him, and for the necessities of the Church.

Such a Gospel must have begun where personal experience began.

Once more with regard to St. Paul-it is a wellknown fact that his epistles are almost exclusively occupied in contending for Christian principles, not in recalling facts of our Lord's life. His function was that of the theologian rather than that of the witness. One conclusion from this might be that St. Paul was ignorant of, or indifferent to, the facts of our Lord's life. But we are restrained from this conclusion by the evidence which

1 Rev. xii. 13, 14.

2 It should be noticed that the account of the death, resurrection, &c. of the 'two witnesses' who represent the Church in xi. 7-12 contains many points of difference from the actual history of the parallel events in our Lord's case, as well as many points of similarity. The relation of the 'mystical' and actual accounts of the death and resurrection is similar to the relation of the two accounts of the birth and early persecution.

3 St. Matt. ii. 13.

he gives at least on two occasions when his argument compels him to recall to the Corinthians his first preaching and he recalls it each time in the form of an evangelical narrative1. We learn from this that St. Paul's first preaching contained at least a considerable element of evangelical narrative. Of all the contents of this narrative we cannot be sure: it is not impossible that it made reference to the miraculous birth of Jesus. But it would be foolish to maintain this in the absence of direct evidence. What we can maintain, with great boldness, is that St. Paul's conception of the 'Second Adam' postulates His miraculous birth. 'Born of a woman,' 'born of the seed of David according to the flesh,' He was yet 'from heaven 3': born of a woman, He was yet a new head of the race, sinless, free from Adam's sin; a new starting-point for humanity 4. Now considering how strongly St. Paul expresses the idea of the solidarity of man by natural descent, and the consequent implication of the whole human race in Adam's fall, his belief in the sinless Second Adam seems to me to postulate the fact of His Virgin Birth; the fact, that is, that He was born in such a way that His birth was a new creative act of God. On this connexion of ideas,

1 I Cor. xi. 23-25, xv. 3-8.

2 Gal. iv. 4; Rom. i. 3.

3 1 Cor. xv. 47. ὁ δεύτερος ἄνθρωπος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ has been interpreted of Christ at His second coming. But it describes the origin of the second man, being parallel to 'the first man is of the earth earthy,' and must therefore be referred to His first coming.

4 2 Cor. v. 21; Rom. v. 12-21; 1 Tim. ii. 5.

Rom. v. 12-21, especially the phrase ép' & návres μapтov. Cf. Acts xvii. 26 ἐποίησεν ἐξ ἑνὸς πᾶν ἔθνος ἀνθρώπων : 1 Cor. xv. 48 οἷος ὁ χοϊκός, τοιοῦτοι καὶ οἱ χοϊκοί: Eph. iv. 22, and Col. iii. 9 ὁ παλαιὸς ἄνθρωπος, which is morally corrupt.

however, more will need to be said when we come to deal with the relation of the Virgin Birth to the idea of the Incarnation.

The 'argument from silence' then, so far as it is based on the facts, appears to be a weak argument, because it gains its strength from ignoring the character and conditions of the silent' records. At least their silence suggests no presumption against the veracity of the records that are not silent, supposing that they present valid credentials, considered in themselves. Accordingly we proceed to the consideration of these records, that is, the narratives of the Virgin Birth in the first two chapters of the first and third Gospels.

§ 2.

The narrative of St. Luke.

Suppose a Christian of the earliest period instructed, like Theophilus, in the primitive oral 'tradition' of the Christian society; suppose him familiar with the sort of narrative that is presented to us in St. Mark's Gospel of the words and deeds of Jesus, and convinced of His Messiahship and divine sonship,- such an one would beyond all question have become inquisitive about the circumstances of the Master's birth. The inquiry must have been general and must have arisen very speedily. Let us transfer ourselves in imagination to that earliest

period, of not less than about five years, before the persecution which arose about the death of Stephen, when the band of Christians in Jerusalem were continuing steadfastly and quietly in the 'apostles' teaching,' and constant repetition was forming the oral Gospel which underlies the earliest evangelical documents; we cannot conceive that period passing without inquiry, systematic inquiry, into the circumstances of our Lord's birth. Now at the beginning of that period the Mother was with the apostolic company. She may well-for all we know have continued with them to the end of it. The Lord's 'brethren' too were there1. There was no difficulty, then, in obtaining trustworthy information. Joseph and Mary must have been silent originally as to the conditions of the birth of Jesus, for reasons obvious enough. They could only have 'kept the things and pondered them in their hearts.' But in the apostolic circle, in the circle of witnesses and believers, the reasons for silence were gone: Mary would have told the tale of His birth.

Now in St. Luke's Gospel-to take that Gospel first— we are presented with an obviously early and Jewish narrative containing an account of the birth of Jesus, incorporated and used by St. Luke. If then St. Luke is believed to be trustworthy in his use of documents, if the account given is credible considered in itself, there is no difficulty at all in perceiving from what source

1 There is, however, nothing improbable in the hypothesis that the 'brethren' did not originally share the secret of Joseph and Mary as to the virgin birth. (The more probable view, as it seems to me, is that which makes the 'brethren' half-brothers of our Lord in popular estimation, i. e. in fact children of Joseph by a former marriage.)