the conception of a divine Fatherhood endowing the royal son with dominion to that of positive paternity takes place with a bold literalness before our eyes on the walls of Luxor in a manner which shows how easily symbols might be converted into facts. May we not believe that a similar conversion was effected in a nobler form by early Christian imagination ?1

In truth, however, it is frankly recognised that this doctrine does not really rest upon historic evidence. It enters the believer's mind by an act of faith. If it be enquired on what this faith is founded, some may answer, 'the Scripture record.' With

1 If it be replied (as, for example by Prof. Sanday, Hastings' Dict. of the Bible, vol. ii. p. 647) that there was not time for such a transition in view of the newer dates assigned to the Gospels, it may be observed that the report that Plato was the son of Apollo was circulated in Athens during his life-time, and was sufficiently important for his nephew Speusippus expressly to deny it at his uncle's funeral, cp. First Three Gospels, 2nd ed. p. 160, and Origen, Against Celsus, i. 37. For the similar case of Augustus, cp. First Three Gospels, p. 160, and Gardner, Exploratio Evangelica, p. 241-2. When Dellius, the friend of Antony came into Judea, he was so much struck with the beauty of Herod's wife Mariamne and her brother Aristobulus, grandchildren of the high priest Hyrcanus, that he began to 'talk portents' and complimented their mother by the suggestion that they were not of human birth, but from some god, Josephus, Antiquities, xv. 2, 6. A remarkable story is related by the historian Justin, xv. 4, of the birth of Seleucus (afterwards the founder of Antioch) whose mother Laodice, though married to Antiochus, received a visit from Apollo. The god left his pledge in the shape of a ring (afterwards found in the bed), on which was engraved an anchor! The thigh of Seleucus, and the same limb of his sons and grandsons, all bore the image of an anchor. Such were the tales of Syria. As the term 'Spirit' is feminine in Hebrew, it is not likely that the Christian story arose on Jewish soil; its use in Luke 135 is not Palestinian any more than 'virgin' in Matt. 123, which is derived from the Greek version of the Old Testament Scriptures made at Alexandria. In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, ed. E. B. Nicholson, the Spirit addresses Jesus as 'My son' and he in turn speaks of 'My mother the holy Spirit,' pp. 43, 74.

'The candid testimony of Prof. Ramsay has already been cited.

that plea we have already dealt. The student who realises that the Scripture record is inconsistent with itself can no longer accept it as a whole. He may select what he finds most congruous with his general scheme of thought, but he cannot refuse the same right to others. Those who believe that Joseph was the father of Jesus have the authority of the Gospels as fully as those who ascribe his birth to the direct intervention of the Holy Spirit. There is, however, another alternative. The same judgment which pronounces the narratives of Matthew and Luke 'incompatible in certain details as they stand,' falls back for the justification of faith on the authority of the Church1:

'Considering the position which the Virgin-birth holds in the creeds, it cannot be denied that the authority of the Church is committed to it as a fact beyond recall. To admit that its historic position is really doubtful would be to strike a mortal blow at the authority of the Christian Church as a guide to religious truth in any real sense. Such a result is in itself an argument against the truth of any position which would tend to produce it.'

But criticism, if it is once admitted into the Scriptures, cannot be restrained from investigating tradition. It will ask what is the authority of the Church? In whom is it vested? How is its scope defined? By what marks may it be recognised? What proofs can it offer of its claims? And to these and other questions of like character it will get various answers, from Jerusalem to Nicea, to Rome, to Geneva, to Canterbury. Moreover, it will point out that the New Testament presents various 1 Dr. Gore, Dissertations, p. 67.

conceptions of the person of Jesus. There is the Synoptic type represented in its earliest form by Mark, which exhibits Jesus as the Messiah who preached the kingdom of God and healed the sick, so that Peter could tell (Acts 1038) how that God anointed him with holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good.' There is the Pauline type, according to which Jesus is interpreted no longer 'according to the flesh,' but as the Second Man, the Man from heaven, first born of the spiritual creation, and identified in express terms with the Spirit, 2 Cor. 317. And there is the Johannine type, depicting Jesus as the Word become flesh, living in mystic unity with the Father and with his disciples, so that all share a common fellowship, the true centre of which is no more on earth but in a realm beyond the relations of space, though it may be accommodated to our conceptions as 'above.' We need not now ask whether these three representations can be reconciled; it is enough to observe that here are the fountain-heads of the Christian tradition, and none of them names the Virgin-birth. If there are any other founders of the Church more eminent than Peter, Paul, and 'John,' it were well that we should know them. As long as we are in error with them, we are not far from safety.

Follow the streams of tradition into the second century, and you will find that it flows in divers channels and has various representatives. The fathers are feeling their way towards new modes of interpreting the word and work of Jesus. There is

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no fixed orthodoxy. Germs of thought are expanding in different directions. Tendencies of speculaThe advancing tion meet in stubborn conflict. exaltation of the person of Jesus drives earlier conceptions of his nature into remote corners; they survive in a sort of underground life, to emerge into light in the heresies of later days, when strange and obscure sects unexpectedly reproduce some primitive aspect of the early faith. But in the midst of the confusion the voice of Harnack is heard saying with unfaltering decision1:

'It is one of the best established results of history that the clause "Born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary" does not belong to the earliest Gospel preaching.'

About the year 243-2 B.C., the great Asoka, so often called the Constantine of Buddhism, visited the reputed birthplace of the Buddha (who had been born some three centuries before), and recorded his homage in an inscription. He had learned from his teachers who held the sacred tradition, that the future Buddha had descended from the Tusita heaven, and had become miraculously incarnate in his mother's womb. At his birth a wondrous light appeared; the shining devas sang and made music in heaven; and the whole system of ten thousand worlds The Brahmans on his quivered in sympathy. name-day predicted his future glory; and the sage

1 Nineteenth Century, July, 1893, p. 170.

2 The twenty-first of Asoka's reign, see the inscription of the Rummindei pillar, Vincent Smith, Asoka, p. 145. The year is uncertain, owing to some slight doubt as to the date of his accession: see Miss Duff's Chronology of India, p. II. The inscription was discovered in December, 1896.

Asita, when he received the babe in his arms, announced that he would establish the kingdom of righteousness, and wept to think that his own death would first remove him from the influence of the future Teacher. The tradition further declared that the Scriptures in which these things were contained had been solemnly rehearsed at a great meeting of the disciples immediately after their Master's death, and had been preserved intact ever since. If a Brahman critic had impeached its truth, should we be surprised if he had declined to accept from Asoka a reply couched in such terms as these?—

'Considering the position which the miraculous Birth holds in the Dhamma (the Truth contained in the sacred books), it cannot be denied that the authority of the Buddhist Order is committed to it as a fact beyond recall. To admit that its historical position is really doubtful would be to strike a mortal blow at the authority of the Buddhist Order as a guide to religious truth in any real sense. Such a result is itself an argument against the truth of any position which would tend to produce it.'

IV.

Once more, in another form and with a wider significance, the authority of Christian experience is urged upon us. The inward light, it is pleaded, is the real witness to spiritual truths; and the believer rests securely on personal communion with his heavenly Lord. The idea of the living and exalted

1 See the Sutta-Nipāta, in Sacred Books of the East, x. p. 125; cp. Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, in S. B. E. xi. p. 47; and Mahâpadāna Sutta, in Digha Nikāya, ed. Davids and Carpenter, vol. ii. p. 15.