250 The Fundamentals. derful story of Christ’s life in the chapters that follow, then from these to the pictures of Christ’s divine dignity given in John and Paul. The whole is of one piece: the Virgin birth is as natural at the beginning of the life of such an One— the divine Son—as the resurrection is at the end. And the more closely the matter is considered, the stronger does this impression grow. It is only when the scriptural conception of Christ is parted with that various difficulties and doubts come in. A SUPERFICIAL VIEW. It is, in truth, a very superficial way of speaking or think ing of the Virgin birth to say that nothing depends on this be lief for our estimate of Christ. Who that reflects on the subject carefully can fail to see that if Christ was virgin born-rif He was truly “conceived,” as the creed says, “by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary”—there must of necessity enter a supernatural element into His Person; while, if Christ was sin less, much more, if He was the very Word of God incarnate, there must have been a miracle—the most stupendous miracle in the universe—in His origin? If Christ was, as John and Paul affirm and His church has ever believed, the Son of God made flesh, the second Adam, the new redeeming Head of the race, a miracle was to be expected in His earthly origin ; with out a miracle such a Person could never have been. Why then cavil at the narratives which declare the fact of such a miracle ? Who does not see that the Gospel history would have been in complete without them? Inspiration here only gives to faith what faith on its own grounds imperatively demands for its perfect satisfaction. THE HISTORICAL SETTING. It is time now to come to the Scripture itself, and to look at the fact of the Virgin birth in its historical setting, and its relation with other truths of the Gospel. As preceding the
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