The Virgin Birth of Christ. 251 examination of the historical evidence, a little may be said, first, on the Old Testament preparation. Was there any such preparation? Some would say there was not, but this is not God’s way, and we may look with confidence for at least some indications which point in the direction of the New Testament event. THE FIRST PROMISE. One’s mind turns first to that oldest of all evangelical prom ises, that the seed of the woman would bruise the head of the serpent. “I will put enmity,” says Jehovah to the serpent- tempter, “between thee and. the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15. R. V.). It is a forceless weaken ing of this first word of Gospel in the Bible to explain it of a lasting feud between the race of men and the brood of 'ser pents. The serpent, as even Dr. Driver attests, is “the repre sentative of the power of evil”—in later Scripture, “he that is called the Devil and Satan” (Rev. 12:9)—and the defeat he sustains from the woman’s seed is a moral and spiritual victory. The “seed” who should destroy him is described em phatically as the woman’s seed. It was the woman through whom sin had entered the race; by the seed of the woman would salvation come. The early church writers often pressed this analogy between Eve and the Virgin Mary. We may re ject any element of over-exaltation of Mary they connected with it, but it remains significant that this peculiar phrase should be chosen to designate the future deliverer. I cannot believe the choice to be of accident. The promise to Abraham was that in his seed the families of the earth would be blessed; there the male is emphasized, but here it is the woman —the woman distinctively. There is, perhaps, as good scholars have thought, an allusion to this promise in 1 Timothy 2:15, where, with allusion to Adam and Eve, it is said, “But she shall be saved through her (or the) child-bearing” (R. V.).
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