256 The Fundamentals. fore, the highest claim to credit. The second fact is even more important. A perusal of the narratives shows clearly— what might have been expected—that the information they convey was derived from no lower source than Joseph and Mary themselves. This is a marked feature of contrast in the narratives—that Matthew’s narrative is all told from Joseph’s point of view, and Luke’s is. all told from Mary’s. The signs of this are unmistakable. Matthew tells about Joseph’s diffi culties and action, and says little or nothing about Mary’s thoughts and feelings. Luke tells much about Mary—even her inmost thoughts—r-but says next to nothing directly about Joseph. The narratives, in short, are not, as some would have it, contradictory, but are independent and complementary. The one supplements and completes the other. Both together are needed to give the whole story. They bear in themselves the stamp of truth, honesty, and purity, and are worthy of all acceptation, as they were evidently held to be in the early church. UNFOUNDED OBJECTIONS. Against the acceptance of these early, well-attested narra tives,. what, now, have the obj ectors to allege ? I pass by the attempts to show, by critical elimination (expurging Luke 1:35, and some other clauses), that Luke’s narrative was not a narrative of a Virgin birth, at all. This is a vain attempt in face of the testimony of manuscript authorities. Neither need I dwell on the alleged “discrepancies” in the genealogies and narratives. These are not serious, when the independence and different standpoints of the narratives are acknowledged. The genealogies, tracing the descent of Christ from David along different lines, present problems which exercise the minds of scholars, but they do not touch the central fact of the belief of both Evangelists in the birth of Jesus from a vir gin. Even in a Syriac manuscript which contains the certainly wrong reading, “Joseph begat Jesus,” the narrative goes on,
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