The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord

The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord

Project Gutenberg's The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord, by B. W. Randolph
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord A paper read (in substance) before
the confraternity of the Holy Trinity at Cambridge
Author: B. W. Randolph
Release Date: March 19, 2005 [EBook #15412]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
VIRGIN-BIRTH OF OUR LORD ***

Produced by Michael Madden

THE VIRGIN-BIRTH OF OUR LORD
A PAPER READ (IN SUBSTANCE) BEFORE THE
CONFRATERNITY OF THE HOLY TRINITY AT CAMBRIDGE
BY
B. W. RANDOLPH, D.D.
PRINCIPAL OF ELY THEOLOGICAL, COLLEGE
HON, CANON OF ELY
EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP OF LINCOLN
Tu ad liberandum suscepturus hominem: non horruisti Virginis uterum.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND Co., 39 PATERNOSTER ROW,

LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY
1903
WITH RESPECT AND AFFECTION TO
VINCENT HENRY STANTON, D.D.
ELY PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE
Dedisti Jesum Christum, Filium tuum unicum, ut . . . pro nobis
nasceretur qui, operante Spiritu Sancto, verus Homo factus est ex
substantia Virginis Marie matris sue.
Pref. in Die Nat. Dom.
PREFACE
This paper was read before the S. T. C. (Sanctae Trinitatis
Confraternitas) on March 10th of this years at one of the ordinary
meetings of the Brotherhood. It is published now in the hope that it
may thus reach a wider circle.
To suppose that any one can hold the Catholic doctrine of the
Incarnation without believing the miraculous Conception and Birth, is,
in the writer's opinion, a delusion. There is no trace in Church History,
so far as he is aware, of any believers in the Incarnation who were not
also believers in the Virgin-Birth. The modern endeavour to divorce the
one from the other appears to be part of the attempt now being made to
get rid of the miraculous altogether from Christianity.
Professor Harnack appears to urge us to accept the "Easter message"
while we need not, he thinks, believe the "Easter faith."* He means
apparently by this that we can deny the literal fact of our Lord's
Resurrection, while we may believe in a future life. What St. Paul
would really have said to a Christianity such as this seems to be plain
from his words to the Corinthian converts who were denying the
Resurrection in his day: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching
vain, and your faith is also vain." (I Cor. xv. 14.)
-- * Harnack, What is Christianity? p. 160. --
Deny the Resurrection of our Lord, and you take away the key-stone
from the Apostolic preaching, and the whole edifice falls to the ground.
Any unprejudiced reader of the sermons and speeches of St. Peter and
St. Paul in the Acts will surely recognize how true this is.
Similarly in regard to the human Birth of our Lord. Once admit that He
was born as other men, and the Incarnation fades away. A child born

naturally of human parents can never be God Incarnate. There can be
no new start given to humanity by such a birth. The entail of original
sin would not be cut off nor could the Christ so born be described as
the "Second Adam--the Lord from heaven." Christians could not look
to such a one as their Redeemer or Saviour, still less as the Author to
them of a new spiritual life.
Another man would have appeared among men, giving mankind the
example of a beautiful human life, but unable in any other way to
benefit the race of men. Further, a Christ such as this would not be a
perfect character, for if the Gospels are to be believed, He said things
about Himself and made claims which no thoroughly good man could
have a right to make unless he were immeasurably more than man.
While these pages were passing through the press, the eye of the
present writer was caught by the following words in a letter of Bishop
Westcott, which seem to have a special significance at this time:--"I
tried vainly to read----'s book .... He seems to me to deny the
Virgin-Birth. In other words, he makes the Lord a man, one man in the
race, and not the new Man--the Son of Man, in whom the race is
gathered up. To put the thought in another and a technical form, he
makes the Lord's personality human, which is, I think, a fatal error."*
-- * Life of Bishop Westcott, vol. ii. p. 308. --
It is sometimes said, in opposition to