The Virgin-Birth of Our Lord | Page 6

centuries of the Church, no teacher and no religious
community which can be considered with any appearance of right as an
heir of original Christianity, had any other notion of the beginning of
the [human] life of Jesus of Nazareth .... The theory of an original
Christianity without the belief in Jesus the Son of God, born of the
Virgin, is a fiction."#
-- * See Texts and Studies (Cambridge, 1891), vol. i. No. I, p. 25. +
"Ecquid verisimile est, ut tot ac tantae [ecclesiae] in unam fidem
erraverint?"--Tertullian, De Praescript, cap. xxviii. # "Dies aber ist ein
Element des Symbolum gewesen, so weit wir dasselbe zuruckverfolgen
konnen; und wenn Ignatius als Zeuge fur ein noch ateres, aus fruher
apostolischer Zeit stammendes Taufbekenntnis gelten darf, so hat auch
in diesem bereits der Name der Jungfrau Maria seine Stelle gehabt . . .
Man darf ferner behauften, dass wathrend der ersten vier Jahrhunderte
der Kirche kein Lehrer und Keine religiose Genossenschaft, welche
sich mit einigem Schein des Rechts als Erben des ursprfinglichen
Christenthums betrachten konnten, eine andere Auschauung yon dem
Lebensanfang Jesu yon Nazareth gehabt haben, als diese .... Dass die

Annahme eines ursprunglichen Christenthums ohne den Glauben an
den yon der Jungfrau geborenen Gottessohn Jesus eine Fiktion
ist."--Zahn, Das Apostolische Symbolum, pp. 55-68. --
Opponents of the Virgin-Birth occur, indeed, in the person of Cerinthus,
the contemporary of St. John, and later on among the Ebionites,
mentioned by Justin Martyr.* But they reject the Virgin-Birth, because
they reject the principle of the Incarnation. "There are no believers in
the Incarnation discoverable who are not believers in the
Virgin-Birth."+ The two truths have been held together as inseparable.
There has never been any belief in the Incarnation without its carrying
with it the belief in the Virgin-Birth.
-- * Dial cum Tryph., 48, 49. + Gore, Dissertations, p. 48. --
II
THE GOSPELS OF ST. MATTHEW AND ST. LUKE
But if such was the belief of Christians everywhere in the early years of
the second century, can we trace the evidence further back? In
answering this question, we are brought face to face with the Gospels.
But first it must be noted that the positive evidence for such a subject
must, in the nature of the case, be much more limited than the evidence
for the Resurrection. The Apostles were primarily witnesses of what
they themselves had seen. There are two persons, and two only, from
whom we could reasonably expect to hear the truth about the mystery
of the miraculous Conception--Mary and Joseph; and when we open
the Gospels we have, as everybody knows, two narratives of the
Nativity--St. Luke's and St. Matthew's.
(I) St. Luke, in describing the Nativity, is using an Aramaic document.
There is a great difference in style between the preface, which is his
own, and that of the narrative which follows. It was an Aramaic
document (as Godet, Weiss, and Dr. Sanday agree); but more than this,
as Bishop Gore has pointed out: "It breathes the spirit of the Messianic
hope, before it had received the rude and crushing blow involved in the
rejection of the Messiah."* The Christology of the passage is
pre-Christian: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the
Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of His father
David: and He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of His
kingdom there shall be no end."+
-- * Gore, Dissertations, p. 16. + St. Luke i. 32, 33. -- "How can all

this," Dr. Chase asks, "be the invention of a believer in the Messiahship
of Jesus when the Jews had rejected Him, and when the Resurrection
and Ascension had raised the conception of His Messiahship to the
height of a spiritual and universal sovereignty? The Christology of
these passages is a striking proof of their primitive character."# It is
indeed difficult to see how men can read the Benedictus or Magnificat
without realizing this. Every verse in them is full of Jewish thought and
Jewish expressions, such as would have been impossible had they been
the inventions of a later date.
-- # Chase, Supernatural Elements in our Lord's Earthly Life. --
That is to say, these two chapters bear traces on the face of them of
being what they profess to be--a true and genuine account of the human
Birth of Jesus Christ, received ultimately from her who alone could be
competent to give it--the Virgin-Mother herself. For it must be Mary's
account if it is genuine. It is given to us by St. Luke, who tells us that
he "had traced the course of all things accurately from the first," and
who had gathered information concerning, be it observed, "those things
which are most surely believed among the