, p. xxiv.
--

Consider next St. Paul's references to the Incarnation:--

"God sent forth His Son, born of a woman." (Gal. iv. 4) He does
not say, "born of human parents."

"His Son our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according
to the flesh." (Rom. i. 3.)

"Being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with
God; but made Himself of no reputation, and took upon Him the form
of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men." (Phil. ii. 6, 7.)

These are the passages in which St. Paul refers to the Birth of
Jesus Christ. Not one of them is inconsistent with the fact that
He was born of a Virgin. But one can say more than this. Every
one of these passages infers that He who was born in time had
existed before. They either assert or imply a Divine pre-existence.
He who was "made in the likeness of men" was already pre-existent
in the "form of God," and was, in fact, "equal with God." This
being the case, does it not prepare us for the further truth that,
when He entered into the conditions of human life, He entered it
not in all respects like us? I should mar if I ventured to
abbreviate Dr. Mason's admirable words, in which he presses
this argument--

"Like causes produce like effects. In similar circumstances, you
may expect the same forces to operate in the same way. But when
some new force is introduced, you cannot expect the same results.
The Birth of Christ, if He is what all the writers of the New
Testament believed Him to be, was necessarily unlike ours in that
one great respect. We had no existence before we were born,
however poets and poetical philosophers may play with the notion.
But the New Testament writers believed that He whom we know as
Jesus Christ was living with a full, vigorous, personal life for
ages before He appeared in the world as man. They maintained that
He was present and active in the making of the world, and
immanent in the development of human history, which formed
a new beginning at His Birth. They said He was God, the Only
Begotten Son of the Eternal Father, who came down from heaven,
and voluntarily entered into the conditions of human life. Admit
the possibility that they were right, and you will no longer
ask that His mode of entrance into our conditions should be
in all things like our own. If you acknowledge that Jesus Christ
was Divine first and became human afterwards, you cannot but say
with St. Ambrose, when you hear that He was born of a Virgin:
'