ritual; and wasn't he continually rebuking those who demanded material
proof? The very acceptance of a material proof, it seems to me, is a
denial of faith, since faith ceases to have any worth whatever the moment
the demand for such proof is gratified. Knowledge puts faith out of
the question, for faith to me means a trusting on spiritual grounds.
And surely the acceptance of scriptural statements like that of the
miraculous birth without investigation is not faith--it is mere
credulity. If Jesus had been born in a miraculous way, the disciples
must have known it. Joseph must have known it when he heard the answer
'I must be about my father's business,' and their doubts are
unexplained."

"I see you have been investigating," said the rector.

"Yes," replied Eleanor, with an unconscious shade of defiance, "people
want to know, Mr. Dodder,--they want to know the truth. And if you
consider the preponderance of the evidence of the Gospels themselves--my
brother-in-law says--you will find that the miraculous birth has very
little to stand on. Take out the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke,
and the rest of the four Gospels practically contradict it. The
genealogies differ, and they both trace through Joseph."

"I think people suffer in these days from giving too much weight to
the critics of Christianity," said the rector, "from not pondering more
deeply on its underlying truths. Do not think that I am accusing you
of superficiality, Mrs. Goodrich; I am sure you wish to go to the bottom,
or else you would be satisfied with what you have already read and
heard."

"I do," she murmured.

"And the more one reflects on the life of our Lord, the more one is
convinced that the doctrine of the virgin birth is a vital essential;
without it Christianity falls to pieces. Let us go at the matter the
other way round. If we attribute to our Lord a natural birth, we come at
once to the dilemma of having to admit that he was merely an individual
human person,--in an unsurpassed relationship with God, it is true, but
still a human person. That doctrine makes Christ historical, some one
to go back to, instead of the ever-present, preexistent Son of God and
mankind. I will go as far as to assert that if the virgin birth had
never been mentioned in the Gospels, it would nevertheless inevitably
have become a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. Such a truth
is too vast, too far-reaching to have been neglected, and it has a much