f supernatural Revelation." Such a stage of thought is only
transitional. An antiquated argument does not long survive in the world
of thought.[38] Military weapons that have become unserviceable soon
find their way either to the museum or the foundry. It is shortsighted
not to foresee the inevitable effect on our theological material of the
law of atrophy through disuse. The case of the miracle is the case of a
pillar originally put in for the support of an ancient roof. When the
roof has a modern truss put beneath it springing from wall to wall, the
pillar becomes an obstacle, and is removed.

But as in such a case the roof, otherwise supported, does not fall in
when the pillar is removed, so neither is the central Christian truth of
the incarnation imperilled by any weakening or vanishing of belief in
the doctrine of the virgin birth. In a discussion of the subject in
Convocation at York, England, while these pages were being written, the
Dean of Ripon (Dr. Boyd Carpenter) urged that it must be borne in mind
that the incarnation and the virgin birth were two different things, and
that some who found difficulty in the latter fully accepted the former.
In a recent sermon Dr. Briggs insists likewise upon this: "The virgin
birth is only one of many statements of the mode of incarnation.... The
doctrine of the incarnation does not depend upon the virgin birth.... It
is only a minor matter connected with the incarnation, and should have a
subordinate place in the doctrine.... At the same time the virgin birth
is a New Testament doctrine, and we must give it its proper place and
importance.... The favorite idea of the incarnation among the people has
ever been the simpler one of the virgin birth, as in the Ave Maria. The
theologians have ever preferred the more profound doctrine of the Hymn
of the Logos [John i. 1-18]."[39] Nay, it may even be found that the
weakening of belief in the incarnation as an isolated and miraculous
event may tend to promote a profounder conception of it, that brings the
divine and the human into touch and union at all points instead of in
one point.[40]

A similar change of thought, less remarked than its significance
deserves, is concerned with that other great miracle, the corporeal
resurrection of Jesus, which such writers as Dr. Nicoll couple with that
of his virgin birth as the irreducible minimum of miracle, belief in
which is essential to Christian discipleship.[41] For many centuries the