of degree from any saint; and by Incarnation they mean
that moral union which a good man has with God, only illustrated
in the case of Christ in an altogether unique degree. If,
however, the Incarnation be what Christendom believes it to have
been; if the Son of God did really take flesh in the womb of Mary,
and became man, not by assuming a human personality, but by
assuming human nature, by entering into human conditions of
life,--it is indeed difficult to imagine any other way of such an
Incarnation save by way of the Virgin-Birth, by which the entail
of original sin was cut off, and humanity made a fresh start in
the Eternal Person of the Second Adam. And if He is indeed
sinless, the sinless Example, the sinless Sacrifice, how
could He be otherwise born? Adam, at his fall, passed on to the
human race a vitiated nature, which we all share--a nature
biassed in a wrong direction. It descended--this vitiated
nature--from father to son to all generations of men. If this
entail of original sin was to be cut off, if there was really to
be a new Adam, a second start for the human race, how could it
be contrived otherwise than by a Virgin-Birth? The Son of Mary
was indeed wholly human--completely man--but "in Him humanity
inherited no part of that bad legacy which came across the
ages from the Fall."*

When a modern writer says, "We should not now, h priori, expect
that the Incarnate Logos would be born without a human father,"+
we may reply that we are hardly in a position to expect anything
a priori in the matter; but when once we have learnt that this
Incarnate Logos was to be the Second Head of the human race--the
sinless Son of Man--and that in Him humanity was to make a fresh
start, it is indeed difficult to see how this could be without
the miracle of the Virgin-Birth.

--
* Liddon, Christmas Sermons, p. 97.
+ See Contentio Veritatis, p. 88.
--

I should like to say, in conclusion, that I cannot disguise my
conviction that just as in the early days we find no denial of
the Virgin-Birth except among those who denied and objected to
the principle of the Incarnation (on the ground, apparently, of
the essential evil of matter), so, conversely, that the attempt
now being made (or the suggestion put forward) to separate the
Incarnation and the Virgin-Birth will prove to be an
impossibility. Once reject the tradition of the Virgin-Birth,
and the Incarnation will go with it. For a few years, indeed,
men will use the