h to
be effective must centre on a living person, and the highest objective
it has ever found is Jesus. He is no abstraction but a spiritual
reality, an ever-present friend and guide, our brother and our Lord.
No one will ever compete with Jesus for this position in human hearts.
When I speak of the eternal Christ, I do not mean someone different
from Jesus, although I certainly do mean the basal principle of all
human goodness; Jesus was and is that Christ, and we can only
understand what the Christ is because we have seen Him. Whole-hearted
faith in Him has proved itself to be the most effective means to the
manifestation of our own Christhood.

+Jesus and the incarnation.+--This thought at once opens up another
great question to which we have already alluded, that of the
incarnation of this eternal Christ or Son of God in the finite
universe. According to the received theology the incarnation of God in
human life was limited to the life of Jesus only, and through Him to
mankind. I purposely say popular theology because the best Christian
thought has always known better. Popular theology has it that Jesus,
the only-begotten eternal Son of God, took human flesh and a human
nature, was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of a virgin, and
was born into the world in a wholly miraculous way--a way which stamps
Him as different from all that were ever born of woman before or since.
It seems strange that belief in the virgin birth of Jesus should ever
have been held to be a cardinal article of the Christian faith, but it
is so even to-day. There is not much need to combat it, for most
reputable theologians have now given it up, but it is still a
stumbling-block to many minds. Perhaps, therefore, a brief examination
of the subject may not be altogether out of place.

+The virgin birth not demonstrable from Scripture.+--The virgin birth
of Jesus was apparently unknown to the primitive church, for the
earliest New Testament writings make no mention of it. Paul's letters
do not allude to it, neither does the gospel of St. Mark. "In the
fulness of time," says the great apostle, "God sent forth His Son born
of a woman." He was "of the seed of David according to the flesh," but
nowhere does Paul give us so much as a hint of anything supernatural
attending the mode of His entry into the world. Mark does not even
tell us anything about the childhood of the Master; his account begins
with the baptism of Jesus in Jorda