But this arrangement of the incidents is, as Schleiermacher has already remarked, full of difficulty [204]; and it seems that what is related by one Evangelist is not only not presupposed, but excluded, by the other. For, in the first place, the conduct of the angel who appears to Joseph is not easily explained, if the same or another angel had previously appeared to Mary. The angel (in Matthew) speaks altogether as if his communication were the first in this affair: he neither refers to the message previously received by Mary, nor reproaches Joseph because he had not believed it; but more than all, the informing Joseph of the name of the expected child, and the giving him a full detail of the reasons why he should be so called, (Matt. i. 21) would have been wholly superfluous had the angel (according to Luke i. 34) already indicated this name to Mary. Still more incomprehensible is the conduct of the betrothed parties according to this arrangement of events. Had Mary been visited by an angel, who had made known to her an approaching supernatural pregnancy, would not the first impulse of a delicate woman have been, to hasten to impart to her betrothed the import of the divine message, and by this means to anticipate the humiliating discovery of her situation, and an injurious suspicion on the part of her affianced husband. But exactly this discovery Mary allows Joseph to make from others, and thus excites suspicions; for it is evident that the expression εὑρέθη ἐν γαστρὶ ἔχουσα (Matt. i. 18) signifies a discovery made independent of any communication on Mary’s part, and it is equally clear that in this manner only does Joseph obtain the knowledge of her situation, since his conduct is represented as the result of that discovery (εὑρίσκεσθαι). The apocryphal Protevangelium Jacobi felt how enigmatical Mary’s conduct must appear, and sought to solve the difficulty in a manner which, contemplated from the supranaturalistic point of view, is perhaps the most consistent. Had Mary retained a recollection of the import of the heavenly message—upon this point the whole ingenious representation of the apocryphal Gospel rests—she ought to have imparted it to Joseph; but since it is obvious from Joseph’s demeanour that she did not acquaint him with it, the only remaining alternative is, to admit that the mysterious communication made to Mary had, owing to her excited state of mind, escaped her memory, and that she was herself ignorant of the true cause of her pregnancy. [205] In fact, nothing is left to supranaturalism in the present case but to seek refuge in the miraculous and the incomprehensible. The attempts which the modern theologians of this class have made to explain Mary’s silence, and even to find in it an admirable trait in her character, are so many rash and abortive efforts to make a virtue of necessity. According to Hess [206] it must have cost Mary much self-denial to have