Another man would have appeared among men, giving mankind the example of a beautiful human life, but unable in any other way to benefit the race of men. Further, a Christ such as this would not be a perfect character, for if the Gospels are to be believed, He said things about Himself and made claims which no thoroughly good man could have a right to make unless he were immeasurably more than man. While these pages were passing through the press, the eye of the present writer was caught by the following words in a letter of Bishop Westcott, which seem to have a special significance at this time:--"I tried vainly to read----'s book .... He seems to me to deny the Virgin-Birth. In other words, he makes the Lord a man, one man in the race, and not the new Man--the Son of Man, in whom the race is gathered up. To put the thought in another and a technical form, he makes the Lord's personality human, which is, I think, a fatal error."* -- * Life of Bishop Westcott, vol. ii. p. 308. -- It is sometimes said, in opposition to the mystery of the Virgin-Birth, that there is a tendency in the human mind, not without its illustrations in history, to "decorate with legend" the early history of great men. In reply, it may be enough here to say that legends analogous to the pagan legends of the births of heroes, false and absurd legends, did gather round the infancy of Jesus Christ. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of such legends. They tell us how the idols of Egypt fell down before Him; how His swaddling-clothes worked miracles; and how He made clay birds and turned boys into kids, and worked other absurd miracles of various kinds. But there is a world of difference between these "silly tales" and the restraint, purity, dignity, and reserve which characterize the narratives of the first and third Evangelists. "The distinction between history and legend," says Dr. Fairbairn, "could not be better marked than by the reserve of the Canonical and the vulgar tattle of the Apocryphal Gospels."* -- * Quoted in Gore, Dissertations, p. 60. -- I wish to take this opportunity of thanking my colleague, the Rev. G. W. Douglas, and my friend the Rev. Canon Warner, Rector of Stoke-by-Grantham, for their kind help in revising the proof-sheets of this paper. B.W.R. THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE, ELY, Feast of St. Mark, 1903. [Note on transliteration of Greek quotations: o = omicron (short o); e = epsilon (short e); ô = omega (long o); ê = eta (long e)] THE VIRGIN-BIRTH OF OUR LORD There are two miracles confessed in every form of the Creed--the miracle of the Conception and Birth, by which the Incarnation was effected; and the miracle of the Resurrection. These are the fundamental miracles, and are the battle-ground upon which the defenders and assailants of Christianity more especially meet.