upon. No, the life of Jesus Christ as given us in the Gospels stands forth clearly and vividly with all the transparency of truth, in every word which describes that life from Bethlehem to Calvary. "Christianity has always rested and will rest always upon the historic facts of Scripture above all upon the life of Christ." Now the Creeds have simply embodied in their teaching the words of Scripture, and when we say that Jesus Christ was "conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary" we say no more, no less, than Scripture sets forth, and we cannot doubt the Virgin Birth as taught in the Creeds without doubting the Scripture account of that birth, and thereby setting aside the whole record.

'The Incarnation of the Son of God, the conjunction of the Divine and the Human, is the mystery or mysteries, the wonder of heaven and earth, each alike astonished at the union of both, the one everlasting miracle of divine power and love."

The Incarnation is the basis of all Christian dogma, and the Virgin Birth cannot be separated from that fact without doing violence to the sacred narrative and to the teaching of the early Fathers of the Church respecting this great doctrine. They stand or fall together, and upon whether they stand or fall depends the stability of the Christian religion.

"Truth is mighty and must prevail," and that the religion of the Nazarene stands to-day is because its rock-bed foundation was Truth.

The Incarnation while it is as stated a great mystery, yet to a certain extent it was only the logical outcome of the fiat of God when He said: "Let us make man in our own image." Man came and for years struggled and waited for a more perfect revelation of the image. Man realized that at his best he was far from being such a creature as God intended he should be, there was a yearning after a pattern which would present, the perfect ideal of personality and that came

to pass when God became Incarnate, when the Word was made Flesh.

The believer has this satisfaction, that above the Babel of doubt and confusion he can see the need of the Incarnation and he can place absolute confidence in the historical reality of the Virgin Birth, for in faith in these facts he finds the only true solution of the problems of life.

We recognize that we are truly treading upon Holy Ground when we attempt even most reverently to give expression to our belief in that much of the mystery which God has been pleased to reveal to

us.

What does the Gospel tell us?

St. Matthew says (R. V., I., 22, 23, 24, 25): "Now all this is come to pass that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Behold the virgin shall be with child and shall bring forth a son and they shall call his name Immanuel which is, being interpreted, God with us. And Joseph arose from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took unto him his wife: And knew her not till she had brought forth a son; and he called his name Jesus."

The passage quoted by St. Matthew is found, as is well known, in Isaiah (VII., 14) and there had been a partial fulfillment of the prophecy near the time when it was uttered. The wicked king Ahaz alarmed at a threatened invasion of Judea was about to apply to the Assyrians for assistance. Isaiah was sent to him by the Lord to command him to put his trust in God alone for deliverance and to ask of God a sign. Ahaz refused and God volunteered a sign by the prophet Isaiah, namely, that the young wife of Isaiah should bear a son and that before the child should know to refuse the evil and choose the good, i. e., before he should come to years of discretion, the hostile kings whom Ahaz feared should both perish. But the prophecy of Isaiah was couched in language the literal fulfillment of which could and did happen only in the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God.

The Son of God was not incarnate simply that Isaiah should be made a true prophet, but that by the prophecy, which had been made 740 years before agreeing with the event, men should believe that Jesus was sent from God.

It is true that the Hebrew word “Almah" which means “Virgin" has other meanings besides that of an unmarried woman who has preserved the purity of her body, but in the record of our Lord's birth it can only mean that a "maiden should without the natural agency of any human father whatever become the mother of One who was at once the Babe of her bosom and the God of her immortality." (Maclear, III., 99.)

Bishop Satterlee (New Testament Churchmanship, p. 40) says, "during the period of His youth and early manhood, our Lord has set an example of filial duty to every child of human parents. Indeed all through the years that followed His visit to Jerusalem when He was twelve years of age we read that He went down to Nazareth and was subject unto them, and even up to the time when at the age of thirty He began His public ministry He appears to have been an inmate of that home at Nazareth; but where in the whole Gospels do we find Him revealing, by a single word, the ordinary human consciousness of being the son of a human parent?"

After the narrative given us in the Gospels of the Nativity there is nothing more said regarding the miraculous birth of Jesus; there was evidently no reason why it should be reiterated. The Church has firmly held from the beginning of its existence to the belief that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary as set forth in these same Scriptures, which belief has been embodied in the Creeds which have become the symbols of the Faith of Christendom.

Keim in his Jesus of Nazara (II., p. 41), referring to the genealogies, says "they could only have been devised by their original authors in the belief that

Jesus was Joseph's son," and from this fact he attempts to discredit the story of the Miraculous Conception; but this argument is well answered by E. Griffith Jones in his The Ascent Through Christ, (pp. 256 et seq.), where also the relation between the doctrine of the Incarnation and the fact of the Virgin Birth is treated most thoroughly and convincingly to show that the birth of Christ should have taken place in the way the Scriptures record it and in no other.

As soon as we deny the physical fact of the Virgin Birth we nullify the truth for which it stands, or else we try to devise a garbled theory of the Incarnation which is far from satisfying the demands of either our minds or our hearts, whereas, on the other hand, as soon as we accept the fact of the Miraculous Conception the Incarnation has its full meaning

the "Word became Flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory-the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth."

Why, let us ask, should there be such a strong desire to put a strange and unusual construction upon the very words of the Scripture? If Jesus, the Son of Mary, was simply of the seed of Abraham through Joseph, the Husband of Mary, why was the Apostle particular in stating that Joseph as soon as he perceived Mary's condition was minded to put her away privily and not to make a public example of her. This fact is stated by St. Matthew with careful directness, and the words must be taken as meaning what they imply, and nothing else.

Joseph knew his espoused wife, the Blessed Virgin, to be a pious and pure maiden, and was perplexed. She had been absent on a visit to her cousin Elizabeth for three months and it was not until her return that Joseph noticed her condition and was minded to divorce her privately. But in the midst of his thought he has a dream in which the angel of the Lord appeared unto him and he is told to "Fear not to take Mary unto him as wife, for," said the angel, "that which is

conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost." This is certainly not an ambiguous state

ment.

If we suggest then that the Blessed Virgin Mary was physically with child through coition with Joseph her espoused husband, and that the only miracle was the entrance of God by means of the Holy Spirit into the "cup of clay," we ignore the positive statements of the Evangelists; we discredit the sincerity of Joseph's thoughts and actions; and we cast a doubt, not only upon the whole story of the Nativity, but upon the Atonement as well.

Some people say: "How much simpler your Christianity would be if you were to leave all miracles out of your Creed." These persons are willing to admit that Jesus was a good man. They even go, further and say He was the best Man that ever lived, the pattern and example of humanity for all time. "But," they say, "do n't ask us to believe that He was God -that He was born of a Virgin through the intervention of a so-called Holy Spirit." But stop! If Jesus was only a man then He could not be called a good man, because He claimed to be that which He was not.

As Dr. George P. Fisher says, "the supernatural claims of Jesus are identified with the excellence of His character. Both stand or fall together." We are justified in putting our trust in Him on account of His goodness which surpasses all that we could conceive. We know that one whose character was so irreproachable could not be deceived, and His testimony concerning Himself is worthy of all credence. "To this end," He said, was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. He that is of the truth heareth my voice." This is His testimony respecting Himself. He was the Truth. It was for it He lived, and for it He suffered and died, and that falsehood had any share whatever in His Character would be contrary to all that is reasonable in law or in morals.

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Whenever these matters are discussed we are met with the question: "Is not this a progressive age, are not the times peculiar, are not certain modifications of your Creeds needed in order to keep abreast of advancing civilization, the advanced thought and the progressive culture of the times?" We may make bold to answer that this is assuredly a progressive age and we glory in its advanced thought and culture and in everything which the age has produced for the betterment of the race and for the promotion of man's highest welfare.

But there is a limit to this epidemic of change. Some things remain unchanged. Human nature is still the same to-day as it ever has been. The heart of man is still selfish and sinful-it is still at enmity against God, and this same human nature can be satisfied to-day in no other way than by the old Gospel which the Apostles and the early Fathers of the Church preached.

That the enemies of the Christian faith should misrepresent and pervert its teachings and attempt to discredit the fundamental truths upon which that faith is based and to undermine its influence in every conceivable manner is not strange, and if this open hostility were all it would be reason for congratulation, but unfortunately there are traitors in the very household, and the faith has been attacked many times by those who were its professed friends and pledged to its defense. These friends (?) under the plea of liberality and broadmindedness have tried to rob the faith of all that is dear to the hearts of the believers. They hold out for our acceptance a stone instead of bread, a corpse instead of life, a mess of pottage for a birthright; and when we consider what they would offer us for the "faith once delivered to the Saints," we are fain to cry out as did Mary at the Sepulcher, "They have taken away my Lord."

If we are to have a religion worth anything at all we must not take from it one jot or one tittle of all that is supernatural

or miraculous in its origin and its development, because religion is the tie which binds men to God, and it must therefore present to men something to show its divine origin-there must necessarily be in it elements above and beyond the limitations of earth.

But why speak of the natural and supernatural in regard to a matter in which we believe that God has given to man a positive revelation? Even without this revelation can the most learned explain for us the distinction between the natural and the supernatural? We may be able to find an academic definition of the two words, but these definitions are again limited by our meager knowledge.

Let us cease trying to measure eternal things with a yard-stick.

Let us cease trying to deceive ourselves into thinking that we can live on husks. Let us be as honest in these spiritual matters as we are or try to be in the temporal affairs of life. Let not the barriers of our spiritual life and de

velopment be of our own making. As rational beings we cannot help but believe in God, and if we believe in God let us also believe in Jesus Christ; and if we believe in Jesus Christ, let us believe in the record of His condescension in becoming man for us and for our salvation. All Holy Scripture has been written for our learning and there is only one thing open to us-that is to accept the record of this life of God on earth as given us by God's grace in the Gospels, and like Thomas, the Doubter, to appropriate this same Jesus as our Lord and our God. Then we need no alternatives, no compromises, but with belief in the Virgin Birth will go belief in the Virgin life, and in the calm possession of a faith which has been handed down to us from the days of the Apostles we may feel secure, not only in our present life, but in that life to come when we shall see not through a glass darkly, but face to face. WILLIAM R. BUSHBY.

Washington, D. C.

NE OF the most interesting compilations to the student of political economy in its broadest sense and most liberal application, is the collection issued by the German Department of Labor, of the replies of forty-six of the most populous, and, industrially, the most important cities in the Empire, as to the ways and means taken by them to provide work in the winter months for the unemployed workingmen and-in a few cases-women.

This collection, which grew out of the realization of the increasing pressure of the socialistic problems involved in the spectacle of so and so many thousands of respectable men thrown out of work

every year through no fault of their own was systematically begun in 1903.

It was obtained by addressing a series of tabulated questions to the Mayors and Councillors of fifty-seven cities of the Empire, and by the detailed replies of the said forty-six of that number; the remaining eleven having either never yet undertaken "Necessity-Employment," as it is called in the German language, or having, like the town of Solingen, long since done away with the need of it by the sensible and generous administration of the managers of its important steel works.

Among the forty-six cities are Aix-laChapelle, Barmen, Breslau, Charlotten