)<■})•■ 
 
/ ,!'^,2^. 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
 Di'vmon....2d>3i'^-'^^ 3 
 
 Section.-i' 
 
 f-AA 
 
.-k.». 
 
 ^M 
 
/«S 
 
 Na^IJ 
 
THE 
 
 JUL n ^1924 
 
 BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Rev. henry A. MILES, D. D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF " ORIGIN AND TRANSMISSION OF THE GOSPELS," " TRACES OP 
 PICTURE-WRITING IN THE BIBLE." 
 
 " Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after 
 the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ." 
 St. Paul to the Colossians ii. 8 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, AND COMPANY. 
 
 381 Washington Street. 
 
 1878. 
 
Copyright, 1877, 
 Br LOCKWOOD, BROOKS, & CO. 
 
 RIVERSIDE PRESS, CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 JTEREOTTPED AND PRINTED BY 
 
 H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANr. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. Introduction 5 
 
 II. The Problem 19 
 
 III. The Probable Facts .... 34 
 
 IV. The Shepherds and the Magi . . 55 
 V. After Theories ..... 72 
 
 VI. The Fight 95 
 
 VII. The Fathers ... . 125 
 
 VIII. Patristic Reasoning . . . .139 
 
 IX. The Apostles' Creed .... 154 
 
 X. Mariolatrt 166 
 
 XL Conclusion 194 
 
THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. . 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 TT is tlie object of tliis book to examine those 
 parts of the gospel narratives which relate 
 to the birth of Jesus, in order to understand, if 
 possible, what they intended to record. 
 
 A few words may explain the motives tliat 
 lead to this investigation, and the spirit in which 
 it is conducted. 
 
 If there be in the English language a mono- 
 graph on this subject, it is not known to the 
 writer of this book. Various commentaries on 
 the Gospels offer brief explanations ; but, per- 
 haps, no critical reader has looked into them 
 without disappointment. To discuss this point 
 fully in such works would require dispropor- 
 tionate space, and it is generally dismissed in a 
 few words. 
 
6 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 The inquirer may next turn to Treatises on the 
 Evidences of Christianity. In modern works of 
 this kind the miraculous birth of Jesus is fre- 
 quently not even alluded to. Scholars know 
 what a prominent place this point held a few 
 hundred years ago. The recent silence betrays 
 doubts, and still further baffles the inquirer. 
 
 He finds a like silence on this subject in 
 modern creeds. The ninth chapter of this book 
 will describe the steps of the formation, in the 
 fourth century, of what is commonly called The 
 ApoHtles' Creed. Subsequent creeds often fol- 
 lowed the style of that symbol of faith. But a 
 marked change in their contents is now seen in 
 nearly all Protestant creeds. The old clauses 
 relating to the supernatural birth of Jesus are 
 now omitted. The Christian consciousness of 
 our age recognizes the difficulties and doubts 
 connected with this subject, and makes conces- 
 sion to them. With good sense and propriety 
 creeds are now usually limited to the expression, 
 in some form, of a belief that Jesus was a divine 
 manifestation in the flesh. Details are left to 
 individual judgments, which, if they have ever 
 carefully considered this subject, have doubtless 
 reached diverse conclusions. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 Two opposite poles of thouglit are sufficiently 
 obvious. On the one hand is the lately pro- 
 claimed, but long believed, dogma of the " Im- 
 maculate Concei)tion," which affirms that the 
 Virgin Mary gave birth to God by the power of 
 the Holy Ghost, without human intervention. 
 On the other hand, to many minds there seems 
 mingled with the records of the birth of Jesus 
 such a mass of incredible interpretations that it 
 has none of the aspects of a real event. The 
 whole history is pushed aside with much the 
 same feeling as is the fable of the birth of Mi- 
 nerva from the brain of Jupiter. 
 
 Between these extremes the minds of thoujxht- 
 ful teachers of religion often waver. Once in 
 each year they read from the sacred desk the 
 stories of the birth of Jesus, and can feel, as 
 they think, a sincere faith in them. They are 
 sustained by the hallowed memories that cluster 
 around that season in which Jesus " came to 
 visit us in great humility," and which, amid all 
 the kindly feelings and beautiful customs of 
 Christmas, draw every one into a believing mood. 
 But even then, as we suppose, most ministers 
 would prefer not to be questioned closely as to 
 what the traditions relating to the first Christmas 
 really mean. 
 
8 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 We know that tliey would generally affirm 
 that they believe exactly what the record says. 
 But what the record says is still an open ques- 
 tion ; and if tliey reply that they take it in its 
 obvious and literal sense, we suspect that few 
 believe this with the same assured faith with 
 which they believe other things. 
 
 Propositions of which we say that we believe 
 them all equally, may have a very different hold 
 upon the mind. There are other witnesses in 
 the case than our affirmations. Probably no 
 one reads ordinarily the story of the birth of 
 Jesus in the same tone of voice with which he 
 reads the Beatitudes. It seems impossible that 
 these chapters should stand alike in our spir- 
 itual conviction. The preacher knows there are 
 thoughtful and devout men among his hearers 
 who look upon the account of that birth with 
 bewildered and suspended minds. He would 
 be glad to come into a truer relation to them ; 
 and they would be glad to see this subject in 
 lights which would permit an untroubled belief. 
 
 Between a literal acceptance of the stories con- 
 nected with our Lord's birth, and a rejection of 
 them all as fables, critical litei'ature has not yet 
 furnished an accredited middle ground. Happily 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 we are far removed from the ribald skepticism of 
 the Deistical writers of the last century. Noth- 
 ing is more reassuring than the freedom from 
 sneering assaults from unbelievers, and the manly 
 confidence in the truth among the friends of a 
 sound Biblical criticism. Even those who shrink 
 from a dej)arture from traditional interpretations 
 have little of the feeling of the Buddhist, who, 
 regarding the destruction of any life as a sin, 
 and seein*g millions of animalculse in a drop of 
 water, at once destroyed the microscope that 
 had made the unwelcome revelation. 
 
 Should a visitor from some other planet see 
 in Roman Catholic countries the infant Jesus in 
 his mother's arms, painted in millions of pictures, 
 in churches, and on shrines and altars, and should 
 he observe that prayers are offered to these a 
 thousand fold more frequently than to any one 
 else, would he not naturally conclude that the 
 Christian's God is an infant, and that Christian 
 adoration consists in the worship of a child ? 
 
 How great would be his astonishment if he 
 should contrast all this with the worship enjoined 
 by Jesus, and with the prayers that have come 
 down to us from the first century of the church. 
 
 It might be a long time before he could under- 
 
10 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 stand from what tone of mind arose this ascrip- 
 tion of the godhead to a child. But his studies 
 in history would at length suggest the true ex- 
 planation. He would see that it was the influ- 
 ence of pagan literature which first invested that 
 child with supernatural associations. 
 
 In the heathen mythologies it was believed 
 that the gods often took human form. When 
 in the fourth century a thin Christian varnish 
 was given to the ancient paganism, parallelisms 
 were eagerly sought between Jupiter and his 
 offspring, and Jehovah and the Son of God. The 
 life of Jesus was then written, once in Greek by 
 lines taken entirely from Homer, and once in 
 Latin by lines taken entirely from Virgil. These 
 " Centons," as they were called, were famous 
 books in their day. They are here referred to 
 oidy as one token among numberless otliers of 
 the drift of thought in the epoch when they ap- 
 peared. That epoch originated the worship of a 
 child, and made that child God. 
 
 At the Protestant Reformation the adoration 
 of an infant was abandoned by the Reformers ; 
 but the theology on which that adoration rested 
 was retained. This theology teaches that this 
 infant, even before his birth, was the Almighty 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 God. " God of God " was laid in the manger of 
 Bethlehem, and was carried in his mother's arms. 
 Some think the Roman Catholic is more consist- 
 ent with this theolog)^ than the Protestant. It 
 seems strange that so little has been done to re- 
 form the theology on which this idolatry was 
 engrafted. Why should we lay at the vestibule 
 of Christianity an old heathen dogma, wliich, 
 if made as prominent as formerly, would repel 
 thousands, and is now repelling many, since it 
 is in conflict with the criticism and thought of 
 this age ? 
 
 What if the recoi'ds of the birth of Jesus have 
 been misunderstood for hundreds of years ? What 
 if false opinions on this point have long been 
 handed down from father to son ? Do we not 
 know that this has happened with many other 
 doermas? The more enlio-htened faith of our 
 day protests against views of the Atonement^ of 
 Total Depravity^ of Future Punishment, and of 
 Infant Damnation, which have been believed for 
 ages. 
 
 The old complaint that theology has not 
 shared the progress of other sciences is at length 
 losing its pertinency. Truth, which is in itself 
 "the same yesterday, to-day, and forever," will 
 
12 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 necessarily assume different aspects according to 
 the condition of our mental eyes. It would be 
 evidence of imbecility or insanity to ask us to 
 hold the astronomical views adopted before tele- 
 scopes were invented. 
 
 "The whole scheme of Scripture," says one of 
 the profoundest thinkers, "is not yet understood; 
 and, if it ever comes to be understood, it must 
 be in the same way as natural knowledge is come 
 at; by the continuance and progress of learning 
 and of liberty, and b}^ particular persons attend- 
 ing to, comparing and pursuing intimations scat- 
 tered up and down it, which are overlooked and 
 disregarded by the generality of the world. Nor 
 is it at all incredible that a book which has been so 
 long in the possession of mankind should contain 
 many truths as jet undiscovered." ^ 
 
 This is a sufficient answer to the sophistry in 
 one of Lord Macaulay's Essays.^ He contends 
 that theology "is not a progressive science." A 
 divine revelation makes all minds equal. A 
 Newton, or a Locke, he says, can see no further 
 than a Blackfoot Indian. This must be on the 
 supposition that revelation is the only factor in 
 
 1 Bishop Butler. 
 
 2 See Macaulay's Review of Rankers Ilistori/ of the Popes. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 the case. Surely, our ability to comprehend 
 revelation, to free it from traditional misrepre- 
 sentations, and to clear our mental eye, is an- 
 other factor. This necessitates a continued re- 
 adjustment of old conclusions. The great his- 
 torian was here advancing one of the brilliant 
 paradoxes which at times fascinated his pen. 
 
 The limits of the change of opinion now advo- 
 cated should be defined as well as its scope. 
 
 In undertaking to show that in the New Testa- 
 ment and the Primitive Church we are taught 
 that Jesus was born in a natural generation, and 
 was the son of Joseph as well as of Mary, nothing 
 is said that is necessarily adverse to Arian or 
 Trinitarian views of his personality. It is as con- 
 ceivable on this hypothesis, as on any other, that 
 a preexisting angel, or the Deity himself, was 
 incarnated in a body so generated. All our a 
 priori speculations are out of place. We are in- 
 terested to know what the Gospels say. Why 
 for their teachings should we substitute the dog- 
 matism of ignorant and misguided ages ? 
 
 If it be asked why we care for one theory 
 rather than the other, it seems a sufficient answer 
 to point to the diffei-ent effect upon our views of 
 tlie reality of tlie person of Jesus. To how many 
 
14 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 minds lie is not a real person ! His existence 
 seems to belong not to the domain of veritable 
 history, but to that of legendary theology. Plato, 
 Socrates, Cicero, Seneca, are real persons; but 
 Jesus, to many, is a fabulous demi-god. His name 
 stands for a spectre. The perplexing traditions 
 of his birth cast a shadowy mystery over the 
 whole of his life. Christians of all names do in- 
 deed say that they believe in his humanity ; but 
 to many this is little better than a mere make- 
 belief. Is there any other name in history around 
 which have jrathered such a mass of confused and 
 self-contradictory associations ? 
 
 No sooner had the person of Jesus been envel- 
 oped in a mythical cloud than a host of perplex- 
 ing questions arose to distract the Church. It 
 was asked. Was his flesh of the same essence as 
 his divinity? Was his body created or un- 
 created ? If uncreated, did it once form a part of 
 the Trinity ? If created, when, where, and out 
 of what, was it made ? Was his bod}^ corruptible 
 or incorruptible? If corruptible, how could it 
 ascend to heaven ? If incorruptible, how could 
 he be said to have assumed human nature ? If 
 he was equal to the Father and the Spirit, why 
 was he sent to suffer and die, rather than either 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 of the other persons of the Trinity ? Did he suf- 
 fer in his human nature, or in his divine nature, 
 or in both ? If he suffered in his human nature 
 ah)iie, where is the infinite atonement ? If he 
 suffered in the divine nature, did the Father and 
 tlie Spirit suffer with him ? Did lie have two 
 wills, or only one will ? How can a generated 
 son be equal to an ungenerated father ? 
 
 Every reader of ecclesiastical history knows 
 that these are only a few of the problems that 
 have fed the fires of controversy. Nor can it be 
 denied that the generally accepted theology of 
 to-day offers stumbling-blocks to faith. The dis- 
 tinction attempted to be drawn between what 
 Jesus said in his human nature and what he said 
 in his divine nature, implies prevarications which 
 we should be slow to impute to a good man. 
 
 They thus interfere with the prompt move- 
 ments of the heart. Not that there are no pas- 
 sionate expressions of love for Jesus ; but have 
 we ever tried to analyze the emotions probably at 
 the bottom of them ? We have, perliaj)s, found a 
 sense of weakness, of a need of forgiveness and 
 help, and a longing for peace and trust, all of 
 which have looked out for an arm on which they 
 may lean. But these emotions stand apai't from 
 
16 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 any clear conception of him on wliom it is said ' 
 they rest. We mark their subjective intensity, 
 and not their objective reahty. Do those who 
 are so absorbed in what they feel know how Jesus 
 feels? Is it possible, with their dim views of his 
 personality, to have a living sjanpathy with his 
 soul ? 
 
 Hence the frequent remark that the prevalent 
 type of i^iety is wanting in manliness. If men 
 feel that " Jesus has done all foi- them," that 
 they have only to go to him "just as they are," 
 that he " washes away their sins," and " hides 
 them in the cleft of the rock," is it strange that 
 this passive trust should lack an inward energy ? 
 Is not here one reason why so many keep on the 
 same plane of Christian experience from the time 
 of conversion to the time of death? This help- 
 less reliance is thus regarded as the crowning 
 work of him who came that they "might have 
 life and might have it more abundantl3\" Wliat 
 we all need for our moral quickening is a pro- 
 founder sympathy with the humanity of Jesus; 
 but how can that sympathy exist under the shad- 
 ows that cloud the scenes of his birth ? 
 
 There are signs of the coming of a better day. 
 The progress of our civilization is marked by a 
 
INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 deeper appreciation of the character of Jesus — 
 his gentleness, his disinterestedness, his self-sacri- 
 fice, the depth of his spiritual insight, the clear- 
 ness and strength of his intellectual convictions, 
 and the force of his will. These lead us into his 
 soul. We see it was a human soul. Born into 
 the world like man's soul, and like man's soul in- 
 creasing in wisdom as he. grew in stature, it was 
 the vehicle of the spirit given to him " without 
 measure," and coming upon, him as he was fitted 
 to receive it. By such a view he is not thrust out 
 of the sphere of our human conceptions and of 
 our intelligent love. Our faith may rest on more 
 real and stable foundations. 
 
 Hence it does not seem too much to look for 
 a deeper and sincerer manifestation of the spirit 
 of Jesus when- those mists of error are not inter- 
 posed between him and our minds. That great 
 soul, whose influence amid all these obstacles has 
 weighed on the civilized world more than that of 
 all other souls put together, may exert a renewed 
 power when we can see him more clearly, and 
 can love him more profoundly. 
 
 We have only glanced at some of the reasons 
 which draw us to a subject that stands connected 
 
18 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 with many curious problems of Biblical criticism, 
 with one of the most savage controversies that 
 has disgraced the history of the Church, and with 
 a wonderful literature, little known by Protest- 
 ants, that grew out of the worship of the Virgin 
 Mary. 
 
 We have no novel explanations to offer, but 
 wish simply to " stand in the way and ask for 
 the old paths." 
 
 It is only with a reverent hand that we pre- 
 sume to touch the sacred pictures which have 
 been the world's delight and instruction through 
 so many centuries ; with the prayer, in the first 
 place, that we may not mar their beanty, and, 
 secondly, that if we fail to remove any of the 
 blotches with which rude times have overlaid 
 them, this success may be given to some other. 
 
 We write in the interest of no sect or creed, 
 and we ask our readers to follow us in that can- 
 did and honest spirit by which we hope that we 
 too may be guided. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PROBLEM. 
 
 rMHERE are eight verses in the first chaptei 
 of the Gospel of St. Matthew, and. thirteen 
 verses in the first chapter of the Gospel of St. 
 Luke, on which all the dogmas in regard to 
 Christ's birth have been built. 
 
 It is so necessary for a just examination of our 
 subject to have these verses readily under the 
 eye, that we shall here quote the words of both 
 Evangelists. 
 
 St. Matthew's Gospel reads as follows : — 
 
 Chapter i. 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on 
 this wise : When as his mother Mary was espoused 
 to Joseph, before they came together, she was found 
 with child of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 19. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and 
 not willing to make her a public example, was 
 minded to put her away privily. 
 
 20. But while he thought on these things, behold, 
 the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a 
 
20 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of David, fear not 
 to take unto thee Mary thy wife : for that which is 
 conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost ; 
 
 21. And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt 
 call his nanae Jesus ; 'for he shall save his people 
 from their sins- 
 
 22. Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled 
 which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, 
 saying : 
 
 23. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall 
 bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Em- 
 manuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. 
 
 24. Then Joseph, being raised from sleep did as the 
 angel of the Lord had bidden him, and took unto 
 him his wife : 
 
 25. And knew her not till she had brought forth 
 her first-born son : and he called his name Jesus. 
 
 St. Luke's Gospel reads as follows : — 
 
 Chapter i. 26. And in the sixth month the angel 
 Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, 
 named Nazareth, 
 
 27. To a virgin espoused to a man whose name was 
 Joseph, of the house of David ; and the virgin's 
 name was Mary. 
 
 28. And the angel came in unto her and said. Hail, 
 thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee : 
 blessed art thou among women. 
 
THE PROBLEM. 21 
 
 29. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his 
 saying, and cast in her mind what manner of sahi- 
 tation this should be. 
 
 30. And the angel said unto her. Fear not Mary, 
 for thou hast found favor with God. 
 
 31. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, 
 and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name 
 Jesus. 
 
 32. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of 
 the Highest ; and the Lord God shall give unto 
 him the throne of his father David : 
 
 33. Aud he shall reign over the house of Jacob 
 for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no 
 end. 
 
 34. Then said Mary unto the angel. How shall this 
 be, seeing I know not a man ? 
 
 35. And the angel answered and said unto her, The 
 Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power 
 of the Highest shall overshadow thee : therefore 
 also that holy thing which shall be born of thee 
 shall be called the vSon of God. 
 
 36. And behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she hath also 
 conceived a son in her old age ; and this is the 
 sixth month with her who was called barren : 
 
 37. For with God nothing shall be impossible. 
 
 38. And Mary said. Behold the handmaid of the 
 Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And 
 the angel departed from her. 
 
22 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Neither St. Mark nor St. John has one word 
 relating to the details named in the above 
 twenty-one verses. In the case of St. John an 
 explanation has often been given of his silence. 
 It is generally believed that he wrote after he 
 had seen the other three Gospels ; and it may 
 not have fallen into his design, it has been said, 
 to repeat what he had there found correctly nar- 
 rated. 
 
 But his design, whatever it was, did not pre- 
 vent him from repeating many other things 
 which his predecessors had recorded ; whj^ did 
 .he omit this ? As he wrote, he says, John xx. 31, 
 to show " that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
 God," it is not easy to see why there is no refer- 
 ence to such proofs as the above texts are now 
 thought to furnish, especially as he must have 
 known that his work might fall into hands that 
 would never receive the other Gospels. 
 
 It is even more difficult to account for the 
 silence of St. Mark, who was a companion of 
 St. Peter, from whose lips, as is believed, he 
 obtained the materials of his Gospel. St. Peter 
 was a native of Galilee, was one of the most in- 
 timate disciples of Jesus, and doubtless person- 
 ally knew his parents. These marvelous inci- 
 
THE PROBLEM. 23 
 
 dents that preceded the birth of his Master, if 
 they occurred in the manner in which in later 
 times they have been understood, must have 
 been the subject of frequent conversation in the 
 circle in which he lived, and must have been im- 
 pressed deeply upon his ardent mind. How hap- 
 pens it that we do not get one word about them 
 through his interpreter, St. Mark ? 
 
 There is another question somewhat perplex- 
 ing. St. Matthew's eight verses give account of 
 the angelic visitation to Joseph, but have nothing 
 to say in regard to the revelation made to Mary. 
 The fact is precisely opposite in the thirteen 
 verses in St. Luke, where we read of the aneelic 
 visitation to Mary, but nothing is said of the 
 revelation made to Joseph. Of course, in such 
 brief memoirs some things must have been omit- 
 ted by each writer, and we have no full history 
 until we put all their accounts together ; bu* 
 there does not seem to be a ready answer to the 
 question, why, if they attached importance to 
 these traditions, each writer gave only half of the 
 story, not knowing that anybody would report 
 the other half. 
 
 There are still other queries that must have 
 suggested themselves to every thoughtful reader. 
 
24 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 If our common interpretation of the above verses 
 be correct, how happened it that John the Bap- 
 tist was so ignorant of Jesus ? Twice he said, 
 " I knew liim not." John i. 31, 33. They were 
 nearly of the same age, had been brought up in 
 the same region, their motliers were cousins, and 
 were well acquainted with each other, and, ac- 
 cording to the received interpretation, botli moth- 
 ers had the most amazing angelic visitations, in 
 regard to which they conversed together. 
 
 Christian art has interpreted all these facts as 
 implying a familiar acquaintance with each other, 
 and a mutual acquaintance on the part of their 
 children. In numberless " Holy Families," the 
 infant John and the infant Jesus are represented 
 as saluting each other. It is true the children 
 may have grown up apart ; but even then, on 
 the supposition of a literal understanding of the 
 above texts, it seems incomprehensible that these 
 stupenduous events attending the birth of these 
 children, events which must have been in their 
 families the subject of frequent conversation and 
 auguries, should not have led John to know 
 Jesus. 
 
 Our wonder does not here cease. Did not 
 Jesus himself know of the marvelous circum- 
 
THE PEOBLEM. 25 
 
 stances tliat preceded his birth ? Did not his 
 mother, who " kept all these sa3'ings in her 
 heart," ever speak of them to that child in re- 
 gard to whom tbey had excited such surprising 
 expectations ? How happens it, then, that Jesus 
 never referred to them when he was so often 
 intent upon proving that he came from God ? 
 
 It* can hardly be maintained that some gen- 
 eral words of his, such as, " I came down from 
 Heaven," " I am from above," " whom the Father 
 sent into the world," are such decisive references 
 to his birth, as, in the case supposed, we should 
 expect from his lips. Phrases of an equivalent 
 meaning he applied to his disciples, whom, he 
 said, he sent into the world, as the Father had 
 sent him. Had it been a point capable of proof, 
 or one of admitted belief in the circle of his 
 family and friends, that his origin was gener- 
 ically different from any other being, that his 
 birth had been foretold by celestial visitants, and 
 that he had been supernaturally conceived, does 
 it not seem amazing that Jesus never once clearly 
 appealed to this evidence of his divine mission ? 
 
 When he was arraigned as a common disturber 
 of the peace, Pilate wanted to know Avho he was, 
 and showed signs of a willingness to release him. 
 
26 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Jesus said, " For this was I born, and for this 
 cause came I into the world, that I might bear 
 witness to the truth." John xviii. 37. Was not 
 here one place where we should have expected 
 him to give some hint of the miraculous manner 
 of his birth ? If this had been a point that was 
 tlien believed, or was capable of proof, could any- 
 thing have been more in his defence ? Why was 
 not some reference to it here made ? 
 
 Nor is this all. Why is it that throughout the 
 Gospels there is no appeal to the events above 
 recited? Excepting in the verses quoted, those 
 events are as much ignored in all the Gospels, 
 and in every part of each Gospel, as if they had 
 been recorded in another history, and concerned 
 some other being. 
 
 If it should bfe said that St. John refers to 
 them in the Proem of his Gospel, Avhen he says, 
 " The Word was God .... and the Word became 
 flesh," we must ask the reader to pause for one 
 moment upon the meaning of that statement. It 
 is possible to thrust interpretations into it that go 
 a great way beyond what it affirms. It does not 
 say where, or how, or when the Divine Spirit 
 was incarnated in Jesus Christ. It does not, 
 therefore, conflict with the supposition that God's 
 
THE PROBLEM. 27 
 
 spirit came upon him gradually as lie " increased 
 in wisdom and stature," and came in harmony 
 with the development of his mental and moral 
 life. Thus these words seem to us to have no 
 necessary bearing upon the question of a miracu- 
 lous birth. 
 
 If it should be said that this Proem of St. 
 John's Gospel affirms a personal existence of 
 Jesus, before his birth on earth, it may be well 
 to ask, not only if we do not assign to the Evan- 
 gelist's words ideas which are not necessarily 
 there, but also if we do not impute to him the 
 very doctrine which he undertook to refute. It 
 was against a Gnostic conception of some Eon, or 
 Being, distinct from God, that St. John's intro- 
 duction is generally supposed to be aimed ; and 
 he says that it was God's Logos that was in the 
 beginning, which created the world, and became 
 incarnated ; and this he repeatedly affirms was no 
 distinct person, but was God himself, as God's 
 Life and Light were God himself. 
 
 Perhaps it will be said that in such brief me- 
 moirs one statement of a miraculous birth was 
 enough. But how did each writer know tluit it 
 had been stated at all? Besides, as a matter of 
 fact, each writer often repeated what the others 
 
28 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 had said. Nor this alone. Each at times re- 
 peated what he himself had recorded. The 
 feeding of the five thousand, the predictions 
 of Christ's sufferings, of his rejection by the 
 Jews, of his crucifixion by the priests, these, 
 and other important events in their narratives, 
 were not dismissed once for all. They were re- 
 ferred to again and again. Now the events pre- 
 ceding Christ's birth, taking them as generally 
 understood, are not only among the most extraor- 
 dinary in the Evangelical Narratives, but are the 
 most important in their bearing upon the great 
 point which the Gospels were written to estab- 
 lish. Why this silence about them ? 
 
 Our surprise culminates in considering one 
 other fact. We have in the Book of Acts re- 
 ports of sermons preached by the Apostles who 
 endeavored to pi'ove that Jesus is the Son of 
 God; and following the Book of Acts, we have 
 Epistles sent to churches in different parts of 
 the world, designed to set forth the same leading 
 truth. But in all of them, Sermons and Epistles, 
 there is no statement of the miraculous concep- 
 tion of Christ. 
 
 Take the sermon recorded in the third chapter 
 of Acts, Avhich Beter preached after he had 
 
THE PROBLEM. 29 
 
 healed the lame man at the Beautiful Gate of the 
 Temple. His object was to explain to the Jews 
 who Christ was, as one glorified by the God of 
 Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but denied by them, 
 and killed, and raised from the dead. How per- 
 tinent to his purpose to refer to his supernatural 
 birth, if that had been a point capable of proof 
 or belief. 
 
 Or take the sermon, recorded in the seventh 
 chapter of Acts, which Stephen preached just 
 before his martyrdom, — the longest apostolical 
 sermon of which we have any record, — giving a 
 resume of Jewish and Christian history, from the 
 call of Abraham to the crucifixion of Jesus. 
 Why not one hint about this miraculous concep- 
 tion ? 
 
 Look, also, to the sermon which Paul preached 
 in Antioch of Pisidia, recorded in the thirteenth 
 chapter of Acts, a sermon recounting prominent 
 events from the exodus out of Egypt to the res- 
 urrection of Jesus. Why not one word said 
 about his supernatural birth? 
 
 Moreover, in the Epistles of St. Paul, of St. 
 Peter, of St. John, there is no distinct allusion 
 to this point, though, had it been then under- 
 stood as it is understood now, there could have 
 
30 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 been nothing more natural, or more decisive than 
 to adduce it. 
 
 It is true, some have quoted the expressions of 
 St. Paul, Romans ix. 5, "of whom as concerning 
 the flesh Christ came ; " implying, it may be 
 thought, that he had also another origin. But 
 the original expression, KaTo. adpna, means, as the 
 commentators tell us, hereditary descent, and so 
 damao;es the use often made of the text. 
 
 Another expression, Philippians ii. 6, "Who, 
 being in the form of God — took upon him the 
 form of a servant ; " has, as it may be said, a 
 reference to a supernatural origin. But perhaps 
 we shall by and by see that later opinions as- 
 cribed a meaning to these words which the writer 
 could not have had in his mind. And, moreover, 
 in resfard to that something which Christ had in 
 him higher than what he inherited by natural 
 descent, that something which made him in the 
 form of God, — as that might have come upon 
 him at any j^eriod of liis growth, — what proof 
 have these texts of a miraculous birth ? 
 
 In regard to the Epistles, it must be remem- 
 bered that they were sent to the churches before 
 the Gospels had been written. At least, we have 
 no distinct traces of the Gospels until after the 
 
THE PROBLEM. 31 
 
 transmission of the Epistles. Every reader will 
 at once see what bearing this fact has upon the 
 argument before us. 
 
 It might be now said that the writers of the 
 Epistles felt that there was no need of relating 
 the miraculous birth of Jesus, or of appealing to 
 this as a proof of his divine origin, if they knew 
 that the" history of that birth was already in the 
 hands of their readers. But there is absolutely 
 nothing to show that the Romans, the Corin- 
 thians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Thessa- 
 lonians, had any knowledge of that history, had 
 ever heai'd of it, or had the least suspicion of it. 
 
 Indeed, the presumption is all the other way. 
 The family traditions were appended to the 
 memoirs of Jesus at a later time. They occupied 
 no place in the first, the Epistolary, publication 
 of the Gospel. Hence they were the ground- 
 work of no argument, and received no distinct 
 allusion. It seems incredible that Paul and Peter 
 and John regarded them as of importance in the 
 life of Jesus. 
 
 Certainly, here are noteworthy facts. This 
 uniform, persistent, and unbroken reticence is in 
 strange contrast with what Ave find at a later 
 day. A way of referring to the birth of Jesus 
 
32 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 sprung up in after ages which ascribed an im- 
 portance to the eight verses of St. Matthew, and 
 to the thirteen verses of St. Luke, wliich, so far 
 as appears, was never imagined by Jesus and his 
 apostles. History tell us when it sprung up, and 
 where it sprung up, and how it sprung uj), and 
 how it colored the whole stream of Christian 
 thought from that time Onwards, and shapes 
 opinions even to this day. 
 
 And history tells us, also, of the wild hypoth- 
 eses which, in modern times, have been invented 
 to get rid of these interpretations. Without re- 
 ferring to the English Deists of the last century, 
 who ridiculed the stories of Christ's birth as 
 absurd fables, we need only allude to Strauss, 
 who sets them all aside as myths, that is, as 
 something which was " characterized by the rich 
 pictorial and imaginative mode of thought and 
 expression of primitive ages." 
 
 Professor Weisse maintained that these nar- 
 ratives were pious imitations of Grecian legends, 
 designed to show that Christ had an origin some- 
 thing like that of heathen gods ; and of this 
 hypothesis Neander well says that " Weisse 
 has transferred his own mode of contemplating 
 heathen myths to a people that would have re- 
 volted from it." 
 
THE PROBLEM. 33 
 
 Eiclihorn regarded these stories as the expres- 
 siolis of an unscientific age, addicted to wonder, 
 and in love with the marvelous. Paulus distin- 
 guished between fact and opinion, and held that 
 this last covered the record with the drapery of 
 miracle, which must be drawn aside to see the 
 historical verity. Kant held to a moral inter- 
 pretation, looking for a sense which agrees with 
 the laws of the pure reason, and he regarded the 
 miraculous stories only as an imaginative de- 
 scription of an ideal humanity pleasing to God. 
 De Wette thought that after Jesus had become 
 famous, reports about him were repeated from 
 mouth to mouth, till his early years became 
 gradually encircled with these poetical embel- 
 lishments. Renan believes that these tales are 
 legendary accounts, framed after the pattern of 
 similar stories in the Old Testament. 
 
 In view of this wide diversity of opinion it may 
 be well, first of all, to consider carefully what the 
 gospel record actually says. And what if we 
 find that the difficulty of explanation lies less in 
 that than in ourselves ? If we see that the record 
 is right, and that it is we who are wrong, we 
 who have blundered over it, this will be a kind 
 of discovery which has often been made before. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE PROBABLE FACTS. 
 
 ri 10 the mere English reader each Gospel seems 
 to be entirely the composition of the writer 
 whose name it bears ; and we usually regard it fis 
 a connected work from one and the same hand. 
 An acquaintance with the original language shows 
 that this impression is incorrect. Criticism soon 
 learns to disintegrate each Gospel, and to recog- 
 nize in the different style of different portions 
 different documents which had been put together. 
 An illustration may give some light to this 
 subject. We may suppose an. incident in the life 
 of Washington to have been described in the 
 rude diction of a common soldier, writing at the 
 time of its occurrence, and afterwards other facts 
 of the same incident to have been described in 
 the plain historical language of ]\'Ir. Sparks, and 
 more ornately in the flowing periods of Mr. 
 Everett. Bancroft may have jDut all the accounts 
 together just as he found them, and the whole 
 may be known as his history. 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 35 
 
 Now if that history should be translated into 
 French, and from that into Spanish, and from 
 that into Italian, these peculiarities of diction 
 would be likely to be worn away in passing 
 through so many hands ; and to the Italian reader 
 the work might seem homogeneous, and all from 
 the pen of Bancroft. 
 
 But suppose the Italian reader should be well 
 acquainted with English, and should read the 
 history, not after these successive translations, 
 but just as Bancroft left it ; he would at once 
 mark the diversity of style, and would unhesitat- 
 ingly assign portions of the narrative to the un- 
 lettered soldier above referred to, and portions to 
 the chaste words of Sparks, and other portions to 
 the rounded periods of Everett, and connecting 
 portions to the historian Bancroft. If he were a 
 master of the English tongue, and acquainted 
 with the different styles of these writers, he 
 never would make the blunder of assiffninsf all 
 these different compositions to one and the same 
 hand. 
 
 In each Gospel, not as we have it after num- 
 berless translations into other languages, but as 
 we find it in the original tongue, there is a va- 
 riety of style somewhat corresponding to the 
 
36 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 above supposition. For example, the first four 
 verses of Luke's Gospel are in pure Greek, and 
 then follows an entirely different diction full of 
 Hebraisms. It is the account of the birth of John 
 and of Jesus ; and if the reader will notice the 
 fifth verse of the first chapter he will see that it 
 begins as a separate and distinct document. 
 
 A similar remark may be made of the first 
 chapter of Matthew. The first seventeen verses 
 appear as an independent genealogy. Accord- 
 ingly they are called " The Book of the Genera- 
 tion of Jesus Christ." Then the eighteenth verse 
 begins as a separate record, though the diffei'ence 
 in style between this and the rest of Matthew's 
 Gospel is not so marked as in the case of Luke, 
 for Luke was a man of more culture than Mat- 
 thew. 
 
 The poetical rhythm of the Magnificat, Luke i. 
 46-55, and of the Benedictus Dominus of Zacha- 
 rias, Luke i. 68-79, is wholly different from the 
 general, matter-of-fact style of Luke. The last 
 chapter of Mark critics believe to be an appendix 
 to that Gospel. John's Gospel they suppose orig- 
 inally ended with the last verse of the twentieth 
 chapter. The first part of the eighth chapter of 
 John, it is thought, is misplaced, and the twenty- 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 37 
 
 second chapter of Luke has some peculiarities of 
 diction that distinfjuish it from the rest of that 
 book. His genealog}^ Luke iii. 23-38, he prob- 
 ably quoted from some family record, without 
 once dreaming of indorsing its entire literal ac- 
 curacy. 
 
 At the time the Gospels were composed there 
 were many memoirs of the birth and life of 
 Jesus in circulation, Luke expressly bears wit- 
 ness to this fact. He begins his record with the 
 words, " Forasmuch as many have taken in hand 
 to set forth in order a declaration of those things 
 which are most surely believed among us." So 
 also the existence of apocryphal Gospels is at- 
 tested by ecclesiastical history. It is probable 
 that a vast number of these memoirs had been 
 written for the use of different churches ; some 
 containing the recollections of one apostle, some 
 those of another, some the reminiscences in the 
 family of Jesus, or brief annals by various hands 
 of what he said and did in the places he visited. 
 Several of these documents were put together; 
 and the four collections most generally approved 
 have come down to us under the four names they 
 bear. 
 
 We must not suppose, therefore, that Mary 
 
38 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 improvised the 3Iagnijicat at the time of the vis- 
 itiition, or that Zacharias sang the Benedictus at 
 the birth of his son. These were probably com- 
 posed long afterwards, as expressive of the sup- 
 posed feelings at the time, and were inserted in 
 the family memoirs to which the subsequent emi 
 nence of John and of Jesus gave rise. 
 
 These family memoirs, as Olshausen suggests, 
 were adopted by Luke ; oftentimes, as that critic 
 adds, " quite unchanged or but slightly amended." 
 And so it happened that more or less of them 
 were attached to the evangelical narrative, none, 
 indeed, to Mark, or John, a few only to Matthew, 
 but more to Luke. 
 
 Apparently, as we judge such things, they 
 were accidentally attached, as it is evident the 
 apostles did not assign much importance to these 
 domestic reminiscences. Of this we have proof 
 in the little use they made of them, as we have 
 seen in the preceding chapter. We shall find a 
 still further proof when we come to mark what 
 these reminiscences really mean. 
 
 An angel appeared to Zacharias announcing 
 the birth of John. An angel appeared to Mary 
 announcing the birth of Jesus. An angel ap- 
 peared to Joseph to allay his suspicions, and to 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 39 
 
 suggest the flight into Egypt. What was the 
 origin of this language about angels, and what 
 does it denote? 
 
 These questions cai'iy us back to the early lit- 
 erary culture of the Hebrew people. Prior to 
 alphabetic writing they undoubtedly followed the 
 fashion of all other nations in the use of picture- 
 language. Some visible representation stood for 
 every mental experience. 
 
 How do thoughts come into the mind ? How 
 do hopes and persuasions enter the heart ? To 
 primitive people it did not seem that these are 
 the natural effect of our oAvn reflections, as indeed 
 they may not always be. It was believed that 
 all deep impressions were sent within us directly 
 by God. If sent, it was supposed there was 
 a messenger to bear them. Hence sprung up 
 the idea of a multitude of celestial beings charged 
 with the duty of bringing convictions and emo- 
 tions to human souls. 
 
 Early art, prior to the invention of letters, 
 expressed this belief, as we have said, by pict- 
 ures, which in turn helped to fasten it more 
 firmly on the popular mind. The messenger was 
 depicted as being in youthful beauty, aerial and 
 winged ; and names, found during the Babylo- 
 
40 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 nian captivity, were given to the chief actors in 
 this imaginary host. Before the use of verbal 
 language, how else could thei-e be expressions 
 of feelings and thoughts supposed to have come 
 from heaven ? These pictures of angels, and 
 the language which subsequently grew out of 
 them, were a necessity in the course of human 
 progress. 
 
 Thus, in our abstract terms, we say, " I am 
 convinced of such a truth." But in early ages 
 men did not regard this conviction as something 
 evolved by themselves. They thought that God 
 sent it to them, and that an angel brought it. 
 Men continued to use this picturesque diction 
 after it had passed out of its first literal signi- 
 fication. Indeed, it retains to some extent its 
 hold upon the imagination to tliis day. We 
 still say the thought came to me like an angel 
 from heaven. We say also that we are sustained 
 by the angel of hope. 
 
 When we ourselves use this metaphorical lan- 
 guage, we see at once that it is employed in a 
 secondary sense. But we do not always remem- 
 ber that the writers of the New Testament may 
 have so used it also. To their words we ascribe 
 a bald, literal meaning ; and so we make the mis- 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 41 
 
 take which, a thousand years hence, an inter- 
 preter of words used now may make, who, when 
 he reads that we were thunderstruck at hearing 
 some news, should gravely say that we had act- 
 ually received a shock of an electrical bolt. 
 
 In the mouths of the evangelical wiiters .this 
 language about angels was probably thus used 
 in a subjective sense. It was employed to carry 
 on, in the form of a dialogue with a suj^posed 
 outward person, a wholly internal process of 
 thought. Unlettered persons among us still use 
 language in a similar way. A plain man de- 
 scribed his doubts about helping a beggar in the 
 following style : " Sympathy for the poor fellow 
 said give ; but justice ui-ged that the beggar was 
 able to work." This is exactly in the manner of 
 the verses in St. Matthew and St. Luke, only the 
 writers of these verses would have called sym- 
 pathy and justice by the name of angels. Until 
 we see what the sacred writers really intended 
 by this phraseology, we turn all their artless sto- 
 ries into an absurd travesty. 
 
 Evil spirits also, as it was believed, had a mis- 
 sion to bring wicked suggestions and Avishes ; 
 hence the whole hierarchy of demons. The 
 temptation of Jesus is, as we suppose, usually 
 
42 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 
 
 interpreted as an internal experience, and not as 
 an outward scene. It may be added that Jewish 
 scholars, who know the meaning of old Hebrew 
 modes of exjwession, do not believe that a per- 
 son is implied by the word angel. (See Nean- 
 der, vol. i. p. 42.) 
 
 In the tenth arid eleventh cha^^ters of the Acts 
 we see a frequent angelophania, or api^earance of 
 angels. But this was not appealed to in early 
 times as evidence of the truth of Christianity. 
 It was understood to be the way in which illiter- 
 ate men expressed themselves. This mode of 
 speech, as we have said, belongs everywhere to 
 certain stages of culture, in which men make no 
 discrimination between the operations of their 
 own minds and the influence of higher powers. 
 All that they think and feel in reflective states 
 they regard as coming to them from above. 
 Thus, in the Greek mythology, the warlike were 
 actuated by Mars, the skilled by Apollo, the 
 loving by Venus, the wise by Zeus ; and Socrates 
 explained how the functions of these divinities 
 ceased as soon as abstract terms were invented. 
 
 So was it in the case of the Hebrews. The 
 use of abstract terms superseded the angelopha- 
 nia ; or at least banished it to the realm of 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 43 
 
 poetry, in which, as we have before remarked, it 
 still survives. 1 
 
 Zacharias, a priest, married (for in those days 
 marriage w^as a holy state, and it was impious to 
 suppose that one contracted impurity thereby), 
 shared the feeling so general in his day that the 
 happiest lot of man was found in the parental 
 relation ; and he and his wife had prayed for this 
 blessing, which, through their age, had now 
 seemed hopeless. Burning incense in a dark in- 
 closure,^ lighted only by flames fitfully playing 
 on the ascending smoke, his eye rested on some 
 convolution at the right hand of the altar, as he 
 was revolving in his mind his life-long prayer ; 
 and a persuasion took possession of his soul that, 
 after all, God would answer it. 
 
 '1 Some attempt to explain the pictoiial formation of Hebrew 
 phrases may be found in a work published in Boston by Little, 
 Brown, & Co., entitled Traces of Picture-icriting in the Bible, by 
 the author of this book. 
 
 2 " A sacred chamber into which tlie liglit of day ne^er pene- 
 trated, but where the dim fires of the altar, and the chandeliers, 
 which were never extinguished, gave a solemn and uncertain 
 light, still more bedimmed by the clouds of smoke arising from 
 the newly-fed altar of incense." Milman's History of Christian- 
 ity, chapter 2. 
 
 Grotius thought that Zacharias offered up tlie national prayer 
 for the coming of the Messiah, and that the expression, thy prayer 
 IS heard, refers to this. 
 
44 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 How often, in human experience, vivid subject- 
 ive states mingle with outward objects, so that 
 they mutually recall each other ! Who can say 
 there was nothing divine in his persuasion, or 
 that there was nothing unusu.al in the bestow- 
 ment of a child to their advanced years ? If 
 we do not recognize something " suj)ernatural " 
 here, as certain metaphysical disquisitions ex- 
 plain that word, does it follow that God Avas not 
 in all this ? It was at least natural that, after- 
 wards, the grateful and gratified father should 
 devoutly recall the alternate hopes and fears that 
 marked that memorable moment of self-com- 
 munion. 
 
 To the incense-burning priest it seemed as if 
 his backwardness to believe in the possibility of 
 the coveted blessing was a sinful distrust of the 
 divine power, and must be punished by a silence 
 enjoined b}'^ the same angel-persuasion ^ that 
 now had influence over him. Examples of xself- 
 imposed silence have not been unknown. See 
 Daniel x. 15. We find them in almost every age, 
 and in some cases men, as a voluntary penance, 
 
 1 " Mrj Swafievoi \a\)/(rai ilicitur is, qui vel propter physic.a, vel 
 propter moralia impedimenta loqui nou potest." Rosenmiiller, 
 in loco. 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 45 
 
 have not spoken a word for fifteen or twenty 
 years. 
 
 The distrust and self-punishment of Zacharias 
 were recalled years afterwards, when the emi- 
 nence of the child had given such importance to 
 these reminiscences. If they had been recorded 
 in some family memoirs, and formed an episode 
 in the jDrivate life of this domestic circle, they 
 might easily get attached to the Gospel of Luke, 
 though of no importance whatever as any his- 
 torical proof. 
 
 The universal belief that the long-expected 
 Messiah was soon to appear led every mother to 
 ask, " Who knows but that my child may be the 
 favored one of God ?" A young woman, named 
 Mary, had been espoused, at the age of sixteen, 
 as the legends of the Church say, to a man much 
 older than herself, by the name of Joseph, whose 
 business it was, as Justin Martyr records, to 
 make yokes and ploughs. 
 
 In those days espousal was in fact a marriage. 
 It gave the rights of a husband. Separation 
 could be effected only by a bill of divorce. Thus 
 the law recognized this as a legal wedlock. But 
 though the parties were really husband and wife, 
 they did not live together until after some public 
 
46 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 ceremony of marriage. The phrase that de- 
 scribed their state before this ceremony is, Trplv 
 r) avve\6ih, that is, before they lived together (see 
 Matthew i. 18), it being the same phrase fonnd 
 in Acts i. 6, where we read, when the disciples 
 came together, and in many other Biblical texts. 
 It is true, however, that it sometimes has the 
 secondary meaning of cohabitatipn, though this 
 is not its uniform signification. 
 
 But it may be asked. Did not Mary say dis- 
 tinctly, in Luke i. 34, " I know not a man " ? 
 The student of the original Greek knows that 
 the word here translated man is uiSpa, the usual 
 New Testament word for husband. She only 
 denied that she liad a publicly recognized hus- 
 band. Accordingly Olshausen translates the sen- 
 tence, "I do not live in a marriage connection 
 with any one." 
 
 At her age Mary was called a virgin, TrapOivo^. 
 The exclusive meaning now generally attached 
 to that word is modern. Virgin is the translation 
 of the Hebrew word rrd^V-, which means of mar- 
 riageable age. (See Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon.) 
 Thus a virgin could be a mother. We are 
 told in Isaiah vii. 14, that a virgin shall be a 
 
THE TROBABLE FACTS. 47 
 
 mother.^ To express our modern idea of vir- 
 ginity, other phrases were used, as may be seen 
 
 1 If we accept the common interpretation of tlie birth of Jesus, 
 and follow literally the words of Scripture, the birth referred to 
 in Isaiah vii. 14, was just as supernatural and miraculous as that 
 of Christ, and all the wonderful sjjeculations gathered around the 
 latter may as reasonably cluster around the former. We do not 
 forget the explanation usually resorted to, that what was fore- 
 told in the time of Jfhaz h:ul its fullillment at the time of Christ. 
 But in regard to this we quote the sensible words of Olshausen : 
 " The immediate grammatical sense of the passage, Isaiah vii. 
 14, necessarily requires a reference to something present, since 
 the irapdivos who was to bring forth Immanuel, is represented 
 by the prophet as a sign to Aliaz. A reference to the Messiah 
 born of a virgin centuries afterwards, ap]iears to answer no 
 end whatever for the immediate circumstances. It is most 
 natural to suppose that by irapdevos is meant the betrothed of 
 the prophet called in Isaiah viii. .3, nS^3p, as being his wife. 
 Tlapdhos, equivalent to nS2bl7, a young woman, is indeed in 
 itself different from n^^nH! which necessarilv denotes pure 
 virginity. Looking at the passage free from prejudice, one is 
 necessarily led to expect that Ahnz must have bad something 
 given him which he would live to see. It is very forced to re- 
 fer the period of two or three years spoken of, to the coming 
 of the iMessiah, born centuries after." If one asks, what was 
 there wonderful, what was there worthy to be called a "sign," in 
 a young woman's bringing forth a child, we find an answer to 
 this question in Olshausen, who says that " the unity of refer- 
 ence lies in the name Immanuel; " and if we ask further, why 
 did St. Matthew refer to this passage in Isaiah, we probably find 
 the reason in the fact that sometliing took place which could be 
 
48 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 in Judges xxi. 12, Genesis xxiv. 16. So also in 
 the writings of the Fathers, not indeed uniformly, 
 but frequently, those women ai"e called virgins to 
 whom, in its modern sense, that word could not 
 be applied.^ 
 
 Who can paint the tender, prophetic thoughts 
 which that young mother hardly dared Avhisper 
 to herself ? Only those can do it who can recall 
 the emotions of the first consciousness of mater- 
 described in those old prophetic words, for now a young woman 
 hrouj^ht forth a child who was, in a sense higher even than in the 
 time of Ahaz, a revealer of God, that is, an Immaniiel. In 7-egard 
 to the sense of the irapQivos it may be added that the Fathers 
 often interpret it as equivalent to our English word bride. This 
 is the sense the word must have in I-iaiah xlvii. 1. So in Esther 
 ii. 19, we see that the king's concubines are called vin/ins. In 
 Joel i. 8, we read that a virgin mourns the death of her hus- 
 band. 
 
 1 Tertullian, in the first half of the third century, applied the 
 word virgins to those who lived in unlawful cohabitation with 
 men. In the sermons of St. John Chrysostom, the ipulieres 
 snbintrodiictse are called virgins. In the letters of St. Jerome, 
 young women who led criminal lives are called virgins. In the 
 Letters of St. Leo, pope from 440 to 460, young married women 
 are called virgins. In all these cases one sense of this word was 
 followed which had been established for more than a thousand 
 years, for Homer calls a mother of two brave sons a "virgin." 
 Iliiid, lib. ii. line .514; and Herodotus speaks of certain " vir- 
 gins " who presented their thank-offering for safe delivery in 
 childbirth. Book iv. chap. 34. 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 49 
 
 nity. Was Mary to be a mother? But she 
 said to herself, avSpa ol ytvwo-Kw, which Olshausen 
 transUites, " I do not live in a marriage connec- 
 tion ; " and therefore it is too soon to open my 
 heart to that great hope. And yet, who knows 
 but that God has already in my virtual wedlock 
 favored me, that his protecting providence will 
 shelter me, and that even I may be the chosen 
 one to give his Messiah to the w^orld, so that to 
 my son may be applied the words recorded in 
 Psalm Ixxxix. 4 ; Isaiah ix. 7, and Jeremiah 
 xxxiii. 15?^ 
 
 In after years how distinctly she recalled the 
 anxious mental debates of the first consciousness 
 of her maternity, she who from her espousal 
 lived in holy wedlock, and knew not one of those 
 associations of impurity which the grossness of 
 af tertimes ascribed to that state ; she who set 
 forth in her own simple tuid primitive style the 
 
 1 The fact that the words put into the mouth of the angel who 
 acUliessed Mary were made up of quotations from the passages 
 above referred to, seems a further indication that these words 
 were not uttered by a celestial personage, in our modern sense of 
 that word ; though one commentator suggests that he sees no 
 difficulty in the idea that angels may quote the Old Testament, 
 and carefully read the Bible " to learn the gracious dispensations 
 of God." 
 
 4 
 
50 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 
 
 dialogue she carried on with herself, representing 
 every good persuasion as an angel coming from 
 the very chief places of heaven,' and weaving 
 finally her joy into song, the whole composing a 
 beautiful family memoir, which St. Luke had 
 procured somewhere, and has handed down to us 
 as a sweet and touching picture, though it was 
 never thought of as any documentary proof until 
 subsequent ages had misinterpreted and mis- 
 used it. 
 
 Joseph, too, was not expecting that his wife 
 would so soon become a mother. In her modesty, 
 and in a reserve perhaps the greater for their dis- 
 parity of years, she did not speak to him of her 
 condition ; time would reveal it. Accordingly 
 the expression in this artless history is evpedr). 
 She was found in that state perhaps on some re- 
 turn after a few weeks' absence, for in these prim- 
 
 ^ This conception of some angels as coming from before the 
 face of God is Persian. The Zendauesta i-efers to seven spirits 
 who stand nearest the throne. After the Babylonian captivity 
 the notion found its way into currents of Jewish thought. Al- 
 lusion is made to it in various parts of the Old Testament written 
 under Chaldean influence. See Zecliariah vi. 5. But the idea 
 nowhere appears prior to the time of that influence. Probaldy it 
 came at length to denote those impressions which were most 
 surely divine. 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 51 
 
 itive times business like Joseph's was not sta- 
 tionary, but was carried on from place to place. 
 
 How great was his surprise and joy ! In after 
 life he well remembered the thoughts he had 
 then revolved. It had seemed too great a bless- 
 ing to come to him. He had dwelt on that idea 
 so much that he had even supposed it possible, 
 that Mary had been unfaithful to him ! Who 
 can describe the mingled pathos and humor with 
 which the old man used to tell the story, the 
 smiles of surprise, and the tears of gratitude, that 
 alternated in those earliest remembrances of that 
 holy child. 
 
 Does a father's heart find any difficulty in inter- 
 preting this history, if he will not overlay it with 
 prodigies that take it out of the sphere of all 
 human experience, and will recognize here the 
 action of that one dear nature which is common 
 to us all ? And so Joseph used to describe bis 
 foolish suspicions, and to tell how they were all 
 allayed by the angel conviction that God's good 
 providence was in all this, and would make his 
 son a light and blessing to the world. 
 
 And then, afterwards, the thought came to him 
 in the night, in view of the dangers that beset 
 the life of his child, that he must go where the 
 
52 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 hand of power could not harm it. We are told 
 that he was Avarned in a dream. But it is by no 
 means necessary to suppose that this was an im- 
 pression made upon his passive mind when his 
 senses were locked in slumber. 
 
 The word dream in the Hebrew language cov- 
 ers all deep impressions in quiet and reflective 
 hours. Joseph had heard much of the character 
 of Hei-od. It made him anxious. He felt that 
 there was but one way of safety, and that was 
 flight. That was borne clear and strong upon 
 his mind, as an inspiration from God, a vision 
 from heaven, as it may have been, and was not 
 the less likely to have been because it came to 
 him when his senses wei"e awake. And here was 
 another of those reminiscences of the birth and 
 early life of Jesus, which fond parents loved to 
 recall, and Avere fittingly treasured as family tra- 
 ditions, though constituting no important evi- 
 dence of the divine mission of their son. 
 
 Their son, we repeat. The son of Joseph as 
 well as of Mary. So Jesus was regarded during 
 his life. The pedigree of Joseph derived all its 
 importance from the fact that he was the father 
 of Jesus. Jesus was called his son in the com- 
 mon speech of his day. "Is not this the car- 
 
THE PROBABLE FACTS. 53 
 
 penter's son? Is not his mother called Mary? " 
 Matthew xiii. 55. " And they said, Is not this 
 Joseph's son ? " Luke iv. 22. " And they said, Is 
 not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father 
 and mother Ave know?" John vi. 42. "Philip 
 findeth Nathanael and saith unto him, We have 
 found him of whom Moses in the law, and the 
 prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of 
 Joseph." John i. 45. 
 
 Surely Mary, the mother, ought to be regarded 
 as a competent witness in the case, and she said 
 to her son, when she found him sitting with the 
 doctors in the Temple, " Son, why hast thou 
 thus dealt with us ? behold thy father and I 
 have sought thee sorrowing." Luke ii. 48. 
 
 And now, in surveying the exegesis offered in 
 this chapter, as also that submitted in the chapter 
 following, no doubt every reader may suggest 
 other interpretations which, without the supposi- 
 tion of a miracle, will account for all the facts re- 
 corded in the texts under review. It is an im- 
 portant consideration that so many explanations 
 may be suggested. The greater the number of 
 possible hypotheses the greater the incredibility 
 of the astounding traditions of past ignorant ages. 
 
54 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Subsequent pages will show how absolutely un- 
 founded these traditions are. But before the evi- 
 dence of this is submitted, our attention may be 
 given to other incidents, connected with the birth 
 of Jesus, in regard to which the imagination has 
 run wild. We refer to the stories of the shep- 
 herds and the Magi. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE SHEPHEEDS AND THE MAGI. 
 
 npHE rejoicing of the shepherds that watched 
 their flocks by night, and the visit of the 
 Magi, are two other beautiful events connected 
 with the birth of Jesus, and we will now try to 
 understand what they were. 
 
 We must, for the moment, lay aside a thousand 
 poetic associations that have been attached to 
 them, for such associations have been the growth 
 of subsequent ages, — the expressions of grateful 
 and devout hea,rts, delighted here to find what is 
 wonderful, and pleased just in proportion as the 
 subject is lifted up into regions of awe and poetic 
 significance. 
 
 No words can be necessary to show that these 
 incidents, whatever they were, produced but little 
 impression at the time. We find the account of 
 the shepherds only in the Gospel of St. Luke, 
 and throughout the sacred canon there is not a 
 hint of it, in sermon, or letter, or narrative, by 
 
56 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 any one else. St. Luke probably found tlie story 
 in some domestic memoirs or tradition of the 
 family of Mary, and appended it to his history. 
 
 Even in the family of Mary, as is evident, the 
 story left no abiding impression. St. John tells 
 us that the members of that family once besought 
 Jesus to manifest himself openly to the world, 
 and he adds, " For neither did his brethren be- 
 lieve in him." John vii. 5. At another time, as 
 St. Mark says, his friends laid hold of him, " for 
 they said, He is beside himself." Mark iii. 21. 
 How could such things have been had the story 
 of the shepherds and of the Magi left any deep 
 mark in the memory of his family ? 
 
 Probably then, in some incidental and almost 
 unnoticed occurrence, we shall find the true 
 origin of these narratives, — some little by-act 
 which perhaps Mary alone laid up in her heart, 
 with no thought that it would be the^ tiny seed 
 of a tree whose leaves would spread over the 
 whole earth. 
 
 In naming a possible explanation, one exposes 
 himself to the derision of many whose minds 
 have long been settled on other conclusions which 
 they do not wish to have disturbed. The new 
 suggestion has a show of presumption in the out- 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 57 
 
 set, as if it could weigli anything with the opin- 
 ions of all the world in the other scale. But 
 fair-minded readers will cover an honest inquiry 
 with no such odium. Rather will they consider 
 with candor an investigation which tries to go 
 beneath unreasoning and hazy traditions, and to 
 find something consistent with the admitted facts 
 of the case. 
 
 Much that is said about poor, humble, sim- 
 ple-hearted shepherds comes from modern life. 
 Shepherds near Bethlehem, eighteen centuries 
 ago, were not what shepherds are now. The care 
 of their flocks was the business of the wealthiest 
 and most intelligent men. They were generally 
 devout men, for such was the common type of 
 the Hebrew character ; and if Bethlehem was re- 
 garded as the predicted birthplace of the expect- 
 ed Messiah, the shepherds of that neighborhood 
 might hear with wonder and joy of the birth of 
 every infant on whom their great hope could pos- 
 sibly rest. 
 
 Joseph and Mary may have arrived at the 
 home of some men who divided their time be- 
 tween that home in Bethlehem, and the care of 
 their flocks by night on the neighboring hills. 
 The utmost uncertainty exists, as everybody 
 
68 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 knows, in regard to the precise spot where Jesus 
 was born. Some tliink it was a cave or grotto 
 where cattle were kept, and both Justin Martyr 
 and Origen say that this was the uninterrupted 
 tradition of Bethlehem ; while others believe that 
 the birth took place in the lower part of a build- 
 ing used as a stable, while the upper stories were 
 for human habitation, the domestic arrangement 
 so common in the East. 
 
 All this is simply conjecture. It is of more 
 importance to observe that the owners of the 
 premises which Joseph and Mary occupied may 
 have been their friends. There is an old church 
 tradition that Andrew was one of the shepherds, 
 and that afterwards, in his old age, he became 
 one of the twelve. It may have been with him 
 that Joseph and Mary stayed. What more nat- 
 ural than that her youth, and a beauty, the tra- 
 ditions of which have been so long ^preserved, 
 should awaken the liveliest interest in all hearts ? 
 
 We have not been told how long Mary had 
 been in Bethlehem before the birth of her child ; 
 but when the joyful event took place, and her 
 friends on the hillsides were informed of it by 
 some messenger, coming to them with torches, 
 and reporting the birth of a son, in the favored 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 59 
 
 line of David, who possibly might fulfill their 
 hopes, and telling them that if they would go 
 into the town they might see the new-born in its 
 lowly abode, how natural that these shepherds 
 should rejoice, and it should seem to them as if 
 the stars of heaven were shouting sweet words 
 of peace and good will ! Have there been no 
 times in our life when we felt as if a thousand 
 voices, all around, syllabled the deep emotions of 
 our heart ? On entering Bethlehem they may 
 have spoken of their feelings to the delighted 
 mother, who, as we read, " kept all these things 
 and pondered them in her heart ; " though such 
 relations would not have a like interest to any- 
 body else. 
 
 Neander and Schleiermacher are of opinion that 
 this little episode about the shepherds was some 
 detached memoir, made probably by the shep- 
 herds themselves. Neander says : " The facts 
 may be supposed to have been as follows : in 
 after times the faithful were anxious to preserve 
 the minute features of the life of Jesus. We see 
 every day how anxiously men look for individual 
 traits in the childhood of great men. Especially 
 would any one who had opportunity prosecute 
 such researches in the remarkable place where 
 
60 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Christ was born. Perhaps one of these inquirers 
 there found one of the shepherds who had wit- 
 nessed these events, and whose memory of them 
 was vividl}'- recalled after his conversion to Chris- 
 tianity. We cannot be sure that such a man 
 would give, with literal accuracy, the words that 
 he had heard." ^ 
 
 If we suppose that here was substantially the 
 whole occurrence, it would be in accordance with 
 the then style of expression with unlettered He- 
 brews, to narrate it as we find it in the Gospel 
 of Luke. If we see an air of naturalness and 
 truthfulness in this narrative, as thus explained, 
 if it seems that the common, the universal feel- 
 ings of human heai"ts here display themselves, 
 perhaps we shall feel a confidence in the truth of 
 this history which we cannot have in the prod- 
 igies with which subsequent ages have overlaid 
 it. 
 
 The story of the Magi is found nowhere ex- 
 cept in the second chapter of the Gospel of St. 
 Matthew, nor is there the least allusion to it in 
 any other place in the New Testament. How 
 fruitful it has been of wonderful legends and fan- 
 ciful speculations in all past ages ! Before sci- 
 1 Neander's Life of Christ, Harjjer's edit., p. 22. 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 61 
 
 ence had revealed to the world what a star is in 
 our solar system, popular credulity saw no diffi- 
 culty in believing that one of the planets of the 
 firmament moved along just above the heads of 
 these men from the East, and stood over the 
 house where the infant Jesus was laid. In a vast 
 number of old church pictures all this is edify- 
 ingly represented. 
 
 But after a while even this needed some addi- 
 tional element of wonder ; and so Ignatius, in one 
 of his epistles says, " This star sparkled brill- 
 iantly beyond all other stars, while the other 
 stars with the sun and moon formed a choir 
 around it, but its blaze outshone them all." 
 
 Commentators in recent times, seeing the ab- 
 surdity of this, have contented themselves in say- 
 ing with Schleiermacher, " We may well leave the 
 statement in the judicious indefiniteness in which 
 it is expressed by Matthew;" or with Olshaus- 
 en, who says that the expression that the star 
 stood over the house "was the natural concep- 
 tion of their childish feeling." Every boy knows 
 that a star seems to move when he moves, and 
 to stop when he stops. 
 
 The Magi themselves have also been the ob- 
 jects of many wonderful legends. Tradition says 
 
62 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 there were three of them, and gives their names 
 as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. It was said 
 that their ages were respectively sixty, forty, 
 and twenty, representing three important epochs 
 of human life. It was said again that they came 
 from the then known three great divisions of the 
 globe, Europe, Asia, and Africa, to signify that 
 the whole world had an interest in that infant. 
 
 Accordingly in many church pictures one of 
 them is a black man. Raphael followed this 
 tradition in his famous picture of the " Adoration 
 of the Magi," in the Loggia in the Vatican ; and 
 his example has been imitated by many artists. 
 Something significant was found in the gifts: the 
 gold being a fit present to a king such as Jesus 
 was to be ; the frankincense was suitable for the 
 worship which was everywhere to be offered in 
 his name; and the myrrh foretokened the em- 
 balming of his body given for tlie world's re- 
 demption. An old Latin hymn sums this all up 
 as follows : — 
 
 "Aurea nascenti fiuleruiit niunera rcgi, 
 Thura dedere Deo, mvrrhamque tribiiere sepulto." 
 
 In the old world paintings the Magi are some- 
 times pictured with crowns on their heads ; but 
 more frequently they are represented as wearing 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 63 
 
 oriental turbans. Camels and elephants are oc- 
 casionally introduced as hints of the far East. 
 Cologne boasts of the honor of possessing their 
 bones ; and one of the penances of a visit to that 
 fragrant city is the hearing an old cicerone drawl 
 out the story of the translation of these bones to 
 the banks of the Rhine. 
 
 Should it be asked, How was it that those 
 heathen Magi had any correct ideas of the future 
 destiny of this infant ? an answer was always near 
 at hand. Of course it was said that they were 
 supernaturally inspired. Even Olshausen says, 
 " These Magi were partly inspired." Kenrick, 
 the American editor of Olshausen, thinks this is 
 hardly enough, and adds in a note, " That the 
 visit of these Magi was accompanied, perhaps, 
 or followed, by the germs of a sincere faith, can- 
 not be doubted." The " perhaps " cannot be 
 doubted. 
 
 And then we read, " they fell down and wor- 
 shipped him." Behold another wonder. These 
 wise men from the East worship Jehovah two 
 weeks old ! But even Olshausen was shocked 
 at this, and adds, " We must not by any means 
 ascribe to the Magi any doctrinal ideas of the 
 divinity of Jesus Christ ; but only a dim concep- 
 
64 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 tion of tlie divine power accompanying and rest- 
 ing on him. We may say they worshipped God 
 who had made this child for salvation to them 
 also ; but not the child." 
 
 And yet the expression in Matthew is, " they 
 worshi]3ped Aim," the child ; and why did not 
 Olshausen say that the original is Trpyo-eKi'fjyfrav, 
 which means show respect, and has no more to do 
 witli worship, in our modern sense of the word, 
 than had their descending from their camels and 
 elephants. 
 
 After this glance at the wonderful mysteries 
 and legends connected with St. Matthew's story, 
 the reader will think it a great downfall to the 
 probable facts of the case, in which, as Neander 
 says, " it is not necessary to suppose that any 
 miracle was wrought." 
 
 A company of merchants carrying with them 
 the articles in common traffic between the East 
 on the one side, and Judea and Egypt on the 
 other, and travelling, as was common in that hot 
 country, in the cool of the evening, noticed a star 
 which, from the clearness of the air or some as- 
 pect of the planets, they had never seen shine so 
 brilliantly. In that age every unusual sight was 
 a sign of something. What did that star mean ? 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 65 
 
 Passing near Bethleliem, some rumor, perhaps 
 from the shepherds before named, of the birth of 
 Mary's son, who, as they were told, might be 
 king of the Jews, reached their ears. Here, then, 
 was the meaning of the star. If the Jews were 
 to have a new king they would do homage to 
 him, to propitiate his future protection. That 
 the star was no guide to them is evident from the 
 fact that, on arriving at Jerusalem, they had to 
 ask where the birth of the new king took place, 
 — an inquiry which naturally awakened great 
 surprise at Herod's court. 
 
 Starting on their way to Bethlehem, they were 
 rejoiced to see that same planet shining clearly 
 in the heavens, which, as they doubted not, was 
 " his star," the star of the infant king. In their 
 compliments to the mother they named the in- 
 cident of the star, which little story she remem- 
 bered, and treasured among her domestic tradi- 
 tions ; but it was altogether too unimportant for 
 use with anybody else. 
 
 Looking back now upon all these narratives, 
 
 and tracing them to their probable humble origin, 
 
 we would ask. Do we destroy their significance ? 
 
 We know that many will think we do, and will 
 
 5 
 
66 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 add, that we eviscerate tbe Gospels, strip them 
 of their divine element, and reduce everything 
 to the plane of naturalism. 
 
 But we think tliat the plane of naturalism is 
 God's plane, and it does not seem less divine be- 
 cause it is natural. In these simple events we 
 think we may see the divine hand quite as plainly 
 as in the sun and moon circling round a cradle 
 in Bethlehem. Is it not possible to believe these 
 natural incidents with a depth and sincerity of 
 faith that cannot be accorded to this last named 
 legend, nor to anything like it ? 
 
 Who is prepared to take the ground that a 
 lowly origin diminishes the importance of a grand 
 result? The heavenly poem of the birth of 
 Jesus, sung all the world over, is it not a heav- 
 enly poem still, even if we know out of what 
 simple elements it took its rise ? If Dante's " Di- 
 vina Commedia" originated, as Florentine tradi- 
 tion says, in some spite against that city, is it not 
 the majestic and wonderful poem of the ages for 
 all that ? If John Robinson and Elder Brewster 
 got up the expedition to America through some 
 petty misunderstanding with a church in Leyden, 
 is not the settlement of the Plymouth Pilgrims 
 a grand event in history for all that ? May not 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 67 
 
 God's gracious and benignant providence come 
 into connection witli human events at any stage 
 of their progress, and in the way He shall judge 
 best ? Have we a right to ask that the moment 
 of his contact with them shall be signalized by 
 such prodigies as to our poor eyes may seem most 
 fitting ? 
 
 There has been by no means a unity of opinion 
 as to the precise time when the divine first min- 
 gled with the human element in Jesus. Some 
 have named the moment of his baptism, as did 
 Cerinthus and Basilides, and Tlieodotus of By- 
 zantium ; some, that of his birth; some, that of 
 the salutation of Mary and Elizabeth ; some, that 
 of his resurrection ; and some, apparently to shut 
 off all curiosity on this point, have held to an 
 " eternal generation," whatever that may mean. 
 Adam Clarke appears to know more about tliis 
 matter than any one else, for he says, in his 
 " Commentary," that he is " firmly established 
 in tlie opinion that the rudiments of the human 
 nature of Christ were a real creation in the womb 
 of the virgin," and that Jesus was there filled 
 with the Holy Ghost. 
 
 Amid all tliis diversity of opinion on a subject 
 where it is the height of folly to pretend to know 
 
68 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 anything, is it not better to abide by the plain 
 words of Scripture, which tell us that Jesus was 
 born like a human being, from a natural father 
 and motlier, that he grew up like other children, 
 "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
 with God and man," and received in some period 
 of his life, we know not when or how, but in har- 
 mony with the normal action of his own mental 
 and spiritual nature, tliat spirit which was given 
 to him " without measure," and by which he be- 
 came fitted for the service he rendered to man- 
 kind? 
 
 But it may be said that this bald and belittling 
 exegesis does not at all meet the sympathies of 
 the universal human heart, and the most obvious 
 aspects of the case. This may be admitted. But 
 the inquiry is still open whether these " sym- 
 pathies " be well founded, and whether the 
 " obvious aspect " is not made such by tradition. 
 Our object has not been to find ^something that 
 will fill the measure of wonder that has been en- 
 larged through long ages of ignorance and credu- 
 lity, but humbly to suggest a possible explana- 
 tion of facts which, at the time, were regarded 
 as very simple and not of great importance, but 
 which have since been clothed with the sublimest 
 significance. 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 69 
 
 Nor let any one regard it as a strange thing 
 that such wonderful interpretations should have 
 been put upon the records of Christ's birth. In 
 past ages men had no other way of marking 
 their sense of something extraordinary in any 
 one, tlian by the description of extraoixlinarj'^ 
 portents. Thus both Isaac and John the Baptist 
 were said to be miraculously conceived. The 
 Indian Buddha, it was believed, was born of the 
 virgin iMaia. Foh, the god of the Chinese, and 
 Shaka, the god of Thibet, were born, of virgins. 
 Romulus, it was said, had a human mother, and a 
 god for his father. Plato was begotten by Apollo. 
 Hercules was a son of Jupiter. The mother of 
 Alexander the Great saw in her sleep, just before 
 the birth of her son, a thunderbolt fall upon her 
 body. The mother of Pericles dreamed that she 
 was to give birth to a lion. Here are but a few 
 examples of natal prodigies. 
 
 All this is popular language, to express, in 
 the absence of abstract terms and nicely shaded 
 meanings, the idea of something wonderful. Had 
 the career of Washington fallen into the world's 
 history centuries ago, we inight have had stories 
 that the chamber of his birth was illuminated 
 with a preternatural light. But we can describe 
 
70 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 his greatness without tlie aid of prodigy. Prodigy 
 would not make liis patriotism, and wisdom, and 
 disinterestedness seem any greater. We judge 
 him by his life. So the life of Jesus describes 
 him to us, and stamps him as the Son of God 
 and Saviour of the world. 
 
 And the simple story of his life may give us a 
 far higher idea of him than is necessarily implied 
 by all the wonders and prodigies attributed to his 
 birth. We see that he who was first regarded 
 merely as the king of Israel has become the 
 Guide and Consoler of humanity ; and they who 
 dwelt so much on the fact of the resurrection of 
 his body knew little of the power of that word 
 which would in time roll away the stone from 
 every sejDulchre in the world. 
 
 " Jfeus a 6t6 le Messie et a vaincu la mort dans 
 un sens bien plus reel que celui auquel s'etaient 
 attach($s les premiers chr^tiens. Ceux-ci ne voy- 
 aient en lui que le roi d'Israel, et il est devenu 
 le sauveur et le consolateur des' hommes. lis 
 s'arretaient a la r(^surrection du corps, et ils 
 n'avaient aucune idee de la puissance avec la- 
 quelle la parole de leur maitre allait briser la 
 pierre au sepulchre pour se repandre sur la face 
 du monde." ^ 
 
 1 Scherer, Mda-iges d'Histoire RfU^ieuse. 
 
THE SHEPHERDS AND THE MAGI. 71 
 
 But God's plan, as unfolded in the sublime 
 march of centuries, is often misunderstood and 
 misrepresented by the philosophy or passions of 
 a particular age ; and we must now see what 
 theories the age succeeding that of the apostles 
 invented. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 AFTER THEORIES. 
 
 T F we have suggested a probable explanation of 
 the account of the birth of Jesus, the question 
 will naturally arise, How came it to be so mis- 
 represented ? In what way was a knowledge of 
 his natural birth lost to the world ? In what way 
 came the history to be enveloped with the prod- 
 igies which are still believed ? 
 
 At the end of a preceding chapter it was said 
 that we all know how, and when, and where this 
 misinterpretation of the record took place : and 
 it is our purpose now to show this. The sub- 
 ject requires some details of ecclesiastical history. 
 Remembering how tedious these are to most 
 readers, we shall select only a* few of the most 
 interesting points, and shall dismiss them with 
 all the brevity compatible with a clear statement 
 of the case. 
 
 No one can give even a brief glance into the 
 history of the early ages of the Christian Church 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 73 
 
 without seeing that there were causes then at 
 work to lead to new and high strained theories 
 about the person of Christ, and as a consequence 
 to ascribe peculiar honor to his mother. 
 
 1. The first was what was called the offense of 
 the cross. That the founder of their religion had 
 suffered an ignominious death was perpetually 
 thrown into the face of the first Christians. It 
 had been cast as a reproach to St. Paul ; but St. 
 Paul did not attempt to evade or mitigate the 
 charge. No high-sounding words, such as soon 
 came into fashion, did he use to cover up the 
 odium of the cross, or to give a factitious splen- 
 dor to the sacrifice there made. With him it was 
 Jesus of Nazareth, " made of a woman," Gala- 
 tians iv. 4; "the man Christ Jesus," 1 Timothy 
 ii. 5, who suffered in our behalf; and he gloried 
 in the cross of Christ, and determined to " know 
 nothing but Jesus and him crucified." 
 
 Would that his successors had done so! But 
 they set to work to blunt the edge of this charge 
 by their representations of the person of him 
 who was crucified. The greater his dignity, the 
 more the cross was invested with interest. This 
 was their reasoning ; but it only showed their in- 
 ability to penetrate to the true greatness of Christ. 
 
74 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 That a superhuman being could meet death 
 with cahn self-sacrifice, was not the fact that cov- 
 ered the cross with its transcendent glory. The 
 spiritual significance of the cross lies in the truth 
 that human weakness there found an almighty 
 strength and support. Accordingly St. Paul 
 knew nothing but Jesus and him crucified. But 
 some of his successors knew a great deal more 
 than that. It is not long before we find the ex- 
 pressions. God himself suffered, God liimself was 
 cracified, God himself died. Texts of Scripture 
 were strangely perverted to give a color to these 
 astounding representations, which found somg 
 support in Indian incarnations, and Olympian 
 mythology. 
 
 If Jesus were God, how could mortal par- 
 ents give him birth ? The exigency demanded 
 some other explanation. These artless narratives 
 that took their shape from peculiarities of He- 
 brew phraseolog3% invited mystic interpretations. 
 These led to the ascription to Mary of a super- 
 human relation. She became the Queen of 
 Heaven and the object of prayer. 
 
 2. The transference of Christianity to lands 
 where the real meaning of its birth-phrases was 
 little understood helped on this tendency. The 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 75 
 
 •1 
 
 overthrow of Jerusalem in the year 70, after one 
 of the most awful sieges recorded in history, 
 drove away the Christian Church from " the 
 mother of us all," and foreign cities became the 
 centres from which the Gospel radiated. 
 
 Who of us has adequately considered what 
 must have been the natural effect of taking the 
 religion from its cradle, from the habits of 
 thought and expression where it had its rise, and 
 planting it under new skies, and amid foreign 
 tendencies and customs and speech ? It was ia- 
 evitable that other elements should mingle with 
 it, and that it should receive a deep impress from 
 the place to which it was transferred. 
 
 The point is so obvious that it hardly needs 
 illustration ; but if we suppose that a new sys- 
 tem of philosophy should spring up in Boston, 
 and should be set foi-th, not in the language of 
 the learned, but in the common phrases, the 
 idioms, the proverbs, the traditional expressions 
 peculiar to New England, who does not see that, 
 if it should be transplanted to another land, and 
 other people, a thousand miles distant, it would 
 naturally be interpreted by the speech, the spirit, 
 the traditions of the new place, and Avould neces- 
 sarily be set forth in a light different 'in many 
 
76 T^E BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 respects from what it had in Boston ? We must 
 interpret history by what we know of human 
 nature, and of the inevitable effect of diverse 
 ideas and culture. 
 
 It is of much interest in this connection to 
 mark the fact that -the farther the Gospel trav- 
 eled from the influence of its home, the more its 
 records were misunderstood. The great names 
 in Church history which have made Antioch, 
 Cappadocia, Ephesus, Constantinople, so cele- 
 bi'ated, were arrayed against the wild specula- 
 tions to which Alexandria in Egypt gave birth. 
 Mosheim, in his " Historical Commentaries on 
 the State of Christianity during the first Three 
 Hundred and Twenty-five Years of the Christian 
 Era," says, " Nearly all those corruptions by 
 which, in the second and subsequent centuries, 
 Christianity was disfigured, and its pristine sim- 
 plicity and innocence were almost wholly de- 
 faced, had their origin in Egypt, and were thence 
 communicated to other churches." ^ 
 
 Let us mark, also, another suggestive fact, 
 namely, that on the subject of the person of 
 Christ the fundamental difference between the 
 northern and southern side of the Mediterranean 
 
 ^ Murdock's Mosheim, vol. i., p. 369. 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 77 
 
 was, as is stated in the words of Neander, that 
 the latter believed that " God became a man, 
 while the former believed that God exerted an 
 influence on a man." The profound significance 
 of this discrimination will arrest the attention of 
 the reader, 1 • . 
 
 Neander proceeds still farther to define the 
 theological speculations of the third and fourth 
 centuries, by saying that it was the aim of the 
 Syrian divines to find " in the union of God with 
 man in Christ something analogous to the re- 
 lation of God to rational beings generally ; to find 
 a point of comparison between the being of God 
 in Christ and the being of God in believers ; " 
 
 1 See Neander, Boston edition, vol. ii,, p. 435. Dupin had 
 before pointed out the same difference between the Syrian and 
 Egyptiiin chnrches. He says : " Les Orieutaux se sont toujours 
 plus appliques a marquer la distinction des deux natures en 
 Jesus-Christ que leur intime union, au lieu que les Egyptiens se 
 sont plus attaches a parler de leur union que de leur distinction." 
 French edition, vol. ii., p. 28. 
 
 While this book has been under pi'cparation I have used both 
 the orio-inal French edition of Dupin, entitlfd Nouvelle BibUo- 
 theqiie des Auteurs Ecdesiastiques, Mons, 1681, and an English 
 translation published in London, 1692. My quotations in French 
 are from the former; when in English they are from the latter 
 work. I have great respect for the candor of Dupin. He was 
 of the Komish Church, and wrote loifg prior to the controversies 
 which at the present time bias our minds. 
 
78 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 while, on the other hand, as he adds, " the supra- 
 rational and supernatural was precisely that for 
 which the Alexandrian theology chiefly insisted. 
 The ineffable, incomprehensible, transcendent 
 mystery consisted in this very thing, that divine 
 omniscience and human ignorance, human sensi- 
 bility and suffering and divine exemption from 
 suffering, and in general divine and human at- 
 tributes, coexisted in one and the same Christ." 
 Vol. ii., p. 445. 
 
 If we think that this was equivalent to saying 
 that a square and a circle have the same form, 
 we can hardly be surprised that here in Alex- 
 andria should be coined the expression which 
 made such a strife in those ages, that the Virgin 
 Mary was ^€ord/<o9, that is, the Mother of God. 
 
 Mary, the Mother of God ? Who can imagine 
 that such an expression should be found in the 
 writings of the apostles ? It is evident that 
 they felt no special interest in her ; not indeed 
 so much as v;e might think they should have 
 felt. After Jesus on the cross had commended 
 her to the care of John, and the beloved dis- 
 ciple had taken her, as we are told in John xix. 
 27, " to his own home," not one word is said of 
 her in the Gospels, nor in the sermons of the 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 79 
 
 first preachers of Christianity, nor in the epistles 
 that were sent to the churches. The one only 
 place where she is even named is in the list of 
 believers in Christ that assembled in the upper 
 room after his crucifixion, and here she is named 
 as " the mother of Jesus," and is included " with 
 the women." Acts i. 14. 
 
 We have other most interesting and precious 
 remains of the first followers of Jesus. I refer 
 to the Roman catacombs. Every one knows the 
 story about them. Those dismal subterranean 
 abodes to which the persecuted Christians fled, 
 where they lived till the time of peril had passed, 
 where they buried their dead, and rudelj^ carved 
 many Christian emblems, show us who and what 
 were the historical figures of chief interest to 
 those who had been driven to " dens and caves of 
 the earth." 
 
 There they engraved the form of Christ as the 
 Good Shepherd, and the fish, the Greek word of 
 which, Ix^v-;, contained the initials so dear to 
 them (Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour), and 
 the anchor, emblem of their hope and trust, 
 and the ship, which represented the Church, to 
 bear them safelj^ over all the storms of life. 
 Thousands of these inscriptions have been care- 
 
80 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 fully removed from the dark and damp cata- 
 combs, and are now inserted in the walls of a 
 long corridor in the Vatican, and few objects in 
 Rome are more interesting than the " Lapidary 
 Gallery." 
 
 But no image of Mary is there. Pictures of 
 the Virgin and Child are of far later date. The 
 effigies of some Christian matron, found on sar- 
 cophagi and in the catacombs, have been claimed 
 by papists as representations of the mother of 
 Jesus ; but in the light of the ecclesiastical lit- 
 erature of the first centuries, the claim is pre- 
 posterous. Not before the fifth century did art 
 multiply images of the Virgin and Child.^ 
 There is reason to think that such images orig- 
 inated in Egypt, as in some of the oldest statues 
 of the virgin she is represented as being black, 
 in imitation, as is supposed, of the black Egyp- 
 tian Isis, who, before the times of Christianity, 
 was worshiped as nursing a child. What would 
 those devout souls of the catacombs have thought 
 of the expression, Mary the Mother of God, the 
 Queen of Heaven, the proper object of prayer ? 
 
 ^ Maitland, in his Church in the Catacombs, says : " It is a fact 
 notorious to every one conversant with ecclesiastical history, that 
 the Virgin Mary was scarcely noticed in writings, paintings, or 
 Bculptures, till late in the fourth century." Page 332. 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 81 
 
 Let US ask a still more interesting question, 
 What would the first Christians in the mother 
 Church at Jerusalem have thought of this ? We 
 are not without means of answering that ques- 
 tion. Though the destruction of Jerusalem drove 
 the Christian Church to make settlements in for- 
 eign cities, it did not expel from Judea all the 
 folloAvers of Christ. A body of them remained. 
 A little town beyond the Jordan, called Pella, 
 received many of them ; and they and their scat- 
 tered brethren were known under the name of 
 Ebionites, from the fact of their poverty, the 
 Hebrew word ^I'^iiS, Eboon^ meaning poor. What 
 chiefly distinguished them was their belief that 
 the Mosaic system had not been entirely abro- 
 gated by Christ, many rites of which they con- 
 tinued to observe. Hence they were sometimes 
 called Judaizers, and were classed as heretics. 
 
 It seems not improbable that they might know 
 far better than the Alexandrian mystics what 
 the gospel account of Christ's birth really meant. 
 At any rate, it is certain that they did not be- 
 heve in his miraculous conception as it was in- 
 terpreted in Egypt, and continues to be inter- 
 preted to this day. They had a Hebrew copy 
 of the Gospel, in which the family memoirs of 
 
»1J THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Zacharias, and of Joseph and Mary, were left 
 out. The fact which we have here signalized, 
 namely, that they did not believe in the super- 
 natural birth of Jesus, but accounted him as the 
 son of Joseph and Mary, is admitted by all ec- 
 clesiastical historians : and the significance of this 
 fact will not escape the notice of any attentive 
 reader.^ 
 
 3. The prevalence of the Manichean philosophy 
 was another cause that aided the dogma of the 
 miraculous birth of Christ. This was a branch 
 of that Gnostic system which ascribed all evil to 
 m.atter. Spirit and matter were regarded as the 
 two antagonistic principles of the universe. Sin 
 
 1 Hagenbach says in his Hislori/ of Doctrines, vol. i., p. 180, 
 that some of the Ebionites believed that a higher power rested on 
 Christ which made him rank with Adam, Enoch, and Moses, 
 and this was the highcsit conception tliat they had of him. j\Ios- 
 lieini's words are as follows: "Although thty [the Ebionites] 
 held our Saviour Jesus Christ in great veneration as a divine 
 legate or pro])hct, tiiey wonld not admit that any miraculous cir- 
 cumstances attended his birth, but maintained that he was the 
 natural son of Joseph, begotten according to that law by which 
 all other mortals are produced." ' 
 
 Milman says that the Ebionites not only maintained that Christ 
 was born in the natural way, but affirmed that such was " the 
 unbroken tradition of the Church from the apostles to their own 
 day." See Latin Christianity, vol. i., ]). 40. 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 83 
 
 had a self-subsistent existence in matter. As 
 man is allied to matter by liis body, he will find 
 his perfection only by mortifying, starving, and 
 scourging it. Here was the origin both of monk- 
 ish asceticism, and of that dualism, God and Nat- 
 ure, which has been transmitted down to our day. 
 Under this system it became a necessity to show 
 that Christ's sinlessness came from the fact that 
 he had no connection with matter. 
 
 Never was the force of theory more signally 
 illustrated. Some, like the Docetaj, taught that 
 Christ had a body only in appearance. Only a 
 phantom had been born and crucified. It had 
 none of the substance of which our bodies are 
 composed. It was incapable alike of sin and of 
 suffering. It was against this opinion that St. 
 John leveled some of his most pointed sentences, 
 condemning tliose who had denied that Christ 
 had come in the flesh, and calling such antichrist. 
 See 1 John iv. 3. 
 
 Others maintained that Christ had a real body, 
 but it was not composed of common fleshly mat- 
 ter ; it was not derived from Mary ; it was fash- 
 ioned from subtle and celestial materials ; it was 
 put together in heaven, according to the belief of 
 Marcion ; and it passed through the body of 
 
84 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Maiy, as the Bardesanists maintained, as a beam 
 of light passes through glass, or as water passes 
 through a pipe. The fourth and fifth centuries 
 abounded with edifying speculations of this kind, 
 and all these served still more to shape a theology 
 which removed Jesus from any natural alliance 
 with humanity. 
 
 4. A fourth cause which contributed to this 
 result was certain metaphysical speculations as to 
 the origin of souls. A subject of which a human 
 being has no knowledge, and can have none ex- 
 cept by express revelation, was then treated as if 
 it were all as well understood as the pedigree of 
 one's father, and as if there must be something 
 culpable in dissent. 
 
 The historian Gibbon, in a note to his forty- 
 seventh chapter, enumerates the four different 
 opinions that have prevailed : 1. That souls are 
 eternal and divine. 2. That they ai-e created in 
 a separate state of existence before their union 
 with the body. 3. That each soul is created and 
 embodied in the moment of conception. 4, That 
 souls are propagated frorti the original stock of 
 Adam, who contained in himself the spiritual as 
 well as the corporeal seed of his posterity. 
 
 This last opinion took root in the age we are 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 85 
 
 now considering. Neander gives TertuUian the 
 honor of its paternity, and refers to him as that 
 " great church teacher who in many respects 
 may be regarded as the forerunner of Augus- 
 tine ; " and he adds that it was Tertullian's be- 
 hef " that our first parent bore within him the 
 undeveloped germ of all mankind; that the soul 
 of the first man was the fountain-head of all hu- 
 man souls, and that all the varieties of individual 
 human nature are but different manifestations of 
 that one spiritual ■ substance. Hence the whole 
 race became corrupted in its original father, and 
 sinfulness is propagated at the same time with 
 souls." 1 
 
 Even if there be the least plausibility in this 
 hypothesis, still it might be asked how was Christ 
 free from all hereditary taint if he derived his 
 being through a human mother ? And here came 
 in another assumption. It was maintained that 
 the generative power belongs exclusively to the 
 father, the mother having only a subordinate part 
 in the production of children. See Lecky's " His- 
 tory of Morals," vol. ii., p. 296, who says that we 
 find this notion also among the old Greek writers, 
 for Euripides puts it into the mouth of Ajaollo in 
 1 Neander, vol. 1., p. 615. 
 
86 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 tlie " Eumenides." St. Thomas Aquinas believed 
 it, and hence argued that we ought to love our 
 fathers more than our mothers. But human af- 
 fections do not always obey this logic. 
 
 Reasoning then precisely as some theologians 
 reason still, it was contended that if Jesus had 
 been a son of Joseph he would have inherited the 
 sin of Adam. In all the resources of omnipotence 
 God had no other way of cutting ofp that sinful 
 connection except by preventing Joseph's cooper- 
 ation. This was arguing in rather a high strain, 
 and assuming to know much about the resources 
 of omnijDotence. But it answered its purpose, 
 and we shall see that some theologians talk in the 
 same style now. 
 
 Some of the Schoolmen framed another ingen- 
 ious theory. They supposed there was a double 
 conception, which we find thus described by Bun- 
 sen : "• First a conception by which the body was 
 formed, and second that which occurs at the end 
 of forty days when the soul is added to it. The 
 former is called the active, the latter the passive 
 conception. Tlie first tool^ jD^^^e with Mary in 
 the same manner as with all other human beings ; 
 but in the moment of the latter, God delivered 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 87 
 
 the soul thiit was entering the womb from orig- 
 inal sin by a special miracle." ^ 
 
 All these baseless hypotheses had one object in 
 view. The aim was to shut out Jesus from any 
 organic connection with humanity ; and it was no 
 matter how fanciful and extravagant the opinion 
 might be if only it prepared the way for an ad- 
 mission of a supernatural birth. 
 
 5. That birth found a fifth support in the ris- 
 ing clamor in favor of celibacy. All through the 
 Old Testament ages, marriage was in such esteem 
 that one wife did not satisfy the sense of its 
 value. The command at the creation to be fruit- 
 ful and multiply was well remembered, and the 
 Hebrew spirit uttered itself in the words of 
 Psalm cxxvii. 3, " Lo children are an heritage of 
 the Lord ; happy is the man that hath his quiver 
 full of them." Wedlock was a pure and holy 
 state with Jewish priests and the first Christian 
 pastors. In the Epistle to the Hebrews xiii. 4, 
 marriage is called '' honorable in all ; " and in 
 the First Epistle to Timothy iv. 3, among the 
 doctrines of devils which would come in, in the 
 latter times, St. Paul names this, " forbidding to 
 marry." 
 
 1 Bunsen's God in History, vol. iii., p. 158. 
 
00 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 As late as the beginning of the fourth century 
 St. Jerome called the whole book of Solomon's 
 Song an indubitable proof in favor of marriage, 
 and he names bishops who would ordain none 
 but married men. St. Angustine wrote a trea- 
 tise " De Bono Conjugale," denying that celibacy 
 had any special merit of itself, though praising it 
 when chosen in a right spirit ; and Jovinian of 
 Verona, whom Neander calls the Protestant of 
 the fifth century, set himself against the frenzy 
 of Jiis times, and defended the honorableness and 
 desirableness of marriafje. 
 
 If any one is curious to know how an opinion 
 in favor of celibacy sprung up, and what con- 
 nection it had with various heathen superstitions, 
 with Manichean speculations, and metaphysical 
 notions about the origin of souls, he may find 
 much light in the " Historical Sketch of Sacer- 
 dotal Celibacy," by Henry C. Lea, Philadelphia, 
 1867, a learned and thorough work, to which we 
 have been indebted. 
 
 Celibacy was at first severely denounced by 
 the Church. The Apostolioal Constitutions prob- 
 ably reflected the spirit of their times, and with 
 an unexpected degree of good sense, they said, 
 " Nam nee legitimus concubitus, nee cubile, nee 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 89 
 
 sanguinis flnxus, nee nocturna polUitio, potest 
 hominis naturam contaminare, vel spiritum sanc- 
 tum auferre ; 8ed sola impietas et actio injusta." 
 And again, " Nuptre igitur lionestse et commen- 
 dabiles sunt, ipsaque liberorum procreatio pm^a 
 est, nihil enim mali est in bono." 
 
 Pope Syricns, A. D. 385, was the first to enjoin 
 celibacy, asking, " Can the Spirit dwell in any 
 other than holy bodies ? " as though, says Ne- 
 ander, " true holiness is incompatible with mar- 
 ri'age." Twenty years after this, Pope Innocent 
 I. decreed that all married priests should be de- 
 prived of office. Success could attend such steps 
 only by the most extravagant laudations of the 
 virtue of the single state, and Cyprian got up 
 a mathematical comparison of it to martyrdom, 
 which he rated at one hundred and celibacy at 
 sixty ; and Chrysostom pronounced virginity as 
 much superior to marriage as heaven is to earth, 
 or as angels are to men. 
 
 To support the opinion in favor of perpetual 
 virginity resort was also had to wonders revealed 
 from the spiritual world ; and it is in this age 
 that occurred, it is said, the incident of St. Ju- 
 lian and St. Basilissa, which we find reported as 
 follows in one of the old legends of the Church : 
 
90 THE BIR.TH OF JESUS. 
 
 Forced by his parents to take a spouse, Julian 
 was inspired by God to select Basilissa, who was 
 of the same mind as himself, namely, that after 
 marriage they would live only as the angels in 
 heaven. On the nuptial night Jesus Christ ap- 
 peared to the holy couple, and he and his august 
 mother, escorted by a legion of virgins, filled 
 the chamber with the celestial light of their 
 presence, and with the odor of lilies and roses, 
 though it was midwinter, and brought two golden 
 crowns, and said, " Victory to you, Julian ; vic- 
 tory to you, Basilissa ! Exalted shall be your 
 place in heaven, grand shall be your glory, bril- 
 liant shall be your crowns ! " And the Church 
 recognized and proclaimed the triumph by giv- 
 ing the title of saints to these two virgin souls. 
 
 But even Avith all these, mathematics, rhetoric, 
 and fable, the papal decrees were a failure. The 
 well-known lines of Horace, about trying to ex- 
 pel natui'e, must have often come to mind.^ For 
 six or eight centuries the subject was a fruitful 
 source of trouble. If the reader should ever 
 turn over the pages of Dupin's " Ecclesiastical 
 
 1 "Naturam expellas furca, taraen usque recurret, 
 
 Et mala perrunipet furtim f;tstidia victrix." 
 
 A terrible meaninar must have been often found in these lines. 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 91 
 
 History," where are summaries of the decisions 
 of all the leading Church Councils, he will get a 
 vivid idea of the vast amount of discussion that 
 must have been given to this subject. 
 
 " This overstrained demand on the virtue, not 
 of individuals in a high state of enthusiasm, but 
 of a whole class of men ; this strife with nature 
 in that which, in its irregular and lawless in- 
 dulgence, is the source of so many evils and so 
 much misery, in its more moderate and legal 
 form is the parent of the purest affections and 
 the holiest charities ; this isolation from those 
 social ties, which, if at times they might draw 
 them from total dedication to their sacred duties, 
 in general would, by their tending to soften and 
 humanize, be the best school for the gentle and 
 affectionate discharge of those duties ; this en- 
 forcement of the celibacy of the clergy was not 
 slow in producing its inevitable evils. Simul- 
 taneously with the sterner condemnation of mar- 
 riage, or at least the exaggerated praises of clias- 
 tity, we hear the solemn denunciations of the 
 law against those secret evasions by which the 
 clergy endeavored to obtain the fame without 
 the practice of celibacy, — to enjoy some of the 
 pleasures without the crime of marriage. From 
 
92 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 the middle of the third century, in which the 
 growing aversion to the marriage of the clergy 
 begins to appear, we find the " sub-introduced " 
 females constantly proscribed. The intimate 
 union of the priest with a young, often a beau- 
 tiful, female, who still passed to the Avorld under 
 the name of a virgin, and was called by the priest 
 by the unsuspected name of a sister, seems, from 
 the strong and reiterated language of Jerome, 
 Gregory Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and others, to 
 have been almost general." ^ 
 
 Not often was the controversy redeemed by 
 such gleams of good sense as St. Ulric showed, 
 who, in 952, when a council was held at Augs- 
 burg which tried to enforce celibacj', addressed 
 a long letter to the pope, Agapetus II., in which 
 he said : " How much moi^e obnoxious to divine 
 wrath are the promiscuous and nameless crimes 
 indulged in by those who would enforce celib- 
 acy, than the chaste and single marriages of the 
 clergy ; " and then when, alluding to the " vio- 
 lent distortion of the sacred texts by those who 
 sought authority to justify the laAvs," he not un- 
 happily characterized it as " straining the breast 
 
 1 Milman's History of Christianiti/, book iv., chapter 1. 
 
AFTER THEORIES. 93 
 
 of Scripture until it yielded blood instead of 
 milk." 1 
 
 Let us pass over the petitions sent by laymen 
 begging that the clergy might be allowed to 
 marry, as this might protect the purity of house- 
 holds committed to their spiritual charge ; as 
 also the secular consideration that favored celib- 
 acy, namely, the vast sums of money bequeathed 
 to the Church for religious uses, but squandered 
 by the clergy on their children. The Church, it 
 was believed, would be richer if the clergy " were 
 relieved of the cares of paternity," to adopt the 
 euphemism of those times. 
 
 It is a sad history, and a disgraceful history, 
 and the struggle is a sad and disgraceful one in 
 the Romish Church to this day. How fruitful 
 of warning to those who would set themselves in 
 array against the laws of our nature ! The con- 
 nection of this subject with the point under 
 discussion lies in the fact, that in all this long 
 and scandalous controversy, the virginity of the 
 mother of Christ, and the supposed continence 
 of Joseph, were matters of unceasing laudation : 
 and all this helped to fasten upon the accounts of 
 ^ Lea's Sacerdotal Celibacy, p. 153. 
 
94 . THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 the birth of Jesus the interpretations which. have 
 been handed down to this da3^ 
 
 And now comes the fight. For fight there was 
 between the more moderate and more scriptural 
 interpretations of the north of the Mediterra- 
 nean, and the fiery and impetuous fanaticism of 
 Alexandria. In no other struggle in all Chris- 
 tian history have theological odium, and secta- 
 rian hot-headedness, and partisan diplomacy, and 
 blood-thirsty measures made a more sticking dis- 
 play. Some of the chief points in this j)ictur- 
 esque but shameful controversy we shall present 
 in the next chapter. As we have now seen by 
 what means the primitive records of Christ's 
 birth came to be overlaid by false interpretations, 
 so we shall next mark how these iuterpretations 
 were forced into the line of Christian tradition, 
 and were established as the orthodoxy of the 
 Church. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FIGHT. 
 
 r MHE difference in opinion, on the subject of 
 the nature of Christ, between the northern 
 and southern side of the Mediterranean, has 
 been summed up generally by Neander, in words 
 which we have quoted in a former chapter, as 
 follows : The Syrian churches held that God 
 exerted an influence on a man ; the Egyptian 
 churches held that God became a man. 
 
 Of course it will be understood that the Syr- 
 ian theologians explained themselves in divers 
 manners, and had themselves more or less de- 
 parted from the simplicity of the sacred writers, 
 who contented themselves with calling Jesus the 
 Son of God, the promised Messiah, the Sent of 
 the Father, the Saviour of the world ; while, in 
 the fifth century, there was everywhere a dispo- 
 sition to go beyond these words, — a prurient 
 desire to pry into the nature of Christ, and to 
 apply to him high-sounding titles. This tend- 
 
96 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 ency had been apparent for a hundred years, 
 and had been signally displayed in the Council 
 at Nice in 325, when there had been a fierce and 
 successful struggle to supplant the simplicity of 
 the evangelical statements by mysterious meta- 
 physical subtleties. 
 
 But the excess to which the Egyptian theo- 
 logians carried this tendency was at length in- 
 tolerably revolting to the more sober thought of 
 the Syrian Christians ; and when, in Alexandria, 
 was aj)plied to the Virgin Mary the expression 
 6'eoTo/co?, Mother of God, it was like casting a fire- 
 brand into an inflammable mass. Let us mark 
 some of the circumstances which conspired to 
 kindle the flames that soon raged. 
 
 Alexandria was then one of the most promi- 
 nent cities of the world. Founded by Alexander 
 the Great 332 b. c, its advantageous position 
 at the mouth of the Nile gave it a rapid growth, 
 an early commercial importance, and a popula- 
 tion at one time surpassing that of Rome. His- 
 tory tells us of its immense trade between Eu- 
 rope and the far East, — a trade afterwards di- 
 verted by the discovery of the passage round the 
 Cape of Good Hope, but in our times regained, 
 at least in part, by the construction of the Suez 
 Canal. 
 
THE FIGHT. 97 
 
 But we are more interested in its then multi- 
 form intellectual culture. It became the home 
 of scliolars and disputants from all parts of the 
 world, and Eg3qDtian mysteries, and Greek soph- 
 ism, and Jewish theocracy, and Persian phi- 
 losophy, and Indian subtleties, strove for the 
 mastery in the fervid life favored by the mer- 
 curial spirit of the people and the place. Here 
 the Old Testament had been translated from the 
 Hebrew into Greek, in the version known as the 
 Septuagint ; here were the great libraries so 
 famous in history ; and here flourished the men 
 whose names make such a figure in ecclesiastical 
 writings, — Philo, Porphyry, Clement, Origen, 
 Athanasius, Cyril. 
 
 What would become of the religion of Jesus 
 when thrown into that seething Alexandrian 
 cauldron ? Christianity must have something 
 more mysterious, incomprehensible, than any 
 otlier system if it would there gain favor. The 
 obscure origin of its founder was an offense in 
 the eyes of ambitious sectarists. But those rec- 
 ords of his birth had great capabilities. Some- 
 thing might be made out of them more won- 
 derful than Grecian mythology or Indian incar- 
 nations could parallel. 
 
98 THE BJRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 It seems probable that a peculiar notion of the 
 Egyptian philosophers here rendered some aid. 
 Plutarch tells us, in his life of Numa, that "the 
 wise Egyptians held tliat it may be possible for a 
 divine spirit so to apply itself to the nature of 
 a woman as to imbreed in her the first begin- 
 nings of generation," without any intercourse 
 with man. Here may have been the genetic 
 idea of the whole Alexandrian scheme, and of 
 the theology thence derived. 
 
 The tone of mind then prevailing at Alex- 
 andria was one which has shown itself in many 
 ages, and may be recognized at this present time 
 among the Ritualists in England, and those in 
 other places who sympathize with them. The 
 more wonderful and incomprehensible the dog- 
 mas and rites of religion are made, the more 
 it suits the taste to which we refer. And this 
 taste must continually have something new to 
 feed it, and hence there is a rapid progress in ex- 
 travagance. To those who renounce the guide of 
 the judginent, and appeal wholly to a love of the 
 marvelous, learning is nothing but a hindrance, 
 common sense a carnal intruder, and the man of 
 empty brain, with lighted candles and sing-song 
 tone, is as good as anybody, on a level with 
 
THE FIGHT. 99 
 
 ■well-furnished and enlightened minds, — perhaps 
 a little better, for there is no suspicion that he 
 has wit enough to see the hollow delusion. 
 
 In his Lectures on " Ecclesiastical History," 
 Dr. Campbell says : " To men of shallow under- 
 standing, theological paradoxes afford a pleasure 
 not unlike, that which is derived from being 
 present at the wonderful feats of jugglers. In 
 these, by mere sleight of hand, one appears to 
 do what is impossible to be done ; and in those, 
 by mere sleight of tongue (in which the judg- 
 ment has no part), an appearance of meaning 
 and consistency is given to terins the most self- 
 contradictory, and the incredible seems to be 
 rendered worthy of belief. To set fools a- staring 
 is alike the aim of both. Of the two kinds of 
 artifice, the juggler's and the sophist's, the former 
 is much the more harmless." 
 
 The patriarch of Alexandria, at the time to 
 which we now come, was Cyril, a man of u.nfail- 
 ing cvmning and tact, united to boundless am- 
 bition, and prompt and arrogant force. He had 
 been elevated to the episcopal throne in 412, and 
 had exercised with a liigli hand the lai'G^e tern- 
 poral powers which his position gave him. His 
 character will come out with sufficient distinct- 
 
100 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 ness. At the head of a fanatical rabble he as- 
 sailed the quarter of the city assigned to the 
 Jews, then numbering forty thousand souls, who 
 had there long lived in peace. Their synagogues 
 he tore down, and their goods he gave to the 
 plunder of his soldiers. ^ 
 
 His connection with the thrilling fate of the 
 beautiful and accomplished Hj^patia has often 
 been described. She had applied herself to the 
 study of philosophy, had acquired distinction in 
 Athens as a scholar, and when still a young 
 woman, had been invited to take charge of one 
 of the principal schools in Alexandria, where her 
 lectures drew crowds of admirers. Her great 
 personal attractions, her learning, the unblem- 
 ished purity of her life, made her extremely 
 popular in the city ; but her refusal to declare 
 herself a Christian — a refusal which did her 
 honor, considering what the word " Christian " 
 then meant — marked her out as a victim of 
 religious fanaticism. 
 
 1 Josephus says that Alexandria, in his time, was half a Jew- 
 ish city. The part of the city which the Jews inhabited was 
 called the Delta. Here they formed a sort of republic, adminis- 
 tering their own affairs, rendering justice, attending to the ex- 
 ecution of contracts and testaments, as in an independent state. 
 — Josephus, Antiq., xviii. 9. 
 
THE FIGHT. 101 
 
 Of course, it is impossible at this day to ap- 
 portion aright the guilt of her murder. Gibbon 
 charges it upon Cyril, as did Theodoret, a church 
 historian of the fifth century, and an anti-Nes- 
 torian. Gibbon says: " Gn a fatal day, in the 
 holy season of Lent, Hypatia was torn from her 
 chariot, stripped naked, dragged to the church, 
 and inhumanly butchered by the hands of Peter 
 the reader, and a troop of savage and merciless 
 fanatics ; her flesh was scraped from her bones 
 with sharp oyster shells, and her quivering limbs 
 were given to the flames. The just progress of In- 
 quiry and punishment was stopped by seasonable 
 gifts ; but the murder of Hypatia has imprinted 
 an indelible stain on the character and religion 
 of Cyril of Alexandria."^ Chapter xlvii. 
 
 1 An interesting sketcli of her life may be found in Cliateau- 
 briand's Eludes Histnriqnes, who also imputes the guilt of her 
 murder to Cyril. Hypatia is the heroine of one of Charles 
 Kingsley's historical romances. The bold and blunt Jortin 
 sums up the case of Cyril ami Hypatia in these words : " Cyril 
 was strongly suspected of having been an instigator of her mur- 
 der. Dnpiu and Lowth endeavor to vindicate him ; but though 
 there is not sufficient evidence to condemn him, yet neither is 
 there room to acquit him. Neither Socrates nor Valesius have 
 dropped one word in his vindication. Philostorgius says that 
 Hypatia was murdered by the Consubstantialists, and Damasius 
 
102 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Triumphs at home awakened his ambition for 
 conquests abroad. The other side of the Med- 
 iterranean offered a wider field. He had had 
 aspirations to the patriarchate of Constanti- 
 nople. Foiled there, he did not mean to sink 
 into a subordinate position. Was not Alexan- 
 dria too large a place to play a secondary part ? ^ 
 
 says it was done at the instigation of Cyril." — Jortin's Remarks 
 on Ecclesiastical Uistorij. 
 
 One crime more or less weiglis little in the condemnation of a 
 man h'ke Cyril. In regard to his conduct in the murder of 
 Hypatia, Jortin goes too far when he says that Dupin endeavors 
 to vindicate him. Dupin calls Hypatia an illustrious woman, 
 whose reputation for learning extended so far that !<tudeufcs 
 flocked to her lectures from all parts, and says that her friend- 
 ship for Orestes, the Governor of Alexandria, an open enemy 
 of Cyril, made her hateful to this bishop. Bupin, indeed, says : 
 " Saint Cyrille n'eut aucune part a ce mcurtre," referring to 
 the act itself, but not screening him from guilt in its prepara- 
 tion, for Dupin adds that the assassination was by this prelate's 
 fi-iends ; and they probably well knew what would be agreeable 
 to him. — Dupin, vol. iv., p. 41. 
 
 1 " Some jealousy whicli at that time subsisted respecting the 
 relative dignity of the two sees of Alexandria and Constanti- 
 nople probably heigliteiied the contention, and is believed by 
 some to have cau.sed it." These are feeble words found in Wad- 
 dingfon'a Church Histori/. The truth is, this jealousy had been 
 long implacable, and Cyril was confident that the Roman pontiff 
 favored the claims of Alexandria. Out of hatred to Constan 
 tinople, the successive popes accorded superiority to the Egvp- 
 
THE FIGHT. 103 
 
 Was his church, founded by St. Mark, to yield 
 to that of Constantinople which had grown up 
 wholly by secular causes ? Was not the differ- 
 ence in their theology an opportunity to " mount 
 the whirlwind and direct the storm ? " 
 
 In reading history of any kind, ecclesiastical 
 or civil, we must not make the mistake of suppos- 
 ing that the causes assigned for controversies 
 and wars create the passions which are soon dis- 
 played. The passions existed before the strug- 
 gle, and seek the object by which they may ex- 
 press themselves. The two Italian towns which 
 carried on a murderous war against each other, 
 alleged as a reason that the artists of one rep- 
 resented the eyes of the dead Clu'ist as open, 
 against the orthodox fashion of the other who 
 painted them as shut ; but every one knew that 
 
 tian see. The quarrel l)etween Alexandria and Constantinople 
 was further emhiitered by the aims of both to have supreuiai-y 
 over all the churches of the East. "L'Evuque de Constanti- 
 nople vouloit etre le inaitre dcs Dioceses d'A^ie et de Pont; 
 celui d'Alexandrie les lui disputoit, et vouloit meme soumettre a 
 sa jurisdiction une partie de I'Orient." Dupin, vol. iv., p. 327. 
 
 Wiiat scenes of intrigue, bribery, violence, and bloodshed had 
 long mai'ked the relations between Constantinople and Alex- 
 andria, may be seen in an able book, St. Jean Chnjsostome, par 
 Amede' Thierry, Paris, 1872. 
 
104 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 here was only the pretext, and that back of this 
 they had many old scores to settle. 
 
 The pretext for wars grows ovit of subjects 
 which interest the world at the time. In epochs 
 of national aggrandizement it is some question of 
 a boundary ; in ages of martial glory it is some 
 point of military ambition ; in commercial eras 
 it is some infraction of the interests of trade. 
 In the fifth century, when religious discussions 
 were the world's great employment, it was a 
 question whether Mary was the Mother of God. 
 But in all these cases the passion is back of the 
 object, and the alleged cause is only a pretext.^ 
 
 1 The long Ariaii controversy which raged so fiercely for cen- 
 turies, presents a memorable example of the difference between 
 pretext and cause. Men said that they fought fur the truth ; but 
 it is incredible that ignorant hordes of barbarians understood 
 the merits of the discussion nhout'omoousian and hmoioiisian. It 
 is not always understood even by learned men now. The in- 
 tense hatred of Arianism must have been fed l>y political and 
 national rancor, llean Stanley, in his Lectures on the East- 
 em Churches, p. 173, says that the chief cause of the opposi- 
 tion to Arianism was its " making two Gods instead of one, 
 aud tlius relapsing into Polytheism." No opinion can appear 
 stranger than this. Early and late in the controversy the Trin- 
 itarians were charged with making three Gods instead of one, 
 and thus rehipsing into Polytheism. In twenty-two years after 
 the Council of Nice, a large Council at Sardis anatliematized 
 tlie tritheistic tendencies of believers in the Nicene Creed. So, 
 
THE FIGHT. 105 
 
 Constantinople was the head-quarters of the 
 party opposed to GyriL Fanaticism was the 
 disease of the age, and Constantinople had its 
 share. Gregory of Nyssa gives a vivid picture 
 of the rage in that city for doctrinal disputes. 
 " Every nook and corner of the city," he says, 
 " is full of men wdio discuss incomprehensible 
 subjects. They are found in the streets, the 
 markets, among the people who sell old clothes, 
 those who sit at the tables of the money-changers, 
 and those who deal in provisions. Ask a man 
 how many oboli a thing comes to, he gives you a 
 specimen of dogmatizing on generated and un- 
 generated being. Inquire the price of bread, you 
 are answered, the Father is greater than the Son, 
 and the Son subordinate to the Father. Ask if 
 the bath be ready, you are answered, the Son of 
 God was created from nothing." ^ 
 
 The patriarch of Constantinople at that time 
 
 in modern times, Arianism has never been thought to impair 
 the unity of God. On the other hand, Trinitarianism has 
 always been prone to relapse into Polytheism. As to the real 
 cause of the internecine strife between tliese two early forms 
 of Christianity, much, no doubt, was due to the struggle for the 
 appi'oval of the civil power, as non-acceptance of its religious 
 belief was treason, and was punisliable as such. 
 1 Quoted by Neander, vol. ii., p. 388. 
 
106 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 was Nestorius, He had been brought up in the 
 cloisters of Antioch, and had been raised, by his 
 austere life and impetuous eloquence, to be head 
 of the church at "• a corrupt court Avhere every 
 species of intrigue and passion was busily at 
 work." Neander, from whom we quote this, 
 alludes to him as " destitute of prudence and 
 moderation ; " but this seems a feeble way of 
 characterizing one whose whole career reveals 
 that w'ant of practical tact and ability often seen 
 in men who know nothing except from books. 
 
 His obvious weakness invited insults. Once 
 as he was preaching against the doctrine of the 
 generation of the eternal Logos, and contrasting 
 it with the nativity of Christ as the divine instru- 
 ment, he was hiterrupted by some crack-brained 
 fanatic who exclaimed, " No, the Eternal Logos 
 himself condescended to the second birth ; " and 
 the church became the scene of one of those 
 commotions of clapping and stamping for which 
 Constantinople was then celebrated. At another 
 time, as he was entering the church to preach in 
 his usual style, a rnonk confronted him, declaring 
 that " a heretic ought not to be allowed to teach 
 in public." 
 
 In Alexandria the cry was, "Let him be ac- 
 
THE FIGHT. 107 
 
 cursed who says ' Maiy is not the Mother of 
 God.' " In Constantinople the cry was, " How- 
 can God be born ? Who could say of the infant 
 Jesus, God Avas two hours or two days old ? Ac- 
 cursed be he who vents such blasphemy ! Mary 
 Avas xP"J-Toro/cos, that is. Mother of Christ." ^ And 
 then Ave have a long account in Church History 
 of the cunning measures of Cyril to fan the 
 rising flame, of the spies and bribes ^ that he 
 
 1 Early in the last century some papists, who thought it was 
 time to start some new wonderful phraseology, began to call the 
 mother of the Virgin Mary, Anna, " Tlie Grandmother of God." 
 • The Pope, Clement XI., forbade this, as he believed it would be 
 offensive to the Christian world. Dr. Campbell, in his Lectures 
 OH Ecclesiastical History, \n recording these facts, adds, " It is 
 impossible for one, without naming Ncstorius, to give a clearer 
 deci.sion in liis favor." But to have called Anna the grand- 
 mother of God would have awakened no sense of impropriety 
 in the fifth century. The second Council of Nice called the 
 Apostle James "God's brother." The phrase, "Mother of 
 Goil," touched some chivalrous sensibilities of the age when it 
 was first used, and it is impossible to explain its effect until we 
 take this into account. " It was intimately connected," says Dr. 
 SchafF, in his Church History, "with the growing veneration of 
 the Virgin. It therefore struck into the field of devotion which 
 lies much nearer the people than that of speculative theology, 
 and thus it touched the most vehement passions." 
 
 ■'' Gibbon gives an account of a letter that has been singularly 
 preserved and transmitted down to our times, written by Cyril's 
 archdeacon, containing a list of prominent persons in Constan- 
 
108 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 sent to Constantinople, of the popular preachers 
 whom he won over to his side, of the letters and 
 books he wrote, dedicating some to the Emperor 
 Theodosius II., and converting to his views one 
 of the Emperor's sisters, Augusta Pulcheria, a 
 woman of great influence, who had been hurt by 
 some slight of Nestoi'ius. 
 
 This hurt might easily happen, for tiie patri- 
 arch was impulsive and rough. B}'^ many of the 
 clergy he was hated as a stranger put over them, 
 and most of them joined the party who ascribed 
 the greatest honor to the Virgin, 
 
 The little story about Dalmatius is a curious* 
 picture of the times. Dalmatius was a monk 
 who for forty-eight years had never left his cell. 
 His reputation for sanctity was so great that the 
 people resorted to his intercessions iu every per- 
 plexity. Even the Emperor himself had repeat- 
 edly visited him to implore his aid. He Avas an 
 almost omnipotent oracle in that generation. By 
 Alexandtian influence he was won over to Cyril's 
 side, who communicated with him by means of 
 
 tiuople to whom magnificent bribes had been sent. These bribes 
 must have been numerous as well as costly, for it apjK'ars that 
 the clersxy of Alexandria mourned over the poverty which the 
 gifts entailed. See Gibbon, 47th chapter, and also Neander, 
 vol. ii., p. 482. 
 
THE FIGHT. 109 
 
 a letter concealed in a hollow reed borne as a 
 staff by a pilgrim. 
 
 Dalmatlus denounced Nestorius as " an evil 
 beast wlio had entered the city." He declared 
 that an exigency had now arrived that summoned 
 him to leave his cell. He put himself at the head 
 of a procession of monks and abbots who marched 
 through the streets bearing burning torches and 
 chanting psalms. He demanded that the Em- 
 peror should give more heed to " six thousand 
 bishops than to one godless man." He excited 
 the whole city to a state of frenzied madness. 
 
 All this encouraged Cyril to a more decisive 
 step. Quarreling bishops in the East had often 
 called for the help of the Pope at Rome, who was 
 anxious then to extend and assure his power. 
 Cyril represented to Celestine I., the reigning 
 pontiff, that now was the favorable moment for 
 him to intervene, and put himself at the head of 
 the party contending for the highest views of the 
 person of Christ. To this end he suggested that 
 a general council should be summoned to settle 
 the points in dispute. 
 
 Readers of Church History know what coun- 
 cils have been. One has been held in our day and 
 is of fresh memory. Under the pretense of an 
 
110 THE BIETH OF JESUS. 
 
 inspiration of the Holy Spirit, there have proba- 
 bly been no assemblies of men where worldly 
 ambition, and personal intrigue, and party strife, 
 and national hate, and adulation and bribery, 
 have played a more effective part. 
 
 " Nowhere is Christianity less attractive, and, 
 if we look to the ordinary tone and character of 
 the proceedings, less authoritative, than in the 
 Councils of the Church. They are in general a 
 fierce collision of two rival factions, neither of 
 which will yield, each of which is solemnly 
 pledged against conviction. Intrigue, injustice, 
 violence, decisions on authority alone, and that 
 the authority of a turbulent majority, decisions by 
 wild acclamation rather than after sober inquiry, 
 detract from the reverence, and impugn the judg- 
 ment at least of the later Councils. The close 
 is almost invariably a terrible anathema, in which 
 it is impossible not to discern the tones of hatred, 
 of arrogant triumph, of rejoicing at the damna- 
 tion imprecated against the humiliated adver- 
 sary." 1 
 
 The Council summoned to meet in Ephesus 
 " about Pentecost," in the year 431, was nothing 
 but a tool in the hands of Cyril and the fifty 
 
 1 Milman's Latin Christianity. 
 
THE FIGHT. Ill 
 
 Egyptian bishops, and their numerous attendants, 
 whom in an imposing fleet he had brought with 
 him. It was opened before the prelates of Asia 
 Minor, known to be adverse to the Alexandrian 
 Creed, had arrived. In consequence of inunda- 
 tions impairing the public ways, their progress was 
 delayed. In their absence, Nestorius and sixty- 
 eight' bishops refused to be present. The session 
 "was held in the great Church of St. Mary. It 
 was Mary's title to the highest honor which they 
 were now determined to maintain. Cyril was 
 president and directed all the proceedings. " It 
 had been skillfully arranged that Ephesus should 
 be chosen for the decision of a difference resj)ect- 
 ing the dignity of the Virgin, since popular ti'adi- 
 tion had buried her in that city, and the imperfect 
 Christianity of its inhabitants had readily trans- 
 ferred to her the worship which their ancestors 
 had offered to Diana." ^ There was no pretense 
 at deliberation and argument, for a snap-judgment 
 was pronounced, after a session of only one day. 
 
 Tlieir decision, which received one hundred 
 
 and sixty signatures, is worth quoting. " Our 
 
 Lord Jesus Christ, by Nestorius blasphemed, has 
 
 ordained by this most holy synod that the Nesto- 
 
 1 Wadilino-ton's Ch. Hist. 
 
112 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 rius above named should be excluded from the 
 
 Episcopal dignity, and from the whole college of 
 
 priests : " and this sentence, which names no 
 
 charge and adduces no proof, was reached, as was 
 
 said, with an hypocrisy not altogether unknown 
 
 in such cases, " after many tears." 
 
 This decree w^as sent " To Nestorius, a second 
 
 Judas ; " and Cyril immediately had it posted up 
 
 in Ephesus, proclaimed by heralds, and reechoed 
 
 by a crowd of bullies and slaves, whom he had 
 
 brought into tlie cit}^ to sustain his side by clamors 
 
 and blows. Illuminations and songs and tumults 
 
 attested his triumph, and the joy of the city, 
 
 which claimed the honor of possessing the body 
 
 of the Virgin. 1 
 
 1 Of this Couucil Dupin writes as follows : " There are sev- 
 eral objections made against the nature of this Council and the 
 management of it. Some say tliat it ought to be accounted no 
 better than a tumultuous and rash assembly, where all things 
 were carried by passion and noise, and not an Ecumenical Coun- 
 cil ; that St. Cyril held it against the consent of the commis- 
 sioners whom the emperor sent to call them together ; that not 
 only Nestdrius and his party, but also several other orthodox 
 bishops opposed it ; that Cyril scorned to wait for the Eastern 
 bishops, who would soon have arrived, and who desired him to 
 wait for them ; that he did not stay for the legates of the holy 
 see, nor any of the western bishops ; that his synod was made 
 up of the Egyptian bishops and some bishops of Asia who were 
 wholly devoted to his will ; that it was be that did all and 
 
THE FIGHT. 113 
 
 The spirit which animated Cyril's party may 
 be i]ifei'red from some of their sayings which have 
 
 ordered all in the Council. The manner in which he acted 
 a.sainst Nestorius, and the rashness he was guilty of in con- 
 demning him, make it credible that he was actuated by nothing 
 but piission ; that St. Isidore reproved St. Cyril, telling him ' that 
 several persons laughed at him, and at the tragedy which he 
 had acted at Ephesus; that it was said openly that he sought 
 nothing but revenge upon his encmj- ; that he had better have 
 been quiet and not revenged his private quarrels at the expense 
 of the Church, and raise an eteinal discord among Christians 
 under a pretense of piety.' This Council was so far from bring- 
 ing peace that it brought nothing but trouble, divisions, and 
 scandals into the Church of Jesus Christ, so that that may be 
 said of this Council with a great deal more truth, which St. Greg- 
 ory Nazianzeu said of the Councils of his time, ' that he never saw 
 an asseml)]y of bishops that had a good and happy conclusion ; 
 that they always increased the distemper I'atlier than cured it; 
 that the obstinate contests and ambition of domineering which 
 ordinarily reigns among them renders them prejudicial, and 
 generally they who are concerned to judge others, are moved 
 thereto by ill-will, rather than by a desire to restrain faults.' 
 This seems to agree to tlie Council of Ej)hesus better than to 
 any otber assembly of bishops." Dupiu, vol. iv., p. 213. Dupin 
 proceeds to mitigate the force of some of tliese objections, and 
 finds the central cause of the quarrel in the self-contradictory 
 terms dear to the Egyptian, but offensive to the Oriental bishops. 
 Eeferring to what St. Gregory Nazianzen here said of Councils, 
 Dr. Campbell adds : " How a man, who, in the fifth century 
 could talk so reasonably and so much like a Christian, came to 
 be sainted, is not indeed to be easily accounted fur." 
 8 
 
114 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 come down to us. One bishop declared that "as 
 those who counterfeit the imperial coin deserve 
 the extremest punishment, so Nestorius, who has 
 presumed to falsify the doctrines of orthodoxy, 
 deserves every punishment both from God and 
 man." Another bishop preached a sermon in 
 wliieh he said, as quoted by Neander, that " Nes- 
 torius was worse than Cain and the Sodomites. 
 The earth ought to open and swallow him up ; 
 fire ought to rain down on him from heaven. 
 The God Logos whom he had ventured to sever, 
 who had come forth in the flesh from Mary, the 
 Mother of God, would appoint for him the pun- 
 ishment of eternal torments in the day of judg- 
 ment." 
 
 And what was the offense of this man ? He 
 believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, as a Teacher 
 sent from God, and the Saviour of the world. 
 But he could not accept the interpretations which 
 Alexandrian fanaticism had put upon the records 
 of Christ's birth. He called Mary the Mother 
 of Christ, and not the Mother of God. For this 
 offense, and as the representative of the prevail- 
 ing belief of the Syrian churches, he must be 
 crushed.^ 
 
 1 " Had Nestorius been a better politician, and a more equal 
 
THE FIGHT. 115 
 
 When at length the tardy bishops arrived at 
 Ephesus, they were amazed at the precipitancy of 
 C^a-il, and proceeded to organize a new Council. 
 They declared that the decision which had been 
 proclaimed was of ex 'parte origin, without valid- 
 ity, and that they themselves, to the number of 
 forty-two bishops, constituted the only regular 
 Council. 
 
 But Cyril had got the start of them. He soon 
 brought both the Emperor — a feeble boy, under 
 the influence of his mother and sister — and 
 the Pope to sustain his side. Nestorius was de- 
 graded, his books were burned, all meetings of 
 his friends forbidden, and he was driven into exile 
 on one of the oases of Egypt, near the confines of 
 Nubia. Here hordes of Nubian barbarians soon 
 fell upon the place, laying it waste by fire and the 
 
 match for his adversary, St. Cyril, the decision of the Clmrch had 
 infallibly been the reverse of what it was ; and we should at this 
 day find Cyrilianism in the list of heresies, and a Saint Nesto- 
 rius in the calendar of the beatified." Campbell's Lectures on 
 Ecclesiastical History. "From his sad fate and upright character, 
 Nestorius, after having been long abhorred, h;>s in modern times, 
 since Luther, found much sympathy ; while Cyril, by his violent 
 conduct, has incurred much censure. Gieseler and Neander take 
 the part of Nestorius ; and Milman said he would rather meet 
 the judgment of the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of 
 Nestorius than with the barbarities of Cyril." SchafF. 
 
116 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 sword. Nestoiius was carried off as a prisoner. 
 By a tool of Cyril the old man was dragged about 
 from place to place under a guard of soldiers. It 
 is not certainly known how death came to his 
 relief. As to Cyril, we may say in the words of 
 Gibbon, that " the title Saint prefixed to his 
 name is a mark that his opinions and his party 
 finally prevailed." ^ 
 
 1 When those who shaved the opinions of Nestoriiis were 
 driven away from Constantinople, some of them fled to tlie East, 
 and their descendants, tnking his name, and establishing churches 
 amid the mountain-fastnesses of Western Persia, exist to this day. 
 They form a distinct line of transmission of the Christian faith, 
 independent of the Romish and Greek churches, and in some re- 
 spects purer than either. Gibbon is mistaken who speaks of 
 them as "obliterated." The Nestorians number many thousand 
 souls. Though an ignorant and decaying people, they still pro- 
 test against calling Mary the Mother of God, or addressing her 
 in prayer, or adoring her image. A Nestorian Bishop, Mar Yo- 
 hannaii, came to the United States in 1842. Alexander von 
 Humboldt, in the second volume of his Costnos, says, " It was 
 one of the wondrous arrangements in the system of things that 
 the Christian sect of the Nestorians, which has exerted a very 
 important influence on the geographical extension of knowledge, 
 vv'as of service even to the Arabians before the latter found their 
 way to learned and disputatious Alexandria. The Arabians 
 gained their first acquaintance with Grecian literature through 
 the Syrians, while the Syrians themselves had first received a 
 knowledge of Grecian literature through the anathematized 
 Nestorians." 
 
THE FIGHT. 117 
 
 A triumph where there was no inward convic- 
 tion, but only an artificial union through fraud 
 and violence — how long would it last? Dupin 
 says: "La paix apparente qui le suivit n'etait 
 qu'une paix platree." There were other troubles 
 at hand, and we must glance at them in order 
 to complete our view of the manner in which the 
 Alexandrian theology got its foothold in the 
 Church. 1 
 
 There was in Constantinople an abbot by the 
 name of Eutyches, a warm advocate of the Egyp- 
 tian dogma, who devised some forms of expression 
 that opened the controversy anew. Taking the 
 words in the Proem of St. John's Gospel in their 
 literal sense, " The Word was God, and the Word 
 was made flesh," he contended not only that 
 Christ was God, but there was nothing in him 
 but God. He had but one nature and that was 
 
 1 In looking back upon this shameful conflict, Milman, in his 
 History of Christianity, has some reflections worth reading, 
 thonuh in part quoted on a preceding page. He says: "While 
 ambition, intrigue, arrogance, rapacity, and violence are pro- 
 scribed as uncliristian means ; barbarity, persecution, bloodshed, 
 as unholy and unevangelical wickednesses; posterity will con- 
 demn the orthodox Cyril as one of the worst of heretics against 
 the spirit of the Gospel. Who would not meet the judgment of 
 the Divine Redeemer loaded with the errors of Nestorius, rather 
 than with the barbarities of Cyril '? " 
 
118 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 God. Those who said that God dwelt in Christ, 
 divided Christ into two parts, the divine and the 
 human Christ ; and this leaves the door open to 
 the suspicion that the last was born in the natural 
 way. This is awful heresy. Accordingly the 
 cry was, " Let those who divide Christ be them- 
 selves divided by the sword. Let them be hewn 
 in pieces. Let them be burned alive." ^ 
 
 Flavian, the successor of Nestorius, and like 
 him a representative of the Syrian theology, op- 
 posed these statements. An appeal was again 
 made to the Pope. The pontiff, Leo the Great, 
 called another Council which met at Ephesus in 
 449. It is known in history as the " Robber 
 Synod," from its scenes of violence and blood- 
 shed. " A troop of hospital waiters and soldiers," 
 says Neander, "was admitted into the assembly 
 for the purpose of intimidating refractory mem- 
 
 bei'S Force was resorted to in various 
 
 ways to compel men to assent to the decisions of 
 the Council. Bishops were kept confined in the 
 Church. They were menaced by soldiers and 
 monks till they liad subscribed, and blank papers 
 were laid before them for their signature which 
 could afterwards be filled up with Avhatever the 
 1 See Neander, V(j1. ii., p. 501. 
 
THE FIGHT. 119 
 
 leaders chose." It was tliiis that the Alexan- 
 drian, Eutychian, Monophysite (one nature} doc- 
 trine overwhelmed all opposition.^ 
 
 Gibbon gives a picturesque view of this Coun- 
 cil. " A furious multitude of monks and soldiers, 
 with staves and swords and chains, burst into the 
 church ; the trembling bishops hid themselves 
 behind the altar or under the benches, and as 
 they were not inspired with the zeal of martyr- 
 dom, they successively subscribed a blank paper 
 which was afterwards filled with the condemna- 
 tion of the Byzantine prelate. Flavian was in- 
 stantly delivered to the wild beasts of this spirit- 
 ual amphitheatre. It is said that the patriarch 
 
 ^ It is edifying to see what sensible words a contemporary 
 uttered in regard to the fact that the violent party had the 
 majority on its side. Eutherus was at this time Bishop of 
 Tyana, and with other Syrian prelates manfully comljated the 
 Alexandrian theology. When told that the niultitiidu was 
 against him, he asked, in words translated into French : " Mais 
 quelle est cette multitude que vous ni'opposez ? C'est une 
 troupe de gens corrumpus par les flatteries et par les prisons. 
 C'est un nombre d'ignorans qui n'ont point de lumiere pour se 
 conduire. Ce sont une quantitede personnes foibles et timides 
 qui se sont laissc'es vaincre. Ainsi quand vous m'opposez cette 
 multitude pour autoriser le mensonge, vous ne faites autre 
 chose que de decouvrir la grandeur du mal et le grand nombre 
 des miserables." Dupin, vol. iv., p. 68. 
 
120 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 of Alexandria reviled and buffeted and kicked 
 and trainj)led his brother of Constantinople ; it 
 is certain that the victim, before he could leach 
 the place of his exile, expired on the third day of 
 the wounds and bruises he had received at Ephe- 
 sus." Chapter 47. 
 
 Two years later still another Council was called 
 to meet at Chalcedon, whose main object it 
 seemed to be to hit upon expressions that would 
 harmonize all parties. As their result has con- 
 tinued to the present time to be the orthodox 
 expi'ession of the nature and person of Christ, it 
 deserves to be liere quoted. We find it thus 
 stated by Dupin : " That they did believe in one 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, perfect God 
 and perfect man, consubstantial Avith God as to 
 his divinity, and with man according to his hu- 
 manity; in whom there are two natures united 
 without change, division, or separation ; so that 
 the properties of the two natures do subsist in 
 and agree to one and the same person, who is 
 not divided into two, but is one Jesus Christ." 
 
 And thus, as Gibbon says, " the road to Para- 
 dise, a bridge as sharp as a razor, was suspended 
 over the abyss by the master-hand of the theolog- 
 ical artist. During ten centuries of blindness and 
 
THE FIGHT. 121 
 
 servitude, Europe received her religious opinions 
 from the oracle of the Vatican, and the same doc- 
 trine, already varnished with the rust of antiq- 
 uity, was admitted without dispute into the creed 
 of the Reformers, who disclaimed the supremacy 
 of the Roman Pontiff. The Synod of Chalcedoii 
 still triumphs in the Protestant churches ; but the 
 ferment of controversy has subsided, and the 
 most pious Christians of the present day are 
 ignorant or careless of their belief concerning the 
 mysteries of the incarnation." Chapter 47. 
 
 No, not so much " careless of their belief," as 
 blindl}^ following their leaders like sheep. J'or 
 this decision of the Council of Chalcedon is re- 
 garded in some quarters, even at the present day, 
 as the last word which the science of theology 
 can utter. Dr. Shedd, in his " History of Doc- 
 trines," says, " Beyond this, the human mind, it 
 is probable, is unable to go in the endeavor to 
 unfold the mystery of Christ's complex person." 
 
 If a writer on geology, reverting to the earliest 
 speculations on that science, should claim them as 
 something beyond which the human mind cannot 
 go, what should we think of such a statement as 
 that.i 
 
 1 After all, it is worthy of notice that these definitions of the 
 
122 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Tlie world lias probably never known an as- 
 sumption more monstrous than that we are to 
 yield our confidence to those packed conventions 
 of ignorant and lirutal men. Out upon the claim, 
 as one of the most insulting and outrageous ever 
 made. It does, indeed, become a humble faith to 
 recognize with revei'ence a Divine hand in the 
 transmission of Christianity from age to age, and 
 to feel grateful for all that learning and genius 
 have contributed to its defense. But no less is 
 
 doctviue of the Trinity are wholly unsatisfactory to the most 
 acute evangelical minds of the present day. It is admitted that 
 they are self-contradictory. The late Professor Moses Stuart, 
 of Andovcr Theological Seminar}', says of them, " They are open 
 to grave and appalling objections." In further criticising their 
 representations he says : "If I understand their views [the Nicene 
 Fathers], they do, in an occult manner indeed, but yet really and 
 effectually interfere with the true equality in substance, ])o\ver, 
 and gloi-y of the three persons or distinctions in the Godhead. 
 This seems to be taking away with the left hand what we have 
 given with the right. If I say in words that Christ and the 
 Spirit are God, and vcrv God, and yet assign to them attributes 
 or a condition which after all make them dependent, and repre- 
 sent them as derived and originated, then I am in fact no real 
 believer in the doctrine of true equality among the persons of the 
 Godhead ; or else I use expressions out of their lawful and ac- 
 customed sense, and lose myself amid the sound of words, while 
 things are not examined and defined with scrupulous care and ac- 
 curacy." Professor Stuart, in Biblical Eeposiiorij for April, 1835. 
 
THE FIGHT. 123 
 
 the obligation to reject with scorn the mass of 
 contradictions and lies which some have tried to 
 foist into the sacred deposit of trnth. 
 
 When we reflect upon the perversions of Chris- 
 tianity, and upon the divisions and wars among 
 Christians which all these mad passions entailed, 
 one gigantic fact must not be overlooked, though 
 it is not often adduced in this connection. 
 
 Of course a great religion, which has acted, 
 and still acts, a tremendous part in history, is the 
 result of many cooperating influences ; but who 
 doubts that the vast Mohammedan power found 
 one of the causes of its rise and marvelous diffu- 
 sion in the doctrinal corruptions and strifes which 
 extended into the centuries that followed the 
 times to which we have here referred ? It started 
 as a restorer of the original purity of various re- 
 ligions, Arabian, Jewish, and Christian, but to a 
 large degree it was a protest against the attack 
 upon the unity of God, and the ascription to 
 Jesus of equality with the Supreme Father. 
 
 " There is no God but God," was its rallying 
 cry, while both Mohammed and Jesus Avere re- 
 garded as Teachers sent from heaven. We do 
 not comprehend the system of the false Prophet 
 until we look back upon it as in part an offshoot 
 
124 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 from a corrupt Christianity, — an offshoot which 
 in some fundamental points better preserved the 
 purity of the parent stock, — an offshoot which 
 might have never reached such height and 
 strength had not the errors and passions of Chris- 
 tians opened the way to its growth. 
 
 In the next chapter we shall endeavor to prove 
 that the earliest Christian writers, subsequent to 
 the evangelists and apostles, knew nothing of 
 these corrujptions. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE FATHERS. 
 
 "TESTIS of Nazareth, receiving in conformity 
 ^ with the normal action of his own intellectual 
 and spiritual nature, an inspiration from on high 
 by which he became the Son of God, the Teacher 
 and Guide of humanity, yet born of Mary and 
 Joseph, amid beautiful and touching natural cir- 
 cumstances, AAdiich formed part of family me- 
 moirs or traditions, not at first noticed, but which 
 were afterwards attached to' the gospel histories, 
 and were subsequently misinterpreted in support 
 of a doctrine never heard of in the earliest ages 
 of the Church, but into whose creed it became 
 afterwards incorporated by fraud and violence — 
 if all this be so, we may expect to find traces of 
 it in the writings of the Fathers. 
 
 For this purpose it becomes important to give 
 a careful examination to those writings, in the 
 chronological order usually assigned to them, and 
 to note what they have to say about Jesus. If 
 
126 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 we find in the earliest Chi'istian generations no 
 mention of a supernatural birth, if we see this 
 dogma in after generations first incidentally al- 
 luded to, and finally in the fourth and fifth cent- 
 uries set forth in the manner witnessed in the 
 last chapter, then we may regard these facts as 
 confirmations of the essential truth of the posi- 
 tions here taken. 
 
 1. The first Christian writer after the apostles 
 was Clement of Rome. Very little is known of 
 Lis life. He is claimed as the thii-d successor 
 from St. Peter in the line of Popes ; but he lived 
 long before the word Pope had acquired the 
 meaning since so well known. There is a con- 
 currence of all writers in the opinion that he died 
 in Rome, about the 'year 100, having had some 
 office there as pastor or overseer of the Church, 
 and from thence had sent two epistles to the 
 church at Corinth. The second is short and of 
 little consequence. The first is of considerable 
 length, and of much importance. 
 
 Of this epistle Mosheim says, '' It is generally, 
 and I think not without reason, considered as 
 indisputably genuine in the main." Neander 
 says, " The first epistle of Clement was in the 
 first centuries read at public worship in many of 
 
thp: fathers. 127 
 
 the cliurches along with the Scriptures of the 
 New Testament, Although genuine in the main, 
 it is still not exempt from many interpolations." 
 Donaldson, in his " Critical History of Christian 
 Literature and Doctrine," a learned and able 
 work, which we shall have frequent occasion to 
 consult, quotes the evidence of Eusebius and Je- 
 rome to prove that it was by them regarded as 
 the trustworthy writing of Clement, and fixes 
 its date as near the close of the first centiuy. 
 
 This letter, which is longer than any of the 
 epistles of St. Paul, gives an account of Christ's 
 life and w'ords and promises, and of the leading 
 hopes and duties of believers. It is therefore of 
 value as showing Avhat was the Christian faith 
 and spirit in the very first 3'ears after the death 
 of the apostles. We therefore turn to it with 
 interest to mark what it has to sny on the subject 
 of the miraculous birth of Christ. 
 
 This epistle may be found in the " Apocryphal 
 New Testament," printed in Boston, 1832, and 
 the reader can see for himself that a miraculous 
 conception, or supernatural birth of Jesus, is a 
 point not once named or alluded to. In reading 
 this epistle no one could possibly obtain a hint 
 that such a dogma had ever been taught. It thus 
 
128 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 follows in the steps of St. Paul, and St. Peter, 
 and St. John, in not recognizing one of the mis- 
 interpretations of later ages. 
 
 Moreover there is no allusion to the mii'aculous 
 conception or birth in the other writings of Clem- 
 ent. The weight of this negative evidence, to 
 show that this was not then believed by the 
 Christian Church, will not be overlooked by the 
 reader. 
 
 2. Following Clement, the next Christian writ- 
 er whose works we possess is Polycarp. He was 
 for a long time pastor of a church at Smyrna, 
 from which place he wrote an extant epistle to 
 the Philippians. The date is not far from 150, 
 and though, as Mosheim says, it has been inter- 
 polated by weak and superstitious copyists, it is 
 by many considered for the most part genuine 
 and authentic. 
 
 Two circumstances give special interest to 
 Polycarp : the first that he had been personally 
 acquainted with the Apostle John ; and the sec- 
 ond that in his old age he was dragged into the 
 amphitheatre at Smyrna, and required to blas- 
 pheme Christ. He said, " Eighty and six years 
 have I served Christ, and he has never done me 
 an injury; how can I blaspheme my King and 
 
THE FATHERS. 129 
 
 Saviour?" Then he was disrobed, bound to a 
 stake, and burned to death. 
 
 Tlie epistle to the Philippians is not long. In 
 this, Polycarja writes of Christ as the Son of God, 
 who suffered for us, and whom God raised up 
 from the dead; but there is not the remotest 
 allusion to anything peculiar in his birth. This 
 epistle is also included in the " Apocryphal New 
 Testament," and all can easily procure it and read 
 it for theniselves. If the interpretations now put 
 upon the records of Christ's birth were then 
 believed, and were then thought to have the 
 importance now ascribed to them, why did not 
 those early Fathers have one word to say about 
 them? 
 
 3. Barnabas is the next Christian writer. He 
 was the companion of St. Paul, and was the noble 
 man who took that apostle by the hand, after his 
 conversion, and when every one beside was still 
 afraid of him. Acts ix. 27. The general epistle 
 which goes by his name is a long letter referring 
 largely to the events of Christ's life and suffering 
 and death, and dwelling upon the fact that he is 
 the Son of God and Saviour of the world. The 
 document is by many regarded as genuine. It 
 is in the " Codex Siniaticus." Origen calls it "a 
 9 
 
130 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 catholic epistle." Dupin, Dr. Mill, Archbishop 
 Wake, and others admit its authenticity ; but, on 
 the other hand, Neander and Donaldson think it 
 has no claim to be considered authentic. Mos- 
 heim's opinion is that it was written by a man 
 called Barnabas, " not wanting in piety, but of a 
 weak and superstitious character," and " the early 
 Christians, led away by a name for which they 
 entertained the highest reverence, attributed it to 
 the friend and companion of St. Paul." 
 
 Whether genuine or not, one thing is certain, 
 it makes no allusion to anything unusual in the 
 birth of Jesus, as any one may see for himself, 
 since this also is included in the " Apocryphal 
 New Testament," before referred to. 
 
 4. The Shepherd of Hermas is the next Chris- 
 tian writer. His extant works are divided into 
 three books, " Visions," " Commands," and " Si- 
 militudes." There is a great diversity of opinion 
 as to the character of these works, and the time 
 and place of their composition. Some think the 
 writer is the Hermas referred to by St. Paul. 
 Romans xvi. 14. Others suppose he was a broth- 
 er of Pius I. Bishop of Rome in 154, and that he 
 lived and wrote in Italy. Mosheim doubts if the 
 writer was sane. Neander says his works were 
 
THE FATHERS. 131 
 
 in high repute, in the second century. Origen 
 often quotes them, as did Eusebius and Athana- 
 sius. Donaldson regards them as very interest- 
 ing; and to those who call them silly, he says 
 that Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress would have 
 seemed absurd to Latin critics. He adds that 
 Bunsen compares them to Dante's "Divina Corn- 
 media.^ 
 
 ^Bnt it should be added that Bunsen compares them only in 
 certain points, which he names as follows: "It is very remark- 
 able that Hermas has performed his task with the same religious 
 respect for the historical individuality of his person that Dante 
 exhibits nearly twelve centuries later; and moreover, we do not 
 scruple to say, reveals not only an equal inteusity of religious 
 belief, but a far greater hopefulness for the future ; therefore 
 really a much stronger faith in the victory of the true world- 
 transforming Christianity than was possessed by the great 
 mediaeval Florentine. Both present us with a picture of the in- 
 ward history of the soul, of its awakening from selfishness, and 
 the mad pursuit of sensual pleasure, to faith in the Divine 
 redeeming love, and of the passage through a purifying state of 
 suffering to the blessedness of peace ; both depict these changes 
 as taking place after the close of the earthly life. But while the 
 prophet of the Middle Ages nowhere expresses any hope for 
 the earthly life of Christendom, for the existing ecclesiastical 
 form of God's kingdom, but, on the contrary, transfers all blessed- 
 ness and all just retribution to the future world, Hermas, in the 
 very midst of persecution, nay, on the eve of a new persecution 
 which he sees to be impending, with the eye of his spirit gazes 
 with rapture on the magnificent expansion of the kingdom of 
 
132 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 In bulk they make a quarter part of the 
 " Apocryphal New Testament." They refer to 
 the leading events of Christ's life, deaths and res- 
 urrection ; but throughout the whole there is no 
 hint of anything extraordinary in his birth. 
 Donal'dson says, " The writer's views in regard to 
 Christ are especially Ebionistic." 
 
 In coming down now to the early part of the 
 second half of the second century, we meet with 
 five Christian writers who were neai-ly contempo- 
 raries, — Hegesippus, Athenagoras, Theophilus, 
 Tatian, and Justin Martyr. We will give a 
 glance at each in the order in which we have 
 here named them. 
 
 5. Hegesippus was a converted Jew, who visited 
 Corinth and Rome about the year 170. He 
 wrote the history of ecclesiastical affairs from the 
 death of Christ to his own time ; but nothing of 
 it remains except some scattered fragments, from 
 which it appears that it was a book of notes, 
 recollections, and scraps of information. Donald- 
 son says he speaks of Christ as the Son of God, 
 and this is about all the doctrinal information we 
 get from him. There is no reference whatever to 
 a supposed miraculous birth. 
 
 God that was destined to replace the moribund vitality of the 
 Greek and Roman world." — God in History, vol. iii., p. 83. 
 
THE FATHERS. 133 
 
 6. Athenagoras was of Alexandria, and was a 
 lea;der of a school there. He became a Christian, 
 and published a defense of the Christians about 
 the year 168. Two works of bis are extant, the 
 defense above alluded to, and a small treatise on 
 the resurrection. Critics speak of him as writ- 
 ing in a clear and strong style, and pronounce his 
 defense of the Christians the best produced in 
 that age. He gives a full account of the Chris- 
 tian system, and dwells particularly upon its 
 power to purify and ennoble the conduct of man. 
 Following the style of the Gnostic writers he calls 
 the Logos the reason of God, but he has nothing 
 to say about a supernatural birth of Jesus. 
 
 7. Theophilus was of Antioch. Eusebius says 
 he was the sixth overseer of the church in that 
 city. The only extant work of his is addressed 
 to Autolycus, designed to show the falsity of 
 heathenism, and the truth of Christianity. For 
 this purpose he cites the chief doctrines and pre- 
 cepts of the Gospels : but there is no allusion to 
 anything miraculous in the birth of Christ. 
 
 8. Tatian, a Syrian, brought up a heathen, 
 was a traveling lecturer, but became converted 
 to Christianity, and is chiefly remarkable for his 
 leanins: towards Gnosticism and asceticism. He 
 
134 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 left several works, only one of which is extant — 
 an Oration to the Greeks, commended by Euse- 
 bius and Origen. His object is to show that 
 there is much in what the Greeks call barbarian 
 religions which is worthy of their notice. He de- 
 nounces the Greek mythology, and holds up for 
 imitation the pure morals of the Christians. He 
 regards the Logos as the power of reason, ema- 
 nating from God as a light emanates from a burn- 
 ing torch ; but he gives no account of the birth 
 of Christ as differing from the birth of others. 
 
 9. Justin Martyr was born at Neapolis, near 
 Sichem, in Samaria, about the beginning of the 
 second century. He is supposed to have been of 
 Roman descent, at any rate was not a Jew by 
 birth. He devoted himself to the study of the 
 prevailing systems of philosophy, — the Stoic, the 
 Pythagorean, the Platonic, — but none of them 
 satisfied him. One day as he was walking near 
 the sea- shore — we are not told what shore — he 
 met an old man of gentle and venerable appear- , 
 ance who talked with him about the object of 
 life, the existence of God, the soul of man ; and 
 finally called his attention to the Hebrew proph- 
 ets, through whom the gates of light might be 
 opened to him, and God and Christ might give 
 
THE FATHERS. 135 
 
 him understanding. It may have been one who 
 had himself personally seen Jesus. " And sud- 
 denly," said Justin, " a fire was lighted in my 
 soul, and I w^as possessed with a love of the proph- 
 ets, and of those men who are Christ's friends." 
 
 We know little of the events of Justin's life, 
 and the most important thing that we know is 
 that he published a defense of Christians ad- 
 dressed to Antoninus Pius, another work of a 
 similar kind addressed to Marcus Aurelius, a 
 Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, and a few other 
 works of less value. They mark him as one of 
 the most important of the early Christian writers. 
 Such was the result of that chance conversation 
 by the sea-shore. 
 
 He is regarded as a man of good culture and 
 extensive reading, but not a profound thinker, 
 nor a systematic reason er. He was not a theolo- 
 gian, nor an ecclesiastic, but rather a philosopher ; 
 and he wore the mantle of a philosopher as long 
 as he lived. He wins our love by his bold and 
 manly address to the Roman Emperor, to whom 
 he writes, " We can receive no iujury from you 
 unless we are workers of iniquity. You can kill 
 us ; injure us you cannot." 
 
 He conceived of Christ as the chief anscel of 
 
136 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 God, the Logos-agent of the Ahnighty, whose 
 offices are recorded throughout the Old Testa- 
 ment history. He refers to the events of Christ's 
 life as we find them recorded in the Gospels. He 
 is the first writer, we believe, who describes Christ 
 as not born of human parents. He believed that 
 the Logos of God, which in the Old Testament 
 ages had assumed so many forms, might in these 
 latter times come in the form of man without 
 human seed ; and this, as he says, was exactly 
 parallel to what, as the Grecians taught, had 
 happened to many sons of Jupiter. 
 
 Yet this view of Christ's birth is a point to 
 which he refers only incidentally, without as- 
 signing any great importance to it ; the reason 
 of wliicli is obvious, for he adds, " Some of my 
 friends, of our Christian sect, aTro tov rjixerepov 
 yeVous, maintain that Christ was born of human 
 parents ; " and in another place, in a list of her- 
 etics, he did not include the Ebionites, who never 
 believed the miraculous birth. 
 
 Here, then, is the first suggestion of anything 
 miraculous in the birth of Christ. It first ap- 
 pears nearly two centuries after his birth ; and 
 here no prominence is assigned to it, and it is 
 coupled with the distinct admission that some 
 
THE FATHERS. 137 
 
 did not believe it. What is equally surprising 
 is, that for his own faith in Christ's supernatural 
 birth Justin appeals to no testimony or traditions 
 which must have existed at his time, had the 
 event occurred or been generally believed; but 
 finds an argument for it in the heathen genealo- 
 gies of the gods. It is to be added, that Justin 
 did not know the Hebrew language, and perhaps 
 was not therefore able to appreciate the linguistic 
 reasons which had kept the apostles and fathers 
 before him fi-om assigning to the stories in St. 
 Luke the sense which he attached to them. 
 
 We have made a study of succeeding Fathers of 
 the Church, such as Cyprian, Tertullian, Origen, 
 with a view of bringing forward the statements 
 of their belief concerning the birth of Jesus. 
 But to extend our examination of their writ- 
 ings any farther would be giving a dispropor- 
 tionate attention to this point; nor is it really 
 necessary, since the remark in general terms is 
 sufficient that, subsequent to the point of time to 
 which we have no^v arrived, allusions to a sup- 
 posed miraculous birth of Christ are found more 
 or less distinctly in nearly all Christian writers. 
 The prominence that was now given to this 
 dogma, through the causes adverted to in our 
 
138 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 fifth chapter ; the new style of language in regard 
 to it that now came into fashion ; and the multi- 
 tudinous speculations and absurd exegesis to 
 which it gave rise, will be sufficiently apparent 
 by a glance, which we propose to give in the next 
 chapter, at the modes of patristic reasoning. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PATRISTIC REASONING. 
 
 T N the above review of the writings of the ear- 
 liest Fathers, we have seen that there was no 
 allusion to the miraculous birth of Christ in the 
 extant works of those authors who immediately 
 succeeded the apostles. It is only when we 
 come down to the latter part of the second cent- 
 ury that we find the first traces of that dogma. 
 
 It may be of some service to place directly 
 under the eye a synopsis of the results we have 
 thus far reached. 
 
 St. Matthew and St. Luke have annexed to 
 their Gospels some detached family traditions, to 
 which were ascribed but little importance, as 
 these contained merely private reminiscences of 
 the birth of Jesus. 
 
 St. Mark and St. John do not record them at 
 all. 
 
 The sermons of the first preachers of the Gos- 
 pel, reported so fully in the Acts of the Apostles, 
 make no mention of them. 
 
140 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 The Epistles of St. Paul, and St. Peter, and 
 St. John do not relate them. 
 
 Clemens Romanus, the first Christian writer 
 after the apostles, is silent in regard to any 
 thing supernatural in the birth of Christ. 
 
 To him succeeded Polycarp, who is equally 
 silent. 
 
 Barnabas, a companion, as is supposed, of St. 
 Paul, is the next Christian writer, and he does 
 not refer to it. 
 
 The same remark is to be made of the Shep- 
 herd of Hernias. 
 
 Then come Hegesippus, the Church historian, 
 and Athenagoras of Alexandria, and Theophilus 
 of Antioch, and Tatian the Syrian, who are all 
 equally silent on this point. 
 
 Justin Martyr, in the second century, is the 
 first writer who sjoeaks of something miraculous 
 in the birth of Christ, to which view he seems to 
 have been led by his heathen training, as such a 
 birth Avas similar to what had happened to sons 
 of Jupiter; but he assigns no prominence to this 
 point, and says expressly that some Christians 
 did not believe it. 
 
 To show that in the first generations of Chris- 
 tians this dogma of a miraculous conception was 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 141 
 
 unknown, there is a still more important proof to 
 be now submitted, and a proof which must be 
 regarded as decisive. 
 
 Its early absence is distinctly and expressly 
 admitted by those who began to broach it and 
 maintain it ; and they assigned special reasons 
 why it had not before been received. 
 
 The facts of the case were as follows : When 
 Christian preachers and writers first began to 
 attach so much importance to the records of 
 Christ's birth, surprise was naturally awakened; 
 and they were told to look to the traditions of 
 the Church, for it was well known that these 
 supernatural interpretations were of recent ori- 
 gin, and were unknown to the first Christian be- 
 lievers. 
 
 How was this objection met? It was admitted 
 that the real facts about Christ's birth had not 
 before been understood, and reasons were given 
 why they had been lately discovered. If we find 
 these reasons to be very weak and absurd, they 
 are none the less interesting in view of the point 
 which we have here in mind. 
 
 And now what are these reasons ? 
 
 If our readers have ever turned over the leaves 
 of the writings of the Fathers, some of them now 
 
142 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 quite accessible in the beautiful English "Ante- 
 Nicene Library of the Fathers," they will be pre- 
 pared for the strange mixture of a sincere, earnest 
 faith, with feeble puerilities, and foolish fancies, 
 and solemn absurdities, which there abound. 
 We may begin our citations with almost any one, 
 and we will turn first to no obscure name, to St. 
 Chrysostom — him of the golden mouth. 
 
 In reference to the miraculous birth he ob- 
 serves : " This was concealed and managed as a 
 great and wonderful thing to preserve the Virgin, 
 and cover her from wicked suspicions. For if 
 this had been known to the Jews from the be- 
 ginning, they would have stoned the Virgin, abus- 
 ing her for what would have been said, and have 
 
 condemned her for adultery Nor did the 
 
 Virgin herself dare to confess this. For observe 
 how she calls Joseph the father of Jesus, when 
 she said to him, ' Behold thy father and I have 
 sought thee.' If the truth had been suspected, 
 Jesus would not have been thought to have been 
 the son of David ; and this not being admitted, 
 many mischiefs would have arisen. On the same 
 account the angels did not mention this except to 
 Mary and Joseph only, but not to the shepherds, 
 though they acquainted them with the fact of the 
 birth." 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 143 
 
 But St. Chrysostom does not tell us by what 
 means the full facts became known two or three 
 hundred years after the event. It could not have 
 been from the narratives of Matthew and Luke, 
 for these had long been read without deriving 
 from them the dogma in question. Was there 
 any special revelation in later times ? Or how 
 did the " management " that shut out the mis- 
 chiefs, and screened the Virgin, and taught her 
 to prevaricate, unfold the knowledge of the case 
 to St. Chrysostom ? 
 
 Of course it occurred to many to ask, If Mary 
 was the only parent of Jesus, why was she mar- 
 ried at all ? Had there been no marriage, the 
 presumption of her virginity, and the exclusion 
 of any paternity, would have been more probable. 
 But answers were at hand. 
 
 St. Jerome gives three reasons why Mary was 
 married to Joseph. 1. That it might appear that 
 Jesus Avas descended from David. 2. Lest Mary 
 should have been stoned as an adulteress. 3. That 
 she might have a guardian in the flight into 
 Egypt. 
 
 St. Basil and Theophylact take a still higher 
 flight in accounting for Mary's marriage. St. 
 Basil says, " Mary was married to Josej^h that 
 
144 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 the devil might not suspect that she was a vir- 
 gin, for he knew that Christ was to be born of a 
 virgin." In the same strain argues Theophylact, 
 who says, " Mary was married that she by this 
 means might deceive the devil. For the devil, 
 having heard that Christ was to be born of a vir- 
 gin, observed the virgins. She therefore married 
 Joseph to deceive the deceiver." 
 
 Following in this same strain, Damascenes says, 
 " The virginity of Mar^^, her delivery, and the 
 birth of Christ, were all concealed from the 
 devil." 
 
 It was all plain to St. Ambrose why Jesus him- 
 self never alluded to the miraculous conception, 
 for that writer says, " Our Lord rather chose 
 that his origin should be unknown than that his 
 mother's chastity should be questioned." The 
 fact of his divine origin was quite subordinate to 
 a false opinion about his mother. 
 
 Curious, too, is it to see how many a j^fiori 
 reasons the Fathers had for the birth of Christ 
 from a virgin. In that age they all knew exactly 
 how it ought to take place. Cyril of Alexandria, 
 the same whose contest with Nestorius we have 
 described in a former chapter, said : " Christ 
 ought to have such a birth that his presence and 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 145 
 
 manifestation to the world might have something 
 in it worthy of a God." 
 
 Lactantius said that as God was without father 
 and mother, so the son had to be born twice, that 
 he might be born without father and mother ; 
 for he was first spiritually generated by God the 
 Father only, and so without mother ; and then 
 again he was carnally born by the Virgin alone, 
 and so without father. 
 
 St. Augustine thouglit that the salvation of the 
 female sex was particularly intended by Christ 
 being born of a woman only ; for as he was de- 
 rived solely from a woman, he would naturally 
 feel a deeper interest in woman's lot; while if he 
 had had a father as well as a mother, he might 
 have taken more than a due care of the male sex. 
 Such Mas St. Augustine's reasoning. 
 
 St. IrensBus asks. If Christ were born of Joseph, 
 how could he have surpassed Solomon or David ? 
 Were he produced in the same manner, and their 
 descendant, Omnipotence could have made noth- 
 ing more of him than of them. 
 
 Justin Martyr said that Christ was born of a 
 virgin, that by the same means that disobedience 
 came by a word, that is of the serpent, by the 
 same means it should be terminated by a word. 
 
 10 
 
146 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 For Eve, a virgin, uncorrupt, conceived by the 
 word of the serpent, and brought forth death ; 
 so the Virgin Mary conceived by the word of 
 the angel, and brought forth deliverance from 
 death. 
 
 The same conceit was taken up by others. 
 Cyril of Jerusalem said that " as death came by 
 the virgin Eve, so it was necessary that life 
 should be brought by a virgin." But St. Am- 
 brose vaiied the comparison, for he said, " Adam 
 was made of the virgin earth, and Christ was 
 made from a virgin woman." 
 
 St. Chrysostom knew exactly what sort of a 
 birth it was fitting Jesus should have, for he said, 
 " It is not because marriage is a bad thing, but 
 because virginity is better ; and it behooved the 
 Lord of all to have a more splendid entrance into 
 the world than ours, for it was the entrance of a 
 king. He ought to be born of a woman in com- 
 mon with us ; but to be born without marriage 
 which makes him greater than us." 
 
 St. Athanasius also dwells on this thought that 
 Christ's birth makes him greater than all, for his 
 eloquence flames out as follows : " What right- 
 eous person, what holy prophet or patriarch in 
 all the sacred writings, was born of a virgin 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 147 
 
 only ? or what woman was sufficient for the con- 
 ception of a man without a man? " 
 
 This opinion, that it was specially honorable to 
 Jesus to be without a father, is frequently pre- 
 sented in these writings, as if what we think is 
 honorable is to decide our view of what God has 
 done. We might think it more honorable still if 
 Jesus had had no mother, had not been born at 
 all, or not born an infant, or not born in a stable; 
 and it is not easy to see where such human ideas 
 of what is honorable might stop. 
 
 The Emperor Constantine, in his oration before 
 the Council of Nice, says, " When Christ was to 
 live among men he invented a new way of being 
 born ; for there was a conception without a mar- 
 riage, a delivery of a pure virgin, and a young 
 woman was the Mother of God." This idea of 
 inventing a new way of birth has been reproduced 
 in recent times. ^ 
 
 In reviewing the above citations, perhaps no 
 one can read them without seeing that we here 
 meet many expressions wholly different from any- 
 thing found in the writings of the apostles and 
 of their first successors. The entire body of the 
 
 1 See Disquisitions and Notes on the Gospel of Matthew. By 
 John H. Morison, Boston, 1860, p. 37. 
 
148 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 literature of these last named writers does not 
 offer so much about the birth of Christ as we 
 may find on one page of the writings of the third 
 and fourth centuries. The strata of thought is 
 as abruptly different as any strata of gravel and 
 clay or granite and trap the geologist knows. 
 
 The allegorical mode of interpretation which so 
 much flourished in that age opened a wide door 
 for the loss of any sound practical sense, and for 
 the entrance of any improbable conceit. It is 
 important to mark the fact, that this mode came 
 into vogue among those who were out of the 
 circle of the strongest Jewish influence, and were 
 in contact with Greek civilization. Hence they 
 were not hampered by Hebrew lexicography or 
 traditions. It was the idea of Origen that every 
 passage of Scripture had a spiritual element, and 
 sometimes, as he maintained, a spiritual truth in 
 a corporeal falsehood. With such latitude of in- 
 terpretation, how many prophecies and hints of 
 the miraculous birth of Christ might be found ! 
 
 We read in Psalm cxxxix. 16, " In thy book 
 all my members were written." Epiphanius 
 thought that David said this in the name of 
 Christ, and the book was the Virgin's womb. In 
 the Song of Solomon iv. 12, we read, " A garden 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 149 
 
 enclosed is my sister, my spouse, a spring shut up, 
 a fountain sealed." This was often referred to 
 the Virgin ; and the visitor to Rome may see this 
 text cited on the tasteless monument in the Piazza 
 di Spagna, erected in honor of the dogma of the 
 Immaculate Conception. In Psalm cxxxix. 13, 
 we read, " Thou hast covered me in my mother's 
 womb." Eusebius applies this to Christ, whose 
 miraculous conception was hid from the world. 
 
 In the very first verse of Genesis a prediction 
 of the Virgin Mary was found. " In the begin- 
 ning God created the heaven and the earth." 
 That means Joachim and Anna, the father and 
 mother of the Virgin. " And the earth was with- 
 out form and void." That is, Anna was barren. 
 '' And darkness was on the face of the deep." 
 This is the sorrow she felt. "And the spirit of 
 God moved upon the face of the waters." That 
 is, the Holy Ghost giving conception to Anna. 
 " And God said, let there be light." That is, the 
 Virgin was born. 
 
 Probably it is such exegesis as this that led 
 the poet to say : — 
 
 " The fly-blown text conceives an alien brood, 
 And turns to maggots what was meant for food." 
 
 It may be that we have now seen enough of 
 
150 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 the Fathers to lead us to indorse the opinion of 
 Milton, who says : " Whatsoever time or the 
 heedless hand of blind chance hath drawn from 
 of old to this present, in her huge drag-net, 
 whether fish or sea- weed, shells or shrubs, un- 
 picked, unchosen, — these are the Fathers. See- 
 ing, therefore, some men deeply conversant in 
 books have had so little care of late to give the 
 world a better account of their reading, than by 
 divulging needless tractates stuffed with the spe- 
 cious names of Ignatius and Polycarp, with frag- 
 ments of old mythologies and legends to distract 
 and stagger the multitude of credulous readers, 
 and mislead them from their strong guards and 
 places of safety under the tuition of Holy Writ, 
 it came into my thoughts to persuade myself, set- 
 ting all distances and nice respects aside, that I 
 could do religion and my country no better ser- 
 vice for the time, than by doing my utmost 
 endeavor to recall the people of God from this 
 vain foraging after straw, and to reduce them to 
 their firm stations under the standard of the 
 Gospel, by making appear to them, first the in- 
 sufficiency, next the inconveniency, and lastly 
 the impiety of these gay testimonies that their 
 great doctors would bring them to dote on." ^ 
 
 ^ Miltou's Prelatical Episcopacij. 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 151 
 
 We are apt to suppose that the fact of their 
 nearness to tlie times of the apostles gives the 
 Fathers an authorit}' superior to all other writers. 
 We forget, as Macaulay has well said, " that their 
 disadvantages in other respects place them below 
 a third rate student of Scripture of a later age, 
 just as a man with bad eyes may not see an ob- 
 ject so clearly at fifty yards, as another with good 
 eyes may see it at half a mile. Almost all the 
 Fathers had very bad eyes, and they attempted 
 to remedy the defect with worse spectacles." 
 
 That among such men there should gradually 
 grow up a misinterpretation of the records of the 
 birth of Jesus, and an assignment to them of an 
 importance not at first thought of, will seem all 
 the more probable if we remember two facts 
 which marked the primitive age of Christianity. 
 
 The first is that some time elapsed before the 
 writings of the New Testament were reverenced 
 as a part of the Holy Scriptures. Those writings 
 were not composed during the generation that 
 was contemporary with Jesus. Even after they 
 had been gathered into the form in which we now 
 have them, converts from Judaism could not at 
 once have held them in the same light in which 
 they regarded their older sacred books. 
 
152 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 Of course the life of Jesus was of deep interest 
 to them. Yet it was not the subject of the crit- 
 ical study elsewhere bestowed. Of this we have 
 plenary proof. Among the immense mass of ex- 
 tant writings of the Fathers, it is surprising to 
 mark what a vast proportion is commentary on 
 the Old Testament. We see the cause of this 
 only when we reflect how slowly the reverence 
 for that book would be shared by woi'ks which 
 must have seemed so modern. There was a con- 
 stant attempt to prove that Christ was foretold 
 and described in the Law, the Prophets, and the 
 Psalms, — the same tendency so manifest in the 
 evangelists, who pored over the Jewish Scrij^tures 
 to find predictions of events in the life of Jesus. 
 It is probable, judging from the titles of books 
 that have come down to us, that in the first years 
 of the Gospels The Song of Solomon received 
 more critical study than the Gospels themselves. 
 Origen, between A. D. 215 and 254, gave twenty- 
 eight years of his life, terminated at this last date, 
 to a critical study of the Old Testament, bringing 
 to the task vast learning, and unexampled bold- 
 ness and acuteness of speculation, while he be- 
 stowed comparatively little attention upon that 
 New Testament which, as he seems not to have 
 
PATRISTIC REASONING. 153 
 
 suspected, would soon eclipse in interest the elder 
 Scriptures. We need not say how favorable all 
 this was to the creeping in of wide-spread mis- 
 conceptions of the real meaning of the Gospels. 
 
 But, secondly, what critical study there was 
 among the first genei'ations of believers was not 
 only devoid of any scientific accuracy, but was 
 worthless through false rules of interpretation. 
 The reader of the preceding pages has seen evi- 
 dence enough of the love of allegory, and the 
 search for mystical but baseless meanings. Men 
 then applied to the words of the evangelical nar- 
 rative "• not an historical criticism, but abstruse 
 
 metaphysical conceptions The world and 
 
 society presented conditions less and less favor- 
 able to sane criticism. It was under these con- 
 ditions that the dogma now called orthodox grew 
 up." 1 
 
 Thus an age of puerile speculations still further 
 favored the rise of tlie misconceptions on which 
 we have dwelt, and which in time acquired the 
 dogmatic form set forth in the "Apostles' Creed," 
 so called, to the history and meaning of which the • 
 next chapter will be devoted. 
 
 1 Literature and Dogma, pp. 276, 282, by Matthew Arnold. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE apostles' CEEED. 
 
 TT may be thought that the expressions in the 
 * "Apostles' Creed," " Conceived of the Holy- 
 Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary," refute the 
 leading idea of this book ; and it becomes neces- 
 sary therefore to notice this symbol of faith. An 
 account of its origin may be found in various 
 ecclesiastical histories, and several distinct trea- 
 tises have unfolded its history and explained its 
 meaning. The well-known and approved work 
 in English, by Sir Peter King, has long been 
 before the public ; and a more extended and 
 thorough publication in French has lately ap- 
 peared, entitled " Le Symbole des ApStres," by 
 Michel Nicolas, Paris, 1867. 
 
 It will occur to every one that there is no al- 
 lusion to this Creed in the sermons or epistles of 
 the first preachers of Christianity, nor is it named 
 by any writer in the earliest ages of the Church. 
 Had it been the work of the apostles, it would 
 
THP: APOSTLES' CREED. 155 
 
 often have been appealed to in the sharp con- 
 troversies of those times ; nor is this negative 
 evidence the only proof that it was composed in 
 a later day. 
 
 Not till the end of the third century do we 
 meet with any reference to this Creed as having 
 the authority of the apostles. Of course, some 
 of the articles it embraces had been frequently 
 named before as matters of belief. When Philip 
 baptized the Eunuch, Acts viii. 37, the latter 
 said, " I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of 
 God." This was all the creed the apostle re- 
 quired. To that simple profession of faith point 
 after point was afterward added, as we shall soon 
 see ; but not till about three hundred years after- 
 wards were all these points brought together in 
 a form that claimed apostolic authority. 
 
 The truth is this Creed is in the main of Roman 
 Catholic manufacture. The Greek Church never 
 has acknowledged it. Luther said it had no more 
 authority than the symbol of St. Ambrose or St. 
 Augustine. Calvin thought its origin so late and 
 its author so uncertain that it had no special 
 value. Zwingle believed there was no copy of it 
 prior to the fourth century. Sir Peter King says, 
 *' Part of this Creed was transmitted down from the 
 
156 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 apostles, and other parts were afterwards added 
 by the governors of the church to prevent here- 
 sies." He says also that the first Christians had 
 a variety of symbols of faith, which were not 
 usually committed to writing, but were trans- 
 mitted orally with some feeling of secrecy and 
 awe, and were taught to the baptized ; but the 
 profession of faith did not take the form in which 
 we have it in the Apostles' Creed till centuries 
 after Christ. 
 
 The French author we have referred to is en- 
 tirely in accord with all this, and says that no 
 creed under the name of the apostles can be 
 found earlier than the fourth century, and adds 
 that St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, is the first 
 writer who calls a creed by this name ; that it 
 was in Italy that this name was first generally 
 used ; that the Church in the East long after 
 this did not receive this Creed, while the Greek 
 Church, as we have before said, does not to this 
 day own it. 
 
 It will be more interesting to show how, ac- 
 cording both to Sir Peter King and M. Nicolas, 
 the different articles of this Creed came to find 
 their place ; and this point will shed still further 
 light upon the time of its origin. So far from 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED. 157 
 
 being completed at once, it received additions 
 generation after generation, to guard against suc- 
 cessive heresies. Crescit eundo, and this is the 
 reason why it exceeded in length the true Apos- 
 tles' Creed of Philip and the Eunuch. 
 
 Thus the Creed was made to read, " I believe 
 in one God," not only in opposition to pagan 
 polytheism, but, as King shows, against some 
 heretical Christians, who, in the third and fourth 
 centuries taught that there were two coeval and 
 independent principles ; while others propagated 
 opinions which bordered on tritheism. The ap- 
 proved faith was in one God only. 
 
 It was said " Maker of Heaven and Earth," 
 because the Gnostic heresy of the early centuries 
 taught that matter was not created by God, but 
 was the work of some being at war with him, or 
 inferior to him. Matter was believed to be the 
 source of all impurity, and could not come there- 
 fore from the hands of an infinitely holy God. 
 But the true doctrine was that God made the 
 earth as Avell as the heaven. 
 
 Nicolas says that the expression, " In Jesus 
 Christ our Lord^^^ was aimed against those who 
 held that a multitude of eons emanated from 
 God, to whom allegiance was due. This article 
 
158 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 affirmed Jesus to be the sole revealer of God, and 
 Master of Christians. 
 
 The phrase, " conceived by the Holy Ghost," 
 was inserted, as both King and Nicolas show, to 
 oppose the opinions of the Ebionites, and the 
 Judaizing Christians, who believed that Jesus was 
 a son of Joseph as well as of Mary. The next 
 phrase in the Creed, " born of the Virgin Mary," 
 was directed against those who held that Jesus 
 had a corporeal existence only in appearance ; 
 that his body was a mere phantom ; had no sub- 
 stance derived from his mother. It was out of 
 the controversies of the third century, that this 
 part of the Creed was shaped ; and here is an- 
 other proof of its late formation. 
 
 " Suffered under Pontius Pilate ; " this was 
 placed in the Creed because there were some in 
 the second century who taught that Christ's body 
 was incapable of suffering. " Crucified, dead, and 
 buried ; " Nicolas says these expressions are a lit- 
 eral repetition of the frequent declarations of Ig- 
 natius, Irenffius, Tertullian, and Origen against 
 the Doceta?. 
 
 " He descended into Hell." By this last word 
 was denoted Hades, the place where it was sup- 
 posed all departed spirits were confined prior to 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED. 159 
 
 the final judgment. Hence in the parable both 
 Lazarus and Dives are represented as being there. 
 There had been from the first some vague idea 
 that the human soul of Jesus visited that place 
 between the time of his death and his resurrec- 
 tion. To this it is supposed St. Peter alludes, 
 1 Peter iii. 19 : " Went and preached to the spir- 
 its in prison." No prominence was given to this 
 point till in subsequent centuries it connected it- 
 self with two important articles of faith : the first, 
 that Jesus had a human soul, in opposition to 
 those who denied his perfect humanity ; and the 
 second, that Jesus went to the place of departed 
 spirits, which was Purgatory, to carry his re- 
 deeming work there. 
 
 In our times probably the general opinion at- 
 tached to the sentence, " He descended into Hell," 
 is that he died ; and the Episcopal Church does 
 not impose any interpretation of this phrase. But 
 at the time the Creed was formed, in this point 
 there was something more meant than a mere 
 tautology. King gives the chief prominence to 
 the supposition that it was inserted against those 
 who thought Christ did not have a human soul ; 
 that the Logos took its place. 
 
 From this opinion Nicolas dissents. He says 
 
160 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 that it could not have been admitted that the 
 mere human soul of Christ could carry on the 
 work of redemption in the place of departed 
 spirits ; and besides, it was held by the Fathers 
 that the Divine nature accompanied Christ to 
 that place. He therefore sees in this expression 
 the recognition of a middle place between earth 
 and heaven, Purgatory, where the Saviour went 
 to redeem the pious souls who had died in the 
 Old Testament ages. Nicolas shows that the be- 
 lief in Purgatory took a fresh life from this part 
 of the Creed, and has been attached to it ever 
 since. 
 
 A like inference may be drawn from the ex- 
 pression in the Creed, " The Communion of 
 Saints." Protestants see in that clause only a 
 recognition of a common feeling among all de- 
 vout men. But Nicolas shows that this is by no 
 means the idea which presided at its formation, 
 and which has been in all past ages attached to 
 it. It sets forth, he says, the fact of a unity 
 among all redeemed souls, on earth or in heaven ; 
 and it is used chiefly to justify the invocation of 
 angels and saints, and the very life-blood of the 
 clause is found in this idea. 
 
 Looking at the Creed as a whole we sec at 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED. 161 
 
 once, from its disproportions, that it took its 
 shape controversially. Regarded as a full Chris- 
 tian Creed it is singularly deficient. Nothing is 
 said about the offices, ministrations, and comforts 
 of the Holy Spirit. The great subject of God 
 the Father is dismissed in a line or two ; while 
 contrpverted points about Christ are brought for- 
 ward at greater length. After all, many of the 
 important verities of the Christian faitli find no 
 statement whatever. It is more a polemic weapon 
 than an enumeration of the truths which lie deep- 
 est in the believer's heart. 
 
 Bunsen, in his book entitled, " God in History," 
 vol. iii. p. 55, says, " The most ancient formula 
 of the Apostles' Creed for which we have docu- 
 mentary evidence is that used in the church of 
 Alexandria, A. D. 200, the whole of which, word 
 for word, is as follows : — 
 
 " I believe in the only true God^ the Father 
 Almighty; and in his only begotten Son, Jesus 
 Christ, our Lord and Saviour; 
 
 " And in the Holy Ghost, the Giver of life." 
 
 The same writer adds : " It was not until the 
 fifth century that the confession of faith used in 
 public worship, entitled 'The Apostles' Creed,' 
 11 
 
162 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 grew out of the gradual expansion of this earlier 
 baptismal formula." 
 
 Nicolas gives many versions of this Creed in 
 the early centuries before it took the final shape 
 in which we commonly see it, and then says : — 
 
 " Rien ne me semble plus propre a donner une 
 idee exacte au long travail auquel le Crddo.a 6t6 
 soumis avant d'arriver a sa forme definitive, que 
 les remaniements successifs de cet article, re- 
 maniements dont il n'est pas tres-difficile de 
 suivre presque pas a pas la serie. Les mention- 
 ner c'est prouver que notre formulaire a 6te 
 I'oeuvre de plusieurs siecles." Page 86. 
 
 Thus we see that this Creed can rightly be 
 called the Apostles' Creed only in that general 
 sense in which the college of cardinals is called 
 the Apostolic College, or a papal ambassador is 
 called an Apostolic Nuncio. It is hardly worth 
 while to stt>te how much Roman Catholic tradi- 
 tion has glorified the formation of this document, 
 representing that, before the apostles left Jeru- 
 salem, the twelve came together, and each one 
 contributed a sentence, as follows : — 
 
 Peter, I believe in God the Father Almighty; 
 
 John, Maker of Heaven and Earth ; 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED. 163 
 
 James^ And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our 
 Lord; 
 
 Andrew^ Conceived of the Holy Ghost, born 
 of the Virgin Mary ; 
 
 Philip, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was cru- 
 cified, dead, and buried; 
 
 Thomas, Descended to hell, the third day he 
 rose from the dead ; 
 
 Bartholomeiv, He ascended to Heaven, he is 
 seated at the right hand of God the Father 
 Almighty ; 
 
 Mattheiv, From thence he shall come to judge 
 the quick and the dead ; 
 
 James the Less, I believe in the Holy Ghost, 
 the Holy Catholic Church ; 
 
 Simeon, The Communion of Saints, the for- 
 giveness of sins ; 
 
 Jude, The resurrection of the body ; 
 
 Matthias, The life everlasting.^ 
 
 The assignment of sentences to the apostles 
 has been variouslj'^ made. There is an old Latin 
 poem, attributed to Saint Bernard, which gives a 
 
 1 We see that Mr. Longfellow has appended the Apostles' 
 Creed, with this assignment, to his Divine Tragedy. The fiction 
 of the assignment is not without some interest for its antiquity, 
 but it was a fraud perpetrated centuries after the apostolic 
 age. 
 
164 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 different distribution, and is in itself of some in- 
 terest. Perhaps the omission in it of the miracu- 
 lous conception was only through some metrical 
 necessity. 
 
 Articuli fidci sunt bis sex corde tenendi, 
 Quos Chiisti socii docueruut, pneumati pleni : 
 Credo Deum Patrem, Petrus inquit, cuncta creatum; 
 Andreas dixit, Ego credo Jesuin fore Christum ; 
 Conceptum, natum, Jacobus; passumque, Joannes; 
 Infera, Plulippus, fugit ; Thomas que, revixit ; 
 Scendit, Bartholomeus ; veniet cens(!re, Matthams ; 
 Pneuma, Minor Jacobus ; Simon, pcccata remittet; 
 Restituit, Judas, carnem ; vitamque, Matthias. 
 
 We need not repeat that this picnic origin, 
 as one has called it, is a late invention. 
 
 We close this review by marking the fact that 
 the first skeletons of the Apostles' Creed do 
 not state a belief of anything miraculous in the 
 birth of Christ. We have seen that the earliest 
 Alexandrian version, quoted above from Bunsen, 
 has no clause of this kind. Such is the fact also 
 of a sketch of a summajry of Christian truths, 
 somewhat resembling the Apostles' Creed, found 
 in the writings of Ignatius. It speaks of faith 
 in " Jesus Christ, who is of the race of David, 
 Son of Mary, who was veritably born, has eaten 
 and drunk, who has truly suffered persecution 
 
THE APOSTLES' CREED. 165 
 
 under Pontius Pilate, has been veritably crucified 
 and was dead, in the view of all who are in heaven, 
 upon the earth, and under the earth, who has 
 truly arisen from the dead, his father having 
 raised him up as He will raise us up." ^ 
 
 It will be observed that li6re is a statement of 
 that simpler, earlier faith on the subject of the 
 birth of Jesus, whirh, as we have seen, was all 
 that the Christians of the first ages professed ; 
 and in a creed that has grown up as has the 
 Apostles' Creed no statement it contains can be 
 brought as an argument for or against the faith 
 of the first disciples of Christ. 
 
 In support of the general thesis of this book 
 there is another subject which merits notice. It 
 is the worship of the Virgin Mary, — a worship 
 which grew up contemporaneously with the as- 
 cription to Jesus of a supernatural origin. The 
 next chapter will cast an important side-light on 
 the point under discussion. 
 
 ^ Le Symhole des Apdtres, p. 13. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 MAEIOLATRY. 
 
 fllHE adoration of the Mother of Jesus is one 
 of the consequences of the misinterpretation 
 of the records of his birth ; and in Roman Cath- 
 olic countries her image has taken a hold upon 
 the imagination and affections, which arrests our 
 attention and merits consideration. 
 
 " It is remarkable," says Lecky, in his " His- 
 tory of Morals," "that the Jews, who of the three 
 great nations of antiquity certainly produced in 
 history and poetry the smallest number of il- 
 lustrious women, should have furnished the 
 world with its supreme female ideal ; and it is 
 also a striking illustration of the qualities which 
 prove most attractive in woman, that one of whom 
 we know nothing except her gentleness and her 
 sorrow, should have exercised a magnetic power 
 upon the world, incomparably greater than was 
 exercised by the most majestic female patriots of 
 Paganism." Vol. ii., p. 389. 
 
MAPJOLATRY. 167 
 
 Archbishop Whately, in tracing the errors of 
 Romanism to some principles in human nature, 
 might readily have discerned in this worship of 
 the Virgin something which made it fondly wel- 
 come to the heart. Where the idea of God was 
 thrown into a mysterious and awful background, 
 and the court of heaven was painted by the 
 imagination after the fashion of an earthly court 
 of the Middle Ages, and access to the monarch 
 was with difficulty obtained, and only abject fear 
 and trembling could be felt in his presence, with 
 what j(iy was received the dogma of a gentle and 
 loving one to go between the suppliant and that 
 King of kings, — one who had all womanly ten- 
 derness and pit}^, into whose ear every sorrow 
 and wish might be poured, and whose influence 
 was all powerful in heaven. 
 
 Her image was set up everywhere, and in Cath- 
 olic Europe may still be seen, not only in lofty, 
 cathedrals, and venerated parish churches, and 
 sacred retreats for the dead, but in the corners of 
 the streets, in shrines by the wayside, in resting 
 places of the mountain paths, on the inclosures 
 of the vineyards, over the doors of the houses, on 
 the walls of the humblest dwelling, in the shop of 
 the artisan ; and she of the loving smile, with the 
 
168 ' THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 infant Jesus in her arms, seen by every one, from 
 the first memory of youth to the last look in 
 death, became a real being whose existence, and 
 compassion, and power it was impossible to doubt. 
 God occupied no place in their hearts compared 
 with that of Mary.i 
 
 Of course all this was founded on false concep- 
 tions of God. Mariolati-y could never have ex- 
 isted had men believed what Jesus had taught 
 of the Father, who clothes the lilies with tlieir 
 beauty, numbers the hairs of our head, and with- 
 out whose notice not even a sparrow falls to the 
 ground. It is the grand distinction of that Di- 
 vine Teacher to present to us in God a being 
 whom the heart may love, whom it may approach 
 in confidence and joy, and before whom it may 
 pour out all its cares, " for he careth for us." 
 But when a false religion has shrouded the throne 
 ,of the Almighty with awful mystery and terror, 
 the human heart will make some object to love, 
 for to love is one of the necessities of our nature. 
 
 1 The lines of Words^yorth to the Virgin may here be re- 
 called : — 
 
 " Thy very name, Lady, flings 
 0"er blooming fields and gushing springs 
 A tender sense of shadowy fear, 
 And chastening sympathies." 
 
MARIOLATRY. 169 
 
 There has been much speculation as to the 
 effect in Roman Catholic countries of the wor- 
 ship of the Virgin ; and it has often been said 
 that it has elevated the position of woman. We 
 think that such an opinion could not have been 
 founded on an3^thing the traveler now sees in those 
 countries. The position of woman in Protestant 
 lands is beyond comparison higher. But after all 
 this is not decisive. No one can tell how much 
 lower woman might have fallen had she not been 
 shielded by some associations of infinite purity 
 and holiness with her to whom so many prayers 
 have been addressed ; and this refuge in all times 
 of sorrow and peril to one who was believed to 
 be full of gentleness and love, how could it wholly 
 fail to do much to soften rugged natures, and to 
 teach sweet lessons of pity and forgiveness ? 
 
 Probably the homage given to the Virgin IMary 
 would have had a more humanizing influence, and 
 would have done more to elevate her sex, had not 
 superstition placed her on a pinnacle so far above 
 all other women. Her birth was regarded as 
 miraculous, for the supposed law of transmitted 
 sin was suspended in the case of her who was the 
 Queen of Heaven, and the Mother of God ; and 
 this accumulation around her of supernatural 
 
170 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 attributes, how did it make all others of her 
 sex appear in comparison ? Her beauty, purity, 
 gentleness, and love were something more than 
 human, and therefore were no example and meas- 
 ure for others, who perhaps were sometimes even 
 scorned by the contrast. Who can doubt that 
 both Jesus and his mother will have a pro- 
 founder influence over human hearts, the closer 
 they are brought to our humanity ? 
 
 To show what influence she has had in past 
 ages the old legends of the church have a special 
 interest. The "• Lives of the Saints " are full of 
 stories, many of them wild and absurd, but some 
 of them singularly beautiful and suggestive of 
 the intercessions and helps of the Virgin ; and we 
 quite agree with what a late writer says, who ex- 
 presses himself as follows : — 
 
 " There is, if I mistake not, no department of 
 literature the importance of which is more inad- 
 equately realized than the " Lives of the Saints." 
 Even when they have no direct historical value, 
 they have a moral value of the very highest or- 
 der. They may not tell us with accuracy what 
 men did at particular epochs, but the}^ display 
 with the utmost vividness what men thought and 
 felt, their measure of probability, and tlieir ideal 
 
MARIOLATRY. 171 
 
 of excellence. Decrees of councils, elaborate 
 treatises of theologians, creeds, liturgies, and can- 
 ons, are only the husks of religious history. They 
 reveal what was professed and argued before the 
 world, but not that which was realized in the 
 imagination and enshrined in the heart. The 
 history of art, which in its ruder day reflected 
 with delicate fidelitj^ the fleeting images of an an- 
 thropomorphic age, is in this respect invaluable ; 
 but still more important is that vast Christian 
 mythology which grew up spontaneously fi-om 
 the intellectual condition of the time, included 
 all its dearest hopes, wishes, ideals, and imagin- 
 ings, and constituted during many centuries the 
 popular literature of Christendom." ^ 
 
 No English writer, we believe, has looked into 
 this mythology so much as INIrs. Jameson, and 
 her delightful works on the old church legends 
 are an invaluable companion to the visitor of the 
 galleries of Europe. Alban Butler's " Lives of 
 the Saints " is another storehouse ; but a work 
 in Italian, the " Golden Legend," by Giacobo 
 Voragine, is the most fam.ous collection, — a fine 
 copy of which, now rarely obtained, fortunately 
 rewarded our search in an old bookstore in Flor- 
 
 1 Lecky's Flistorj/ of Morals, vol. ii., p. 119. 
 
172 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 ence. Later than this a French publication, en- 
 titled "Apparitions et Revelations de la Tres- 
 Sainte Vierge," by Paul Sausseret, gives us in 
 two volumes one hundred and forty legends of 
 the Virgin. 
 
 In casting one's eye over this vast mass of me- 
 diaeval literature, the first thing that one observes 
 is that these legends cover the entire course of the 
 Virgin's history, — her Birth, her Presentation 
 in the Temple, her Espousal, her Marriage, her 
 Conception, the Birth of her Son, the Visit of the 
 Magi, the Purification, the Flight into Egypt, the 
 Repose in Egypt, the Seeking of Jesus amid the 
 Doctors of the Temple, the Marriage at Cana of 
 Galilee, Mary at the Crucifixion, the Stabat Ma- 
 ter,i Mary at the Descent from the Cross, Mary at 
 the Entombment, Mary at the Resurrection, her 
 Death, her Ascension, her Assumption, her En- 
 thronement, and her Coronation. From many of 
 these Christian art has drawn the subjects of its 
 most renowned works. 
 
 The wonderful variety and expressiveness of 
 
 the titles given to lier is also observable. She is 
 
 1 So called from tlie first line of an old Latin hymn : — 
 " Stabat Mater Dolorosa 
 Juxta crucem lachrymosa 
 Dum pendebat filius." 
 
MARIOLATRY. 173 
 
 the Holy Virgin, the Blessed Virgin, the Immac- 
 ulate Virgin, Our Lady of Peace, Our Lady of 
 Good Counsel, Our Lady of Sorrow, Our Lady of 
 Succor, Our Lady of Good Heart, Our Lady of 
 Mercy, Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady of Hope, 
 Our Lady of Victoi'y, Our Lady of Salvation, Our 
 Lady of the Cradle, Our Lady of the Girdle, Our 
 Guardian Lady, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Our 
 Lady of Bethlehem, The Queen of Heaven, The 
 Divine Mother, The Mother of Grief, Our Celes- 
 tial Empress, and she is addressed by other titles 
 more than we can recapitulate. In every con- 
 siderable place throughout the Roman Catholic 
 world, churches have been consecrated to her, 
 and one particidar hour every day, the most 
 thoughtful and tender hour of all, has been set 
 apart for the " Ave Maria." 
 
 It may be thought that any citation of these 
 legends is quite uns'uited to the purpose of this 
 book, which aims to set forth historical facts and 
 logical arguments bearing on the general thesis 
 in view, while these church stories take us into 
 the region of sentiment and poetry. 
 
 But they show us the state of feeling in which 
 originated the popular belief about Christ's 
 mother and his birth. Even at the present day 
 
174 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 dogmas are more the product of emotion than of 
 reason. How much more was this the case eight 
 and ten centuries ago ! On the points referred to, 
 we have inherited a creed from a condition of 
 society which has so long since passed away that 
 we perhaps find it difficult to reproduce it to our 
 imagination ; and it is only by the aid of these 
 legends that we can go back to past genenitions, 
 whose wild and fabulous creations still haunt the 
 domain of Christian thought. For this reason 
 the quotations we propose to make seem germane 
 to our design, and may not detract from its inter- 
 est. 
 
 In translating, then, from the French and Ital- 
 ian, a few of these old legends for our pages, we 
 pass by those that are the best known as being 
 the motif of famous pictures, and have taken such 
 as may suggest the variety of services which it 
 was thought the Virgin rendered to her devotees. 
 It will be seen that it was believed that she min- 
 istered to the humblest forms of human need. 
 
 HOW THE VIRGIN HONORED A SERVANT IN THE 
 MONASTERY. 
 
 By the pious care of St. Bernard no less than 
 eight hundred had been gathered under the 
 
MARIOLATRY. 175 
 
 shadow of the oaks and cloisters of Clairvaux, It 
 was made a valley of milk and honey ; and led 
 by him in the way of eternal life, they all had 
 one heart to praise and serve God. 
 
 There was with them a menial brother by the 
 name of Didier, a man of the deepest piety, who 
 made a special devotion to the Sainted Virgin, 
 wdiom he loved with all his heart during the 
 whole course of his life. His duty called him to 
 pass the night of the Assumption in the forest, 
 guarding the sheep of the monastery : and so he 
 could not join in the holy offices in honor of Our 
 Lady. But all night long he ceased not to keep 
 his thoughts turned to heaven, and to salute the 
 Blessed Virgin, adding prayers to prayers, and 
 sighs to sighs. No one Avon her heart so much 
 as he. 
 
 St. Bernard knew all this by express revela- 
 tion, and the next day, when the holy mysteries 
 of the Assumption had been duly celebrated, he 
 addressed the religious in these words : — 
 
 " I do not doubt, my brethren, that you have 
 all offered to our most holy Mother the homage 
 which is her due, and that you will have as a 
 recompense the part which our august and well 
 beloved Sovereign will bestow ; but I must in- 
 
176 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 form you that one of the least of our brethren, 
 who, in the forest guarding our flocks, passed all 
 the joj'^ous night of this grand solemnity, has 
 rendered to the Queen of Heaven an homage, 
 which no one of you, however great has been his 
 devotion, has surpassed in the sight of God and 
 our common Mother. Behold what has raised 
 him above us all ! " ' 
 
 And then he related what had been revealed to 
 him. And Didier, at his last hour, saw the Queen 
 of Heaven come in the midst of a cortege of ce- 
 lestial spirits. He heard her call him by name; 
 he saluted her ; and she responded with the smile 
 of heaven, and received him to the regions of 
 eternal peace and joy. 
 
 HOW THE VIRGIN FREED A SLAVE. 
 
 There was once a Christian mother whose son 
 had been carried off by Mussulman pirates, and 
 had long worn the chains of a bitter slavery. She 
 had no mone}^ to pay his ransom, and no friends 
 to intercede in his -behalf ; and in her distress 
 she turned entirely and trustingly to Our Lady 
 of Sorrow. 
 
 One day, when her prayer had been fervent, 
 accompanied by alms and fast, the Holy Virgin 
 
MARIOLATRY. 177 
 
 appeared and said, " What do you wish of me ? 
 Why these tears and groans?" And the pious 
 woman replied, " Good Lady, restore to me the 
 child of my love, now in slavery." And the 
 Blessed Virgin said, " Dry up your tears ; you 
 shall see your son." 
 
 One day soon after, when the mother of the 
 captive was revolving these things in her heart, 
 some one knocked at her door. She opened it, 
 and what was her surprise and joy when she 
 recognized her son. She asked him how he had 
 obtained his freedom. And he said, " One night 
 the Mother of God came to me, and took the 
 irons from my feet and hands and neck, and 
 showed me the way to come to your arms." And 
 on comparing their accounts it appeared that this 
 was on the very night when the Holy Virgin 
 had promised all this to the mother. 
 
 THE VIRGIN AND THE LEPER. 
 
 In a certain monastery there was a poor lay- 
 brother, whom God had sorely afflicted with lep- 
 rosy, in order to try him, and that he might lay 
 up by patience and resignation a great sum of 
 merits. He was sequestered from all intercourse 
 with others, and kept in a cell by himself. There 
 
 12 
 
178 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 succumbing to the might of the hand that was 
 upon him, and feeling the utmost discourage- 
 ment, he lent an ear to the enemy of all souls, 
 and resolved to throw himself at night into a 
 river hard by. 
 
 But he had fear of the dogs that guarded the 
 place every night as soon as it was dark ; and so 
 he bethought himself to defer the execution of 
 his plan till Christmas Eve, when no one slept, 
 and the dogs were not on watch. Meanwhile his 
 disease had so disabled him that he now could 
 not walk a step, and hardly could he sustain him- 
 self on his feet. Then he tried to drag himself 
 to the water, but this he found impossible. 
 
 This poor brother had formerly been a most 
 devout worshiper of the Virgin, and in his ex- 
 tremity she did not forget him. One night she 
 appeared to him, accompanied by many holy an- 
 gels, and by John, a brother of the monastery. 
 She said, in gentle and loving tones, " My son, do 
 not neglect the service of God ; and be not cast 
 down when he chastises you, for like a Father he 
 corrects for their good those whom he loves." 
 When the Holy Virgin had thus comforted this 
 poor leper with sweet words she departed with 
 her angel attendants. 
 
MARIOLATRY. 179 
 
 Not long after, some one came to ask the leper 
 if he was in want of anything, and he asked to 
 see Brother John. To him he began to recount 
 his vision ; but John said, " I have seen all of 
 which you speak ; not with my bodily eyes, but 
 with the eyes of my soul ; and the Blessed Virgin 
 when she left you went to the choir of monks, to 
 witness to these servants of God her satisfaction 
 in their chanting the praises of the Most High." 
 Then the leper had no doubt that he had indeed 
 been favored with a celestial visit from the Di- 
 vine Mother, whose loving counsel he followed, 
 showing ever after heroic patience and resigna- 
 tion, and dying in the most pious and edifying 
 manner. 
 
 THE VIRGIN AND THE ARCHITECT. 
 
 In the year 324 the Emperor Constantine, 
 among other temples which he consecrated to the 
 Virgin, designed one which should be the most 
 costly, and most worthy of the Blessed Mother of 
 Jesus. So he had enormous columns cut in the 
 quarries, and transported to the chosen place. 
 But what was his surprise to find that through 
 their vast size and length they could not be set 
 on end. In vain for a long time they tried to 
 
180 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 raise them ; all their plans failed, and their labor 
 was lost. 
 
 The architect, who was deeply grieved, was 
 one night in bed revolving this difficulty. All at 
 once the Holy Virgin appeared to him and said, 
 " Cease to be sad. I will show you what to do." 
 And so she briefly explained what machines and 
 ropes were to be • used, and then added, " Take 
 with you three little children. You will need no 
 more; I will give you help." 
 
 When the architect awoke, he recalled his 
 dream, and prepared his towers, his cables, his 
 pulleys, just as she had prescribed; and calling 
 three children from a neighboring school he set 
 to work. Wonderfully the columns arose and 
 took their appointed place, and crowds of people 
 came to see how one man with tln-ee little chil- 
 dren had done what a thousand arms had in vain 
 attempted. 
 
 HOW THE VIRGIN SELECTED A SITE FOR A 
 CHURCH. 
 
 In the year 363 the Divine Mother chose to 
 give in Rome a mark of her gracious favor and 
 to confirm her worship by a prodigy. There was 
 then in Rome a powerful and rich Patrician, 
 
MARIOLATRY. 181 
 
 whose wife had brought him as large an estate as 
 he possessed himself. They were equal in rank, 
 in the gifts of nature, and the graces of the heart, 
 but one joy was wanting. They were childless ; 
 and afflicted that they had no heir to their vast 
 fortune, they resolved to devote it all to the Ce- 
 lestial Mother. 
 
 One night in the month of August, when the 
 heats are the greatest in Rome, there fell on the 
 Esquiline Hill a quantity of snow, which in the 
 morning was seen to cover the ground. That 
 same night this Patrician, whose name was John, 
 and his wife also, had a dream in which the 
 Holy Virgin appeared to both of them, telling 
 them to construct a temple to her honor on the 
 spot which she would mark with snow. 
 
 Early then the next morning John went and 
 recounted the wonderful vision to the Pope, Li- 
 bei"ius, who said that he also had had the same 
 revelation. The Pontiff then ordered a proces- 
 sion, and clergy and people went with the chant 
 of hymns and with lighted torches to the Esqui- 
 line Hill. Some say the snow had fallen in lines 
 to mark the dimensions of the church. There a 
 temple was built at the expense of the Patrician 
 John and his virtuous wife. At first the church 
 
182 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 was known by tlie name of Nostra Donna Delle 
 Neve, Our Lady of the Snow ; but afterwards it 
 received the name it bears to this day of Santa 
 Maria Maggiore, and is now one of the largest 
 basilicas of Ronie.^ 
 
 HOW THE VIRGIN PLANNED A BATTLE. 
 
 For sixty years Italy had been the prey of the 
 Goths, and Theodoric and Totila, kings of those 
 barbarians, had brought that beautiful country 
 to a deplorable state. At length the piety and 
 good works of the Emperor Justinian mounted to 
 the throne of God; and the Queen of Heaven, 
 to whom the emperor was specially devoted, had 
 pleaded with God and had obtained favor. 
 
 There was at that time in the army of the em- 
 peror a general of small stature and feeble consti- 
 tution, but of great valor and of signal piety 
 towards the Blessed Mother. One night she ap- 
 peared to him and traced the plan of a campaign, 
 
 ^ " The whole story of the vision, the suow-storm, and the 
 founding of tliis church, is represented in tlie mosaics of the 
 tliirteenth century still ou its facade; and the Pope tracing the 
 foundations in the snow is the subject elsewhere represented in a 
 gilt and silver relief over the altar of the magnificent Borghese 
 chapel in the same basilica." Hemau's History of Ancient Sacred 
 Art. 
 
MARIOLATRY. 183 
 
 and taught him what marches to make, what 
 ambushes to escape, and what positions to fortify- 
 In everything he followed her counsels ; and 
 when the army of Totila was cut to pieces, in 
 563, on the plains of Tuscany, the celestial Queen 
 herself was seen, as many testified who were 
 there, directing the opei'ations that led to that 
 renowned victory. 
 
 THE VIRGIN AND THE MIRACULOUS CANDLE. 
 
 In tlie year 1095 the village of Arras was smit- 
 ten with the plague, which had commenced in 
 1089 in Lorraine, and had so much prevailed 
 that that year Avas called the jyest year. It en- 
 dured for a long time, and depopulated parts of 
 France and covered it with grief. 
 
 In this extremity the inhabitants of Arras had 
 recourse to the supreme and all powerful consola- 
 trice of human sorrow. Processions Avere made, 
 and prayers the most fervent mounted on the 
 two wmgs of faith and hoj^e to the throne of the 
 Virgin. 
 
 She was not deaf to their supplications. One 
 day as the bishop, Lambert, entered the church 
 at the head of a great procession, all the peojDle 
 saw the Virgin descend from the towers, bearing 
 
184 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 a miraculous candle, which she placed in the 
 hands of two men, who were mortal enemies, and 
 whom she thus wished to reconcile with each 
 other. They carried it to the bishop, who re- 
 ceived it with tears of joy. When it was lighted, 
 it burned one hundred years without consuming 
 or being extinguished ; and water into which 
 drops fi'om this candle had fallen was a perfect 
 cure of the pest. 
 
 In memory of this a fete was established, and 
 a rich chapel for the miraculous candle was built. 
 Pope Sixtus IV. ordained that an exact narrative 
 of the miracle here w^'ought should be pre- 
 pared ; and afterwards Pojae Clement VIII., by 
 a bull in 1597, accorded indulgences to those who 
 should visit this chapel in Arras. 
 
 THE VIRGIN AND THE CISTERCIANS. 
 
 In the year 1113 a monk of the religious order 
 of Gistei"cians, who had a special devotion to the 
 Holy Mother, was favored wath an ecstasy in 
 which the heavens were ojiened to him, and he 
 saw the choirs of angels, and the patriarchs, and 
 the prophets, and the apostles, and the martyrs, 
 and confessoi-s, and various orders of monks, all 
 distinguished by their proper emblems. But, 
 alas, there was not one of his own order there. 
 
MARIOLATRY. 185 
 
 Witli sorrow lie turned to tlie Divine Empress 
 of Heaven and said, " Why, Holy Virgin, do I 
 see none of my order here ? " And the august 
 Queen of Heaven replied, " Because the Cister- 
 cians to me are so dear, I do not treat them as 
 others ; but like to a hen who gathers her brood 
 under her wings, I gather the elect whom your 
 order hath given to the realm of my Son." With 
 these words she opened the ample folds of her 
 mantle, and there was an innumerable company 
 of saints that had belonged to this order. 
 
 The monk was overwhelmed with joy. He 
 gave to the Divine Protectress the most fervent 
 thanks ; and when his ecstasy ceased, he related 
 the wonderful vision to his Superior. 
 
 HOW THE VIRGIN TREATED THE INCREDULITY 
 OF THOMAS. 
 
 When the Blessed Mother ascended to heaven 
 in the sight of the apostles, it so happened that 
 Thomas was not present with the rest of the 
 Twelve, but after three days he returned to them. 
 When they related to him the wonderful story of 
 her translation, he doubted and said he would not 
 believe unless he should find her tomb empty. 
 Upon this they showed him the tomb which she 
 
186 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 had left ; and the Holy Vii'gin, taking pity upon 
 him, threw down from heaven her girdle that this 
 might remove all doubt from his mind. 
 
 Thus some perhaps natural impediment to a 
 believing spirit, so often visited with stern re- 
 buke, moved the blessed Mother to tender com- 
 passion, and gently won a heart to faith which 
 might otherwise have been driven to unbelief. 
 In the Florentine Gallery is a charming picture 
 by Granacci, representing the Virgin seated on 
 the clouds, and surrounded by a choir of angels, 
 while beneath her is the empty tomb. Thomas 
 is kneeling beside it, and the Virgin drops her 
 girdle down into his hand, which he receives with 
 grateful joy and reverence. 
 
 HOW THE VIRGHSr MARRIED ST. CATHARINE TO 
 HER SON. 
 
 Catharine's father was a brother of Constan- 
 tine the Great. He died when she was but four- 
 teen years of age, and left her Avith his kingdom, 
 heiress of immense wealth. From her infancy 
 she had been the wonder of all, for her grace of 
 person and gifts of mind ; and when she became 
 queen she despised tlie cares of royal splendor, 
 and gave herself to study. 
 
MARIOLATRY. 187 
 
 The nobles of the country begged that she 
 would be pleased to take a husband who should 
 assist her in the government of the kingdom, and 
 lead forth their armies to war. " And what 
 manner of man is this that I must marry ? " she 
 asked. And they said to her : " You are our 
 most sovereign lady and queen, and it is well 
 known to all that you possess four most notable 
 gifts : the first is, you have the most noble blood 
 in the whole world ; the second is, that you are 
 the greatest heiress whom we know ; the third 
 is, that in science and wisdom you surpass all 
 others ; and the fourth is, that in beauty none 
 can be compared with you. Wherefore we be- 
 seech you that these good gifts, with which the 
 great God hath endowed you beyond all creat- 
 ures, may move you to take a lord to your hus- 
 band who shall be not unworthy of your choice." 
 
 And then the queen said : " If God hath 
 wrought so great virtues in us, we are bound to 
 love him and to please him ; and he that shall 
 be my husband, and the lord of my heart, must 
 have also notable gifts : he must be of so noble 
 blood that all men shall worship him, and so 
 great that I shall never think that I have made 
 him king, and so rich that he shall surpass all 
 
188 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 others in wealth, and so full of beauty that the 
 angels of God shall desire to behold him, and so 
 benign that he can gladly forgive all offenses 
 done unto liim. If you can find me such an one 
 I will take him for my husband and the lord of 
 my heart." 
 
 Then all her lords and friends looked upon 
 each other and said, "Such an one as she hath 
 described there never was and never shall be." 
 
 Now the Virgin Mary appeared out of heaven 
 and sent a message by a holy hei-mit to the young 
 Queen Catharine, to tell her that the husband she 
 desired was the Virgin's Son, who was the King 
 of glory, and Lord of all power and might. And 
 when Catharine slept, the Blessed Virgin ap- 
 peared to her in a dream, accompanied by her 
 Divine Son, and with them a noble company of 
 saints and angels. And the Lord smiled upon 
 her and held out his hand, and plighted his troth 
 to her, and put a ring on her finger, and when 
 she awoke the ring was there, and thenceforth 
 she regarded herself as the betrothed of Christ. 
 
 We must quote no more of these legends, 
 though hundreds of them might be given. There 
 was no form of sorrow, or trouble, or need, which 
 
MARIOLATRY. 189 
 
 the Divine Mother could not help. No doubt 
 some of these tales were as much fictions as, in 
 Disraeli's story, was the reported appearance of 
 the Virgin to save the life of Lothair ; ^ yet many 
 
 1 " That some of the Christian legends were deliberate forger- 
 ies can scarcely be questioned. The principle of pious fraud ap- 
 peared to justify this mode of working on the popular mind. It 
 was admitted and avowed- To deceive into Christianity was so 
 valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself. But the largest por- 
 tion was probably the natural birth of that imaginative excitement 
 which quickens its day-dreams and nightly visions into reality." 
 Milman. 
 
 " There are other avenues, more trodden than the narrow way 
 of reason, by which opinions enter the mind. What impresses the 
 imagination, affects the feelings, and is blended with habitual 
 association, is received by the generality as true. Fables however 
 absurd, conceptions however irrational, even unmeaning forms of 
 words, which have been early presented to the mind, and with 
 which it has been long conversant, make as vivid an impression 
 upon it as realities, and assume their character. No opinions in- 
 here more strongly than those about which the reason is not ex- 
 ercised ; for they are unassailable by argument. Nor shall we 
 find it hard to conceive, nor regard it as a very extraordinary 
 fact, that the fables respecting the mother of our Lord and our 
 Lord himself have been credited, as well as the doctrine of tran- 
 substantiation. Undoubtedly, the world has grown wiser ; or 
 rather a small portion of the world has grown wiser, and we may 
 hope the light will become less troubled, steadier, and brighter, 
 and spread itself more widely." Norton's Genuineness of the Gos- 
 pels, vol. iii., p. 274. 
 
190 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 of them may have been mostly founded on some 
 fact, and grateful and devout imaginations gave 
 them the form in which they have come down to 
 lis. They are the language of wonder, of love 
 and joy, of unreasoning and highly wrought exal- 
 tation of feeling ; and those who told these stories 
 and those who heard them no more thought of 
 asking if they were true, than we think of ask- 
 ing for the chemical properties of the peach or 
 the grape whose flavor we enjoy. These legends 
 belonged to an age which will never return, but 
 to which they were as much fitted as baby-talk is 
 fitted to infancy, and as our stammering intellect- 
 ualism is fitted to the age in which we live ; and. 
 of two things we hardly know which is the most 
 absurd, to criticise them according to our modern 
 ideas, or to insist that we shall now believe them 
 just as they were believed a few centuries ago. 
 
 A few centuries ago ! How strange it seems 
 that we stand so near the time when they were 
 the intellectual and spiritual nourishment of our 
 ancestors ! The Reformation has banished them 
 from our sympathies and affections as much, as 
 Mrs. Jameson very justly says, "as if they were 
 antecedent to tlie fall of Babylon, or related to 
 the religion of Zoroaster." But the purpose for 
 
MARIOLATRY. 191 
 
 which we have quoted them will not be over- 
 looked. It has been to show how much they 
 served to fix deeply in the convictions and hearts 
 of the people these misinterpretations which made 
 Mary the Mother of God. 
 
 The subject of the " Immaculate Conception " 
 connects itself here with our general topic. It is 
 easy to see the sort of reasoning which led to 
 that dogma. After the seventh century it was 
 said, if Mary be the Mother of God, she must 
 have been a j^ure shrine for his dwelling; and 
 therefore must have been free both from original 
 and acquired sinfulness. "It was argued," as 
 Mrs. Jameson says, " that God never suffered any 
 temple of his to be profaned : he had even pro- 
 mulgated severe ordinances to preserve his sanct- 
 uary inviolate. How much more to him was 
 that temple, that tabernacle built by no human 
 hands, in which he had condescended to dwell ! 
 Nothing was impossible to God ; it lay therefore 
 in his power to cause his Mother to come abso- 
 lutely pure and immaculate into the world. Be- 
 ing in his power, could any earnest worshiper of 
 the Virgin for a moment siippose that for one so 
 favored it would not be done." Did not the Song 
 of Solomon say, in a text which Romish theolo- 
 
192 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 gians applied to the Virgin, " Thou art all fair, 
 my love ; there is no spot in thee " ? Canticles 
 iv. 7. 
 
 Yet St. Thomas Aquinas said, " If Mary was 
 conceived without sin, then she does not need the 
 redemption of Christ." And St. Bonaventura 
 said, " We ought to beware lest by the honor 
 we ascribe to the Mother, we derogate from the 
 glory of the Son, and to remember that the Crea- 
 tor stands higher than an}^ creature. We could 
 by no means affirm, without impiety, that the 
 Holy Virgin had no need of redemption." 
 
 But in time this difficulty was adroitly avoided. 
 The hypothesis was framed that Jesus freed his 
 mother from sin beforehand, so that she no longer 
 stood in need of the general redemption. 
 
 For several centuries, however, there was a 
 sharp discussion on this point, and the Francis- 
 cans and Dominicans were divided in opinion. 
 x\t length Sixtus IV., who had been a Francis- 
 can, issued a papal decree in favor of the dogma. 
 A foi-m of service was composed, in 1496, for the 
 festival of the Conception. But this was not for- 
 mally instituted until 1617, when Paul V. issued 
 a bull forbidding any one to teach and preach 
 against the Immaculate Conception. This was 
 
MARIOLATRY. 193 
 
 received in Spain particularly, where the Fran- 
 ciscans were held in great esteem, and where no 
 less than one hundred and fifty books had been 
 written on the subject, in a frenzy of religious 
 joy ; and tournaments, bull-fights, and banquets 
 attested the triumph of the votaries of the Virgin. 
 The exact definition of this dogma as an article 
 of faith was not authoritatively given until 1854, 
 when Pio Nono assembled three hundred prelates 
 at Rome, and decreed with great pomp in St. Pe- 
 ter's, " That the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the 
 first instant of her conception, was preserved free 
 from all stain of original sin by the singular grace 
 and privilege of Almighty God, and through the 
 merits of Jesus Christ." A tasteless monument 
 in memory of this event was erected in 1857, in 
 the Piazza di Spagna at Rome, the monument we 
 have before referred to, and large marble tablets, 
 recording the names of those who assisted at this 
 decree, have been ostentatiously placed in the 
 chancel of St. Peter's. 
 
 13 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 rilHE point we have been discussing in this 
 -*- volume does not relate to an abstract sub- 
 ject of no practical importance. It intimately 
 concerns our mode of conceiving of the Master of 
 Christians, and our ability to understand and 
 love him. The prevailing views push him aside 
 into a region of mystery and shadows, and make 
 him a mythical demi-god. They take away our 
 revered Elder Brother, " and we know not where 
 they have laid him." It seems as if in sorrowful 
 tones we hear him say, " Have I been so long time 
 with you and yet hast thou not known me ? " 
 
 On the other hand, if we think of him as born 
 of human parents, tempted in all respects as we 
 are, receiving, as his intellectual and spiritual 
 nature unfolded, a supply of God's illuminating 
 grace which has distinguished him from every 
 other being on earth, we have a view not only in 
 harmony with the Scriptures, but intelligible to 
 
CONCLUSION. 195 
 
 our understanding, and welcome to our heart. 
 This makes Jesus, what he so often called him- 
 self, the Son of Man, but no less the Son of God. 
 In their anxiety to mark something super- 
 human in Jesus, theologians, as it seems to us, 
 have applied to his body expressions which are 
 true only of his soul. Thus Neander says on the 
 subject of the miraculous conception : " If we con- 
 ceive the manifestation of Christ to have been a 
 supernatural communication of the Divine nature 
 for the moral renewal of man, this conception 
 itself, apart from any historical accounts, would 
 lead us to form some notion of the beginning of 
 his humble life that would harmonize with it. 
 He entered into history not as a part of its off- 
 spring but as a higher element. Whatever has 
 its origin in the natural course of humanity must 
 bear the stamp of humanity, and share in the 
 sinfulness that stains it. It was impossible that 
 the second Adam, the Divine progenitor of a new 
 and heavenly race, could derive his origin from 
 the first Adam, in the ordinary course of nature. 
 And so our own idea of Christ compels us to ad- 
 mit that two factors, the one natural, and the 
 other supernatural, were coefficient in his en- 
 trance into human life ; and this too although we 
 
196 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 maybe unable a priori to state how that entrance 
 was accomplished." ^ 
 
 But if in order to have a sinless being it be 
 necessary that his body should be removed from 
 the idea of earthly parentage, the argument re- 
 quires that the mother should have no share in 
 its production. 
 
 We admit that Jesus was above " the ordinary- 
 course of humanity," was a " communication of 
 the Divine nature for the moral renewal of man ; " 
 but what has this to do with the origin of his 
 hodi/ f The Divine nature entered into history 
 as a higher element through Christ's soul; and so 
 we recognize the two factors, the human organi- 
 zation and the divine illumination ; but no proof 
 is offered to show that the latter cannot have con- 
 nection with the former; and who are we who 
 talk about the " impossibility " of this? Such a 
 connection is confessed if the mother had any 
 share in the formation of the body of Jesus. 
 
 Olshausen follows in the same strain. Argu- 
 ing for the miraculous birth he says : "If we rec- 
 ognize in Chi'ist an actual incarnation of the 
 Word of God, then the narration of his super- 
 natural generation, so far from astonishing us, 
 1 Life of Christ. 
 
CONCLUSION. 197 
 
 seems for the Saviour specially natural and befit- 
 ting. The very idea of a Saviour requires that in 
 him there should be manifested something higher, 
 something heavenly, that cannot be derived from 
 what exists in human nature." 
 
 Yes, we see in Jesus " something higher, some- 
 thing heavenly," and above ordinary human nat- 
 ure. But all this belonged to his soul. What 
 kind of a body shall we attribute to Jesus if not 
 a human body ? 
 
 This inherited corruption of man's nature to 
 which both Neander and Olshausen refer, and 
 on which countless other writei's so much insist — 
 the dogma whicih has been age after age handed 
 down in the Romish and Evangelical churches — 
 who can refrain from asking, What is it? What 
 does it amount to ? Is it a deeply fixed stain, 
 ineffaceable except by miracle ? Have these 
 churches really believed that it can be cut off 
 only by supernatural means ? 
 
 Every reader knows that these churches have 
 not believed this. They have held that the trans- 
 mitted stain, whatever it was, could be removed 
 in the easiest mode in tlie world. Baptismal re- 
 generation, as they teach, puts it all away. The 
 corruption of Adam, original sin, is abolished by 
 
198 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 the water of baptism. So that now a priest can 
 any day do what God could not do except by a 
 stupendous departure from the laws of Nature. 
 
 In a different school of thought from the above- 
 named writers, we find Professor Norton . arguing 
 for the miraculous conception in the following 
 manner: "Nothing could have served more ef- 
 fectually to relieve Jesus from tliat interposition 
 and embarrassment in the performance of his 
 high mission, to which he would have been ex- 
 posed on the part of his parents if born in the 
 common course of nature. It took him from their 
 control, and made them feel that in regard to him 
 they were not to interfere with the purposes of 
 God." 
 
 Perhaps the reader will think, as we do, that 
 this is finding reasons for a previous conclusion. 
 It often happens in such cases that the reasons 
 do not tally with the facts. There is no evidence 
 to show tliat Jesus was in the least taken from 
 the control of his parents ; or that anything oc- 
 curred in regard to his birth to impress his family 
 circle with feelings of awe. On the other hand 
 we are told that " his brethren did not believe in 
 him," John vii. 5 ; and even thought him mad, 
 Mark iii. 21. 
 
CONCLUSION. 199 
 
 In view of some historical notices, in a former 
 chapter, of sacerdotal celibacy, the remark of 
 Milman, defending the miraculous conception, 
 " that it has consecrated sexual purity," seems 
 amazing. In order to remove all thoughts of 
 Christ's birth from the circle of nature, ten thou- 
 sand engines for centuries have played their dirty 
 streams upon the relation of the sexes, and in- 
 stead of consecrating its purity seem rather to 
 have covered it with filth. 
 
 We find another opinion of Milman which we 
 quote with more satisfaction. In referring to 
 what he calls "the poetical and imaginative in- 
 cidents of the birth of Christ,'' he very justly 
 ascribes to them a vast influence over the thouo^hts 
 and affections of mankind. " This language of 
 poetic incident, and, if I may so speak, of imag- 
 ery, interwoven as it was with the popular belief, 
 infused into the hymns, the services, the cere- 
 monial of the Church, introduced in material 
 representation by painting and scul2:)ture, has 
 become the vernacular tongue of Christendom, 
 universally intelligible, and responded to by the 
 human heart throughout these many centuries." 
 
 No doubt this is true ; and we may well be 
 thankful for it ; and b6 glad that this language of 
 
200 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 poetic imagery is long to hold its inflvience over 
 the human heart. It will be an influence all the 
 greater when we see it as the language of poetry, 
 and no strange questioning of what it means, and 
 dim shadows of prodigious and incredible things, 
 shall perplex and darken the mind. 
 
 So also in our arguments with unbelievers what 
 a help it will be to shut off all objections natu- 
 rally and inevitably arising from the misinterpre- 
 tation of the records of the birth of Jesus, and 
 to feel no longer bound to defend the traditions 
 which originated hundreds of years after that 
 event. We shall not then think of proving 
 Christ's divinity by such arguments as the vir- 
 ginity of Mary and the continence of Joseph. 
 
 Moreover, what a satisfaction it will be to 
 know that we can trace the footsteps of our re- 
 ligious faith quite back to the simplicity of the 
 first preachers of the Gospel. Nothing is clearer 
 than that much of our theological diction origin- 
 ated in those muddled politico-dialectic disputes 
 of the fourth and fifth centuries. Lano;uaa'e is 
 a record which nothing can falsify. Two thou- 
 sand years hence an historian, meeting in old 
 books the first words about railroads, will know 
 that those expressions originated in the first haK 
 
CONCLUSION. 201 
 
 of the nineteenth century, and were entirel}' un- 
 known before. With a like certainty we know 
 where much of our reh'gious terminology came 
 from, and are sure it does not come from the 
 Gospels, nor from the writings of the apostles. 
 
 No one who has read Macaulay's review of 
 Ranke's " History of the Popes " will forget the 
 few striking paragraphs which show that in Eu- 
 rope Protestantism has made no geographical ad- 
 vances since the first impulse of the Reformation, 
 while Catholicism has regained some of the ground 
 it then lost. With equal truth it ma}^ be said that 
 theology has made hardly any progress since the 
 first fresh days of the Reformers, while many of 
 the dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church have 
 been more strongly intrenched in the very bosom 
 of Protestantism. We have continued to drink 
 the water of life, not as it flowed direct from the 
 Divine fountain which God opened for our heal- 
 ing, but as it has trickled through turbid papal 
 channels. Perhaps it will one day be seen that 
 in order to get into the tiaie current of apostol- 
 ical descent, we must go back to a time before a 
 corrupt side-stream from Egypt, by fraud and 
 violence, flooded the Church of Christ.^ 
 
 ^ " It cannot be regarded as a strange event that, at a time 
 
202 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 In looking back to the epoch which succeeded 
 that of the apostles, it is only too evident that it 
 was marked by a constant degeneracy both in in- 
 telligence and spirituality. The lofty mind and 
 the great soul of Jesus lifted up all who had per- 
 sonally known him. His inspiring influence to a 
 large degree survived through a few following gen- 
 erations. But with the lapse of time it was much 
 weakened. This is the general effect of the with- 
 drawal of a great mental and spiritual guide. The 
 reaction is usually proportioned to his superiority. 
 
 When, then, Ave come down to the fourth cent- 
 ury, and the immediately subsequent centuries, 
 the men we meet in history are widely different 
 from Paul, and Peter, and John. Indeed, what 
 a contrast ! Petty questions, petty subtleties, 
 petty superstitions, petty strifes, are now the 
 rage. Who can imagine the apostles going forth 
 on their missionary journeys as carrying with 
 them a splinter of the true cross, a thorn from 
 
 wlien most believers could not read, tradition should acquire an 
 authoritv above the real record of the Gospel ; and of tradition it 
 has Iieen justly said that it is like the parasite plant -which at 
 first clings to and rests on the tree, which it gradually over- 
 spreads with its own folinge, till little by little it weakens and 
 completely smothers it." Whately's Kingdom of Heaven, Phil- 
 adelphia edit., p. 53. 
 
CONCLUSION. * 203 
 
 the bloody crown, a thread from the seamless 
 garment, a paring from one of the finger-nails on 
 the pierced hands ? When men had lost an abil- 
 ity to comprehend the real significance of what 
 Jesus had taught, these supei'stitious and per- 
 haps counterfeit relics became everything. 
 
 At that time, too, a syllable more or less woidd 
 kindle fury, and make multitudes fly to arms. 
 On an insignificant question about a formula, ex- 
 communication and banishment were suspended. 
 There was a I'ace of narrow minds and hard 
 hearts. The tide of Christian intelligence and 
 Christian virtue hai'dly ever ebbed lower than 
 with them. Yet they gave a shape to the Gospel 
 which not only the Catholic but the Protestant 
 world has acce])ted as its clearest and final word. 
 If human authority be needed to interpret and 
 verify Christianity, how astounding that we should 
 look for it among the ambitious and corrupt pet- 
 tifoggers of the epoch referred to. 
 
 The times in whicli we live seem favorable in 
 one respect for important reforms in theology. 
 It would be absurd to found many hopes on any 
 one sect, for none has a monopoly of this work. 
 The best encouragement is in the large number 
 of generous-minded and scholarly men of all 
 
204 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 denominations who feel uneasy under sectarian 
 restraints, and long to see eye to eye those with 
 whom they know they have a spiritual alliance. 
 Probably there has never been a day when this 
 number was larger than now. 
 
 Still the bondage of sect is wide-spread, and 
 often overwhelming. One might be surprised to 
 count up the number and power of material inter- 
 ests that ai^e pledged to some old creed. Funds, 
 churches, periodicals, theological schools, count- 
 less religious and social organizations, partisan 
 leadership, hopes of advancement, means of daily 
 bread — all are at stake, in numberless cases, 
 upon the retention of certain formulas of faith. 
 The sermons, the habits of thought, the exhorta- 
 tions, the gestures, the roll of the eye, the shake 
 of the head, of thousands of preachers are ad- 
 justed to a certain belief ; and to overthrow that 
 is to take away their stock in trade. Theological 
 schools seem to answer the end of camp-life to 
 raw soldiers, that is, to break down the will of 
 many to the command of a few ; and so it is that 
 we go on repeating from generation to generation 
 the same old rattling and hollow forms, and all 
 improvement in tlieology has a hard fight against 
 these resistincT forces. 
 
CONCLUSION. 205 
 
 It would denote extreme verdancy to svippose 
 that any churches are now formed to encourage 
 higher conceptions of truth. Who does not 
 know that their corporate strength is always 
 given to the defense or diffusion of a precon- 
 ceived creed? Hence Dr. Arnold of Rugby said, 
 " In the great end of a church all churches are 
 now greatly deficient. The life of these societies 
 has long been gone. They do not help the 
 individual in holiness. This in itseK is evil 
 enough ; but it is monstrous that they sliould 
 pretend to fetter where they do not assist." ^ 
 
 It will not be strange if it should be said by 
 some that it is the design of this book to lower 
 our idea of Jesus, and to reduce him to the 
 measure of our humanity. We feel sure that no 
 one who reads this work would willingly bear 
 false witness. Our design is very far from that 
 here named. We think that we have the highest 
 ^idea of his person. In his life we recognize the 
 advent of a new spirit, a new power, into the 
 world, coming direct from God. Yet we believe 
 it works in an organic connection with the natr 
 ural, so that while the chain of cause and effect 
 is not broken, a higher influence mingles in the 
 1 Life, of Dr. Arnold, vol. ii., p. 57. 
 
206 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 links of that chain, and operates in the circle of 
 human instrumentality. And we hold to this 
 view, and commend it to others, because it seems 
 to bring ns nearer to our Divine Teacher and 
 Guide. 
 
 If we look to other branches of inquiry, how 
 plainly we see the need of fresh, independent in- 
 vestigation to emancipate us from long inherited 
 errors. The other day, as we were turning over 
 the leaves of a book relating to the history of med- 
 ical opinions, we were astonished at the ground- 
 less theories, the puerile absurdities, the supersti- 
 tious nostrums, that had long been handed down 
 from the dark ages, and implicitly adopted, gen- 
 eration after generation, as the substance of ther- 
 apeutic science. This enormous mass of error 
 has almost tempted some eminent medical writers 
 to wish that all traditional maxims and remedies 
 could be annihilated, so that there might be a 
 fresh study of each case. 
 
 This is the fact where the point to be inves- 
 tigated touches our external senses, and requires 
 for its successful prosecution only good eyes, 
 good ears, and unbiased, trained habits of care- 
 ful discrimination. How incredible, then, to 
 suppose there have been no inherited errors in 
 
CONCLUSION. 207 
 
 a sphere of thought above our external senses, 
 in the science of theology, in dogmas framed in 
 times of gross ignorance, and transmitted from 
 father to son unaltered for ten or fifteen cent- 
 uries. 
 
 A spirit of investigation, which has recon- 
 structed all other branches of knowledge, will 
 some time break up the petrified crusts of the- 
 ology. A silent change is even now going on, 
 far more deep and fundamental than the great 
 revolution which we call the Protestant Reforma- 
 tion, and which, if it were allied, as then, to 
 questions of dynasties and state interests, would 
 produce even greater convulsions. Thinking men 
 everywhere see that there must be a readjust- 
 ment of our ideas of God, of Christ, of the 
 Bible, in order to bring them into truer relations 
 with the advancement of the a^e. 
 
 We have failed altogether in the object kept 
 in view in this book if the mind of the reader 
 be not impressed with a sense of the wrong 
 which the ages have inflicted upon Jesus. Of 
 course they have sought to honor him, but it 
 was been in a way which he would have for- 
 bidden. High sounding titles have shut him out 
 of the sphere of human sympathies. His mur- 
 
208 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 derers mockingly said, " Hail, King of the Jews ! " 
 in after times his friends sincerely applied to hini 
 like inflated epithets ; but the effect was in both 
 cases the same — to alienate from him human 
 affections. 
 
 And to whom were these estranging phrases 
 applied? It was to him who loved man most 
 tenderly, who came closer to the human heart 
 than any other soul known on earth, whose 
 chosen title was Son of Man, who declared that 
 the humblest child who did the will of God was 
 his mother and sister and brother. Such was he 
 who has been lifted up on a pedestal above our 
 clear vision, has been surrounded by mists and 
 clouds, and has been made the object of a con- 
 ventional adulation instead of a natural love. 
 
 If we have any right sympathy with the mind 
 of Jesus, we must see that he would have infi- 
 nitely preferred that love. The world has de- 
 frauded him. We have defrauded ourselves, also, 
 of a mighty aid. Fellowship with such a lofty 
 human soul is one of the most quickening helps 
 to draw us up to his transcendent height. 
 
 No doubt for the humanity of Jesus the early 
 Christians had a sympathy which, with those 
 who succeeded them, was weakened and nearly 
 
CONCLUSION. 209 
 
 lost. To be convinced of this we have only 
 to mark the way in which the first disciples 
 spoke of him. Whom did St. Peter preach on 
 the day of Pentecost ? " Jesus of Nazareth, a 
 man approved of God." Acts ii. 22. Whom 
 did St. Paul declare to he the one Mediator be- 
 tween God and man ? " The man Christ Jesus." 
 1 Timothy ii. 5. Whom did St. Paul say God 
 had sent into the world? "His son, made of a 
 woman." Galatians iv. 4. By whom came, ac- 
 cording to St. Paul, the sure hope of a future 
 life ? " By man came the resurrection from the 
 dead." 1 Corinthians xv. 21. In his memorable 
 speech at Athens, whom did St. Paul announce 
 as assisting at the judgment of the last day ? 
 " God will judge the world in righteousness by 
 that man whom he hath ordained." Acts xvii. 
 31. In his sermon at Antioch of Pisidia St. Paul 
 preached the forgiveness of sins ; but through 
 whom ? " Be it known unto you, men and breth- 
 ren, that through this man is preached forgive- 
 ness of sins." Acts xiii. 38. And, finally, when 
 the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews set forth 
 the true and acceptable offering, in what terms 
 did he allude to Jesus? "This man, after he 
 
 14 
 
210 THE BIRTH OF JESUS. 
 
 had offered one sacrifice for sins, forever sat down 
 on tlie right hand of God." Hebrews x. 12. 
 
 Thus it was the manhood of Jesus to which 
 constant reference was made — a humanity with 
 which they could sympathize, while they rejoiced 
 that our human nature was made the vehicle of 
 God's grace, and was the antetype and prophecy 
 of Avhat man, in some future age, was to be- 
 come. 
 
 But this style of speaking of Jesus soon ceased. 
 We find nothing like it in all the literature that 
 succeeded apostolic times. Then came the exe- 
 gesis, still in vogue, of two natures, between 
 whicli, it was supposed, Jesus and his apostles 
 prevaricated. Men's hearts were thus turned 
 away from an earnest love of a brother to empty 
 boasts of a demi-god. What a confirmation is 
 here of the leading view of this book ! 
 
 On all sides Ave liear complaints of prevailing 
 indifference to the great themes which in other 
 times have most profoundly moved the human 
 mind. Is no part of this indifference attribu- 
 table to the divorce between modern intelligence 
 and an outgrown theology? To what length 
 may the antagonism extend ? Is not a higher 
 plane of free and thorough criticism one of the 
 
CONCLUSION. 211 
 
 great needs of our times ? Are there not many 
 subjects which should be brought before the bar 
 of a criticism like that ? Is not here the rem- 
 edy for existing and menacing evils ? Aware 
 of many imperfections in the work which we 
 here close, and not doubting but that in some 
 points we may have made mistakes, we are yet 
 conscious that it has been written in the interest 
 of a true religion, — of a profound reverence for 
 its verities and hopes. 
 
/ 
 
>«iM^Vi\ 
 
 >^ 
 
 \ 
 
 \