[37] Luke i. 35.
[38] To what extent the law of atrophy has begun to work upon the
doctrine of the virgin birth appears in the recent utterance of so
eminent an evangelical scholar as Dr. R. F. Horton, of London. The
following report of his remarks in a Christmas sermon in 1901 is taken
from the _Christian World_, London. "We could not imagine Paul, Peter,
and John all ignoring something essential to the Gospel they preached.
Strictly speaking, this narrative in Matthew and Luke was one of the
latest touches in the Gospel, belonging to a period forty or fifty years
after the Lord had passed away, when men had begun to realize what he
was--the Son of God--and tried to express their conviction in this form
or that." The implication here is unmistakable, that, in Dr. Horton's
view, subjective considerations in the minds of pious believers, rather
than objective fact, form the basis of the story.
[39] See the Sermon on "Born of a Virgin," in the volume on _The
Incarnation of Our Lord_.
[40] "Christian thought has not erred by asserting too much concerning
the incarnation of God, but, on the contrary, too little.... If ever
overblown by blasts of denial, it is for wanting breadth of base.... Men
have disbelieved the incarnation, because told that all there was of it
was in Christ; and they reject what is presented as exceptional to the
general way of God. They must be told to believe more; that the age-long
way of God is in a perpetually increasing incarnation of life, whose
climax and crown is the divine fulness of life in Christ."--From a
discourse by the present writer on "Life and its Incarnations," in the
volume, _New Points to Old Texts_. (James Clarke & Co., London. Thomas
Whittaker, New York, 1889.)
[41] See page 97 and Note.
[42] Romans i. 4.
[43] 1 Corinthians xv. 16-23.
[44] _Our Risen King's Forty Days_, 1902.
[45] In strong contrast with this are the reactionary protests of Dr. W.
R. Nicoll: "To talk of the resurrection of the spirit is preposterous.
The spirit does not die, and therefore cannot rise.... The one
resurrection of which the New Testament knows, the one resurrection
which allows to language any meaning, is the resurrection of the body,
the resurrection which leaves the grave empty" (_op. cit._ p. 134).
It should be noted here that Jesus' argument with the Sadducees on the
resurrection (Luke xx. 37, 38) logically proceeds on the assumption that
living after death and rising after death are convertible terms. Also,
that the contrast involved in the idea of the resurrection (the
_anastasis_, or rising up) is a contrast not between the grave and the
sky, but between the lower life of mortals and the higher life immortal.
For an extended exhibition of this line of evidence see "The Assurance
of Immortality," and "The Present Pledge of Life to Come" (in two
volumes of discourses by the present writer), London, James Clarke & Co.
New York, Thomas Whittaker, 1888 and 1889.
[46] Could it have been only an apparition? The "census of
hallucinations" conducted some ten years since by the Society for
Psychical Research evinced the reality of veridical apparitions of
deceased persons at or near the time of their death, showing the number
of verified cases to be so large as to exclude the supposition of chance
hallucination (see _Proceedings_, August, 1894). Or could it have been a
material body suddenly becoming visible in a closed room, as narrated by
Luke and John? First-class evidence, if there can be any such for such
occurrences, has been exhibited for such phenomena as the passage of
solid substances through intervening doors and walls--easy enough, say
mathematicians, for a being familiar with the "fourth dimension"--and of
the levitation of heavy bodies without physical support. (See
_Proceedings_, January, 1894, and March, 1895.) As to such things
scepticism is doubtless in order, but dogmatic contradiction is not.
_Sub judice lis est._
[47] Professor Borden P. Bowne has thus exhibited this great mistake and
its grievous consequence:--
"In popular thought, religious and irreligious alike, the natural is
supposed to be something that runs itself without any internal guidance
or external interference. The supernatural, on the other hand, if there
be any such thing, is not supposed to manifest itself through the
natural, but by means of portents, prodigies, interpositions, departures
from, or infractions of, natural law in general. The realm of law
belongs to the natural, and the natural runs itself. Hence, if we are to
find anything supernatural, we must look for it in the abnormal, the
chaotic, the lawless, or that which defies all reduction to order that
may be depended on. This notion underlies the traditional debate between
naturalism and supernaturalism.... This unhappy misconception of the
relation of the natural to the supernatural has practically led the
great body of uncritical thinkers into the grotesque inversion of all
reason--the more law and order, the less God."--_Zion's Herald_, August
22, 1900.