THE Virgin Birth of Jesus Christ is a fundamental fact in our Christian faith.

If Christ, the Son of Mary, was not the Son of God also, then He was only a great man, one of the world's prophets (sec Matt. 16:14). This clear recognition that He was the Son of God was the great turning point in His relations with His disciples, the rock on which His Church is built (Matt. 16:16-18). Had they not recognized this, no further progress could have been made in leading and teaching them.

All of the Old Testament, its individual histories, its national history, the Psalms and the Prophets, from Eve down to Malachi, is instinct with the expectation of the coming of a wondrous mysterious person, a prophet like unto Moses, but yet a greater, a king like David, and yet greater, for He was to be David's Lord. Him the nation was to hear and to obey (Deut. 18:18). So exalted was to be His person that His name would be Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 11: 6). The Psalms and Isaiah especially are so vibrant in every part with the expectation of Him that the citation of individual texts almost weakens the evidence.

There He stands on the threshold of History in the Old Testament, revealed and yet concealed. How the eyes of this sin-smitten, weary, expectant nation strain to discern and to greet Him! (I Pet. 1:10-11). Jesus Christ perfectly fulfils in the New Testament all these prophecies, just as a master key fits the locks and opens the doors, and yet He is wonderfully different and far highest expectations as He stands revealed in the Gospels by the Spirit of God.

Even now as the centuries flow on there is no making common of His Sacred Person, for only true Christians can ever truly know Him. The very creed of the Christian faith is not understood by the unbelieving world, and to those who reject Him, He is unreal, and His teachings are but dogmas, containing, like all the religions of the world, only a philosophy of life.

All four gospels unite in asserting that Jesus was the Son of God as this could never have been said of any mere man. Mark tells us, in the very first verse, that He is the Son of God, and goes on to reveal Him in the second chapter as God forgiving sins. John tells us in the first chapter that He is both Son of God and Son of Man, that He was ever with God, and was revealed in time to us by becoming incarnate (compare chapter I, verses I, 14, 18).

His title, the Son of God, is a declaration of His divine Birth, which could not be more definite. In this very matter lay the issue between Him and the Jews in the fifth of John, often called the divinity chapter (v. 18). Again in the sixth, it is brought up — "And they said. Is not this Jesus the Son of Joseph, Whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He saith, I came down from Heaven?" (6:42).

Matthew is most explicit in his first chapter, and quotes Isaiah, and tells us that the word Almah in the Hebrew of Isaiah (7:14) in his day meant a virgin, and that Jesus was conceived by the virgin Mary of the Holy Spirit.

I read Luke's account with particular pleasure, perhaps because he was a physician, as well as because of the fact that his trained scientific mind shines all through his writings, both in the Gospel and in the Acts. Luke was a greater scientist, I opine, than some 'in our day, for he was broadminded enough to examine into the alleged circumstances, and then if he found reason to accept them, to admit the facts, however much they might upset preconceived notions.

Except in the first verses of the First Epistle of John, I do not suppose cur language contains a more positive asseveration of established facts, than we find in the first four verses of Luke's Gospel. Then at once, true scientist that he is, Luke does not hesitate to declare the circumstances of the angel visits to Zacharias and to Mary, and the miraculous events which followed. Turn to this introduction and mark every word which shows Luke to be a competent witness.

The Virgin Birth upsets, as the coming of God to live on this earth ought to upset, all our preconceived notions. In this age of discovery it is folly to cry "impossible," because the thing proclaimed is new and outside of our own limited experiences. Only a few years ago radium was declared "utterly impossible" by distinguished scientists, and yet the explanation — that the phenomena of radium are due to the breaking up and setting loose of enormous forces locked up in the "indivisible" atoms ("those foundation stones of the universe, unbroken and unworn," of Clerk Maxwell in 1875) — is now universally accepted, and "the indivisible atom" is not only divided, but found to be made up of many component parts.

The Virgin Birth is not, as some would have it, a mere question as to whether I, as a scientific man, may accept such a doctrine, because no similar phenomenon has come within the experience of the human race in any authenticated instance. Back of this much-discussed subject, inseparably connected with it, lies the fundamental question whether God, having made man, and seeing no other way of saving him, could become his Redeemer by taking man's nature upon Himself, in order as the champion, and new Head of our race to meet and overcome man's great adversary. It is in brief, after all, the question whether God is in the matter at all or not. Indifference to this great truth explains the present deadness of the Christian world, and the lack of eagerness to propagate the Gospel on all sides. For if God was not in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, what have I specifically to declare and to offer to men.?

He who denies the Virgin Birth of our Lord offhand commits the logical error of begging the question, for he assumes at the outset as impossible that which is to be proved.

The apostles apparently found overwhelming proof compelling them to believe that Christ was God, before they knew accurately the circumstances of His Birth in detail. Such proof also comes to us from the consistency of the narrative of Christ's life and works, and death and resurrection, and the results which constantly flow from these great historic facts.

It is impossible for Christ to be the Son of God in any real sense, such as He claimed for Himself, unless He was born of the virgin Mary.

If Jesus Christ was God Incarnate, then we cannot doubt that He broke the power of the grave, and rose from the dead for cur justification. He met Satan, the arch enemy of our race, and utterly routed him; and now to all the lost sons of Adam's race who believe on Him and will commit their lives to Him, to them He offers free pardon and grace, victory over sin and death, and union with Himself through all the ages to come. What a glorious prospect, what a heritage is ours!

If I believe that Christ was the son of Joseph, then He cannot be to me the Lord Christ; and though He may be the most wonderful teacher the world has ever seen, I am yet in my sins, and I am yet struggling with the burning question, "How is it possible for me, a sinner, ever to appear in the presence of an infinitely Holy God and not be utterly consumed?"

There is an infinite difference between having Christ bear my sins, and bear them away into the unknown, and having them forever hanging as a burden about my own neck.

Every time, therefore, that I call Him Lord I mean by that, God, the Son of God, and I proclaim His Virgin Birth,