Those who speak, somewhat incautiously surely, of Incarnation, while they deny or question the Virgin-Birth, should be asked to consider what they say and to reflect what their words imply.  A man born naturally of human parents but taken up, on account of a wonderfully high moral character, into close union with God, can never differ in kind from any saint.  He can never benefit the race of men save by way of example.  His death can never effect our redemption, for it does not differ in kind from the death of a martyr.  Being only a great saint himself, he cannot represent mankind either on the Cross or before the Throne.  One man has been assumed into heaven.  But this is wholly a different thing from the Faith of Christendom, which is that God has taken human nature into union with His Divine Person, in that nature God died upon the Cross, and in that nature He pleads before the Throne for the race of men.  It is because Christ’s Person is Divine, that His life means to us Christians what it does.

“No person,” says Hooker, “was born of the Virgin but the Son of God, no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of God condemned, the Son of God and no other person crucified; which one only point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the Son of God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning life and salvation by that which Christ either did or suffered as man in our behalf."* “That,” says Bishop Andrewes, “which setteth the high price upon this sacrifice is this, that He which offereth it to God is God."+

—­ * Eccl.  Pol., v. 52. 3. + Second Sermon on the Passion. —­

“Marvel not,” says St. Cyril of Jerusalem, “if the whole world has been redeemed; for He who has died for us is no mere man, but the Only Begotten Son of God."^ “Christ,” says St. Cyril of Alexandria, “would not have been equivalent [as a sacrifice] for the whole creation, nor would He have sufficed to redeem the world, nor have laid down His life by way of price for it, and poured forth for us His precious Blood, if He be not really the Son, and God of God.” #

—­ ^ Catech., xiii. 2. # De Sancta Trinitate, dial.  A. (quoted Liddon, B. L., p. 477). —­

How different is all this from the language of those who would deny or question the Virgin-Birth!  With them the Resurrection is denied as a literal fact; the whole meaning of the Atonement as being a real sacrifice for sin, a real propitiation, is eviscerated of its meaning, and is reduced to a moral appeal to man; and finally, we find that whereas Christians have been thinking and speaking of Christ as truly God, who in becoming man “did not abhor the Virgin’s womb,” modern writers really mean a very good man who does not, however, differ in kind but only in excellence of degree from any saint; and by Incarnation they mean that moral union which a good man has with God, only illustrated in the case of Christ in an altogether unique degree.  If, however, the Incarnation be what Christendom believes