“Admirably clear.  But we have our Lord’s example of how to live here.”

“If we could be sure,” said Eleanor, “just what that example meant.”

Hodder was silent a moment.

“You mean that you cannot accept what the Church teaches about his life?” he asked.

“No, I can’t,” she faltered.  “You have helped me to say it.  I want to have the Church’s side better explained,—­that’s why I’m here.”  She glanced up at him, hesitatingly, with a puzzled wonder, such a positive, dynamic representative of that teaching did he appear.  “And my husband can’t,—­so many people I know can’t, Mr. Hodder.  Only, some of them don’t mention the fact.  They accept it.  And you say things with such a certainty—­” she paused.

“I know,” he replied, “I know.  I have felt it since I have come here more than ever before.”  He did not add that he had felt it particularly about her, about her husband:  nor did he give voice to his instinctive conviction that he respected and admired these two more than a hundred others whose professed orthodoxy was without a flaw.  “What is it in particular,” he asked, troubled, “that you cannot accept?  I will do my best to help you.”

“Well—­” she hesitated again.

“Please continue to be frank,” he begged.

“I can’t believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth,” she responded in a low voice; “it seems to me so—­so material.  And I feel I am stating a difficulty that many have, Mr. Hodder.  Why should it have been thought necessary for God to have departed from what is really a sacred and sublime fact in nature, to resort to a material proof in order to convince a doubting humanity that Jesus was his Son?  Oughtn’t the proof of Christ’s essential God-ship to lie in his life, to be discerned by the spiritual; and wasn’t he continually rebuking those who demanded material proof?  The very acceptance of a material proof, it seems to me, is a denial of faith, since faith ceases to have any worth whatever the moment the demand for such proof is gratified.  Knowledge puts faith out of the question, for faith to me means a trusting on spiritual grounds.  And surely the acceptance of scriptural statements like that of the miraculous birth without investigation is not faith—­it is mere credulity.  If Jesus had been born in a miraculous way, the disciples must have known it.  Joseph must have known it when he heard the answer ‘I must be about my father’s business,’ and their doubts are unexplained.”

“I see you have been investigating,” said the rector.

“Yes,” replied Eleanor, with an unconscious shade of defiance, “people want to know, Mr. Dodder,—­they want to know the truth.  And if you consider the preponderance of the evidence of the Gospels themselves—­my brother-in-law says—­you will find that the miraculous birth has very little to stand on.  Take out the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, and the rest of the four Gospels practically contradict it.  The genealogies differ, and they both trace through Joseph.”