“I think people suffer in these days from giving too much weight to the critics of Christianity,” said the rector, “from not pondering more deeply on its underlying truths.  Do not think that I am accusing you of superficiality, Mrs. Goodrich; I am sure you wish to go to the bottom, or else you would be satisfied with what you have already read and heard.”

“I do,” she murmured.

“And the more one reflects on the life of our Lord, the more one is convinced that the doctrine of the virgin birth is a vital essential; without it Christianity falls to pieces.  Let us go at the matter the other way round.  If we attribute to our Lord a natural birth, we come at once to the dilemma of having to admit that he was merely an individual human person,—­in an unsurpassed relationship with God, it is true, but still a human person.  That doctrine makes Christ historical, some one to go back to, instead of the ever-present, preexistent Son of God and mankind.  I will go as far as to assert that if the virgin birth had never been mentioned in the Gospels, it would nevertheless inevitably have become a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith.  Such a truth is too vast, too far-reaching to have been neglected, and it has a much higher significance than the mere record of a fact.  In spite of the contradictions of science, it explains as nothing else can the mystery of the divinity as well as the humanity of the Saviour.”

Eleanor was unconvinced.  She felt, as she listened, the pressure of his sincerity and force, and had to strive to prevent her thoughts from becoming confused.

“No, Mr. Hodder, I simply can’t see any reason for resorting to a physical miracle in order to explain a spiritual mystery.  I can see why the ancients demanded a sign of divinity as it were.  But for us it has ceased even to be that.  It can’t be proved.  You ask me, in the face of overwhelming evidence against it, to teach my children that the Incarnation depends on it, but when they grow up and go to college and find it discredited they run the risk of losing everything else with it.  And for my part, I fail utterly to see why, if with God all things are possible, it isn’t quite as believable, as we gather from St. Mark’s Gospel, that he incarnated himself in one naturally born.  If you reach the conclusion that Jesus was not a mere individual human person, you reach it through the contemplation of his life and death.”

“Then it isn’t the physical miracle you object to, especially?” he asked.

“It’s the uselessness of it, for this age,” she exclaimed.  “I think clergymen don’t understand the harm it is doing in concentrating the attention on such a vulnerable and non-essential point.  Those of us who are striving to reorganize our beliefs and make them tenable, do not bother our heads about miracles.  They may be true, or may not, or some of them may be.  We are beginning to see that the virgin birth does not add anything to Christ.  We are beginning to see that perfection and individuality are not incompatible,—­one is divine, and the other human.  And isn’t it by his very individuality that we are able to recognize Jesus to-day?”