on our part unbelief or at least hesitation in belief. It is a not
uncommon accent to hear to-day in questions as to divine mysteries. Our
recitation of the creed is not rarely invaded by restlessness, shadows
of doubt, which perhaps we brush aside, or perhaps let linger in our
minds with the feeling that it is safer for our religion not to follow
these out. I am afraid that there are not a few who still adhere to the
Church who do so with the feeling that it is better for them to go on
repeating words that they have become used to rather than to raise
questions as to their actual truth; who feel that the faith of the
Church rests on foundations which in the course of the centuries have
been badly shaken, but that it is safer not to disturb them lest they
incontinently fall to pieces.

In other words there is a wide-spread feeling that such stories as this
of the Annunciation and of the Virgin birth of our Lord are fables. When
we ask, why is there such a feeling? the only answer is that the modern
man has become suspicious of the supernatural. Has there anything been
found in the way of evidence, we ask, which reflects upon the truth of
the story in S. Luke? No, we are told; the story stands where it always
did, its evidence is what it always was. What has changed is not the
story or the evidence for it but the human attitude toward that and all
such stories. The modern mind does not attempt to disprove them, it just
disapproves of them, and therefore declines to believe them. It sets
them aside as belonging to an order of ideas with which it no longer
has any sympathy.

It is no doubt true that we reach many of our conclusions, especially
those which govern our practical attitude towards life, from the ground
of certain hardly recognised presuppositions, rather than from the basis
of thought out principles. The thought of to-day is pervaded by the