sinless, the sinless Example, the sinless Sacrifice, how
could He be otherwise born? Adam, at his fall, passed on to the
human race a vitiated nature, which we all share--a nature
biassed in a wrong direction. It descended--this vitiated
nature--from father to son to all generations of men. If this
entail of original sin was to be cut off, if there was really to
be a new Adam, a second start for the human race, how could it
be contrived otherwise than by a Virgin-Birth? The Son of Mary
was indeed wholly human--completely man--but "in Him humanity
inherited no part of that bad legacy which came across the
ages from the Fall."*

When a modern writer says, "We should not now, h priori, expect
that the Incarnate Logos would be born without a human father,"+
we may reply that we are hardly in a position to expect anything
a priori in the matter; but when once we have learnt that this
Incarnate Logos was to be the Second Head of the human race--the
sinless Son of Man--and that in Him humanity was to make a fresh
start, it is indeed difficult to see how this could be without
the miracle of the Virgin-Birth.

--
* Liddon, Christmas Sermons, p. 97.
+ See Contentio Veritatis, p. 88.
--

I should like to say, in conclusion, that I cannot disguise my
conviction that just as in the early days we find no denial of
the Virgin-Birth except among those who denied and objected to
the principle of the Incarnation (on the ground, apparently, of