good man could have a right to make unless he were immeasurably
more than man. While these pages were passing through the press,
the eye of the present writer was caught by the following words
in a letter of Bishop Westcott, which seem to have a special
significance at this time:--"I tried vainly to read----'s book ....
He seems to me to deny the Virgin-Birth. In other words, he makes
the Lord a man, one man in the race, and not the new Man--the Son
of Man, in whom the race is gathered up. To put the thought in
another and a technical form, he makes the Lord's personality human,
which is, I think, a fatal error."*

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* Life of Bishop Westcott, vol. ii. p. 308.
--

It is sometimes said, in opposition to the mystery of the
Virgin-Birth, that there is a tendency in the human mind, not
without its illustrations in history, to "decorate with legend"
the early history of great men. In reply, it may be enough here
to say that legends analogous to the pagan legends of the births
of heroes, false and absurd legends, did gather round the infancy
of Jesus Christ. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of such legends.
They tell us how the idols of Egypt fell down before Him; how His
swaddling-clothes worked miracles; and how He made clay birds
and turned boys into kids, and worked other absurd miracles
of various kinds. But there is a world of difference between these
"silly tales" and the restraint, purity, dignity, and reserve which
characterize the narratives of the first and third Evangelists.
"The distinction between history and legend," says Dr. Fairbairn,
"could not be better marked than by the reserve of the Canonical