258 



HEREDITY AND CHRISTIAN PROBLEMS 



as they account for other men, viz. Direct Hered- 

 ity, or Atavism. But when we turn from this 

 young man, who was the world's Great Teacher, 

 to His mother, Mary, and His reputed father, 

 Joseph, there is nothing whatever in them to indi- 

 cate that they were His parents. Art, poetry, and 

 the religious spirit have idealized Mary, but when 

 we leave those ideal realms and come to the common 

 world of fact, we find nothing remarkable in her. 

 Raphael and Murillo have painted her as surpass- 

 ingly beautiful and spiritual, but history shows 

 nothing unique, either in her appearance or her 

 character. She differed not greatly from other 

 peasant maidens of the land and time. Neither 

 Joseph nor Mary apparently were possessed of 

 exceptional ability or remarkable spiritual insight. 

 It may be said that comparatively little is known 

 of women in our own time, that probably in that 

 time they lived in still greater seclusion, and 

 that therefore it is entirely conceivable that Mary 

 may have been a spiritual genius, as the mother 

 of Goethe was an intellectual genius. If that 

 were true, it would be expected that some indica- 

 tion of the fact would appear in her other children, 

 but they were, with one possible exception, very 

 commonplace. They had no appreciation of 

 Jesus, and showed no signs of relationship to Him. 



