SCIENCE AND CHRISTIANITY. 335 



often distinguished these " love-children " above 

 ordinary offspring were thus partly explained by 

 " heredity." Distinguished " sons of God " of this 

 kind were held in high esteem both in antiquity and 

 during the Middle Ages, while the moral code of 

 modern civilization reproaches them with their want 

 of honourable parentage. This applies even more 

 forcibly to " daughters of God," though the poor 

 maidens are just as little to blame for their want of a 

 father. For the rest, everyone who is familiar with the 

 beautiful mythology of classical antiquity knows that 

 these sons and daughters of ihe Greek and Roman 

 gods often approached nearest to the highest ideal of 

 humanity. Recollect the large legitimate family, and 

 the still more numerous illegitimate offspring, of Zeus. 

 To return to the particular question of the impreg- 

 nation of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost, we are 

 referred to the Gospels for testimony to the fact. 

 The only two evangelists who speak of it, Matthew 

 and Luke, relate in harmony that the Jewish maiden 

 Mary was betrothed to the carpenter Joseph, but 

 became pregnant without his co-operation, and, 

 indeed, "by the Holy Ghost." As we have already 

 related, the four canonical gospels which are regarded 

 as the only genuine ones by the Christian Church, 

 and adopted as the foundation of faith, were 

 deliberately chosen from a much larger number of 

 gospels, the details of which contradict each other 

 sometimes just as freely as the assertions of the four. 

 The fathers of the Church enumerate from forty to 

 fifty of these spurious or apocryphal gospels ; some of 

 them are written both in Greek and Latin — for 

 instance, the gospel of James, of Thomas, of Nico- 

 demus, and so forth. The details which these 



