236 THE ET. EEV. BISHOP J. E. C. WELLDOX, D.D., ON 



The Incarnation of Jesus Christ is indeed a miracle; nay, it 

 is the miracle of miracles. But, if it is believed, it carries with 

 it the possibility of other miracles, especially the miracles of His 

 own life. It would be wrong to pretend that these miracles are 

 all supported by equal evidence or all equally affect His Divinity. 

 There can be no reason why criticism sliould not carefully 

 scrutinise the documents which attest His miracles. His Resur- 

 rection is clearly more important to the Christian Church, and 

 therefore to the Christian faith, than His birth of a Virgin 

 Mother. But Christians, who believe His Incarnation, will not 

 be prone to disbelieve His Virgin birth; for the lesser miracle 

 is, as it were, involved in the greater. Mirahilis mirahiliter hiatus 

 est, as Augustine says; His birth was miraculous, because He 

 was Himself miraculous. The denial of His miracles, then, is so 

 far, but only so far, serious, as it imports the denial of His 

 Divinity. It is a fair demand, then, that a writer or tliinker 

 who rejects the miracle of the Incarnation, and therefore rejects 

 all other miracles of Christ's life, because he rejects the miracu- 

 lous element in human nature no less than m Nature itself, 

 should explicitly state his position. 



But Modernism, in so far as it assimilates Jesus Christ to 

 common humanity, entails a loss of which ^Modernists seem to 

 be often unaware. The new interpretation of the Christian creeds 

 may be said to eviscerate them of their spiritual value. Not 

 seldom it is more destructive than Socimanism, at least the 

 Socinianism of Faustus Socinus himself. For if the pre-exist- 

 ence of Jesus Christ before His human birth is denied, then the 

 Incarnation is not a voluntary act of self-humiliation evincing 

 the Divine sympathy with human kind. If the superhuman 

 powers of Jesus Christ are denied, then His life loses the im- 

 pressive dignitj- of the self-restraint whicii made Him unfiling 

 to use for Himself the powers which He used, although under 

 severe limitation, for others. If His crucifixion was inevitable, 

 or, in other words, if He had no power to lay down His hfe and 

 to take it again, or if the legions of angels would not at His 

 bidding have sped to His deliverance, then the sacrifice upon the 

 Cross is robbed of the spell which has in all the Christian cen- 

 turies appealed to the hearts and transfigured the lives of innu- 

 merable men and women. If there was no Eesurrection. and 

 His body when it had been laid in the earth remained there 

 like the bodies of all other human beings, then His Church 

 was built upon a chimera, and it becomes necessary to account 

 for the motive which within a few days converted His disciples 

 from apostates into apostles, and nerved them with a strength, 

 a zeal, a confidence, and a devotion adequate to the evangelisation 

 of the world. 



