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£EV. JOHN HUNTLEY SKKINE, D.D.^ ON 



of Mary known as the Annunciation. And I analyse that 

 vision as the movement of her mental consciousness, which was 

 an inseparable part of the movement of her soul or total 

 consciousness, that which I have called her act of faith. 

 Further, I define this act of faith as an Interchange of Self, or, 

 in less abstract and more consecrated language, an entry by 

 sacrifice into a divine communion. The self-sacrifice of Mary, 

 taking form in the recorded parley with Gabriel, is the fact 

 among things human by which the word was made flesh and 

 dwelt among us in Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary. 



[At this point the question will suggest itself of the relation 

 of this theory to the doctrine of the Virgin Birth. If the 

 theory is a sound speculation its bearing upon that doctrine 

 should be momentous. In this paper the matter cannot be 

 treated, but in leaving it thus aside I cannot refrain from 

 recording my own experience of the result of inquiry : I have 

 found in my own thinkings that to study the Incarnation fact 

 in the light of the above speculation is to add to the scale of 

 the traditional doctrine a great increment of conviction.] 



To resume. What will now ask for proof is the position that 

 the act of the Annunciation was an act of sacrifice. It has 

 not been much regarded in that light. I should suppose that 

 believers have let their minds dwell rather on the exaltation 

 and glory, the incredibly high fortune of the actor in the 

 scene ; their appreciation of the event has been tuned to the 

 pitch of the Magnificat. And if they are now asked to discern 

 a self-sacrifice as the essential reality of the event, they will 

 feel that it is not at once evident. What did it cost the Virgin 

 to assent to Gabriel's message with her " Behold, the handmaid 

 . . . be it unto me " ? What suffering or risk of suffering 

 was dared ? How does this seemingly slight effort of soul bear 

 the weight of that infinite event — the coming of the Word into 

 the flesh ? Nay, is there effort at all in this, that a Jewish 

 maiden at the age of marriage should think she could be 

 mother of Messiah (and no more than this could be before the 

 mind of Mary at this time), seeing that when Messiah shall 

 come He must needs be born of some woman, and therefore 

 any wife in Israel might be that mother ? 



When one asks, " was Mary's act a sacrifice, if it was 

 without suffering ? " it is well to remind oneself that, though 

 pain and loss are in our minds not separable from the idea 

 of sacrifice, they are not the essence of sacrifice, as I am 

 here employing that idea to express the mystery of life. 

 The sacrifice which makes us to live is the giving of self, not 



