LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which ji 1 I treble the space.] THE HEREFORD CONTROVERSY.
[To THE EDITOR or THE " SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—A letter in your columns from Mr. Theodore P. Brocklehurst quotes certain words about the evidence for the Virgin Birth of Our Lord which I am said to have used in Birmingham in 1902: they are spoken of as my " ipsissima verba." This quotation has, I gather, been sent to a number of newspapers and published in several, characterized in the same way, and the same thing has been done in previous years. The Object apparently is to dis- credit me with the orthodox world by showing that my own posi- tion with regard to the Virgin Birth is similar to that of those -whom I am opposing.
When I read the quotation I could not pretend to recall the occasion; but by a happy accident I have found a verbal report of the lecture published by one of the best reporters in Birming- ham, Mr. Hadley, in a magazine which he himself edited, called the Fraternal Visitor, an organ of the Christadelphians. From this it appears that the words selected by Mr. Brocklehurst and made into one sentence are in the report twenty lines apart, and occur in contexts which make their meaning absolutely plain, and show that they were no disparagement of the evidence for the Virgin Birth but part of an argument on behalf of it. The argu- ment is precisely identical in substance with what appears in published books of mine (see, e.g., The New Theology and the Old Religion, VD. 125420. I have' repeatedly come across this same
attempt to discredit me by the use of these particular words, always described as my "ipsissima verba." But I am glad that an accident has enabled me to discover their source. It is only because I do not want to quote a whole page of a report that I do not send you the passage. If I did, it would appear that its meaning is transparent, and precisely the opposite of what is sug.
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