. [To the Editor of TILE SPECTATOR.]
Sra,—The most important point of the story of the Virgin Birth is to remember clearly for whom it was written and in what times. St. Luke, who gives by far the most detailed account, was writing for Greek converts who had been accus- tomed from their childhood to the legends of the birth of their national heroes and deliverers under divine overshadowing. Heracles was their chief deliverer from evils of many kinds and he was fabled to be the son of the supreme Zeus and mortal Semele. Perseus. who delivered his people from the fear of a devouring monster, was the son of the virgin Danae and of Zeus. In those times when science and nature study were almost non-existent such traditions would not appear in the same light as to your more thoughtful believers.
St. Luke not only recorded the wonderful birth of Jesus but also the almost equally wonderful birth of John the Baptist. We are told that an angel came tO announce to the aged priest Zacharias that though he and his wife were " well stricken in years " and she had always been barren that she should bear a son to him. This Divine intervention against the ordinary courses of nature was not unknown to other Jewish writers.
We know how in the same manner Abraham when he was ninety and nine years old was foretold by angel visitors that his aged wife, Sarah, who was ninety years old and who had never borne children, shOuld bear him a son who should be the father of all the Jewish people and these should be as the stars of heaven in numbers. The birth of Samson too was announced by an angel to the barren wife of Manoah.
In all these three miraculous births, of John the Baptist, Isaac and Samson, we find first heavenly messengers coming beforehand to announce that aged men and aged barren wives should bear sons who would be great above all other men. And if we consider any aged people we know who may be a hundred or ninety years old, we can feel that for them to have sons of vigour in body and mind is almost as miraculoy as the Virgin Birth. There is no question of eyewitnesses or reports by those who knew, but simply of belief. Nineteen hundred years ago all men, intellectuals or ignorant, believed easily wonderful stories, as we know the highly cultivated poet Horace did quite seriously, and probably Vergil as well, with all the intelligent Jewish teachers of that time. It therefore remains for us to decide whether we wish to believe them or not. Christians who accept creeds drawn up also long ago must decide for themselves what they should believe in our twentieth century after Christ.—Yours, 82 Newmarket Road, Norwich. HERBERT A. DAY.
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