"Wesley sells powders, draughts and pills,

"Sov'reign against all sorts of ills.

"Assurance charms away the fit,

"Or at least makes it intermit."

In 1779 several "poems" in quarto, with full-page illustrations, were published, dedicated "To that Prodigy of Perfection, the Chief Apostle of that Second Temple of Methodism, The Sinless Foundery." Their character, in the references to Wesley and the institutions of Methodism, is scandalous in the extreme. And yet such were the books the people read, and from which multitudes gained their impressions of the Evangelical Faith. It is gratifying to know that during the closing years of Mr. Wesley's life, from 1782 to the end, nothing scurrilous was printed, either concerning him or the Societies. The well-nigh universal respect which was felt for the aged apostle would have made it impossible to find a sale for lampoons such as abounded in an earlier day. This last decade witnessed a surprising and impressive change; for a time at least, there was no persecution of the pen.

In these pages only a hint has been given of what the early Methodists passed through. In book, pamphlet and magazine, and in the daily and weekly press, almost ceaselessly for upwards of forty years, assaults, more or less virulent, were made upon the Wesleyan movement. Wesley replied to comparatively few of these attacks. He once said, when declining to measure swords with an antagonist, "I have other work upon my hands; I can employ the short remainder of my life to better purpose." In this day, when throughout the Protestant world Methodism is held in high honor and John Wesley is hailed as one of the chief Apostles of the Christian ages, we who have entered into so goodly a heritage think with joy and gratitude of the forefathers who, with unshrinking fidelity, endured all things, companions with the prophets and martyrs in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ.

Idward S. Ninde.

ART. VI.-DID PAUL KNOW OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH?

THE argument from silence is made much of in the discussion of this subject. Professor C. A. Briggs, for instance, in his work on the Incarnation of Our Lord, p. 217, seems to state as a fact that the virgin birth of our Lord was unknown to the great Apostle of the Gentile Christian Church. He says: "That which is unknown to the teachings of St. Peter and St. Paul, St. John and St. James, and our Lord himself, and is absent from the earliest and latest gospels, cannot be so essential as many people have supposed." This belief is probably shared by many evangelical scholars, while, of course, among the rationalistic critics in European universities the probability, even, that the Apostle Paul ever heard of such a doctrine is inadmissible. Now, the only reason adduced for this affirmation appears to be that nowhere in his epistles does the Apostle expressly mention the virgin birth, or make any direct allusion to it whatever. If he had known, it is assumed, of the miraculous birth, he would certainly have referred to it somewhere in those epistles in which he treats of the person of Christ, but nowhere is there any evidence that such a birth as is described in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke was known to him.

To some perhaps this absence of reference to the virgin birth in the Pauline Epistles may appear conclusive that the Apostle was wholly ignorant of such a belief or tradition in the church of his day. But such a conclusion is not conclusive. There may have been many reasons, sufficient to the Apostle for the omission, of which we know nothing; but we are not at liberty on that account to invent one. Hilgenfeld thinks Mark omitted mention of the virgin birth out of respect for the antipathy of the Roman Gentiles to such a birth. (See Keim, Vol. 124, Note.) It is well known that mention of the supernatural birth of Christ is not found in the Gospel of John, but to argue from this omission that the author of the Fourth Gospel knew nothing of the birth story, because he does not expressly refer to it, is wholly uncrit

ical. It is without any historical or other evidence to support it. The simple truth is that, like other errors, it carries with it its own refutation, since it necessarily implies that John knew nothing of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, which narrate the incidents of the virgin birth, while these gospels were well known in Christian communities years before the Fourth Gospel was written and while the virgin birth of Christ had become one of the great themes of Christian teaching and preaching. Thus Ignatius, on his way to Rome and martyrdom, A. D. 110, writes to the churches in Asia-Ephesus, Smyrna, et al.—not many years after the probable date of the Fourth Gospel, that the virginity of Mary was among the three mysteries which were "loudly proclaimed." It is difficult to believe that John, the beloved disciple, who took Mary, the holy mother, to his own home after the crucifixion, knew nothing for or against the narrative of the Nativity recorded by Matthew and Luke and which had become the common belief of the church before he wrote his gospel. Assumption is sometimes overdone. To assert, for example, as does Prof. Briggs, that our Lord knew nothing of his miraculous birth, because he never declared it, is to assume such intimate knowledge of what things Christ did not know that one is inclined to think the chief difficulty with some critics is their omniscience. And with regard to the objection also urged by Prof. Briggs, from the silence of the New Testament, a more critical investigation of the subject might suggest that this objection really begs the whole question. St. Mark, the writer of the "earliest gospel," is silent on the birth of Jesus, but it should also be stated that he passes over with deliberate silence thirty years of our Lord's life, and therefore his silence on this particular fact cannot be construed as evidence of his ignorance. It is significant, however, that he begins his gospel with the striking statement, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Of course it will be objected that these words "the Son of God" were not in the original text of Mark, but were interpolated from John's gospel; that Tischendorf has omitted them in the eighth edition of his New Testament; that they are not in the Sinaitic Manuscript, and that their omission

by Tischendorf is also justified by Irenæus, Origen, and others who quote the gospel of Mark. But it should also be stated that these words are amply attested by other most ancient manuscripts, as the Codex Vaticanus, and by many ancient versions (see Intern. Crit. Commentary; Mark), that the Revised Version inserts them in the text, and that the Sinaitic Manuscript is not and cannot be the sole and absolute authority. Nevertheless, as Keim concedes, and we quote him because he does not accept the doctrine of the virgin birth-"the watchword of the book is the Son of God: nay, going beyond the standpoint of Matthew and Luke, the only, the well-beloved Son of God, who stands high above the angels and next to God himself. Nor is the conception attached to the phrase merely a Messianic one, but that of the most marvelous endowment of spirit and power, a conception which seems to be tacitly based upon a supernatural birth of 'the Son of Mary.'"

As for St. Paul, we should not expect him to mention the virgin birth unless the logical implications or relation of the particular thought he is unfolding necessarily led him for illustration or proof to historical details of Christ's early life. His various references to events in the life of our Lord show that his knowledge was not confined wholly to things he expressly mentions. His visits to the apostles at Jerusalem must certainly have been fruitful in information concerning the early life of the Christ whom in his epistles he ever contemplates as the risen Lord, but it is clear that the history of our Lord did not fall within the thought circle of Paul's epistles to the Christian communities. His preaching had for its theme the moral or spiritual significance of the Christ, and not the events of his earth-life. While this opinion may not carry sure conviction to every mind, it is at least as reasonable to maintain till a better one is reached as the contention of those critics who affirm that Paul was unacquainted with this narrative of Christ's birth, as given in the first and third gospels, solely on the ground that no explicit mention is made of it in his epistles. But there is, we think, strong presumptive evidence derived from a study of Paul's doctrine of sin and his teaching concerning the sinlessness of Christ. "the Lord from heaven," that

the miraculous birth of Christ was known to him and was essentially related to his Christology-indeed that in his mind it was a necessary pre-supposition of the sinless character of the Christ who came to redeem us from sin. In the Epistle to the Romans, Chap. 7, the Apostle states that the seat of sin is in the flesh, sarx: "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh, sarx) dwelleth no good thing." By "flesh" he undoubtedly means corrupt human nature, not the mere material; the "old man," "the body of this death," "the carnal mind,” which, not being under the law of the Spirit, is antagonistic to the Spirit and is against God, "for they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit." For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." This corrupt human nature is the result of primal sin and is universal. "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God." It is evident then that the Apostle teaches a universal taint in human nature, that it is fallen, corrupt, dead in sin, unable by the exercise of its own innate powers to overcome the deadening power of the evil which dwells in it and reigns over it. It is also clear that this corrupt quality of human nature is derived through birth by natural laws of propagation from the first progenitor of the race, and is transmitted with the transmission of his fallen nature. He was "of the earth, earthy," and "as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy." "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," and cannot in the nature of things be other than it is. No being inheriting human nature by natural mode of generation can inherit that nature without inheriting with it all that belongs to it. "The trail of the serpent is over it all." Such is fallen human nature in the epistles of the Apostle.

Now in the first chapter of Romans Paul describes Christ our Lord as having been "made of the seed of David according to the flesh; and declared [or demonstrated] to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from