No loyal Christian wishes to impugn a doctrine which touches so closely the life of the Redeemer as the account of His miraculous conception, which appears, in our texts, in two books of the New Testament.  If the tradition is as old as the Church, which is very doubtful, it must, from the nature of the case, rest on the unsupported assertion of Mary, the mother of Jesus; for Joseph could only testify that the child was not his.  It is therefore useless to reinforce the Gospel narrative by appealing to ’Catholic tradition,’[42] as if it could add anything to the evidence.  It is significant, however, of the Bishop’s own feelings about tradition, that he quietly sets aside the plain statement of the Synoptic Gospels that Joseph and Mary had a large family of four sons and more than one daughter by their marriage.  This statement, which is doubtless historical, became intolerable to the conscience of the Church during the long frenzy of asceticism, when marital relations were regarded as impure and degrading; and in consequence the perpetual virginity of Mary, though contradicted in the New Testament, became as much an article of faith as her conception of Jesus by the Holy Ghost.  We have no wish to criticise the arguments for the Virgin Birth which Dr. Gore has collected in his ‘Dissertations.’  But when a strenuous effort is made to exclude from the ministry of the Church all who cannot declare ex animo that they believe it to be a certain historical fact, it becomes a duty to point out that, on ordinary principles of evidence, the story must share the uncertainty which hangs over other strange and unsupported narratives.  The Bishop expresses his doubt whether those who regard this miracle as unproven can be convinced of the Divinity of Christ.  This only shows how difficult it is for an ecclesiastic in his high position to induce either clergy or laity to talk frankly to him.  To most educated men there would be no difficulty in believing that the Son of God became incarnate through the agency of two earthly parents.  The analogy of hybrids in the animal world is not felt to apply to the union of the human and divine natures, except by persons of very low intelligence.  We should have preferred to be silent on this delicate subject, but for the fact that some men whom the Church can ill spare have been advised officially not to apply for ordination, on account of their views about this miracle.  Fortunately, the practice of demanding more specific declarations than the law requires has not been adopted in most dioceses.

The question of the miraculous element in religious truth has indeed reached an acute stage.  The Catholic doctrine is and always has been that there are two ’orders’—­the natural and the supernatural—­on the same plane, and distinguishable from each other.  The Catholic theologian is prepared to define what occurrences in the lives of the Saints are natural, and what supernatural.  Miracles are of frequent occurrence, and are established