with Him long enough and closely enough to see that the real miracle is the continuous miracle of His life. Nothing could be more wonder-compelling than that. It is at once our shame and our inspiration. It is so absolutely unique that the only worthy explanation of it is found in the creed: "I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotton Son of God . . . Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven."

But if Jesus Christ is divine, if at His birth an Eternal and Divine Personality entered into a new mode of existence, and manifested Himself in human form, then it would hardly be strange or unreasonable if His birth were unlike other births. The fact of Jesus Himself is so unique and miraculous that we may rightly expect the method of His entrance into the earthly life to be unique and miraculous also. Face to face with a life that cannot be explained save as the unveiling of deity, we ask how it would be possible for an Eternal, Divine Personality to clothe Himself in human flesh after the ordinary mode of human conception. When a child is born of human parents, a new personality enters upon its life. When Jesus Christ was born, it was no new personality that appeared, but He who is from Everlasting.

We must start at the right point. Assuming that Christ is God (and we have barely touched the fringe of the argument for that fact), here is something which has no equal or likeness in the annals of earth. It is not the case of a new man coming into life, but of the Creator of all things manifesting Himself in a particular life. "If a divine life was entering into our weakened humanity," said the late Dean of Westminster in Some Thoughts on the Incarnation, "can we think it inappropriate that from the outset this life should manifest its power to transcend the natural order by which we are limited? If miracle is ever in place as a witness to the intervention of a new power, challenging our attention and manifesting the 'finger of God,' was not the coming of the Son of God in human flesh a fit occasion for miracle?"

Once we separate in thought the fact of the Incarnation from the mode of its accomplishment, we have stated the two truths in the right order and can approach them with a due sense of their right proportion. Then we are not making the mistake of resting our belief in Christ's divine life on the frail foundation of an acceptance of the Gospel accounts of His birth. On the contrary, we are ready to adopt a less antagonistic attitude in our consideration of the evidence of the miracle of the birth, because it is secondary to the greater miracle of the life, secondary to it, but singularly consistent with it.

Then, too, we see the importance of the emphasis the creeds have always placed on the Virgin Birth. It safeguards both the truths we have been considering. The fact of the birth guarantees the actual humanity of Christ as against the tendency to make it humanly unreal; the uniqueness of the birth is the guarantee that the One born is unique in His Personality-the very Son of God.

And the fact of this unique Personality baffles any other explanation than that of the creed. Does that explanation seem too great to be true? In fact, it is too fine and splendid not to be true. "The very God! think Ahib"-so Browning makes Karshish the Arab physician write to his friend-"think, Ahib; then the All-Great were the All-Loving too."

Is there any message quite as important as that for the world now? With Europe soaked in blood and millions of lives sacrificed-with the good and the bad, the civilized and the barbaric, the Christ-like and the diabolic, in a death struggleis there anything we want to know as much as to know that God is love? If we can only be sure of that, we can stand up under any strain. And we can be sure, if Christ is actually the unveiling of Deity.

Belated Pacifism

BY CHARLES C. MARSHALL.

ACIFISM in the present crisis is odious. Something of

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a paradox in a nation that claims to own allegiance to the Prince of Peace! Nevertheless popular feeling, based on intuitions, and the conclusions of scholarly minds seeking only to be true to high ideals coincide in the repudiation of pacifism. The Christian idealist turns from the Gospel to take up arms not with doubt as to his duty-that is clear-but with some bewilderment that after two thousand years of Christianity any such duty could arise and that in the world-wide catastrophe of the day the outlines of the kingdom of heaven (the Church of God) should be obliterated and Christians wholly committeed to the slaughter of each other. Much of our bewilderment disappears if we accept the war as the inevitable result of the volition and action of all mankind, an occurrence wholly congruous with the past and in whose causation we all share rather than as something abnormal or as having its causation exclusively in the development of the German people.

Some enthusiast has said, "I care for nothing back of 1914.” It makes very little difference what any one cares for. The question is not one of preferences but of realities. If in a study of human causation we could stop with 1914, happy indeed would we be. The trouble is we can't.

Pacifism started too late. A pacifism that is silent and even acquiescent until it comes time to take the gun and get into the trenches is not the pacifism of Christian idealism. It savours rather of a comfortable opportunism. One who plays the game until the odds are against him and then complains to the police cannot pose as an exemplary citizen. Good intentions and a conscientious change of mind furnish no excuse. One who has set a hay barn on fire by the generous scattering of burning matches in its vicinity cannot plead that the ignition of the matches was intended only for the genial purpose of dispelling the twilight gloom. Nor can one set fire to a fuse even though it be a mile long and escape odium because he

changes his mind just before the powder magazine with which the fuse is connected blows up.

If it be conceded that the war is an occurrence congruous with the past and having its due cause therein we have a terrible arraignment of the past. This concession can hardly be refused. The war then becomes a mere incident in a long period characterized by the spirit of war and we realize that human life for many hundreds of years has in reality been war. Pacifism in the present crisis could justify itself if during all this period it had been active, but in the long warfare of the human race pacifism has been strangely silent. Its advocates like the rest of us have moulded life on the material standards of the age. They contended in the war of industrial activity. They participated in the war of capitalistic aggrandisement. They helped to chain civilization to materialism, to trade off spiritual development for ever increasing markets, to lose souls in order to multiply bodies. All this spelled war. Yet the plea of the pacifist was not heard until the inevitable came and he was asked to shoulder the gun. Even in the society of Friends while the doctrine of pacifism was preached it was applied only to an actual state of war, and between wars members of the society found no difficulty in participating, often with large results, in an industrial system characterized by the spirit of

war.

Viewed from the standpoint of Christian idealism the present conflict cannot be regarded as an isolated occurrence. It is in essence only somewhat less reconcilable with Christ's teaching than the civilization in which it has its setting. We have in the past quite universally exalted that civilization and have pretended to reconcile it with the Gospel. The war has come and in reason the plea for pacifism must be denied us.

The conclusions here presented necessarily involve no element of pessimism. No denial of that eternal source of powerthe leaven of the few-is intended, and the glory of the agelong line of saints and martyrs known and unknown is not to be obscured. No doubt is to be cast upon the supreme fact that the way is open, and no discouragement can wait upon the ultimate fate of a race of men of whom Jesus Christ is not only the

divine Saviour but the human Head. With such elements of encouragement it is strange indeed if in the interests of correct thinking we cannot endure some abatement of indiscriminate optimism.

If we say that mankind is absorbed in material rather than in spiritual development, that the end of government is the creation and protection of wealth, that competition to the point of ruin is the law of trade, and material success the common goal of life, some will recognize the essential truth of the picture, but there are those who will say that it is over-drawn and that the dark features are over-stressed. However, no one will quarrel with the proposition, which is quite sufficient here, and the truth of which is demonstrated by current events, that the underlying conditions of that occidental civilization which calls itself Christianity and its dominion Christendom, have been such as to lead to a struggle within its limits and between its members which is irreconcilable with the teachings of Jesus Christ. No claim is intended to be made that what we call Christianity has not always embraced some Christian features, but the assertion is ventured that what we call Christianity is in reality an occidental materialism, which has adopted certain parts of Christ's teachings which required no large sacrifice of its purposes and has suppressed others that were inconvenient. Thus it has advocated morality in business but has glorified success obtained at its expense. It has preached the Sermon on the Mount yet has condoned its violation by the financial prince who has laid a million on the altar of a popular philanthropy. It has believed in social welfare but it has minimized spiritual welfare. It has sought to cure disease while it has multiplied slums. It has promoted secular education and depressed religion. It has had prodigious confidence in cash but it has been dubious about prayer. Jesus was a carpenter but it has preferred a capitalist. In short it has had many of the signs of that materialism against which our Lord's teaching was directed and too few signs of that spirituality which he preached as most essential. The terms Christianity and Western Civilization have come to be used interchangeably with a