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The Second Lesson: The Mystery of the Virgin Birth.955
naturally lost its vital significance, and it has practically held no place in the
great systems of philosophy elaborated by the Christian thinkers in modern
times.” And, yet, the Church continues to repeat the now meaningless words,
“I believe in the Resurrection of the Body.” And while practically no one now
believes it, still the recital of the words, and the statement of one’s belief in
them, forms a necessary requisite for admission into the Christian Church
to-day. Such is the persistent hold of dead forms, and thoughts, upon living
people.
And, so you can readily see from what has been said, why the early Christians,
about the close of the first century a.d., attached so much importance to the
physical conception and birth of Jesus. To them the physical body of Jesus
was Jesus Himself. The rest follows naturally, including the Virgin Birth and
the Physical Resurrection. We trust that you now understand this part of the
subject.
We have heard devout Christians shocked at the idea that Jesus was born
of a human father and mother, in the natural way of the race. They seemed
to think that it savored of impurity. Such a notion is the result of a perverted
idea of the sacredness of natural functions—a seeing of impurity—where
all is pure. What a perversion, this regarding the sacredness of human
Fatherhood, and Motherhood, as impure! The man of true spirituality sees
in the Divine Trinity of Father, Mother and Child, something most pure
and sacred—something that brings man very close indeed to God. Is the
beautiful babe, held close in its mother’s fond embrace, a symbol and
type of impurity? Is the watchful care and love of the Father of the babe,
an impure result of an impure cause? Does not one’s own heart tell him
the contrary? Look at the well known picture of the Journey to Egypt, with
Mary carrying the babe, and both guarded and protected by the husband
and father—Joseph—is this not a beautiful symbol of the sacredness of
Parenthood? We trust that the majority of those who read these pages have
advanced spiritually beyond the point where The Family is a thing of impure
suggestion and relationship.