The Virgin Birth of Christ

These lectures were delivered during the month of April, 1907, in the Chapel of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York, under the auspices of the Bible Teachers’ Training School of that city, and they are now published, practically as prepared for delivery, under the same auspices. The author regrets that their revision for the press had to be undertaken at a distance from facilities for checking quotations and references in his pages; but he trusts that these, if not so copious as he could wish, will be found generally correct. The papers summarised in the Appendix came into the author’s hands in New York after his own work was completed, and he has made no use of them in the text.

The aim of the lectures is to establish faith in the miracle of the Lord’s Incarnation by Birth from the Virgin, to meet objections, and to show the intimate connection of fact and doctrine in this transcendent mystery. The organism of truth is one, and there is much need, in these days of loose ends in thinking, to fortify what may be called the doctrinal conscience by showing how the parts of divine truth cohere together. For the rest, the book must speak for itself. The writers to whom the author has been chiefly indebted, and to whom he makes grateful acknowledgment, will be found mentioned in the footnotes.