“THE VIRGIN BIRTH"

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 8, 4 October 1927, Page 3

“THE VIRGIN BIRTH"

LECTURE BY DR. PETTIT. Lust evening in the Concert Chamber i Dr. W. H. Pettit continued his lectures under the auspices of the New Zealand Bible Training Institute, when his subject was “The Virgin Birth. Mr. H. N. Vivian was in the chair. Dr. Pettit said that it was well, m view of the advancing tide of modern unbelief and destructive criticism, that they should look iu detail at the Tncarnation an 1 th? Virgin Birth of the Son of God as recorded iu the gospels of Matthew and Luke. No more tragic example cculd be given of the darkness and copfusion which resulted from abandoning Hnth in the inspiration and integrity ot the Scriptures than the maze of absuid and contradictory theories which modernist theologians bad propounded in order to explain away the miracle of the \ irgin Birth and the authenticity of the Gospel record. One of the most eminent of these attacked the virgin birth because it involved a biological miracle that the modern mind could not accept, lie proceeded to tell them that a hehel in miraculous births as an explanation of great personalities was one of the familiar ways in which the ancient world was accustomed to account for unusual superiority .in its heroes. The lecturer pointed out that tris theory was quite incredible as heathen ism was viewed with absolute abhorrence bv both Jews and Christians, and nothing could have been more impossible than that Christians, either Jews er Gentiles, would have absorbed these, heathen conceptions which were steeped in the grossest immorality In. fact, h« athen mythology contained nothing in the re of a virgin birth at all. Turning to the argument ot the silence of the New Testament writers, others than Matthew and Luke, the speaker pointed out that this had force only to a mind that was blind to the harmony and purpose of the Scriptures. Mark presented Christ as “The Servant of Jehovah.” Geneaology had no place in the case of a servant. John presented Christ as “the Son of God." -and it would have been entirely out of keeping with, his Gospel to have given a detailed description of His birth. Paul was for years Luke’s intimate companion and fellow-traveller, and undoubtedly would know everything that Luke knew concerning the birth of Christ The more closely one examined the Gospel records. the more wonderful were seen to be the internal evidences which bore out the truthfulness of the record. The critics told them that the virgin birth might be rejected without losing anything that wp.s essential to the Christian faith. Nothing could be further from tho truth. No man who denied this truth could maintain his belief in the integrity of the Scrintures. Very few of those scholars who did reject vligin ■h were able for long to believe in the Deity and tho atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole body of divine truth must, stand or fall together.

To-night Dr. Pettit will deliver his Inst lecture, when the subject will be “The \ppeal of tho Present Hour.”