THE VIRGIN BIRTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20241, 29 April 1929, Page 13

THE VIRGIN BIRTH.

REMARKS BY BELIEVER.

NEED FOR PROPER EXPOSITION. '.'There are many young people at our universities to-day—women as well as men—who intensely desire to enrol themselves as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, but feel that the Virgin Birth stands in their way—and I don't wonder."- 1 his statement was made bv Canon Tctei' Green, preaching at the Liverpool Parish Church last month.

"I don't sco," Canon Green said, "how anyone can believe it, expressed as it very often is. If you had had in your garden a largo number of laurel bushes as long as you had been alive, and you were suddenly asked to believe that one of them had, for no apparent reason, suddenly produced a pineapple, you would not believe it —young people certainly would not. They would say, 'No, we know something of the uniformity of nature Why has that universal order been departed from ? The whole tiling is a mediaeval legend.' The real difficulty with our scientific men, added the preacher, was that they had never taken Darwin seriously. "VVe could not,* he said, detach the cherry from the tree, and wo could not oetach man from the universe.

Commenting subsequently to a Morning Post representative on his address, Canon Green, who was offered the Bishopric of Lincoln in 1919, said that the references to the Virgin Birth were not to be taken as his own views. "I wa3 stating the position as it is held by tho young people of to-day," he added. "Personally, I am a most intense believer in the Virgin Birth, but it must bo taught in the light of the logos if it is to be credible. The life of Christ has always been the power behind phenomena. If you present the Virgin Birth merely as an isolated event then it is inaudible."

Canon Green, who is rector of St. Philip's, Sal ford, is a canon residentiary of Manchester, and was appointed Hon. Chaplain to the King in 1914. 110 is the author of several religious works.