asked (having accepted the idea of a Creator) to impute to Him discreditable conduct—to believe that a point came in these causal processes which He had instituted when He could no longer "play the game" without arbitrary interference with its rules, and that the appearance of man upon the globe was the signal for a fatal weakening to His character.
I have seen a clergyman cheat at croquet. He was the by-word of the neighbourhood for that curious little weakness; but I assure you that the spectacle of that reverend gentleman surreptitiously pushing his ball into better position with his foot instead of depending upon the legitimate use of his mallet, was no more ignoble a spectacle than that which I am asked to contemplate by believers in miracle when they present to my eyes a Deity who (upon their assertion) does similar things.
Test upon this basis of morality the most crucial of all events in Christian theology.
The idea of the Incarnation of God in human form as the final and logical fulfilment of the Creative purpose and process—the manifestation of the Creator in the created—has had for many great thinkers a very deep attraction. But if the process which brings Him into material being—the so-called Virgin-Birth—is not a process implicit in Nature itself and one that only depends for its realisation on man's grasp of the higher law which shall make it natural and normal to the human race—if the Virgin-Birth is miracle instead of perfectly
