BRETHREN OF THE LORD
BRETHREN OF THE LORD 32.')
■but . . . came also (as the Church piously Wieves) into the world 80 without doing violence to the virginal and pure body of His mother, that He did also leave her virginity entire.' * This miracle, Bupertluous as it is, and directly opposed to the words of St. Luke (2^), is yet accepted by Jerome and his followers, and the allegorical method of interpretation is pressed to the utmost in order to gain some support from the t>T for the doctrine of the dfirapOei'la. Thus we tind Pearson [Creed, p. 3i2t!) citing, as a proof of it, Ezk 44' ' This pate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it ; because the I/jrd, the Uod of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut.' It would surely have been more to the point to cite the words of the Messianic psalm (09") : ' I have become a stranger to my brethren and an alien unto my mother's rhildren ' ; this psalm being used to illustrate the earthly life of our Lord, both by St. John: 'The zeal of thy house has eaten me up; they gave me also ^'all for my meat, and in my thirst they f;ave me vinegar to drink'; and by St. Luke : ' Let tneir habitation be de.snlate.' (4) We go on, however, to consider that which has been all along the real obstacle in the way of a literal acceptation of the Scripture narrative, viz. the objection on the ground of Christian sentiment. It is ' the tendency,' says Dr. Mill (I.e. p. 301), 'of the Christian mystery, God manifest in the flesh, when heartily received, to generate an unwillingness to believe that the womb thus divinely honoured should have pven birth to other merely human progeny.' 'The sentiment of veneration for this august vessel of grace which has erer animated Christians . . . could not have been wanting to the highly-favoured Joseph.' 'On the impossibility of refuting these sentiments . . . the truly Catholic Christian will have pleasure in reposing.' So Epiphanius, Jerome, and other ancient writers speak of this as a 'pious belief,' and the same is reiterated by Hammond and Jeremy Taylor cited by Mill (p. 309). In answer to this I would say that, unless we are prepared to admit all the beliefs of the mediaeval Church, we must be- ware of allowing too much authority to jiious opinions. Is there any extreme of superstition which cannot plead a 'pious opinion' in its favour? Of course it is right in studying history, whether sacred or profane, to put ourselves in tiie position of the actors, to imagine how they must have felt and acted ; but this is not quite the same thing as imagining how we ourselves should have felt and acted under their circumstances, until at least we have done our best to strip oirall that differentiates the mind of one century from the mind of another. If we could arrive at the real feeling of Joseph in respect to his wife, and of Mary in resijcct to her Son before and after His birth, this would undoubtedly be an element of the highest importance for the determination of the question before us ; but to assume that they must nave felt as a monk, or nun, or celibate priest of the Middle Ages ; to assume even, with Dr. Mill, that they fully understood the mystery ' God manifest in the flesh,' is not merely to make an unauthorised assumption, it is to assume what is pal[>ably contrary to fact. Mary and Joseph were religious Jews, espoused to one another, as it is natural to suppose, in the belief prevalent among the .lews that marriage was a <nity, and that a special blessing attached to a prolilic union. To both it is revealed from heaven th.it the Messiah ahould be bom of Mary by a miraculous conception. Joseph is told that 'Ins name is to be called Jesus, because he shall save his people from their sins.'
• Ctiryi. Horn, cxlll. (ap. Solcer, 11. p. SOn): i Xfirrit r^iii. !• unr^t mtti mXuTu i^iti* ii ^tir^. This wfti ntHniiM III Tlie 71)th Canon of the Council in 'I'rullo towartln the end of the 7th cent.
Mary is told, in addition, that ' he shall be called the Son of the Highest, and that the Lord God shall give him the throne of his father David, and he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever.' There is surely nothing in these words which would disclose the Christian mystery 'God manifest in the flesh.' They point to a greater Moses, >r David, or Solomon, or Samuel. Mary's hymn of praise is founded on the recollection of Hannah's exultation at the fulfilment of prophecy in the birth of her son. Her mind would naturally turn to other miraculous births, to that of Isaac under the old dispensation, to that now impending in the case of her cousin Elisabeth. And as there was nothing in the announcement made to them which could enable them to realise the astounding truth that He who was to be bom of Mary was Very God of Very God, so there is nothing in the subsequent life of Mary which would lead us to believe that she, any more than His apostles, had realised it before llis resurrection. On the contrary, it is plain that such a belief fully realised would have made it impossible for her to fulfil, I do not say her duties towards her husband, but her duties towards the Lord Himself during His infancy and childhood. It is hard enough even now to hold together the ideas of the humanity and divinity of Christ without doing violence to either ; but to those who knew Him in the flesh we may safely say it was impo.ssible until the Comforter had come and revealed it unto them. As to what should be the relations between the husband and wife after the birth of the promised Child there is one thing we may be sure of, viz. that these would be deter- mined, not by personal considerations, but either by immediate inspiration, as the journey to Egypt and other events had been, or, in the absence of this, by the one desire to do what they believed to be best for the bringing up of the Child entrusted to them. We can imagine their feeling it to ba a duty to abstain from bringing other children into the world, in order that they might devote them- selves more exclusively to the nurture and training of Jesus. On the other hand, the greatest prophets and saints had not been brought up in solitude. Moses, Samuel, and David hail had brothers and sisters. It might be God's will that the Messiah should experience in this, as in other things, the common lot of man. Whichever way the Divine guidance might lead them, we may be sure that the response of Mary would be still as before : ' Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.' Even if the language of the Gospels had been entirely neutral on this matter, it would surely have been a piece of high presumption on our part to assume that God's providence must always follow the lines suggested by our notions of what is seemly ; but when every conceivable barrier has been placed in the way of this interpretation by the frequent mention uf brothers of the Lord, living with llis mother and in constant attendance upon her ; when He is called her firstborn son, and when St. Matthew goes into whiit we might have been inclined to think iilmost unnecessary detail in fixing a limit to the sepa- ration between husband and wife, — can wo characterise it otherwise than as a contumacious setting up of an artificial tradition above the written W ord, if we insist upon it that ' brother ' must mean, not brother, but either cousin or one who is no bloodrelation at all; that ' lirstliorn ' does not imjily other children 8ubse(|uently born ; that the limit fixed to separation does not imply subsequent union !