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Letter 25] that they did not dispense with an additional narrative from him. The emphasis which St. Luke lays on the fact that he has traced things "from the first," and that he writes "in order,"—combined with the mention of "many" predecessors who have "taken in hand" the work which he intends to do over again—makes it almost certain that some of these Evangelists had omitted all account of our Lord's birth; others had not regarded chronological order; others had not written "accurately." All these deficiencies indicate a great and general difficulty in obtaining exact information; and the mere honesty of a new attempt, under circumstance so disadvantageous, cannot justify us in attaching a very high authority to a tradition in this new Gospel, of a miraculous character, and in a style that appears to be not St. Luke's own, referring to an incident supposed to have occurred upwards of sixty years before. This digression about St. Luke's Gospel will not be without its use if it leads you to perceive that history, and experience, and criticism, while they tend to make us believe more, tend also to make us know less, about Christ's life and doctrine; I mean, that we find we know a little less about the historical facts of Christ's life than we supposed we knew, while we are led to believe a great deal more in the divine depth and wisdom of His ideas.

I pass to the second question which you put to me, "What sense, if any, do you yourself attach to the statement in the Creed that Christ was born of a Virgin?" Before I tell you what sense I attach to it, or rather what sense seems to me the only one compatible with the facts, I must honestly express my doubt whether any sense that is compatible with the facts, is also compatible with the words. To speak plainly, the statement appears to be so obviously literal that I shrink from interpreting it metaphorically; and yet, if taken literally, it