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 has admired this voluntary acceptance of the Divine honor conferred.

It was not something which could come without Mary's perfect acquiescence, any more than the fact of motherhood ever normally comes to women without their consent.

Nor was there any violation of Joseph's conjugal rights. He was fully informed of the condition that was to be achieved, the coming to earth in fulfilment of prophecy of the Messiah to be born of a virgin. It is perfectly evident that he regarded it, as all sincere men regard the birth of any child, as an act of God, mysterious, relatively inexplicable, but God's way of working, and yet in this case necessarily effected without His instrumentality in order that Mary's son might be the Son of God.

Both Mary and Joseph were sincere and honest people whose lives, as to their minutest detail, had been known from eternity. In the sight of Him who exists apart from space or time all things past or future are as present. God knew from the beginning the characters and dispositions of Mary and Joseph. They were prepared by the Lord for this very mission long before the time of Abraham, through whom the promise of the blessing first openly came.