The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-18
REV. LAWYERS VIEWS
 ON VIRGIN BIRTH
Birmingham Rector's Recent TheO- logical Writings Attracting Unusual
 Attention in Church Circles


 Attention in Church Circles
 The recent contributions to modern theological literature by the Rev. J. ]. Lanier. rector of Grace Episcopal church, Woodlawn, have been attracting unusual attention. His treatise on @The Virgin Birth" contained if "The Harmony of Some Revelations in Nature and in Grace" is thus commented upon by the Charlotte Observer:
 'Christmas Day commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of a virgin called Mary. The creed of Chris tendon declares that He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary Those who rest their faith in the Bible as the inspired authority accept this article of belief on the basis of what is found principally in the Gospel of St. Matthew and St. Luke. Those who put their faith in the authority of an his toric and inspired church say that this is what the church has always taught and we can therefore believe 1t. But in our day criticism has assailed the Bible and furthermore there are thousands of Christians who have no conception of the church as being of divine institution and authority These seek for a rational argument for belief in the teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, and are not contented to rest upon the Bible or the church, or even both. To such, and to all who honestly and reverently wish to consider the rationale of the virgin birth, we commend the suggestive and Illuminating treatise The Harmony of Some Revelations in Nature and in Grace by the Rev. J. J. Lanier of Bir- mingham, a knsman, we believe, of the famous southern poet bearing his sur name.
 This argument begins by stating that If we are to prove the birth of Jesus or Nazareth of the Virgin Mary only as an isolated historical fact the argument Is hardly worth our time. But, on the other hand, as religion is living thing and has nothing to do with a fact that is wholly past, it must be shown that this is a universal and necessary law of all evolutionary life-a present living fact. We do not object, says MT. Lanier, to living real mysteries, but we do reject useless and needless mysteries If they can be shown to be such, born only of the undiciplned imagination and wild theo-4 logical guesses of the childhood of the race, unverified by present experience. The argument is convincing that the doc Urine of the virgin birth is no such use less and needless mystery but an ever living eternal truth.
 ,''First off all what do the words vir- gin birth mean? They connote the truth that while we think of human life as male and female and cannot assert that after God made man, male and female sex is ever suspended or becomes inoper- ative on its plane and in it's degree, yet we ave Also conscious of having sexless life, transcendng sex, derived from sex less father and sexless mother. We think of the transcending life of God as sexless Fatherhood but the thought of having sexless motherhood scarcely, If ever. enters our minds. And yet this is the very thought which we must realize before we can understand the necessity for the virgin birth of Jesus. Virgin birth describes the eternal process by which the sexless imminent and eternal life of God becomes cosmic and mierocos- mic embodied life: and sex-birth. that process by which the embodied life of God reproduces itself. Virgin birth is the law of the introduction of life and sex-birth the law for the reproduction of fife The uniqueness of Jesus does not consist in his aloneness, but in being the first of His type of life, which, If 1t 
 in failure. The Scriptural parallel be- tween the first and second Adam is com plete. in that both are the first of their tyne of life and in that both reproduce themselves the one by natural birth and the other by spiritual birth. At the be- ginning of creation God began to en- body Himself, and in the historical Jesus there is the symbol of the ever-continu- ing and present and eternal purpose Of God to incarnate Himself in man. Sir Oliver Lodge asks the question, Why is it necessary to believe in the virgin birth of Jesus since no other Christian is virgin born? MT. Lanier's answer is, that every child of God is virgin born. :.
 .'The next point in this argument Is 10 fhow the place of the principle of virgin birth in the evolution of life and to in dicate the harmony of this theological truth with the latest scientific definition of evolutiona According to science this earth was at one time chaos which be- came the cosmos of earth, sea and sky; and then after that earthly life, higher than mineral was born. Now all life of this world was mmanent in mineral life and matter, but not vestige of vegetable life embodied as vegetable, only inma- nent: but out of this mineral, by means of resident forces, the first lowest form of life, higher than mineral, was born. The first form of embodied vegetable life could not have come from a pre-ex- isting form of vegetable life embodied as vegetable, because there was none such on each Whence then? There must be an Introduction of life or mineral would type of life which we call vegetable came through a further incarnation of imma- nent life.