A Victorian’s Religious Beliefs

THE PARENTAGE OF JESUS

The Statements in Mathew, and Luke, concerning a process of the conception and birth of Jesus, which would not be according to Nature do not appear to be recorded by Mark, or John, of Paul, or the other apostles, or by any other writer from Genesis to Revelation.

John the Baptist did not, once, ever mention such a conception, and therefore he never could have heard of it.

Mary, the Mother of Jesus, mentioned his Parentage once, and then named her husband Joseph as his father, saying “thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing” Luke 2+48. And these words were spoken by Many, his mother, 20 years before Mathew and Luke had heard of Jesus.

And later, Philip told Nathanael that he had seen “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph” John 1+45. Philip, therefore, recognised Joseph as the real father of Jesus.

Jesus himself never spoke once about the process of his conception, as told by Matthew and Luke. And his reason for not doing so seems clearly to have been that he never heard, or knew, anything about it. For he had “gone the way of all the earth”, before Matthew and Luke, wrote their statements.

And, although Jesus lived a life of 33 years, yet neither he himself, nor any of his family, ever once alluded to a theory of his conception that would be contrary to the changeless laws and order of all Nature!

If Jesus had not been the offspring of two human beings, male and female, he cold not have been a natural human being himself, not a perfect man! In all ages of man’s existence upon this earth, no conception, and birth, have ever occurred apart from the natural sexual oneness and agency of the male and female human beings! All animal and vegetable life, and the minutest forms of all life can only give an increase of its perfect kind by means of the natural use of the male and female agencies, which exist in all the million forms of life after their kind.

Therefore, in this life at least, the laws and processes which govern human conception, and birth, are unchanging and in no instance have they ever been suspended.

Why did Matthew, and Luke, alone, write their beliefs concerning an unnatural conception of Jesus, by Mary? The reply, and truth, would seem to be that these two writers were possessed by the Spirit of superstition. And that “possession” need not cause wonder when we know that they were written about 2000 years ago. They gave their statements prominence, but if they had been truths, and prominent truths, then John the Baptist, and other apostles, and Mary, and Jesus himself would have given them startling prominence, during some of the 33 years which Jesus lived! Yet, with them all, concerning this Impossible thing – Silence, ever, reigned Supreme.

The Neighbours of Mary, in Nazareth could never have heard the stories of Matthew. For after knowing Jesus for 30 years, and he began to teach “they were astonished” and said, “is not this the Carpenter? Mark 6+3.

And even in his life-long home, his brethren appear never to have heard anything unnatural concerning Jesus coming into the world. And “they did not believe” he was the Christ. John 7+5.

The passage in Isaiah 7+14 “Behold a virgin shall conceive” probably did not refer to Jesses. But even it if did – Still, it does not say, nor mean, that a virgin should conceive by any other than the natural human agency. Hundreds of millions of virgins have conceived, but the moment Conception begun – virginity ended. Therefore, a virgin mother has never existed.

The Angel Gabriel said to have appeared to Zacharias, Mary & Joseph is a rather mysterious being to the men of this generation. The songs of Joy he inspired, and drew forth from several real good men, and from Elizabeth and Mary, soon died away, for his perditions, and Israel’s expectations were not realised. And, from then till now, 2000 years, the whole Jewish Race have had no faith in the conception of Jesus, as predicted by Gabriel, nor in any of his perditions concerning Israel, at all. And it is a truth that Jesus never has been the “King of the Jews”, and never has sat “on the throne of David”.

There are many mysterious moving forces in Nature, and in Human Life, which call for no doubts from men’s minds. But when any theory directly crosses the natural and uniform laws and facts of Nature, and the process of Human Existence, then that theory cannot be true. Now the natural, and only, theory of human conception and birth is simple, and well understood, and it is universal. Every single increase of the Race, once the world began, came by exactly the same kind of agency. Therefore, the child Jesus of Bethlehem and Nazareth was conceived, and born, by the same male and female human process as are all the children of men, all over all the face of the Earth.

George Burgess, June 1900