Teacher.—When Jesus says Father, he means God; but when Mary says father, she means Joseph.
Boy.—Then Mary didn't know God was Jesus' father?
Teacher.—Oh, yes, she did (reads the story of the Annunciation).
Boy.—It seems to me very odd that Mary used language which she knew was not true, and taught her son to call Joseph father. But there's another odd thing about her. If she knew her child was God's son, why was she alarmed about his safety? Surely she might have trusted God to look after his own son in a crowd.
I know of children of six and seven who are quite capable of following out such a line of inquiry with all the severe logic of a moral sense which has not been sophisticated by pious scrubbing.
I could tell you of stranger inquiries than these which have been made by children in endeavouring to understand the account of the miraculous conception.
Whence I conclude that even in the interests of what people are pleased to call Christianity (though it is my firm conviction that Jesus would have repudiated the doctrine of the Incarnation as warmly as that of the Trinity), it may be well to leave things as they are.
All this is for your own eye. There is nothing in substance that I have not said publicly, but I do not feel called upon to say it over again, or get mixed up in an utterly wearisome controversy.
I am, yours faithfully,
T.H. Huxley.