The Current Scene
The Test Tube Baby
The successful experiment that has produced the world’s first test tube baby has created no little excitement and stimulated some lively imagination. This daring work performed in an English laboratory was prompted by a humane purpose —to enable otherwise barren couples to have a child of their own.
We were once entertained by an elderly couple, The wife grieved as she remarked, “Oh, the loneliness of a childless marriage!” Others find it a frustration to which it is easy not to adjust. The sacred writer of Psalm 127 says, “Lo. children are a heritage of the Lord” and “Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” Yet, some of God’s choicest women, in spite of their anguish and wish, had their patience sorely tried. There comes to mind Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth. Fortunately, they were blessed with the most happy of endings. We are told in another psalm that “our times are in thy hand.” Christian couples that happen to be tested in this area should accept their trial as from the Lord.
At present, the test tube experiment appears loaded with uncertainties. In the United States, the morality of the procedure has not been settled. The thing is so novel and unanticipated in the Scriptures that no caterogical statement from that source is forthcoming. We are assured that God is the author and creator of life (Mal. 2:10). Here is a domain, we would think, where Providence should be allowed to rule and overrule.
The birth of Louise Brown has brought a renewed interest in Aldous Huxley’s, Brave New World. We were tempted to read it and found it much to our disgust. In this imaginary New World, anything but brave, all of the inhabitants were conceived and gestated in test tubes. By a manipulation of genes, they were bred to fill a particular role in life. The father of this standardization is deified and named “Ford” (sometimes called Freud). conditioned. Just a select few are so conditioned. Just a select few are so bred to become Alphas and Alphas Plus. Everyone is happy, this being the only goal in life; and a universal drug called “soma” assures the maintenance of this condition should any distraction occur such as death. Was this Huxley’s millennium, or was he attempting to show the absurdity of a completely controlled society?
Yes, there has been one, and only one, miraculous birth; that of Jesus Christ. He was holy in the womb of His mother and from the womb. “And the angel answered, and said unto her (Mary), The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35).
He had to be who He was to do what He did. Yes, He offered Himself up to God without spot on our behalf. “For He hath made Him, who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21). Then, too, the analogy from human birth is the new birth by the Holy Spirit. This birth takes the “whosoever wills” into the kingdom of God, makes them children of God, and endows them with eternal life which is imperishable (John 3). It has been catchingly said, “Born once, die twice; borne twice, die once.” Of course, this is only understood by those who accept the revelation of Scripture. The unsaved die physically, followed by the second death in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14). The new birth of the Spirit should be the chief concern of all those who are accountable.