PRESENTED TO THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 PRINCETON THEOLOGICHL SEMINARY 
 
 BY 
 
 |V[fs. Alcj^andcp Proudfit. 
 
 ■Z7 
 
THE 
 
 RESURRECTION 
 
 JESUS CHRIST 
 
 HISTORICALLY AND LOGICALLY VIEWED. 
 
 Kai b ^dVf Kal iyevdjirtv vsKpdg. 
 
 RICHARD W. DICKINSON, D. D. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 No. 821 Chestnut Street. 
 
Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by 
 
 THE TRUSTEES OF THE 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
 of Pennsylvania. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY WESTCOTT & THOMSON, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following pages are submitted to the public in the 
 hope that they may serve, at least in some degree, to supply 
 a want, which, though seldom expressed, is often felt. 
 The want, here assumed, as the conscious experience of 
 not a few minds, is that of some treatise on the Resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, which, while excluding all that is irrelevant, 
 without omitting anything essential to the fair discussion 
 of the subject, shall, in a brief and convenient form, em- 
 body the facts and testimony in the case ; and which, in 
 vindicating the credibility of the witnesses, shall rebut the 
 positions, and expose the sophistries of Infidelity. 
 
 Such a work, it is hoped, will not merely attract the 
 notice of those who have no leisure for investigating the 
 documentary proofs of our holy religion, but will also fur- 
 nish material for reflection on not a few of the most strik- 
 ing incidents of the Gospels, as well as on some of the most 
 humiliating features of our fallen nature. 
 
 The natural tendency of a discussion of this nature, and, 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 by God's blessing, the actual result may be expected to be, 
 to counteract the suggestions of "an evil heart of unbe- 
 lief ; " to aid the inquiries, and solve the doubts of those 
 whose minds have been embarrassed by speculative difficul- 
 ties ; and, though last, not least, to silence, if not convince 
 the skeptic. 
 
 R. W. D. 
 
 New York, July lat, 1865. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE PREDICTION. 
 
 PAaB 
 
 The death of Christ no ordinary event — He might have avoided 
 it — Foretold the manner of his death, and the time of his 
 resurrection — Ability to foretell the time of one's death, not 
 human — His prediction without a parallel — It was not under- 
 stood by his disciples — Reasons — His enemies not ignorant 
 of Christ's " saying ;" — How they reasoned about it — Sought 
 an audience with Pilate — Precautions against the last error — 
 Watch set, and the stone sealed — A timely precaution — Object 
 of the priests and rulers 11 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 THE MISSING BODY. 
 
 Incidents attending the dawn of the third morning — No guards 
 to be seen — The body of Jesus missing — Agreement of the 
 Sanhedrim and the disciples as to the fact — Official explana- 
 tion of the mystery — Not even intimated that Christ was not 
 dead when buried — Had he not been, could not have removed 
 the stone himself, and been unobserved — The body either re- 
 moved or stolen — Must have been done by either his enemies 
 or his friends — His enemies had no motive to take it away — 
 His friends could not, nor had they a motive : they were dis- 
 pirited and terrified — Could not have been taken without 
 causing some noise — Improbable that the guard slept — Would 
 1 * 6 
 
b CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 not have acknowledged it if they had — Priests put a lie into 
 their mouths to circulate — Subterfuges of infidelity — Parallel 
 between the priests and modern infidels — Repetition of false- 
 hood — Its influence — Readiness of the people to be imposed 
 on — Illustrations — The rulers did not themselves believe the 
 story — Took no measures to substantiate the priests' charge, 
 though bound to do so — The crucifixion without a parallel — 
 Design of the priests' story — Exasperated by the reports of 
 the morning — AVhy they did not embrace the apostles' doc- 
 trine — They had nothing to hope, every thing to fear from 
 the part they had taken in eflfectiug Christ's death 22 
 
 CHAPTER IIL 
 
 PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF CHRIST'S RESTJRRECTIOK. 
 
 No absurdity in the supposition that he had risen — It was not 
 impossible; especially if he was the God-man — It was not im- 
 probable that such a person would verify his own saying — In 
 itself not more wonderful than some of his own miracles — 
 A necessity induced for the verification of his plighted word 
 — The absurd position of modern infidelity — No cause is pre- 
 judged by the love of truth — Absence of all presumptive 
 proofs fatal to the argument — Apart from the nature of his 
 death, his resurrection was uncalled for — No question of 
 trivial interest — The course of errorists in their assaults on 
 Christianity — Christ's resurrection implies a higher purpose 
 — No necessity for his rising again if he did not die to take 
 away the sin of the world — By whom the fact of his resur- 
 rection has been disputed — The disciples had not the ad- 
 vantage of presumptive proofs — Not strange that they did not 
 understand the import of Christ's saying — If Christ rose he 
 would assuredly convince his disciples of the fact — Import- 
 ance of the strongest possible evidence 40 
 
CONTENTS. 7 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 No one saw Christ rise — The guard frightened away by the 
 angel — The women no knowledge of the guard — Their object 
 in going to the sepulchre — Their consternation — Mary and 
 Salome frightened by an angel — Joanna — Mary Magdalene's 
 early visits — The other Mary and Salome — Joanna and other 
 women : their successive visits — John followed by Peter, saw 
 the clothes lying but no angel — John the Jirst to believe in an 
 unseen Saviour — Special message for Peter — Christ appeared 
 Jirst to Mary Magdalene — Mary and Salome the next wit- 
 nesses — Peter the next witness — His second visit to the sep- 
 ulchre was probably the last that was made by either of the 
 disciples — " The two disciples" — The incredulity of the dis- 
 ciples in general — Christ appears to them all, save Thomas — 
 Rebukes their unbelief — Thomas at last convinced — Next ap- 
 pearance on the shore of Tiberias — The incidents of his in- 
 terview with the fishers — The next meeting was at Galilee — 
 His last appearance was to the apostles — Final interview — 
 Closing scene — Consequent emotions of the apostles 52 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 
 
 Four narratives of the same event — Period at which they 
 were written — The narrators would not multiply particu- 
 lars — They would vary, and yet agree — Omission no con- 
 tradiction — Unusual circumstances to be taken into view 
 — The mental agitation of the disciples must have been 
 extreme — Naturalness of the narratives — They explain them- 
 selves — The testimony of the women all -important — "Why 
 the angels appeared only to the women — Their appearance on 
 the occasion appropriate — No mention of Mary the mother 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAQB 
 
 of Jesus — She was no more to the risen Jesus than the other 
 women — A fictitious writer would have differently represented 
 Mary the mother of Jesus — Not known whether he ever ap- 
 peared to his mother — She is for the first time mentioned in 
 connection with the apostles — When they all were at prayer 
 —A fact to be praised by all who love truth , 73 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 
 
 They were competent to judge whether Christ was dead — Could 
 not have been deceived as to his death — Not as to the place 
 where his body was laid — Nor mistaken a phantom for reality 
 — Not possible for a number of persons to labour under an 
 illusion at the same time — In this case eleven witnesses be- 
 sides the women — The apostles knew what was indispensable 
 to the competency of a witness — They were neither preju- 
 diced nor credulous — The idea of Christ's rising probably did 
 not occur to their agitated minds — The natural effects of de- 
 spondency — In view of the evidence, there was no room for 
 doubt — They are again assembled in " that upper room" — 
 Their prayers — The descent of the Holy Ghost on the day of 
 Pentecost — Speaking with tongues — Preaching in the name 
 of Jesus — Marvellous effect of their preaching — Wonderful 
 change the apostles have undergone — Not to be explained 
 unless Jesus rose from the dead — They could not have been 
 justly charged with either arrogance or dogmatism 84 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CHOSEN WITNESSES, 
 
 No valid objection — Reasons for selecting certain persons — Un- 
 reasonable to suppose that Christ would have appeared to his 
 enemies — His work on earth was finished — Twelve separate 
 witnesses enough — They must have " infallible proofs," and 
 
CONTENTS. 9 
 
 PAGE 
 
 act according — The apostles' course — Their testimony — Their 
 miracles — Their writings — Corresponding effects — That 
 Christ's enemies did not believe, no disparagement to the 
 apostles' testimony — They knew that Christ had risen — What 
 they did — Moral truth cannot be accompanied with resistless 
 evidence 97 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 HYPOTHESES OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 That the apostles were enthusiasts — But they were not self- 
 moved — Not easily convinced — They acted under authority, 
 and taught only as commanded — They appealed to facts — 
 They were not governed by impulse, or by fancy — 'Their wri- 
 tings as fresh as ever — Origin and nature of enthusiasm — 
 The apostles spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost — 
 Enthusiasm allies itself with fanaticism — Characteristics of 
 their history of Jesus — The influence of their writings as 
 contrasted with what they themselves were — Their modesty 
 and candour — The case of Paul. The second hypothesis — 
 The crucifixion-scene — No impostor would have broached the 
 story of the resurrection on the spot — Against all experience 
 that twelve men should have united in a falsehood so soon 
 after the tragedy of the cross, and beneath its shadow — Such 
 a story might have been easily refuted, had it been false — It 
 was adverse to all the national sentiments of the Jews — The 
 story could not have originated in a different place and at a 
 later period 105 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCLirSION. 
 
 No accounting for the Christian church and the Christian ordi- 
 nances unless we admit the truth of what Peter said — That 
 
10 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 three thousand were deceived in a day would be a greater 
 miracle than that Christ rose from the dead — The issue met — 
 The apostles either true or false — Their's no story to please 
 The great task — They could not have been ignorant of conse- 
 quences — They had nothing to gain — If true, everything to 
 lose — Sketch of the apostles — Something more than words 
 demanded — How did the apostles act? — Could not have aimed 
 to deceive — Logical consequences — Christianity has myste- 
 ries — It illumines life and immortality — Infidelity to be pitied 
 —The epitaph 115 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The relation of the fact to Christian doctrines — Obvious, yet 
 overlooked or evaded — Examples in illustration — Method of 
 assault on Christianity changed — Object of skeptical theories 
 — Christian doctrines the exponents of Scriptural facts — 
 Logical consequences of rejecting either the facts or the teach- 
 ings of Christianity — Testimony of the "witness within" — 
 No materials for constructing the history of Jesus — Outline 
 of his character — The Divine perfections largely unknown 
 till Christ appeared — The constitution of his person — Not to 
 be explained — No relief from heavy thoughts but in the light 
 of the resurrection — The Divine-human — Harmony of the 
 sacred writings — Declared by his resurrection to be " The Son 
 of God" with 2)oiuer — If not the Son of God, there is no sig- 
 nificancy in his death — Wrong views of Christ's death — His 
 death an act of humiliation — It assures us of eternal life — 
 His mysterious sorrow — But imperfect knowledge in this re- 
 lation — A great mystery — One thing known — Christ Jesus his 
 own interpreter — The influence of the resurrection on the 
 chosen witnesses — The scandal of the cross — Chi-ist's resur- 
 rection the seal and pledge of his people's 126 
 
THE 
 
 RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 TSE FMEiyiCTIOJSr. 
 
 The peculiarities of Christ's ministry which 
 awakened so intense an interest in his person, to- 
 gether with the varied influences which were ar- 
 rayed against his mission, forbid the supposition 
 that his death could have been an ordinary event. 
 
 It was, indeed, no new thing for a man to be 
 crucified. Many a poor criminal had been, without 
 any one near, save the stern executioners of jus- 
 tice ; many a one had breathed out his life in 
 agony on the cross, with no one present to drop a 
 tear, much less care for his mangled corse. 
 
 Those two malefactors — the one on the right, the 
 other on the left, who cares for them ? Who will 
 ever mention their names after their bodies are 
 thrown into ignominious graves ? But He who is 
 suspended between those malefactors, ah, never be- 
 fore had the cross borne a man who in all the public 
 acts of his life had seemed to multitudes to be 
 more than man ! 
 
 11 
 
12 THE RESURRECTION OE JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 It was not an event, therefore, to be either con- 
 cealed or forgotten. All had heard of Jesus. His 
 name had been often pronounced with awe, or won- 
 der; with sentiments of love, or of hate. The 
 common people had heard him gladly : the lame, 
 the halt, the blind, the sick, the leper, — ^mothers with 
 their little children ; mourners, sorrowing over the 
 grave of an only brother, or an only son, all had 
 blessed him ; while many had felt that they were 
 not worthy that he should come under their roof; 
 and others had fondly hoped that it was he that 
 should redeem Israel. 
 
 We can readily imagine that the mere intelligence 
 of his arrest for trial occasioned feelings of the 
 most painful suspense in unnumbered minds through- 
 out Judea. But that men, calling themselves 
 priests and rulers could so outrage justice and 
 humanity as to put so good a man to an accursed 
 death, was enough to arouse all Jerusalem to the 
 highest pitch of public excitation. The great city 
 of the Jews is pouring forth its thousands to gather 
 round the brow of that hill; Jjifl because tliree men 
 are there to be crucified, but because of the One 
 between the two, whom Pilate had delivered up to 
 be crucified, and over whose head there is written 
 in large letters : " This is he that was born king of 
 the Jews !" 
 
 She who bare him is there, and when no longer 
 able to endure the sight is commended by him to 
 the care of one of his disciples. Certain women 
 
THE PREDICTION. 13 
 
 who had followed him are there, wringing their 
 hands in anguish of spirit. Peter is there, weep- 
 ing more bitterly than ever, that he had denied his 
 Lord. Thomas is there, and gives up in despair. 
 Though they are standing in the distance, yet all 
 the disciples are there, to witness the dark scene, — 
 all save one who had already gone out to revenge 
 on himself his betrayal of his Master. His enemies, 
 they who had imprecated his blood on themselves 
 and their children, are there; and they hear from 
 his dying lips that touching prayer of his fof their 
 forgiveness. Men of all ranks, and sects, and of 
 different nations, are there. The scribe and the 
 pharisee, the priest and the Levite, the elders and 
 the rulers, the civilian and the soldier, the noble 
 and the base, Jew and Gentile, all are merged in 
 one promiscuous throng ; and deep as was the conflict 
 of emotions in their minds as they gazed upon the 
 cross, it was not so great as the difference in their 
 sentiments respecting Him who was heard to ex- 
 claim as he gave up the ghost, "It is finished !" a 
 difference, which, though it may still be found 
 among men, does not militate against the fact that 
 he who was born in Bethlehem was put to death on 
 Calvary. 
 
 If the multitude on witnessing the wondrous 
 works of his life, often exclaimed, " What manner 
 of man is this ?" well may any one while reflecting 
 on the tragic end of his mission inquire, and with 
 the deepest solicitude, what manner of death is 
 
 2 
 
14 THE RESURRECTION! OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 this ? a death without a parallel in the world's 
 history, a death- scene, rather, such as had never 
 been enacted. 
 
 No one, however, can candidly examine the par- 
 ticulars of his trial and crucifixion, as -furnished by 
 the Evangelists, without perceiving how easy it 
 would have been for him to have avoided the catas- 
 trophe.* 
 
 He was no stranger to the treacherous intentions 
 of a perfidious disciple ; and though he had enemies 
 he had also friends on whose support he could have 
 relied. Had he returned to Galilee, as he might 
 readily have done, he would have been removed 
 from all danger of personal violence ; or had he 
 even concealed the place of his nightly resort, he 
 might have baffled the evil counsels of the Jewish 
 elders. 
 
 But he remained in Jerusalem in the midst of 
 those who, to his certain knowledge, were plotting 
 against his life. He retained Judas about his per- 
 son, though he knew that he was but waiting an 
 opportunity to betray him. He continued to pass 
 his nights where he knew that Judas might find 
 him. He even rebuked Peter for attempting his 
 rescue from the mob ; and when arraigned for trial, 
 made no defence. 
 
 In short, though he was but young, and seemed 
 to have the same ties which bind other men to life ; 
 though he was engaged in a god-like work and had 
 
 * John xviii. 
 
THE PREDICTION. 15 
 
 won a multitude of hearts ; though he had betrayed 
 no morbid sympathies, nor lack of thoughtfulness ; 
 though, on several occasions of threatened violence 
 to himself, he had retired from observation, and had 
 always been solicitous only for the safety and wel- 
 fare of others, yet is it a fact that at this juncture 
 he voluntarily neglected to avail himself of any of 
 those precautions which ordinary prudence would 
 have dictated, and which any other man of his na- 
 tion, if placed in his circumstances, would cer- 
 tainly have adopted. He calmly awaited the de- 
 velopement of the most diabolical plot that malice 
 had ever conceived. He surrendered himself to 
 his accusers without resistance. He submitted to 
 his sentence without appeal. He suffered the death 
 of the cross without a murmur.* 
 
 It is at variance with the known laws of our 
 nature that a man in such circumstances should 
 make no effort to save his life ; as it is repugnant 
 to our natural sensibilities that so good a man, one 
 who had never harmed a single being, never cher- 
 ished a private end, never breathed but for the 
 good of his nation, should be so cruelly put to 
 death. 
 
 But on further examination of the evangelic re- 
 cords, it appears that Jesus Christ foresaw and 
 foretold the time and manner of his death ; and, 
 what is still more remarkable, he distinctly said to 
 his disciples that though he should speedily be sub- 
 
 * Compare Mark xiv. Luke xxii. xxiii. John xix. 
 
16 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 jected to an ignominious death, yet within three 
 days after the event he would be restored to life ! 
 "Behold," said he to the twelve, "we go up 
 to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the 
 prophets concerning the Son of man shall be 
 accomplished. For he shall be delivered unto 
 the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and spite- 
 fully entreated, and spitted on : and they shall 
 scourge him, and put him to death : and the third 
 day he shall rise again.''"^ Truly a most extraor- 
 dinary " saying !" 
 
 Now every man knows that sooner or later he 
 must die ; and one may have an impression that he 
 will die at such a time, and, it may be, in a particu- 
 lar way ; and it is possible that the event may in- 
 dicate the correctness of his forethought. Hence, 
 what are termed " presentiments," which, though 
 common to minds of an imaginative cast, are sel- 
 dom realized. 
 
 Man may have his nervous apprehensions or may 
 indulge in conjecture ; but of himself can know 
 neither the time nor the manner of his death. 
 This is so obvious that no one in his senses would 
 ever venture to predict the time and manner of his 
 decease. Even when exposed to imminent peril, 
 whatever may be his thoughts, he cannot say to a 
 certainty that he shall be killed or drowned at that 
 time, and in a certain way. 
 
 Much less, then, would any one venture to affirm 
 
 *■ Luke xviii. 31-34. John xii. 23-36. 
 
THE PREDICTION. 17 
 
 that he will come to life again within three days 
 and three nights after his death and burial. If 
 the finite mind cannot read the future, it is still 
 more evident that no created mind can reverse the 
 laws of nature : and hence we may search in vain 
 amid the annals of our race for any prediction 
 analogous to that which Christ was known to have 
 uttered, and that more than once, before he was 
 crucified and slain. 
 
 Throughout the realms of heathendom there was 
 no belief in a resurrection of the body. The idea, 
 as advanced by Paul, was wholly new, even to the 
 highly philosophic mind of Grecian antiquity ; and 
 though some of the Israelites believed in a final 
 resurrection, no one of their nation, from Moses 
 down to Malachi, had ever predicted of another, 
 much less of himself, that after being " three days 
 and three nights in the heart of the earth" he 
 would rise from the grave. 
 
 How could any self-conscious mortal say, what 
 no mere man in solemn earnest would dare to 
 affirm : ''I have power over my own life ; I have 
 power to lay it down, and I have power to take it 
 agam. "^^ 
 
 But though Christ laid claim to this power over 
 his own life, and had said in the hearing of his dis- 
 ciples that he would rise again, yet this saying was 
 ^' hid from them^" and ^' they understood it not." 
 So foreign was it to their wonted sentiments, so 
 
 * John X. 18. 
 
 2* 
 
18 THE RESURRECTION OF JEiSUS CHRIST. 
 
 contrary to their experience, tliat they could not 
 entertain even the thought ; or it was hid from 
 them that they might at last be more thoroughly 
 convinced of the fact itself: for, if they had not 
 believed that Christ would rise from the dead on 
 the third day after his burial, his resurrection would 
 naturally recall his words to their minds ; and thus 
 the prediction would serve to strengthen their faith 
 in the event. 
 
 Despair at times paralyzes all power of thought; 
 and it may be that their disappointment was so 
 great as to render them unable at the time to recall 
 what Christ had said. Deeply pained as they must 
 have been to witness the sufferings and ignominy to 
 which their Master had been subjected ; and know- 
 ing that they themselves were consequently exposed 
 to the greater contumely and hate, it would have 
 been contrary to the wonted operations of the mind 
 under such circumstances had they then been able 
 to rely on a prediction which, at the time it was 
 uttered, could not have been apprehended by them 
 in its true significancy. 
 
 But had this prediction been overheard by the 
 enemies of Christ, it is not unreasonable to suppose 
 that it would have made a very different impression 
 on their minds. Not recognizing him as the prom- 
 ised Messiah, it could only have furnished them 
 with additional proof of his impious assumption 
 and sinister design, and consequently incited them 
 to deadlier enmity. 
 
THE PREDICTION. 19 
 
 Yet, if they were instrumental in putting Christ 
 to death, it would have been but natural for them 
 to conclude that the disciples of Christ might recol- 
 lect his prediction ; and to shield themselves from 
 the odium of having followed an impostor, might 
 avail themselves of it, in some way, to impose on 
 popular credulity. 
 
 Having witnessed the Crucifixion, and seen how 
 Jesus whom they maligned and unjustly prosecuted 
 had so meekly given up the ghost, it is by no means 
 improbable that the vindictive passions by which 
 they had been actuated, gave place to disturbing 
 thoughts, and dark misgivings such as these: — 
 We have pronounced him an impostor, and have 
 caused him to be put to death as a blasphemer. 
 What if we were blinded by bigotry, and inflamed 
 by hatred in pronouncing sentence against him ? 
 Ah, did we not in our madness even suborn wit- 
 nesses ? We have cried to Heaven and said, "His 
 blood be upon us, and our children !" What if, in 
 accordance with his own words, he should rise from 
 the dead ! But he is dead. We have seen him 
 die. He cannot rise. No man of himself ever 
 rose from the dead. But his disciples may secrete 
 his body ; and should they contrive to make the 
 people believe that he has risen, so deep is now 
 their sympathy with the crucified Jesus whom they 
 loved to follow, that it may react to our injury, and 
 eventually to our overthrow. 
 
 Such a representation of their views and feelings 
 
20 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 as consequent on the act which they had perpe- 
 trated, is far from being a gratuitous conjecture. 
 They have put Christ to death ; but the chief 
 priests and pharisees are not content. If the form of 
 Him whom they had so cruelly scourged and cruci- 
 fied has not risen before the eye of their conscience, 
 the recollection of what he once said has rushed to 
 their hearts, and thej cannot rest. 
 
 The morning, therefore, after Christ was sepul- 
 chred, they sought an audience with Pilate, and 
 said unto him : " Sir, we remember that that de- 
 ceiver said while he was yet alive, After three days 
 I will rise again. Command, therefore, that the 
 sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest 
 his disciples come by night and steal him away, 
 and say unto the people. He is risen from the dead; 
 so the last error shall be worse than the first."* 
 
 Thus it appears that they were not ignorant of 
 the prediction which Christ had uttered ; that they 
 dreaded the thought of its being even seemingly 
 fulfilled; perceiving, as they did, that the popular 
 impression of his having risen from the dead w^ould 
 tend to advance his cause far more than his teach- 
 ings and works had already done ; and hence their 
 conviction that some precautions should be adopted, 
 against any fraudulent design that might be enter- 
 tained, and their determination that something 
 should be done at once to preclude even the appa- 
 rent accomplishment of a well-known prophecy. 
 
 * Matt, xxvii. 63, 64. 
 
THE PREDICTION. 21 
 
 It would seem that Pilate himself coincided Avith 
 them in this opinion ; for, though his reply was brief, 
 it was prompt and pertinent : " Ye have a watch : 
 go your way ; make it as sure as you can. So they 
 went and made the sepulchre sure ; sealing the stone 
 and setting a watch."* 
 
 This, however, was no more than should have 
 been done, on the supposition that Christ had been 
 justly put to death as a malefactor. It is some- 
 times important to guard the dead body of one who 
 has been publicly executed according to the forms 
 of law, lest the sight of it should cause a reaction 
 in the public mind, or inflame the passions of those 
 who had espoused his cause ; and it is possible that 
 Pilate, being a ruler, might have been influenced 
 by this consideration. 
 
 But not so, the priests and pharisees : they in- 
 tend to confute Christ's pretensions to the Messiah- 
 ship of the Jews by disproving his own words. He 
 had publicly said that he would " rise again on the 
 third day ;" and they will see to it that he does not : 
 not even the sanctity of the Sabbath may interfere 
 with the necessity of the case. " The last error " 
 must, if possible, at whatever cost and trouble, 
 whatever hazard to our ceremonial consistency, be 
 precluded. 
 
 And now they have secured the hody: it is closely 
 encased, and strongly guarded ; and they are im- 
 patiently awaiting the dawn of the third day. 
 
 ■» Matt. xxii. 65, 66. 
 
22 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTEK 11. 
 
 THE MISSING BODY. 
 
 Lo, the predicted morn has gilded the eastern 
 horizon ; and now the light of that day, ever after 
 to be distinguished and honoured as the first day 
 of the week, is thrown with resplendent lustre 
 over the far-famed city of the Jews. There, on 
 yonder eminence, can still be seen the cross where 
 Jesus was crucified ; and there, in that garden, is 
 the new-made sepulchre where his dead body was 
 laid ; and there too is the " great stone" that was 
 rolled against its mouth. 
 
 But where are the Roman soldiers who had been 
 so urgently summoned, and authoritatively stationed 
 there to guard with unwonted vigilance a poor life- 
 less body? Where the chief priests and the 
 pharisees who were to assemble this third day before 
 the sepulchre in triumph over the body of their 
 victim, still dead, and now mouldering, notwith- 
 standing his prediction ? Are not all the disciples 
 hiding their faces in shame and confusion ? Is not 
 the whole nation now convinced that he who had 
 said that he would rise on the third day, was not 
 only a blasphemer, but a lying impostor ? 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 23 
 
 Most clearly, the priests and the pharisees in- 
 tended to make a triumphant exhibition of Christ's 
 dead body on the very day that he himself had 
 specified as the day of his resurrection, or they 
 would not have taken the pains they did to procure a 
 watch and secure the sepulchre. 
 
 But they cannot produce the body : it is not 
 there, where they knew it had been deposited, and 
 where they had stationed their guard ; and they are 
 now forced to admit the fact. 
 
 Here the testimony of the Sanhedrim agrees 
 with that of the disciples ; and it is important to 
 note this fact, and the more so, considering the 
 effort that was made to guard the sepulchre. 
 
 Had it not been for the extraordinary precau- 
 tions which the priests and the pharisees adopted, 
 it might have been difficult to show that the body 
 had not been clandestinely removed. But as the 
 stone barrier at the mouth of the sepulchre had 
 been sealed in their presence, and the watch ap- 
 pointed at their urgent solicitation, they have ren- 
 dered themselves the most important witnesses to 
 the fact that on the tJdrd day the body was missing ; 
 and they are bound to account for its disappear- 
 ance in consistency with their own skeptical princi- 
 ples ; or they, as is usually the case with the evil- 
 minded, have outwitted themselves : nay, more ; 
 they have essentially advanced the cause which 
 they had designed to crush. 
 
 If they cannot satisfactorily solve the mystery 
 
24 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 of the missing body, the "last error" which the 
 disciples will propagate may be a thousand times 
 worse for them than " the first :" the "last error" 
 may involve the subversion of their rule, the over- 
 throw of their polity, the demolition of their tem- 
 ple : it may be the death-knell of their nation ! 
 
 What now is their explanation ? Do they say 
 that Christ was not dead when he was buried ? No; 
 though modern infidels in extreme cases have re- 
 sorted to this hypothesis, they not only believed 
 that he was dead, they kneiv that he was ; for they 
 had seen him nailed to the cross; even seen him 
 hanging there for hours until he bowed his head, 
 and gave up the ghost. They had stood among 
 those who taunted, and reviled him, and challenged 
 him to come down from the cross, if he was indeed, 
 the Son of God. They had seen him taken down 
 from the cross ; and they knew that the soldiers 
 did not break his legs, because he was seen to be 
 "dead already," and that when his side was 
 pierced " forthwith came thereout blood and 
 water."* 
 
 As they had been so maliciously intent on his 
 execution, it is not probable they would have been 
 satisfied unless they had the most palpable and con- 
 clusive evidence that he was dead ; and when the 
 body was missing, if it had occurred to them to 
 deny that he was dead when entombed, they must 
 have known that no one would have sided with them, 
 
 * John XX. 33, 34. Mark xv. 44, 45. 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 25 
 
 SO long as great numbers had been witnesses of the 
 fact that Christ was crucified until life was mani- 
 festly extinct. 
 
 Even on the supposition that he was not dead 
 whoii he was laid in the sepulchre, and that while 
 there he revived and arose, how was it possible for 
 one who had hung in agony so long on the cross, 
 and whose hands as well as side had been pierced, 
 to remove the great stone which obstructed the 
 entrance of the sepulchre, or to escape the vigi- 
 lance of the guard ? 
 
 It is certainly more difficult to believe that he 
 could, than that he was dead when taken down from 
 the cross ; and he who would account for the fact 
 that the body was missing, on the supposition that 
 he had revived from the syncope consequent on his 
 suspension from the cross, and had forced his way 
 out of the sepulchre, and frightened away the sol- 
 diers who guarded its entrance, is disqualified by a 
 prejudiced judgment for weighing probable evidence. 
 He may vaunt himself on his philosophic or scien- 
 tific culture ; but had he been an eye-witness of the 
 crucifixion ; had he seen the body when it was 
 wrapped in grave clothes, and seen where it was 
 laid, and how the sepulchre was alike secured against 
 either robbery or violence, and what kind of a 
 guard had been stationed there, he would have per- 
 ceived, as did the priests and pharisees themselves, 
 that there was but one explanation left for all 
 those who were not disposed or prepared to admit 
 
 3 
 
26 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 that Christ had fulfilled his own prediction of him- 
 self. 
 
 Either that body was in some way clandestinely 
 removed ; or Christ rose from the dead. 
 
 If it was removed, it must have been so by^the 
 agency either of the friends, or the enemies of 
 Christ. One who might have been regardless of 
 his living teachings, and indifferent to his end, could 
 hardly have had a thought about the disposition of 
 his dead body ; much less subjected himself to the 
 trouble and risk of attempting its removal. 
 
 Yet it is quite as certain that they who opposed 
 his mission, who sought his death, and exulted over 
 his fate, would not, by making way with the body, 
 aim to make it appear that they had indeed mur- 
 dered the Son of God ; and that the disciples whom 
 they had opposed and reviled were worthy of all 
 credit and honour. Or, if they had maliciously 
 aimed to revive the hopes of the disciples only to 
 subject them at last to deeper mortification and dis- 
 grace, they would of course at some opportune 
 moment have produced the body. 
 
 Thus, we are led necessarily to examine the dis- 
 ciples themselves ; nor would we fail to weigh well 
 the charge which was brought against them. If 
 that body was stolen it was stolen by them : no one 
 else would have done it. 
 
 But no reasonable man ever acts without a 
 motive ; and we can conceive of none which might 
 have influenced them to take away the body : nor, 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 27 
 
 by so doing, could they have hoped to gain any 
 credit to the story of Christ's resurrection, when, 
 so long as it was in their possession, it could only 
 have reminded them of the utter falsity of his own 
 words. 
 
 Besides ; it was the time of the Passover, and 
 about the period of the full of the moon. Jeru- 
 salem was thronged, and the sepulchre exposed to 
 observation. Hence, had the disciples consented 
 to take away the body, they must have been devoid 
 of ordinary forethought to have hoped to succeed. 
 
 They must have known, moreover, that the 
 sepulchre was strongly guarded by a band of 
 Roman soldiers. Is it to be supposed, then, that 
 they who had so lately fled from the band that had 
 arrested their Master ; who, notwithstanding their 
 protestations of inviolable attachment to him, were 
 so terrified that they not only forsook him, but 
 denied their discipleship, and sought to hide them- 
 selves ; that men so timid and irresolute as they 
 must have been, should on a sudden re-unite, and 
 concert measures to surprise the guard, force the 
 sepulchre, and carry off the body of their crucified 
 Master ? 
 
 Unless bereft of reason, they could hardly 
 have engaged in an enterprise so fool-hardy as that 
 in which success would have been as fatal to their 
 cause, as failure had been to their lives ! 
 
 No ; the disciples were few and friendless, de- 
 jected and powerless. The crucifixion had dashed 
 
^8 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 their hopes, and crushed them all to the dust. They 
 had little, or rather, no expectation of the fulfil- 
 ment of their Lord's prediction ; all their thoughts 
 were painfully absorbed in the apprehension of 
 being themselves arrested, and put to death as the 
 followers of the Nazarene. As soldiers are wont 
 to flee, each one intent on his own safety, when 
 their leader is slain, so had the disciples all dis- 
 persed when they saw the great stone rolled against 
 the mouth of the sepulchre. 
 
 Let it be granted, however, that in their own 
 private view they had some interest in taking 
 away the body ; and that, being as crafty as they 
 were cowardly, they watched their opportunity, 
 came to the sepulchre at an hour when no one hap- 
 pened to pass, and found all the guards asleep. 
 
 But the sepulchre was not a mound of soft and 
 yielding earth: it had been hewn out in a rock,* 
 and the stone with which the entrance was secured 
 was unusually heavy, and carefully sealed ;t audit 
 is not more obvious that they must remove the stone 
 before effecting their object, than that they could 
 not have rolled it away without occasioning some 
 little disturbance. 
 
 Moreover ; though one might naturally suppose 
 that persons in so great danger, as were the dis- 
 ciples, of being surprised by the guard, would 
 have been as expeditious as possible, and taken up 
 the body just as they found it ; yet they did, and 
 
 * Matt. xxii. 60. f Matt. xxii. 60, 66. 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 29 
 
 this, too, amid the darkness of the cave, what is 
 not usual when a body is disinterred ; what could 
 have been of no advantage to them, and must needs 
 have delayed them. Before they took the body, 
 they divested it of its grave-clothes, and laid them 
 in separate parcels around the sepulchre !* 
 
 It is not probable, however, that the guards slept. 
 Their's was no familiar post of duty ; nor were 
 they ignorant of the purport of their charge. 
 Stationed where they had never been before, and 
 at the mouth of that sepulchre which but a few 
 hours before had attracted the gaze of the multi- 
 tude, it is more reasonable to conclude that they 
 were animated by a thrilling curiosity, or excited 
 by the fears of a superstitious prompting, rather 
 than at all disposed to slumber. 
 
 That without an exception all should have fallen 
 asleep when they were stationed there for so ex- 
 traordinary a purpose, to see that that body was 
 not stolen, lest it should be said that the crucified 
 Jesus had risen from the dead, may be possible ; 
 but it is not credible : especially when it is consid- 
 ered that these guards were subjected to the severest 
 discipline in the world. It was death for a Roman 
 sentinel to sleep on his post. Yet these guards 
 were not executed ; nor were they deemed culpable 
 even by the rulers, wofully chagrined and exasper- 
 ated as they must have been by the failure of their 
 plan for securing the body. 
 
 * John XX. 6, 7. 
 
30 THE RESURIIECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 But as the Roman discipline was so severe, 
 if the guards had fallen asleep, it is not likely that 
 they would have acknowledged it : it is incredible 
 that they should have voluntarily made such a con- 
 fession ; it is certain they did not. 
 
 Recovering from the death-like terror into which 
 they were all thrown by the appearance of the 
 angel, who rolled back the stone from the mouth of 
 the sepulchre, and sat upon it, some of the guard 
 " went into the city, and showed unto the chief 
 priests all that was done ; and when they were as- 
 sembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, 
 they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, 
 Say ye, his disciples came by night and stole him 
 away while we slept ; and if this come to the 
 governor's ears, we will persuade him, and secure 
 you:"* thus anticipating the very objection which 
 would have occurred to the watch, well knowing, as 
 they did, that they were amenable, not to them, but 
 to Pilate. " So they took the money, and did as 
 they were taught :" ^. e. they were bribed to say 
 what they knew to be false, were instigated by the 
 priests and elders to propagate a shameless and 
 ridiculous falsehood. 
 
 Such, however, is only a specimen of the subter- 
 fuges to which Infidelity is often constrained to re- 
 sort. Absurdity may be more easily embraced 
 than obnoxious truth admitted. Nonsense is the 
 perfection of reason when moral demonstration 
 conflicts with selfish interests. 
 
 » Matt, xxviii. 11-15. 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 31 
 
 It is curious that these priests and elders should 
 have professed to rely, and aimed to persuade their 
 countrymen to rely, on the testimony of a heathen 
 guard, and that concerning what had taken place 
 while they were avowedly asleep. 
 
 It was reasonable to suppose that they were at 
 least over-anxious, and sorely pressed for evidence ; 
 but it is not more preposterous than some of the 
 hypotheses of infidel philosophy at the present day ; 
 it is in entire harmony with the fact that some will 
 now rely on the testimony of a Celsus, or a Julian, 
 rather than on that of a Moses, or a Paul. It shows 
 us what infidelity is, and ever must be — a sheer ne- 
 gation of truth, void of all foundation for its own 
 theories, and deriving its conclusions from unten- 
 able premises. 
 
 It will be observed that the priests and elders 
 did not themselves say that the disciples came by 
 night and stole the body : this would have been to 
 betray too much solicitude, and might have exposed 
 them to some embarrassing questions. They told 
 the soldiers to say this : " Say ye ;' well knowing, 
 as they did, that by often repeating what is false, 
 men not unfrequently come to regard it as true ; 
 that the people are always forw^ard to adopt the 
 first version of any occurrence ; and that if this 
 story could but be rendered current among them, 
 they would be only the more prejudiced against the 
 disciples, and the less disposed to inquire into the 
 facts in the case. 
 
32 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 The common mind in all ages has been more 
 easily swayed by dogmatism and effrontery than 
 duly influenced by argument and reason ; and when 
 a lie accords wuth one's predominant humour or 
 favours selfish gratification, there will never be 
 wanting enough to embrace it, though on reflection it 
 might be seen to involve a combination of impossible 
 circumstances, perhaps an egregious absurdity. 
 
 If it may not be admitted that the greater the lie 
 the more readily will it be believed by the unthink- 
 ing; yet it is on this principle of human nature 
 that the showman presumes, when, through the 
 medium of his paid agents, he contrives to dupe 
 the credulous, and augment his receipts. In this 
 way, too, we may account for the fact that so many 
 preposterous dogmas and lying wonders are re- 
 garded by not a few at the present day as Chris- 
 tian verities. Put into circulation by designing 
 priests or others, they have been repeated, and 
 even impressed in all their naked falsity on the 
 susceptible mind of childhood, until they have 
 come to be believed : just as the story of the theft 
 was currently reported among the Jews so late as 
 the date of John's Gospel. 
 
 In various relations, and for different ends, 
 shrewd men often contrive to make others believe 
 what they themselves know to be false ; and it is in 
 this way that some get inty oflices of rule, and that 
 others suddenly become rich. 
 
 That the Jewish rulers did not believe what they 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 33 
 
 instructed and bribed the soldiers to say, is almost 
 self-evident. If they did, why were not the disciples 
 at once arrested and examined ? For such an act 
 as was imputed to them involved a serious offence 
 against the existent authorities. Why were they 
 not compelled to give up the body ? Or, in the 
 event of their being unable to exculpate themselves 
 from the charge, why were they not punished for 
 their crime ? 
 
 If the Jewish rulers could effect the condemna- 
 tion and death of Christ, they surely have power 
 enough to arraign his disciples for having broken 
 the seal which had been authoritatively set on the 
 door of the sepulchre, and thereby frustrated their 
 own precautions to secure the body. If they have 
 caused it to be rumoured that the body was stolen, 
 they are bound to make it appear, if not from a re- 
 gard to their own authority, at least for the sake 
 of their own reputation ; and if they do not, they 
 stand before the eye of the whole community, self- 
 convicted of falsehood and slander. 
 
 But so far from there being any proof that the 
 disciples on this account were brought to justice, it 
 is no where intimated that the rulers even attempted 
 to substantiate the charge. 
 
 It cannot be said that they really had no inter- 
 est in the final disposition of the body ; and that, 
 whatever interest there might have been in the 
 event, it would soon subside, as all popular excite- 
 ments usually do. This, be it considered, differed 
 
34 THE RESUREECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 from any occurrence that had ever agitated the 
 mind of the people. 
 
 Amid all the scenes through which the Jewish 
 people had passed, all the extraordinary events 
 wdiich had marked their history, there was no par- 
 allel to the crucifixion of Jesus ; and amid all the 
 various miracles which had been WTOught by their 
 prophets, nothing could have been so strange to 
 them, and especially to the rulers who had been so 
 intensely anxious, so particularly careful to seal 
 and guard the sepulchre, as that the dead body of 
 Jesus which they had seen laid there, and knew to 
 be there when they set their watch, should now be 
 missing. 
 
 If the people who had thronged the cross with 
 mingled feelings of grief and indignation must now 
 have gazed in awe and wonder at the vacant sepul- 
 chre, it is hardly possible that the priests and rulers 
 of the Jews should have been unconcerned when 
 they thought of the mysterious disappearance of 
 that corpse. It was their dread of having it even 
 whispered that Christ had risen according to his 
 own declaration, that had led them to seal the great 
 stone, and throw around it a strong guard of Roman 
 soldiers ; and if so be that the sepulchre has been 
 invaded, and the body stolen, much more must this 
 same dread of having it said that Christ is risen, 
 for which, indeed, the missing body now affords a 
 pretext, have impelled them to search out, and 
 arrest the instigators of so audacious a scheme. 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 35 
 
 If any men were ever under the strongest pos- 
 sible inducements not to let a matter rest, but to 
 ferret out and prosecute it to the utmost extent of 
 the law, it was these same priests and rulers. 
 
 Let them lose no time in proving the story which 
 they have originated, lest they should betray their 
 true features to the gaze of the populace ; nay, lest 
 the disciples themselves should gain a priceless ad- 
 vantage over them in the controversy which is soon 
 to convulse society, and upheave the consolidated 
 opinions of ages. 
 
 Already have the disciples heard of the theft 
 which is imputed to them ; and they have not only 
 contradicted the story, they have branded the origi- 
 nators of it with public infamy : for they have 
 published to the world that the priests and elders 
 actually bribed the soldiers to say what they knew 
 to be false, and could not have known to be true 
 when they were all asleep ! 
 
 Strange as it may seem, though the report which 
 they had so solicitously aimed to preclude, was soon 
 after the disappearance of the body rife in the 
 Jewish community ; yet all that the priests and 
 rulers did with the disciples was to command them 
 that they should not teach in the name of Jesus. 
 They were afterwards repeatedly charged with dis- 
 obedience to this command ; but nothing was ever 
 alleged against them on the ground of the story 
 which had become current among the Jews ; though 
 the apostles had at last plainly declared in the 
 
36 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 presence of the whole Jewish sanhedrim that Christ 
 rose from the dead. 
 
 It is conclusive, therefore, that what the soldiers 
 said was a sheer invention of the rulers, as mali- 
 cious and shameless as it was absurd. It was 
 designed to forestall popular opinion respecting the 
 event, and to preclude all inquiry into facts ; and 
 it is not at all improbable that if any one of those 
 rulers had been privately questioned as to the story, 
 he would have disclaimed all agency in it ; and it 
 may be expressed his profound surprise that the 
 soldiers could say so. Unprincipled rulers, whether 
 in the church or the state, often know but too well 
 how to compass sinister ends without disclosing 
 their own hand. 
 
 Having originated the story, these priests and 
 elders would have left it with the soldiers without 
 a word, for or against it, to work its mischievous 
 way into wide-spread circulation ; and they might 
 not have cared had there been only in private some 
 diversity of opinion. 
 
 But to hear it whispered that He whom they 
 had executed as an impostor and a blasphemer had 
 risen from the dead ; and at last, to hear it pro- 
 claimed that they had " killed the Prince of life 
 whom God hath raised from the dead," no wonder 
 they w^ere exasperated as well as troubled. . It was 
 to be reminded of their suborned witnesses, and of 
 the price of blood which they had themselves paid, 
 and of their own horrid imprecations upon them- 
 
THE MTSSINCJ BODY. 37 
 
 selves and their children ! '' Did we not straitly 
 command you that ye should not teach in this 
 name ? And behold, ye have filled Jerusalem Avith 
 your doctrine, and intend to bring tliis mans blood 
 upon us f"^ 
 
 Wretched men ! who can believe that they would 
 not have exposed the theft, and overwhelmed the 
 apostles with shame and confusion of face, had it 
 
 wer 
 
 ? 
 
 only been in their po 
 
 It may be thought that if they did not accredit 
 their own explanation of the missing body, they 
 would have embraced the apostles' doctrine : this 
 by no means follows. One may not be able to 
 make out his case, and yet be unprepared to espouse 
 the opposite cause, be rather only the more preju- 
 diced against the right in consequence of his own 
 failure. If actuated by motives which will not 
 endure scrutiny, or swayed by selfish interests, he 
 will be exasperated rather than convinced by any 
 array of fact and argument : such is ofttimes the 
 unreasonableness and the obstinacy of our nature. 
 
 With these rulers of the Jews, it had long been, 
 and was then, and perhaps, more than ever, a strug- 
 gle for pre-eminence and rule. As hypocritical 
 and unscrupulous as they were bigoted, and now 
 fearing the loss of their authority over the people, 
 they cannot hear, much less examine, a case which, 
 if it proves anything, proves too much for those 
 who were accessory to the recent tragedy. 
 
 * Acts V. 2. 
 4 
 
38 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 To retract the error, or to acknowledge the 
 wrong, is always too hard for those who love the 
 ways and wages of iniquity more than truth and 
 justice ; and above all, for men who at every step 
 of their elevation to power and rule have violated 
 some principle of truth and right, and thus har- 
 dened their hearts. 
 
 But if men could put Christ to death, notwith- 
 standing the astonishing and gracious miracles 
 which they knew he had wrought, and some of 
 which, in all probability, they had themselves seen, 
 it is evident that they were not in a suitable frame 
 of mind to consider the proofs of his having risen 
 from the dead. 
 
 If any could reject Christ even when they ac- 
 tually saw him raise Lazarus from the grave, it is 
 morally certain that they would not be forward to 
 conclude that he himself had risen from the dead 
 because his body was not to be found ; and much 
 more that they would not believe that he had risen, 
 simply on the testimony of his disciples, against 
 whom they must have been as prejudiced and em- 
 bittered as they had been against Christ himself. 
 
 The same principle which led them to reject 
 Christ's miracles while he was alive, would Necessa- 
 rily incline them to blind their eyes to all the evi- 
 dences of his mission, after he was seen to be 
 dead. 
 
 Hating his doctrines, how could they be con- 
 vinced by his works ? Having thirsted for his 
 
THE MISSING BODY. 39 
 
 blood, how could they calmly entertain the thought 
 that he had come to life again ? 
 
 With such views and feelings, all darkened by 
 hate, and inflamed by bigotry, they have nothing 
 to hope, but everything to fear, if so be that Christ 
 has risen from the dead. And if any among them 
 should yet be convinced, and brought to believe in 
 Christ, it will be by a miracle of mercy ^ such as 
 He who prayed for his murderers alone knows how 
 to invoke ; and such as One must himself have risen 
 from the dead, to be able to perform. 
 
40 THE KESUIUIECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 FMESUMPTIVJE PROOFS OF CHRIST'S RESTIRRECTION. 
 
 If, then, notwithstanding the precautions which 
 had been instituted against either the forcible or 
 clandestine removal of the body, it was not to be 
 found in the sepulchre on the morning of the third 
 day after the crucifixion ; if neither the enemies 
 nor the friends of Jesus either would or could have 
 taken it away ; if the priests and elders could not 
 have accredited the story they had put into circu- 
 lation, and there were ample reasons of a moral 
 nature why they should have been most reluctant 
 to inquire into the facts in the case, it is to be pre- 
 sumed that the prediction, which Christ had been 
 known to utter, was literally fulfilled. 
 
 There is no intrinsic absurdity in the supposi- 
 tion ; nor was such an event impossible. He who 
 created man has certainly the power to restore a 
 dead man to life ; and if God sent Christ into the 
 world, he could as easily have raised him from the 
 dead, and might have done so, had it been neces- 
 sary to any wise end. 
 
 Viewing Christ as a mere man, it is possible that 
 he might have been endowed with prescience ; and 
 
PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 41 
 
 possible, considering the end of his mission, that 
 he might have been raised from the dead to attest 
 the truth of all that he had been commissioned to 
 promulge. 
 
 But if he was indeed the G-od-man, it was just as 
 possible for him to reanimate the body which was 
 laid in the sepulchre of Joseph, and in that same 
 body to resume his humanity, as it was for him, be- 
 fore his crucifixion, by virtue of the Divinity veiled 
 in his form, to remand the soul, and revivify the 
 body of a man who had been dead four days ; nor 
 is it more difficult in the one case than in the other, 
 but alike impossible, for us to conceive how this 
 might have been done. 
 
 Moreover ; it is not improbable that a person 
 who had been born of an immaculate conception, 
 and three times declared, by an audible voice from 
 heaven, to be the Son of God ; who had never ut- 
 tered what was not true, never spoken a word that 
 he was constrained to recall or regret, never per- 
 formed a work that did not at once attest his supe- 
 rity over all preceding prophets sent of God, and 
 his power over the laws of the material creation ; 
 who foresaw his own death, and might in his hour 
 of trial have summoned legions of angels to his 
 rescue : it is not improbable that such a person 
 would verify his own prediction, and rise victorious 
 over the assaults of death and hell. 
 
 Since the world began, no man had of himself 
 risen from the grave ; but no one before this same 
 
 4 * 
 
42 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Jesus had ever been seen to unite in himself the 
 attributes of a God with the properties of a man ; 
 and hence, had he on the third day after his cruci- 
 fixion risen from the dead, the act itself would have 
 been in perfect harmony with the most extraordi- 
 nary of all lives, a life of miracles. 
 
 In itself the act could hardly have been more 
 wonderful than that, by a touch, or by a word, he 
 should h^ve opened the eyes of men who had been 
 born blind, cured multitudes of the most desperate 
 diseases to which humanity is subject, fed five thou- 
 sand people by multiplying a few loaves of bread, 
 stilled the tempest, walked on the sea, cast out 
 devils, raised the dead. 
 
 And has He gone down to an undistinguishable 
 grave, he, who while he lived knew no sin, and who, 
 in the hour of his death, suffered mental agony 
 such as no man had ever borne ? Was there a pe- 
 culiarity in his death even to the mind of heathen- 
 dom ? And is there no significancy in his burial ? 
 Can it be that the grave has closed for ever over 
 him to whom all the prophets had borne witness ; 
 and to whom also the expectation of the world had 
 been so long directed, whose birth had been an- 
 nounced by angels, whose Godlike acts had been con- 
 fessed by devils, at whose command all nature bowed 
 as in the presence of her God, and with whose ex- 
 piring cry nature herself sympathized ? 
 
 If not one of his various miracles had failed of 
 its designed end, shall the malice of his enemies 
 
PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 43 
 
 defeat his well known prediction ? If none of his 
 miracles were, as was the case with all heathen 
 prodigies, performed for trifling ends, but all in- 
 volved the most important truths, and alike tended 
 to subserve the development of one vast scheme of 
 human redemption, then was the way prepared, and 
 a necessity laid, for a yet greater miracle than he 
 had ever wrought, to wit ; the verification of his own 
 2Jlighted word that he would rise from the dead. 
 
 So it appears to us, as we reflect on the tenor of 
 his history ; and so it should appear to any one, 
 who, after the lapse of ages, would be prepared to 
 examine, or can be competent to weigh with pre- 
 cision and candour, the facts in the case. 
 
 He must be strangely obtuse who can be imposed 
 on by the modern infidel's position that the very 
 desire of immortality disqualifies one from exer- 
 cising an impartial judgment in relation to Christ's 
 history : a position which, if it be not too fallacious 
 to be formally exposed, must be seen to operate 
 with more logical force against his qualifications for 
 examining a matter which clashes with his selfish 
 interests, and may foreshadow his doom. 
 
 To be indifi'erent in a matter of so great moment ; 
 to divest oneself of all concern as to the result, if 
 indeed that were possible, is to neglect all inquiry; 
 to have one's mind pre-occupied with earth-born 
 interests, to surrender one's being to casual impres- 
 sions and fortuitous developments. Or, to bring 
 to such an inquiry a mind swayed by evil passions 
 
44 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 and darkened by prejudice, is to narrow one's range 
 of thought ; to overlook what is logical in reason- 
 ing, and sound in testimony, and see only what is 
 objectionable to lust and inexplicable to ignorance. 
 
 In all inquiries of a moral nature there must be 
 a love of truth, and a desire to ascertain the truth, 
 whatever its relations and demands ; and in refer- 
 ence to the miraculous fact in question, a fact which 
 cannot be admitted without admitting the doctrines 
 which grow out of it, doctrines confessedly at 
 variance with the mind and will of the flesh, it is 
 not to be supposed that an inquirer is favourably 
 biased in his examination of the fact, when he does 
 but avail himself of all the lights within his reach, 
 and proceeds with a beating heart and docile mind 
 to the place where they sepulchred the body of the 
 Crucified ! 
 
 We do not prejudge a case when we but take into 
 consideration what is essential to a right judgment. 
 We are not disqualified ourselves from judging of 
 a fact, when we have but ascertained whether there 
 was any probability of such an act. 
 
 A presumptive argument, though by no means 
 conclusive, is always desirable ; in some instances, 
 it is indispensable ; and in this, the want of it, were 
 fatal to belief in the alleged fact. 
 
 But as, in canvassing the probability of a revela- 
 tion from God, we must take into consideration his 
 perfections as discerned through his works, and 
 man's wants as developed in consciousness, so is it 
 
PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 45 
 
 necessary in considering the question whether 
 Christ rose from the dead, to have some knowledge 
 of his character and doings; of his life, and of his 
 death: yea, also, and of what man is by nature, 
 and of what man needs, but what by nature he can 
 never reach. 
 
 It was no question of trivial or transient interest 
 how that sealed and guarded sepulchre was rifled 
 of death's treasure! The hopes and fears of men 
 to the latest time are all involved in its solution: 
 not simply because the body that was so securely 
 laid there can no where be found, but because the 
 world had never before seen such a man : Jesus of 
 Nazareth who was crucified, dead and entombed! 
 
 Had he not been The Man among men, as he is 
 represented to have been by his contempora- 
 ries, this story of his resurrection might be philo- 
 sophically classed with the myths and fables of 
 heathen mythology. Viewed apart from the tenor 
 of his teachings, the significance of his works, and 
 the sinless perfection of his character, his predic- 
 tion was presumptuous; and separate from the na- 
 ture and design of his death, his resurrection was 
 uncalled for, and could have been of no more sig- 
 nificancy to us, no more worthy of credence, than 
 the reported resurrection of any other man would 
 have been. 
 
 Hence, in their assaults on Christianity, men 
 usually begin by questioning the divinity of Christ: 
 then, they doubt his atonement; and afterwards 
 
46 THE KESUKRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 pervert his sayings, and explain away his doings, 
 until at last they are prepared to look upon him 
 as but a man, having no higher relation to the age 
 in which he lived than they themselves bear to this. 
 
 As such, however, there was no more reason for 
 his being raised from the dead than in the case of 
 any preceding prophet; and there was no purpose 
 to be answered by his resurrection that might not 
 have been accomplished by any of his previous 
 works: for, if such a miracle as he performed at 
 the grave of Lazarus was not sufficient to attest 
 the truth of his doctrines, his rising from his own 
 grave would carry no more conviction to those who 
 had not then believed. 
 
 If he rose, therefore, it must have been for a 
 higher purpose than could have been answered by 
 either the acts of his life, or the passive sufferings 
 of his death: to wit, that he might be ''declared to 
 be the Son of God with power," and might pro- 
 claim to the heirs of a fallen humanity the joyful 
 tidings of expiated sin through faith in that blood 
 that was shed upon the cross. 
 
 As there was no necessity for his incarnation 
 unless Christ came to do what no mere man could 
 have been rendered competent to do; so, if he was 
 not "delivered for our offences," all the ends of 
 his mission could have been answered without his 
 resurrection. 
 
 We should have had the same true sayings of 
 God, the same code of morals, the same parabolic 
 
PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 47 
 
 representations, tlie same prophetic intimations of 
 future judgment, the same example of patience and 
 resignation, of purity and love, the same lesson of 
 self-sacrifice ; and in the miracles which he wrought, 
 the same assurance that God could raise us up at 
 the last day : in a word the same revelation of the 
 Fatherhood of God, and of the responsibility and 
 immortality of the soul, but not the same evidence 
 that he himself was "the Son of God," and much 
 less "the Lamb of God." 
 
 He might still have been regarded, and justly so, 
 as the greatest of prophets — the most heroic of 
 martyrs; and his memory been still cherished in 
 the hearts of the good; but who could have be- 
 lieved that he died a sacrifice for sin? Who could 
 have looked for deliverance from the curse of the 
 law, if he who offered up his life on Calvary had 
 continued under the power of death, himself the 
 conquered instead of the conqueror? Where would 
 have been the evidence that God had accepted his 
 sacrifice, or that we, through him, could obtain 
 eternal life? Must not the Jew have been con- 
 firmed in his unbelief; and his disciples all been 
 scattered, never again to be gathered in faith and 
 hope around their crucified Master? Most conclu- 
 sively reasoned the apostle when he said, "If 
 Christ be not risen then is our preaching vain ; and 
 your faith is also vain; ye are yet in your sins."* 
 
 The logical connection which subsists between 
 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 14. 
 
48 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 the mysterious constitution of his person, and the 
 end of his resurrection is as obvious to us as it was 
 to the Jewish rulers, that if he should indeed rise 
 from the grave they would stand convicted of hav- 
 ing murdered the Son of God ; and hence the mir- 
 acle of his resurrection has been disputed by those 
 who have been unwilling to recognize in his won- 
 drous pathway through Judea, the foot-prints of a 
 God in human form; while they who admit the fact 
 of his resurrection, and yet deny his Incarnate Di- 
 vinity, act inconsistently with their own principle 
 that he was sent into the world merely to announce 
 a clearer revelation of the mind and will of God; 
 inconsistently, also, with the apostles' adoring 
 views of Christ, on whose testimony to the fact 
 itself they must of course rely, if they believe that 
 he was raised from the dead. 
 
 But whatever presumptive arguments in favour 
 of his having risen from the sepulchre on the day 
 which he had specified, may be now gathered from 
 pondering the records of his history in the light of 
 ancient prophecy, and with the aid of inspired 
 commentators, no such advantage had the disciples 
 at the time of his death. Not that none such ex- 
 isted; not that Christ had not duly instructed 
 them, and even told them what was before them as 
 well as himself; not that they had failed to see in 
 him all the radiant evidences of the Messiah of 
 their prophecies; but that in accordance with the 
 notions of their age they had mistaken the nature 
 
PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 49 
 
 of his kingdom; and, owing to their consternation 
 and distress when Christ was so maltreated, that 
 they could not calmly reflect on the import of his 
 words. 
 
 Men, thrown as they were, and that suddenly, 
 into the midst of a frantic rabble, seeing their 
 blessed Master stretched on the cross, and knowing 
 not how soon they themselves might be arrested 
 and arraigned before the same unjust tribunal, 
 could not have been cheered even by their own rec- 
 ollections of Christ's words which the rulers had 
 employed to justify themselves in putting him to 
 death. 
 
 Even at the present day, men, through fear of 
 personal difficulties, often lose sight of principles, 
 and under the influence of preconceived views, mis- 
 interpret the plainest words of Scripture. 
 
 Though we may understand the import of Christ's 
 prediction, it is not strange that the disciples did 
 not. Though it is essential that we should under- 
 stand who it was that uttered such a prediction, 
 that we may be competent to judge whether its ful- 
 filment was at all probable, yet as the disciples un- 
 derstood it not, it is certain that they could not 
 have ascribed to Christ so extraordinary a predic- 
 tion, had he not uttered it, or they would not have 
 recorded their own stupidity and despondence: 
 and it is certain that they could not have originated 
 an unfounded report of his having risen, when, if 
 they did not understand his prediction, they could 
 
 5 
 
50 THE RESUKIIECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 not have been expecting him to rise; much less 
 would they have told the world that, though they, 
 his professed followers, had lost sight of their Mas- 
 ter's words, his enemies remembered them, while 
 the fact that some of their rulers guarded the sep- 
 ulchre because they thought that the disciples 
 might remember and take advantage of this predic- 
 tion, shows clearly that it was not a shrewd after- 
 thought of the disciples to secure credence to the 
 report that Christ had risen. 
 
 But if a person who had so lived and so died as 
 Christ had done, should rise from the grave, it may 
 reasonably be supposed that, while the event itself 
 would be attended with no ordinary phenomena, he 
 himself would demonstrate his identity in ways, 
 and by means, which could leave no doubt in the 
 minds of his disciples as to the fact itself: that he 
 would come to them as he had been wont, accost 
 them in familiar tones, hush their fears, animate 
 their courage, clear up their darkened apprehen- 
 sions, enlighten them in all things pertaining to 
 his kingdom, and qualify them to carry on the 
 work which he had consecrated by his blood, and 
 attested by his resurrection. 
 
 But whatever may have been his character, and 
 his works, we need something more than mere pre- 
 sumptions before we can believe that he rose from 
 the dead: nothing less than facts which cannot be 
 disproved; and arguments which will admit of not 
 even a plausible refutation. 
 
PRESUMPTIVE PROOFS OF THE RESURRECTION. 51 
 
 We shall not, we cannot believe it: it is too 
 marvellous, £ts indeed everything about this same 
 Jesus is, to be accredited, unless attested by evi- 
 dence which cannot be mistaken; unless accompa- 
 nied by signs which cannot be logically explained 
 on any ground save that of the miraculous fact it- 
 self; which must be unanswerably conclusive as to 
 the fact, unless there is nothing in history, no one 
 worthy of trust, and no man who can confide either 
 in his neighbour's testimony, or in his own senses. 
 
52 THE HESUllilECTli»x\ OF JESUS CIUIIST. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POSITIVE EVinENCE. 
 
 Our blessed Lord did not come forth from the 
 sepulchre in the presence of an assembled multi- 
 tude. Had it been so stated, it would not have 
 been in unison with that studious avoidance of un- 
 necessary publicity which had marked his '^diole 
 life ; while it would have betrayed in the narrators 
 of the event a leaning to stage effect; and thus, 
 instead of being invested with a mysterious sublim- 
 ity — as it now is, the event would have been brought 
 down to the level of some earth-born marvel, such 
 as the heathen were fond of representing, or as 
 ghostly jugglery has been known to contrive. 
 
 But when he rose from the dead, no human eye 
 saw him, not even the soldiers who had been sta- 
 tioned before the sepulchre to watch the remains 
 of that solitary death-sleeper within its portals: 
 for -when they felt the earth quake, and saw the 
 angel, regardless alike of them and of the seal, in- 
 stantly remove the great stone barrier, and sit 
 thereon, they "became as dead men."* 
 
 Their flight, therefore, was consequent on their 
 fright; and hence, though they told the rulers of 
 
 * Matthew xxvii. 4. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 53 
 
 what had happened, yet as they had seen no one 
 but the angel, and knew not what had become of 
 the body, they were the more easily induced to 
 adopt the explanation, and gratify the wishes of 
 those whom they knew might at any moment arrest 
 them for having deserted their post. 
 
 But the women who lingered so late at the sepul- 
 chre, and who had continued in their work of prepar- 
 ing to embalm the body until the shades of the Sab- 
 batic eve began to gather around them, could have 
 had no knowledge of the appointment of a guard, 
 or of the sealing of the great stone. 
 
 This was the work of the priests and rulers, 
 done, too, on the very day which they had so loudly 
 professed to reverence; but the women, we are told, 
 "rested according to the commandment:"* and 
 hence, as the Marys, together with Salome, whom 
 they either met or called to go with them at the 
 earliest dawn of the third day, were hastening to 
 the sepulchre, and probably that they might embalm 
 the body before any others could reach that spot to 
 perform the last office of bereaved affection, their 
 only apprehension was that they might not be able 
 to remove the stone which, according to their rec- 
 ollection, "was very great;" for they had seen it 
 placed there, and it was the last object on which 
 their eye had rested: thus "saying among them- 
 selves. Who shall roll us away the stone from the 
 door of the sepulchre ?"t 
 
 * Luke xxiii. 56. f Mark xvi. 3. 
 
 5 * 
 
54 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Imagine their surprise and fear, when, as they 
 drew nigh the sepulchre, "at the rising of the 
 sun," they perceived "that the stone was already 
 rolled away !"* 
 
 It was but natural for one of Mary Magdalene's 
 temperament to conclude that the body was stolen ; 
 and it is not improbable that she turned back and 
 hastened to tell Peter and " that other disciple " 
 what had happened : that " they had taken away 
 the Lord out of the sepulchre, "f 
 
 But the other Mary and Salome, we may sup- 
 pose, went on, and finding no obstruction at the 
 entrance, were just entering the sepulchre, when 
 they were affrighted by the sight of " a young man 
 sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white 
 garment :"i probably the same angel that had sat 
 on the great stone, and frightened away the keep- 
 ers, who, anticipating the object of their visit, said 
 unto them, " Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth who was 
 crucified : he is not here, for he is risen, as he said. 
 But go your way ; tell his disciples, and Peter, 
 that he goeth before you into Galilee : there shall 
 ye see him, as he said unto you."§ 
 
 Amazed and trembling " they went out quickly 
 and fled from the sepulchre ;" too agitated by con- 
 flicting emotions "to say anything to any man."|| 
 
 Joanna, who might have come in the moment 
 after they left, anticipated no difficulty in removing 
 
 * Mark xvi. 2-3. t ^^^^ ^x. 2. J Mark xvi. 5-6. 
 
 § Matt, xxviii. 6-6. Il Mark xvi. 8. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 55 
 
 the stone, as she was accompanied by other women ; 
 and might have expected, according to an agree- 
 ment made between them on the eve of the Sab- 
 bath, to meet there both Salome and the Marys. 
 She, however, saw that the stone was rolled away, 
 and that the body was not in the sepulchre. But 
 neither she nor either of her companions saw the 
 angel where he was seen by those who had pre- 
 ceded them. 
 
 - Yet while they were wrapped in amazement, 
 " Behold two men stood by them in shining gar- 
 ments ; and as they were afraid, and bowed their 
 faces to the earth, they said unto them. Why seek 
 ye the living among the dead ? He is not here, 
 but is risen : remember how he spake unto you 
 while he was yet in Galilee ; saying. The Son of 
 Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful 
 men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." 
 And they, it appears, remembered his word, and 
 retiring from the sepulchre communicated these 
 things to the disciples.* 
 
 No sooner had they gone, than John came, fol- 
 lowed by Peter whom he had '' outrun," so greatly 
 had their apprehensions been excited by what Mary 
 had told them. 
 
 But though John stooped down, and " looking 
 in saw the linen clothes, yet went he not in " until 
 Peter had gone in, and had seen "the linen clothes 
 and the napkin that was about his head, not lying 
 
 * Luke xxiii. 56 ; xxiv. 1-9. 
 
56 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a 
 place by itself."* 
 
 There was then no angel visible, and no Divine 
 communication heard ; and though Peter " won- 
 dered in himself at that which was come to pass,"t 
 it seems that neither he nor the other apostles at 
 that time knew the import of the Scripture that 
 Christ must rise from the dead.J 
 
 But with an interest how unutferable must "that 
 other disciple " have awaited the result of Peter's 
 examination of the sepulchre ; and with what sen- 
 timents of revived confidence in his blessed Lord's 
 prediction, must he afterwards have gone himself 
 into the sepulchre, for when he went in, lie saw and 
 believed. 
 
 Thus he was the first that ever believed in a 
 risen but unseen Saviour : the prototype of evan- 
 gelical faith, faith in Him " whom though now we 
 see him not, yet believing we rejoice with joy un- 
 speakable, and full of glory." 
 
 Such a circumstance could hardly have been ac- 
 cidental ; nor would it have occurred to a forger 
 of the visits to the sepulchre to represent John as 
 the first to believe ; and this too before the women, 
 who, though they had not seen Jesus, had been 
 expressly told by an angel that Christ was risen. 
 
 But it was John that believed when he saw in 
 the careful disposition of the grave-clothes in which 
 Jesus had been shrouded sufficient proof to his 
 
 * John XX. 3-7. f Luke xxiv. 12. % John xx. 8, 9. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 57 
 
 mind that the body had not been stolen or taken 
 away: John, "that other disciple," who at the 
 " last supper " had leaned on Jesus' bosom ; to 
 whose care Jesus, while hanging on the cross, had 
 committed his weeping mother ; who had taken her 
 to his own home, that she might not witness her 
 son's expiring agonies ; and if either of the disci- 
 ples on recovering from the shock of the crucifixion 
 should have been the first to recollect what Christ 
 had said, ''After three days I will rise again," 
 surely it was he, the loved and loving disciple ! 
 
 But there is a special message yet to be deliv- 
 ered to Peter, who was particularly named in the 
 communication which the angel made to Mary and 
 Salome ; and probably because it was this disciple 
 who had so flagrantly denied his Master. 
 
 Neither of these disciples, however, lingered at 
 the sepulchre : "they went away again into their 
 own home."* 
 
 And now Mary, who had previously informed 
 both John and Peter of what had happened, and 
 who of course had not been able to equal their 
 speed, reaches the sepulchre ; and she " stands 
 without at the sepulchre, weeping." If the body 
 has been taken away, she will sift the matter for 
 herself, and water the place where he had lain with 
 her tears. 
 
 But lo ! as "she stooped down, and looked into 
 the sepulchre, she saw two angels in white, sitting 
 
 * John XX. 10. 
 
58 THE RESUERECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where 
 the body of Jesus had lain." They asked her, 
 Why she wept ? " Because," said she, "they have 
 taken away my Lord, and I know not where they 
 have laid him." 
 
 Her grief was too deep to admit of her being 
 frightened as the other women had been when they 
 saw and heard "the angel;" but like one absorbed 
 in the object of her search, she turned away to look 
 elsewhere ; and seeing a person whom she supposed 
 to be the gardener, for the sepulchre was in a gar- 
 den, " She said unto him. Sir, if thou have borne 
 him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and 
 I will take him away." 
 
 The keeper of the garden, she thought, must 
 needs know something about the removal of the 
 body ; and in this state of mind, it is not surpris- 
 ing that she should not have recognized in him who 
 stood before her the risen Jesus ! 
 
 But when Jesus spoke again, and simply called 
 her by name, it was as if a blaze of light had burst 
 upon her vision, and a stream of joy overflowed her 
 heart. 
 
 '^ Rahhoni F' was all she could utter. But that 
 exclamation more truly than words could have ex- 
 pressed it, betokened her most unexpected recog- 
 nition of him whose body she would have embalmed : 
 her instantaneous faith, her holy love, and pure 
 devotion ; and with what glowing sentiments of 
 hope revived she would have detailed to him her 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 59 
 
 settled conviction that her eye and ear had not de- 
 ceived her, may be inferred from his reply : " Touch 
 me not, for I have not yet ascended to my Father.* 
 
 ■-■• John XX. 17. It is unnecessary in this connection to advert to 
 any of the numerous explanations which have been suggested by 
 different biblical critics. Even scholarly minds must differ in rela- 
 tion to this passage if they proceed on the supposition that there is 
 some mystical meaning in Christ's words on the occasion, or that 
 his resurrection body was not sensible to touch : or that it is neces- 
 sary to harmonize their explanations with some theological precon- 
 ception. But whether the Greek text in its grammatical construc- 
 tion should be strictly adhered to ,• or whether it will admit of a 
 tropical interpretation in consistency with reason, comes not now 
 within our province to inquire. In weighing the proofs of the res- 
 urrection, it is sufficient to view the text simply in its obvious con- 
 nections ; and especially, if it can be made to appear that it does 
 not conflict with the record of Christ's interviews with any other of 
 his disciples, and much less with his instructions to them immedi- 
 ately previous to his death. 
 
 It was but natural for one who had so bitterly mourned his cruel 
 death, and so anxiously awaited the dawn of the third day after his 
 burial to embalm the body, to be transported with wonder and de- 
 light on so unexpectedly meeting Jesus in the garden : just as it was 
 natural for the other Mary and Salome, who, though they ran from 
 the sepulchre with a design to tell the disciples what they had seen 
 and heard, as the angel had ordered them, to be so agitated in con- 
 sequence of the fright into which they had been thrown as to neglect 
 to deliver the message to some (probably John and Peter*) whom 
 they saw on their way ; and when Jesus met them in the way, — to 
 cast themselves at his feet in speechless awe of his resurrection- 
 presence ! But as Jesus said to them " be not afraid," so, in adapt- 
 ation to Mary's state of mind — absorbed as she was in the one 
 blessed thought of having found her buried and lost Kabboni, and 
 yet believing not for joy, — he said unto her, M^ //ou utttov, "Touch 
 me not :" there will be other opportunities of seeing me, and testing 
 the fact of my resurrection ; for I go not yet to the Father : lose no 
 time then ; but go, and tell my brethren that I am shortly to ascend 
 unto my Father and your Father — to my God, and your God. 
 * Mark xvi. 6, 7, 9 : John xx. 4. 
 
60 THE RESTJRKECTION OF JESUS CIIRTST. 
 
 Thus, though John was the first to believe in the 
 risen Jesus, Mary Magdalene was the first to whom 
 
 In appearing to the other Mary and Salome, his object seems to 
 have been to relieve their minds of all fear so as to prevent their 
 forgetting or neglecting to carry their important message from the 
 angel to the disciples ; and to this end he adopted the most suitable 
 means: graciously saluting them; calming their fears; dispelling 
 their doubts ; permitting them to " hold him by the feet," and to 
 worship him; and in confirmation of what the angel had said to 
 them, bidding them to go and tell his disciples from him that they 
 should see him in Galilee. So to convince a disciple who, in the 
 extremity of his grief, had abandoned his mind to the most hopeless 
 skepticism, he showed him his hands and his side ; and said to him : 
 " Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither 
 thy hand, and thrust it into my side ; and be not faithless but be- 
 lieving." But his object in so doing was to make him a faithful 
 and self-sacrificing witness of the resurrection — an Ajyostle. 
 
 Thus, if we overlook not his object in making himself known to 
 Mary, there will be no difficulty, we apprehend, in ascertaining the 
 drift of this passage : it was not only to disabuse her mind of the 
 erroneous impression that his death, as in the case of any mere man, 
 was his final departure from the world ; but that through her — as 
 the bearer of his message to the disciples, they might be in some 
 degree prepared to meet him : — the peculiar terms in which his mes- 
 sage was couched being so well adapted to preclude the idea that 
 Mary had seen the spirit of Jesus, instead of Jesus in person, and 
 consequently to recall to their minds the promise which he had 
 made to them on the eve of his betrayal — of coming to them again 
 before he should finally retire from their sight. " A little while, and 
 ye shall not see me ; and again a little while, and ye shall see me 
 because I go to the Father." (John xvi. 16.) "I am come forth 
 from the Father, and come into the world ; and again I leave the 
 world, and go to the Father." (John xvi. 28.) Thus teaching them 
 that his resurrection was but the harbinger of his ascension ; his 
 glorification no less essential to his nature and office than his resur- 
 rection ; and that on his return to his Father, all the gracious prom- 
 ises which he had made to them before his passion would be fulfilled. 
 See John xiv. Indeed, it is from the tenor of this message to the 
 disciples that, independently of the record, we might argue the 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 61 
 
 the risen Jesus appeared. Hers is the first name 
 that he pronounced after his resurrection ; and she 
 is the first to behold the risen Jesus ; for in ready 
 and joyous obedience to his command, she forthwith 
 departed from the sepulchre, and " told the disci- 
 ples that she had seen the Lord^ and that he had 
 spoken these things unto her."* 
 
 The next witnesses of the fact were probably the 
 "other Mary," and Salome whom Jesus might have 
 met in some retired spot, where, it is supposable, 
 they had halted for a moment to recover from the 
 effects of their speechless fright; and who said 
 unto them, " All hail ! Be not afraid : go tell 
 my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there 
 shall they see me."t 
 
 The next in order is Peter. In consequence of 
 what Joanna had related, and more particularly of 
 what Salome and the Marys had said, that the 
 Lord had appeared to them, he ran again to the 
 sepulchre.! 
 
 But though the grave-clothes were still lying 
 there as he had seen them before, he himself was 
 accosted by no angel, nor did he see Jesus. Thus 
 his second visit to the sepulchre was attended with 
 no more relief of mind than the first : he goes away 
 
 probability of his having appeared first to Mary ; and though some 
 of our contemporaries seem to adopt Dr. Robinson's harmony, we 
 see no good reason for supposing that Christ's appearance to the 
 other Mary and Salome was prior to his appearance to Mary at the 
 garden. 
 
 * John XX. 11-18. t Matt, xxviii. 9-10. % Luke xxiv. 12. 
 
62 THE RESUREECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 with the same throbbing heart — the same perplexed 
 and anguished thoughts. 
 
 Yet shortly after this, while he was all alone, 
 and pondering more deeply what had come to pass, 
 he was favoured by a visit from the risen Jesus ; 
 and thus became the first apostolic eye-witness to 
 the fact of Christ's resurrection.* 
 
 It is certain, according to the apostle Paul, that 
 he was seen by Cephas before any of the other 
 apostles saw him ; and to this end it was that Christ 
 had previously said to him : " Thou art Peter, and 
 upon this rock I build my church," to this end 
 also, that the angel had directed the women to tell 
 Mm in particular that Christ had risen, and that 
 he was afterwards the first to proclaim the gospel 
 to the Gentiles. 
 
 Peter's second visit to the sepulchre, though it 
 is still early, was probably the last that was made 
 by any of the disciples. There is now no further 
 occasion for going there. The body is no longer 
 where it was laid ; and strange reports are in cir- 
 culation : that angels have spoken to the women ; 
 that the Marys and Salome have seen the Lord, 
 and that he has at last appeared to Peter. 
 
 Those two disciples who are on their way home 
 to Emmaus have heard some of the reports ; and 
 while they are in great perplexity of mind, Jesus 
 joins them, and makes himself known to them in 
 a most convincing manner, having " expounded unto 
 
 * Luke xxiv. 34; 1 Cor. xv. 5. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 06 
 
 them in all the Scriptures the things concerning 
 himself," and as he sat at meat with them, having 
 taken bread, and blessed it, and broken it, and 
 given it to them, so that '^ their eyes were opened, 
 and they knew him, and he vanished out of their 
 sight."* 
 
 In the meantime, the other disciples, though they 
 have no doubt that the sepulchre is empty, are all, 
 with the single exception of John, most painfully 
 embarrassed in their judgments. They have re- 
 ceived the angelic messages as sent to them by the 
 women. Mary Magdalene has told them that she 
 has actually seen Jesus, and with beaming eyes of 
 joy has delivered his express message to them : 
 her statement is confirmed by that of the other 
 Mary and Salome ; but all is to them " as idle 
 tales." The additional testimony of Peter, who 
 has now come in, does not convince them : even 
 that of " the two disciples " who returned forthwith 
 from Emmaus to Jerusalem to tell them, "how 
 Jesus was known to them in the breaking of bread" 
 does not dispel their doubts. f 
 
 At last, and probably on the eve of the same 
 eventful day, while they were earnestly discussing 
 the matter with closed doors, Jesus 7«?92seZ/* appeared 
 in the midst of them. 
 
 But so terrified were they by his unexpected and 
 
 *■ Luke xxiv. 13-32. See ** Responses from the Sacred Oracles," 
 p. 367. 
 
 t Mark xvi. 9-13. 
 
64 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 inexplicable appearance to them that they could 
 not be assured that he was not a spirit until he told 
 them to behold him steadfastly, to see and to feel 
 both his hands, and his feet, still bearing the marks 
 of the nails which had pierced them ; and to con- 
 firm their faith, not only did he eat before them, 
 but " he opened the Scriptures to them " as he had 
 before done to "the two disciples;" and finally 
 breathed upon them : thus at once convincing them 
 of his living personal identity, and conferring upon 
 them the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 But Thomas was not then with the disciples, and 
 it is in vain that they afterwards attempt to con- 
 vince him that Jesus is risen. They can prove that 
 he has already been seen five times ; but Thomas 
 will not believe unless he can see the prints of the 
 nails, and put his fingers into the print of the nails, 
 and thrust his hand into the wounded side of Him 
 whom he knew to have been but lately crucified 
 and slain.* 
 
 It was therefore for the very purpose of con- 
 vincing this disciple, that Jesus, on the succeeding 
 first day of the week, appeared to the Eleven ; and 
 giving to Thomas, whom at first he upbraided for 
 his unbelief, the proofs which he had demanded, 
 extorted from him an involuntary tribute to his 
 own Divinity : ''My Lord, and my G-od!"f 
 
 * John XX. 24-25. See also, " Religion Teaching by Example," 
 p. 371. 
 
 t John XX. 26-28. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 65 
 
 His next appearance was at a distance of about 
 eighty miles from Jerusalem, in Galilee, whither a 
 number of the disciples had gone at the close of the 
 feast, and where in accordance with the promises 
 which had been made to them both before and after 
 the resurrection, they might have expected to see 
 the Lord. 
 
 He was standing on the shore the morning after 
 " Simon Peter, and Thomas, and Nathanael, and 
 the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples" 
 had been all the previous night unsuccessfully fish- 
 ing ; and as they were only two hundred cubits 
 from the land, they could see him, and hear him 
 speak.* 
 
 At his suggestion, they cast their net on the 
 right side of the ship, and soon enclosed a multi- 
 tude of fishes, so that they were not able to draw 
 it ; and yet it did not occur to them that it was 
 Jesus, so unexpected was the time and manner of 
 his appearance, until John whispered to Peter, — 
 "It is the Lord!" 
 
 How characteristic of this disciple is it that as 
 soon as he understood who it was, he " girt his 
 fisher's coat unto him, and cast himself into the 
 sea:" too impulsive to wait for the ship which 
 could make but little headway while the disciples 
 were " dragging the net with fishes." 
 
 On reaching the land, they saw " a fire of coals, 
 and fish laid thereon and bread;" and at Christ's 
 
 * Johnxxi. 1-8 J ib. 9-11. 
 6 * 
 
6o THE llESUllllECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 bidding, Peter by himself drew the net to land ; 
 nor was the net broken, thoughit "was fullof great 
 fishes, an hundred, and fifty, and three." 
 
 Jesus then invited them to "come and dine" 
 with him ; and though they knew that it must be 
 Jesus, that no one but he could have wrought the 
 miracle ; yet none of them could venture to ask 
 him. Who art thou ? so overawed were they ! — as 
 indeed it was but natural they should have been, 
 considering the miraculous draft of fishes wdiich 
 they had witnessed, and finding themselves on the 
 lonely shore of Tiberias thus unexpectedly brought 
 into the presence of him whom they had seen so 
 recently crucified on Calvary, and consigned in 
 death to the rock-ribbed sepulchre. 
 
 This was the third time that Jesus made himself 
 known to the body of the apostles ; and what a 
 favourable opportunity was that, as on the quiet 
 shore of that beautiful lake they partook with him 
 of the meal which he had super naturally provided, 
 to give to them the instructions which they needed, 
 and to prepare them for the work to which he had 
 called them. 
 
 It was there that Jesus addressed himself in so 
 striking and touching a manner to the disciple who 
 had denied him ; there, that his allusion to the be- 
 loved disciple gave occasion for the saying among 
 the brethren that " that disciple should not 
 die ;"* and there, that on parting with them, he 
 
 *■ John xxi. 23. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 6T 
 
 probably gave notice, and told them to communi- 
 cate the intelligence to others that, agreeably to his 
 promise, he would meet them on the mountain in 
 Galilee.* 
 
 It was in Galilee that he had spent the most of 
 his days : there it was too, that his divine utterances 
 had been so often heard : there the greater pro- 
 portion of his followers resided ; and this might 
 have been the reason for selecting a mountain in 
 Galilee as the most convenient place for a numer- 
 ous meeting. And thither in due time the brethren 
 repaired, in all " about five hundred," to whom he 
 showed himself openly, and gave ^'infallible signs" 
 of his resurrection. 
 
 They are called "brethren," because they were 
 " chosen witnesses ;" and Paul says, when writing 
 his first epistle to the Corinthians, that though some 
 of them had died, the greater part of these wit- 
 nesses were then alive, f 
 
 He also states, and as if it had been a fact well 
 known, that after this meeting in Galilee Jesus ap- 
 peared to the apostle James. J But this is a point of 
 subordinate moment, especially as the Evangelists 
 have recorded no conversation between the risen 
 Jesus and this apostle. 
 
 His last appearance was '' to all the apostles " 
 then living, Judas having "gone to his own 
 place :" his last personal interview with any of 
 
 «- Matt, xxviii. 16-17. t 1 Cor. sv. 6. J 1 Cor. xv. 7. 
 
68 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 the disciples was with " the eleven,"* and with none 
 but those who were soon to commence a work which 
 should not cease until he who is to be taken up 
 into heaven, shall so come in like manner as they 
 are soon to see him go into heaven. 
 
 Those who lived in Galilee have repaired again to 
 Jerusalem to be present at " the feast of weeks," — 
 the Pentecost ; and it is, we may suppose, the 
 fortieth day since his resurrection, that Jesus now 
 for the last time assembles those whom he had 
 chosen to be his apostles. 
 
 The place of meeting might have been, and pro- 
 bably was, where Jesus had for the last time par- 
 taken of the Passover with his disciples : where he 
 had also broken bread for them to eat, and handed 
 the cup for them to drink of in commemoration of 
 his dying love ; where they had so recently as- 
 sembled through fear of their Jewish enemies ; and 
 where they ate and drank with him after he rose 
 from the dead both on the evening of the day of 
 his resurrection, and on the evening of the succeed- 
 ing first day of the week. 
 
 Yes ; there and then it was that he dispelled all 
 lingering doubts from their minds, and confirmed 
 their faith, and cheered their hearts, and animated 
 their hopes, speaking to them more fully than he 
 
 * The usual appellation of the Apostles was that of the twelve : 
 thus Paul speaks in 1 Cor. xv. 5. But in Matt xxviii. 16, Mark xvi. 
 14, and Luke xxiv. 33, they are referred to as the eleven. On one 
 occasion (John xx. 24,) there might have been hnttenof the apostles 
 present. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 69 
 
 had ever done " of the things pertaining to the 
 kingdom of God." 
 
 There and then it was that he commissioned 
 them to "Go into all the world and preach 
 the gospel to every creature;" to "baptize all 
 nations in the name of the Father, and of the 
 Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" and to teach 
 them " to observe all things whatsoever he had 
 commanded them :" solemnly promising that he 
 would " be with them alway even to the end of 
 the world."* 
 
 That all things might be brought to their re- 
 membrance, whatsoever he had spoken, and that 
 they might be prepared to execute their high com- 
 mission, then it was, moreover, that he charged 
 them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait 
 there, even there where he had been crucified, and 
 in the midst of those who had crucified him, to 
 wait for the promise of the Father : assuring them 
 that in the course of a few days after his de- 
 parture they would "be baptized with the Holy 
 Ghost."t 
 
 And now the closing scene approaches. How 
 powerfully do local associations affect our hearts ! 
 As if to recall to their remembrance the incidents 
 of his life, and connect his history both before and 
 since his death in indissoluble union, that they 
 might ever think of him, and believe in him as their 
 once crucified but now risen and ascended Lord, 
 
 * Mark xvi. 15. Matt, xxviii. 19, 20. f Luke xxiv. 49., 
 
70 'the resurrection of JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 *' he led them out as far as Bethany,"* and 
 '' the mount called Olivet." 
 
 What must have been their emotions while he 
 conversed with them by the wayside as he had been 
 wont, and when they came to the spot where in times 
 past they had so often hung upon his lips, and seen 
 his works, and breathed the atmosphere of his 
 purity, and felt the fervour of his prayers, it may not 
 be impossible to imagine ; but w^ho can conceive or 
 even appreciate the spirit which ever filled, and now 
 overflows the bosom of the risen Jesus ? 
 
 Grievously wronged as he had been, and most 
 cruelly put to death, yet no vindictive sentiment 
 escapes his lips. Not a word does he utter that 
 might remind his disciples of their own faithless- 
 ness in the hour of his trial; or serve to embitter 
 them against those by whom he had been arraigned 
 and crucified. 
 
 Though near the scene which could hardly have 
 failed to call back the past with all its ingratitude, 
 and perfidy, and injustice towards him, where Judas 
 had betrayed him, and his enemies taken him, and 
 his disciples had all forsaken him and fled; yet he 
 thinks not of himself, but to say unto his apostles, 
 "Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, 
 and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the 
 uttermost parts of the earth;" and then, lifting up 
 
 -Bethany is described looth by Matthew and Mark as connected 
 with, or as a part of the Mount of Olives (Luke xix. 29 : Mark xi. 
 1.) Robinson, 215. 
 
POSITIVE EVIDENCE. 71 
 
 those hands which had been so recently nailed to 
 the cross, he blessed them ; and ''while he blessed 
 them," and "while they beheld him," he was 
 " taken up, and a cloud received him out of their 
 sight. "=^ 
 
 No wonder that they were riveted to the spot, 
 " looking steadfastly toward heaven !" 
 
 Is it not more wonderful than any of his past 
 acts ? Must it not be an illusion ? Oh ! can it be 
 that he has been taken from us when but yester- 
 day he was restored to us from the grave ? 
 blessed, blessed Master ! shall we see thee no more 
 forever? 
 
 But while they were thus looking up, "Behold 
 two men stood by them in white apparel," and 
 thus accosted them : " Ye men of Galilee, why 
 stand ye here gazing up into heaven ? This same 
 Jesus which is taken up from you into heaven, shall 
 so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into 
 
 heaven. "t 
 
 Who that ponders these things can be at a loss 
 to conjecture with what adoring sentiments of love 
 and gratitude to an unseen Saviour this angelic 
 announcement was received by those wondering 
 apostles? 
 
 What could have been the glowing utterance of 
 their hearts but one symphonious response, burst- 
 ing simultaneously from every lip: '•^Oome, Lord 
 Jesus, come quickly!" 
 
 ■*-Luke xxiv. 61. Acts i. 8. j Acts i. 10, 11. 
 
72 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Clear and certain is it as the record itself, that 
 '^ they worshipped him ; and returned to Jerusalem 
 with g7'eat joy. And were continually in the iQvu- 
 'i^Xq praising and blessing God."*' 
 
 * Luke xxiv. 62, 53. 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 73 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TESTI3LOJSrY OF THE WITNESSES. 
 
 Such are the evidences of Christ's resurrection 
 as gathered not from any one of the evangelists, 
 but from each of them in turn, together with Paul's 
 epistolary allusions to the event. 
 
 Only one narrative of the resurrection would 
 not have been sufficient ; or had there been but two, 
 however explicit and concurrent they might have 
 been, still, considering the nature of the event, the 
 argument from experience might have been arrayed 
 with no little plausibility against but two narra- 
 tives ; or the probability of collusion would have 
 outweighed the credibility of their evidence. 
 
 But there are four distinct narratives of the 
 same event, embraced in four separate biographies 
 of the same person, by diiferent, though contempo- 
 raneous, writers : a circumstance without a parallel 
 in history ; and which cannot be accounted for, un- 
 less Jesus Christ actually died in Judea in the 
 reign of Caesar Tiberius, and unless there was a 
 peculiarity in his mission which served not only to 
 distinguish him from all ordinary mortals, but to 
 7 
 
•''t"4 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 arrest universal attention, and move the hearts of 
 men with an interest as profound as it was un- 
 wonted. 
 
 These narratives, moreover, were written after 
 the evangelists had in the fullest manner realized 
 the fact that Christ had risen from the dead : they 
 themselves, having, according to his explicit direc- 
 tions, tarried at Jerusalem until the day of Pente- 
 cost, and then received the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
 Hence, in writing a narrative, they would not be 
 apt to multiply particulars, or to accumulate proofs 
 of an event, of which, as they had personally wit- 
 nessed it, and were then consciously certain of it, 
 there could not, in their view, have been any ground 
 for doubt ; and which was then, as they well knew, 
 extensively known, and believed. 
 
 Hence, John says at the close of his narrative : 
 " There are also many other things which Jesus 
 did, the which, if they should be written every one, 
 I suppose that even the world itself could not con- 
 tain the books that should be written." 
 
 Writing independently of each other, each would 
 vary from the other in minuter matters ; yet each 
 in turn would exhibit the same grand outline of the 
 scene. Each might differ from the other, according 
 to his mental habits of expression, or characteristic 
 disposition ; yet all would agree in relation to the 
 main facts : thus unlike as narrators, though alike 
 witnesses of the same event. One of them might 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 75 
 
 State what another omits to mention ; but an omis- 
 sion is no contradiction. 
 
 It does not follow, that because but one angel 
 was seen at one time, two were not seen at another ; 
 or because the angels were not seen by the men, 
 that they did not appear to the women ; or because 
 Mary Magdalene ran first to Peter and John, 
 that she did not afterwards on seeing the Lord in 
 the garden, go immediately back, and tell all the 
 disciples whom she could find. 
 
 As well might it be said that Christ could not 
 have had such a conversation with Peter as John 
 has detailed, or Luke would have mentioned it ; 
 that the story of the priests and elders as given 
 by Matthew is improbable, because Mark has made 
 no mention of it ! 
 
 But it is one thing to encounter difficulties in 
 comparing authorities, and another to detect a 
 falsehood : one thing to be unable to trace every 
 link in a chain of circumstances, and another to 
 show that the witnesses to a fact contradict each 
 other. If they agree in their testimony as to the 
 fact itself that Christ actually appeared to them 
 and to others after his death and burial, then the 
 circumstantial variety which is so obvious, in their 
 respective narratives only proves that the one did not 
 copy from the other, and that there was no sinister 
 agreement among them to originate a story. 
 
 Even distinct things might easily be confounded 
 by any one who would attempt to give an account 
 
76 THE KESUllKECTIUN OE JESUS CIllUST. 
 
 of an event which is either attended or rapidly fol- 
 lowed by a combination of varied and unusual cir- 
 cumstances : especially when the intelligence of the 
 event has caused the most extraordinary excitement: 
 and indeed, so early on the morning of the resur- 
 rection, it is but natural to suppose that there was 
 the most tumultuous haste among the disciples, and 
 frequent passing to and from the sepulchre. 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine that the disciples 
 ran about like persons distracted ; and he who can 
 read the narratives of the evangelists- without 
 making due allowance for the mental agitation into 
 which the disciples were thrown in consequence of 
 the reports and visions on that memorable morn, 
 cannot understand the circumstances in which they 
 were placed ; much less appreciate the relation 
 which they had sustained to the crucified Jesus ; 
 and w^ould not have been convinced of the fact 
 that Christ rose from the dead, though he himself 
 had then lived, and had actually seen " the place 
 where the Lord lay." 
 
 It is their faithfulness to nature, to the workings 
 of this heart w^ithin us, that brings home to us the 
 conviction that those narrators of the resurrection- 
 scene w^ere not the writers of fiction, but eye-wit- 
 nesses to facts. 
 
 That those women should have fled from the 
 sepulchre trembling and speechless ; that Mary 
 should have wept because they had taken away her 
 Lord, and she knew not where they had laid him ; 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 77 
 
 that she should have mistaken Jesus for the gar- 
 dener ; that the apostles were slow of heart to be- 
 lieve ; that thej treated the reports of the women 
 as " idle tales " and " believed not ;" that they were 
 terrified and afirighted at the sudden appearance 
 of Jesus, and supposed that they had seen a spirit ; 
 and after he had showed them his hands and his 
 feet, thus proving his own physical identity, that 
 still " they believed not for joy, and wondered ;" 
 and that again under other circumstances, " they 
 durst not ask him. Who art thou ? knowing that it 
 was the Lord !" never was man's nature exhibited 
 with truer, finer touches. No writer could have 
 invented circumstances with such nice discrimina- 
 tion ; or thus revealed to us the inmost hearts of 
 those desponding disciples, had he himself not 
 known what it was to mourn a Saviour crucified ; 
 and then, and so unexpectedly, what it was to be- 
 lieve in a risen, ascended Lord ! 
 
 Throughout these narratives there can be de- 
 tected no straining after effect, and no anxiety to 
 be believed. No remark is amplified, and no inci- 
 dent exaggerated ; but every thing is briefly 
 stated, simply expressed, unartistically arranged, 
 and life-like in detail ; while the time, the persons, 
 the places, the events both before and after the res- 
 urrection, its effect on Christ's enemies as well as 
 on his friends, all are so indissolubly interwoven 
 with his previous history as to form with it one con- 
 nected, consistent whole. 
 
 "7 * 
 
78 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Thus, it might have seemed improbable to us 
 that the priests and rulers should have invented so 
 ridiculous a story, and bribed the guard to circu- 
 late it, had not the narrative undesignedly disclosed 
 the motive by which they were actuated. 
 
 So, too, it might have appeared strange that the 
 women should have been the first to visit the sepul- 
 chre, and that so very early in the morning, had 
 they not previously to the Sabbath agreed to em- 
 balm the body. 
 
 Or that Christ should have appeared first of all 
 to a woman might have served to throw discredit on 
 the fact of his resurrection, were we unable to per- 
 ceive that he would have acted inconsistently with 
 himself had he not been forward to assuage the 
 mourner's grief. 
 
 The same after his resurrection as before his 
 death, he who had himself wept at the grave of 
 Lazarus, could not have seen the grateful, loving 
 Mary, so passionately weeping at the door of the 
 sepulchre, and not spoken a word of comfort to her 
 sorrow-stricken heart. 
 
 Thus, while the incident invests the character of 
 Christ with additional lustre, and even shadows 
 forth the beneficent end of his Divine mission, it 
 discloses in beautiful harmony the remarkable fact, 
 that woman, who was first in the transgression, was 
 the first to proclaim the joyful tidings of a risen 
 Jesus, a pardoning God ! 
 
 Had not these women been so desirous of em- 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 79 
 
 balming the body as soon as the Sabbath was over, 
 none of the disciples who had witnessed the cruci- 
 fixion, and seen the great stone rolled against the 
 door of the sepulchre, would have gone there so 
 early, if at all ; and thus the most important testi- 
 mony to the fact that early on the morning of the 
 third day, the body was not where it had been laid 
 after it was taken down from the cross, would have 
 been wanting. 
 
 In a matter also, so deeply involving the ques- 
 tion of his personal identity whom the angels said 
 had risen, and had gone out from the sepulchre, 
 whose testimony could have been so essential as 
 that of the women, who, having long known Jesus, 
 had often scanned his features, and listened to his 
 voice with the intensest interest ; who had lingered 
 latest at the sepulchre on the evening of his burial, 
 and returned at the earliest dawn on '' the first day 
 of the week " to pay their last ofiices to his mortal 
 remains ? . 
 
 But that the angels should have made them- 
 selves visible only to these women, is indeed a sin- 
 gular circumstance, unless it was that the women 
 arrived at the sepulchre immediately after the 
 soldiers had fled, and that it might be immediately 
 announced to them that Christ was risen before the 
 soldiers had time to circulate the priests' story. 
 
 Perhaps, these angels were kindly directed to 
 remain, and to explain to these wondering women 
 the enigma of the missing body, so that they might 
 
80 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 be expecting ere long to behold their lost Lord, 
 and not be unprepared to receive him brought back 
 again to life ; and also that bj their means, — they 
 forthwith communicating what the angels had said, 
 Peter, and John, and others might be brought yet 
 early to the sepulchre to see and know for them- 
 selves that the body of Jesus was no longer there ; 
 and thus be furnished with the primary proofs of 
 the fact which were so essential to their own ulti- 
 mate assurance that he had indeed risen from the 
 dead. 
 
 The intervention of angels, strange as it may 
 seem to us, was not foreign to the Jewish mind ; 
 and if an angel appeared to Jesus when he was in 
 his agony in the garden, and then strengthened 
 him, much more would angels have been in attend- 
 ance on his resurrection-bed. They had announced 
 to women his birth; and there was a propriety 
 therefore in their being employed to announce to 
 the women who came early to the sepulchre, the 
 tidings of his resurrection. 
 
 But among those women, one is not there whom 
 we might have expected to have been among the 
 foremost. Mary Magdalene is mentioned, and the 
 other Mary, the mother of Joses, and Salome, and 
 Joanna, and others with them ; but no mention is 
 made of Mary, the mother of Jesus ! 
 
 But from the allusion to her during the scene of 
 the crucifixion, it is probable that she had not so 
 soon recovered from the natural efi'ect of a scene 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 81 
 
 which to her above all others, although all the dis- 
 ciples felt it painfully enough, was distressing in 
 the extreme. 
 
 It was his sympathy with her sufferings that led 
 Jesus to commit her to John's special care ; and 
 with all a mother's heart, so wounded by the nails 
 which had pierced those hands, she was in all pro- 
 bability still at John's home, whither he had borne 
 her away from the cross : too much overcome by 
 what she had seen, to go out early, if at all, on the 
 morning of the third day. 
 
 Had she been at the sepulchre, however, the risen 
 Jesus must have said to her as he did to Mary : 
 *' Touch me not." 
 
 He had replied to some who, on one occasion had 
 told him that his mother and his brethren stood 
 without, desiring to speak with him : " Whosoever 
 shall do the will of my Father, the same is (as dear 
 to me as) my brother and sister and mother ;" and 
 therefore perhaps his mother according to the flesh 
 would have been to him after his resurrection no 
 dearer than any of his disciples ; nor would he in 
 his risen body have probably sustained to her any 
 other relation than he did to them. 
 
 But an idea of this nature would hardly have oc- 
 curred to the mind of a fictitious writer ; and hence, 
 had the resurrection-scene been an invention of the 
 fancy, it is quite certain that the mother of Jesus 
 would have been at least mentioned ; and not unlikely 
 that Jesus would have been represented as appear- 
 
82 THE EESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 ing first to her, instead of to the woman out of 
 whom " he had cast seven devils." 
 
 It is not known whether he appeared at all to 
 his mother after his resurrection ; and if he did, 
 the notice of it was wisely withheld from the sacred 
 page, so that none might pay her more homage 
 than was due to any other disciple ; that there 
 might be not the shadow of a scriptural reason for 
 worshipping her who, though " honoured among 
 women," was never ranked by the risen Jesus above 
 the women who came early to the sepulchre. 
 
 We have no ground to suppose that he even took 
 leave of his mother. She is not mentioned as 
 having been among those whom he gathered to- 
 gether in solemn, final interview with him on the 
 mount from which he ascended ; and it is not till 
 after their return to Jerusalem, and we see them 
 assembled in "an upper room" that we meet with 
 "Mary the mother of Jesus;" or that mention is 
 made of " his brethren." 
 
 She, with them, is at prayer ! " Peter, and 
 James, and John, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, 
 Bartholomew, and Matthew, James the son of 
 Alpheus, and Simon Zelotes, and Judas the brother 
 of James : these all continued with one accord in 
 prayer and supplication with Mary the mother of 
 Jesus, and with his brethren/'"^ 
 
 This fact may not be noticed by those who would 
 exalt Mary to higher homage than they would pay 
 
 * Acts i. 12-14. 
 
THE TESTIMONY OF THE WITNESSES. 83 
 
 to Christ. Let them blot the record ; or withhold 
 it from the astonished gaze of those whom Anti- 
 christ has inveigled into the adoration of the vir- 
 gin. But he who loves truth will ponder the re- 
 corded fact. He who would know whether Christ 
 did indeed rise from the dead, will prize the fact : 
 for without it, the evangelical account of the resur- 
 rection were incomplete ; and with it, we have cer- 
 tain proof that those apostles had seen and heard 
 what they solemnly affirm they did see and hear 
 before their recent return to Jerusalem, and as- 
 sembling in "that upper room." 
 
 Had Jesus not risen from the grave, and ascended 
 to heaven, those apostles, though eleven in all, 
 could not have palmed the lie on his kindred accord- 
 ing to the flesh : " Mary the mother of Jesus, and 
 his brethren," had not been with them in "that 
 upper room;" and much less continued with them 
 in prayer and supplication ! 
 
84 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CJREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 
 
 Such, then, is the testimony of the witnesses to 
 the fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from 
 the dead. 
 
 Now in order to estimate the value of their testi- 
 mony, it may be observed that, if they were not de- 
 void of common sense, they must have been as 
 competent to judge whether a person whom they 
 knew to be dead has come to life again, as whether 
 a person whom they knew to be alive one day was 
 dead the next. 
 
 Whether a man is living, or is dead, is to be de- 
 termined by the evidence of the senses ; and no 
 man, whether learned or unlearned, in the ordinary 
 use of his senses, need be, if indeed he ever is, 
 deceived. If the cessation of all colour, and warmth, 
 and motion certifies death beyond the possibility 
 of doubt, then the return of warmth, and colour, 
 and motion, and speech, and action in the same 
 subject would furnish equally complete and indubit- 
 able evidence of restoration to life ; and if a man 
 has sense enough to judge in the one case, so has 
 he in the other. He who by the intuition of his 
 
CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 85 
 
 senses can discern the difference between a dead 
 man, and a living man, may know to a certainty 
 whether the dead man is still dead, or has become 
 a living man. 
 
 It will not be denied then, that the witnesses to 
 Christ's resurrection were as competent to judge of 
 a fact of this nature, as we should have been, had 
 we stood in the same relation to Christ. 
 
 Did they see him die, and know that he was 
 dead ? Did they see where he was buried ? Did 
 they see, and know this same Jesus, their own 
 Master, alive again ? 
 
 We answer, that they could not have been de- 
 ceived as to his death. He was designedly put to 
 death by judicial authority, and in a way most har- 
 rowing to their sensibilities, and which could have 
 left in their minds no doubt of the fact ; and the 
 very reason why his legs were not broken after he 
 was taken down from the cross, to which he had been 
 nailed for several hours, was that he " was dead 
 already."* 
 
 Yet one of the soldiers, as if to make assurance 
 doubly sure, plunged a spear into his side, piercing 
 the pericardium^ so that " forthwith came thereout 
 blood and water :"t thus proving that death must 
 instantly have ensued had he not been already 
 dead. 
 
 Indeed, it was the recollection of this fearful 
 wound which he must himself have witnessed, that 
 
 ■» John Kix. 32. t lb. 34. 
 
86 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 impelled Thomas to reject, with instant and uncon- 
 querable decision, the united testimony of all his 
 fellow-disciples to a fact which to his mind was im- 
 possible. 
 
 Nor could they have been deceived as to the 
 place where Christ's body was laid. The remains 
 of the malefactors that had been crucified with him 
 were probably thrown into the '^ Potter's field." 
 But at the urgent request of Joseph of Arimathea, 
 Pilate ordered the body of Jesus to be delivered 
 up to him ; and he laid it in his own tomb which he 
 had hewn out in the rock, a new tomb "wherein 
 never man before was laid;"* and they all knew 
 that they buried him there ; and the Galilean 
 "women also followed after," it is said,f "and 
 beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid." 
 Consequently the body of Jesus could not have 
 been mistaken for some other body ; and none of 
 them could have been deceived as to the fact that 
 that identical body was missing on the morning of 
 the third day : for the sepulchre was then tenant- 
 less ! 
 
 Nor could they afterwards have mistaken a 
 phantom for the risen Jesus. An illusion of the 
 senses is by no means impossible ; and in relation 
 to whatever has been ardently desired or long ex- 
 pected by one, and which has taken full possession 
 of the imagination, an illusion is not improba- 
 ble. 
 
 * Matt, xxvii. 58-61. f Luke xxiii. 50-55. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 87 
 
 But in relation to a matter of fact wholly un- 
 looked for ; a fact which falls under the cognizance 
 of the senses ; which admits of close and repeated 
 scrutiny ; for the examination of which, with all its 
 attendant circumstances, ample time is given, and 
 every suitable means employed, it is to the last 
 degree improbable that any man in his senses 
 should be deluded ; and physically impossible that 
 any number of men together should be deluded, 
 and at the same time testify to the same illusion. 
 
 An illusion of the senses is the delusion of an 
 individual mind ; not the clear, calm conviction of 
 many minds, consequent on the united evidence of 
 their separate senses. 
 
 All illusions in relation to the marvellous are 
 traceable to some one person, and because they are 
 unsupported by the ocular testimony of some other 
 person who had the same opportunity of judging 
 of the phenomenon, they are pronounced to be il- 
 lusions. 
 
 But history may be searched in vain for an illu- 
 sion under which two or more persons have simul- 
 taneously laboured ; and if there could be unexcep- 
 tionable testimony to such an illusion as to a mat- 
 ter of fact, it would follow that no man can with 
 certainty discriminate between phantoms and 
 realities : a conclusion, we need not say, utterly at 
 variance with the facts of consciousness, and with 
 the testimony of experience, opposed even by the 
 whole course of human action. 
 
88 THE KESURRECTION OF JESUS CHBIST. 
 
 It is not merely improbable, therefore, that the 
 apostles should have been deceived by their own 
 senses when the risen Jesus stood before them, an<i 
 they heard him speak, and saw him eat, and felt 
 his hands and his feet. With such proofs submit- 
 ted to all their senses, it was not possible for them 
 to be deceived ; and had there been but two wit- 
 nesses to the reappearance of the crucified Jesus, 
 and he had given them the same sensible proofs of 
 his being alive again, and being the very same 
 person that he was known to have been before his 
 death, such independent, positive, and agreeing tes- 
 timony to a fact, if not rebutted by contrary evi- 
 dence, would suffice to decide the most important 
 question of fact that ever came before a court of 
 civil justice. 
 
 But in this case, there were eleven prominent 
 witnesses, all agreeing in their testimony to the 
 fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
 
 The several appearances of the risen Jesus were 
 to them personally : at first to one ; then to two ; 
 and then again to all of them, until his- appearance 
 was familiar to their observation ; nor did any of 
 these witnesses believe that he had risen, until they 
 had had the evidences of their own senses to the 
 fact, unless we except the apostle John, though he 
 did not believe until the sight of the grave-clothes, 
 so carefully folded up, and laid aside in the sepul- 
 chre, flashed upon his mind the conviction that the 
 missing body could not have been stolen. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 89 
 
 He was seen by certain women also, as well as 
 by the eleven disciples. He was seen at diiferent 
 times, and in different places, and by different per- 
 sons during a period of forty days ; and once by 
 about five hundred at the same time and place. 
 " This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof all we are 
 witnesses."* 
 
 Now, however imperfect the acquaintance which 
 the disciples in general might have had with Jesus, 
 there can be no doubt that eleven of them knew 
 him intimately. They had been with him from the 
 beginning ; they had gone out and in with him all 
 the time of his ministry on earth. 
 
 We need not tell those men that before they can 
 be admitted to testify to a fact of this nature, they 
 must prove that they are all competent to judge 
 whether Jesus himself had actually risen. 
 
 They knew as well as we do, that no one could 
 be a competent witness in the case who had not 
 enjoyed a long and intimate acquaintance with 
 Jesus prior to his crucifixion. They themselves 
 would admit no man to testify who had not " seen 
 the Lord" both before and after his resurrection. 
 
 No one could be an apostle who had not been an 
 eye-witness to the fact of the resurrection ; and 
 hence when an election was to be made of some 
 suitable person to supply the place of Judas who 
 had "gone to his own place," and to restore the 
 number of the apostles to Christ's original desig- 
 
 * Acts ii. 32. 
 
90 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 nation, Peter standing in the midst of " one hun- 
 dred and twenty disciples" who had assembled after 
 the ascension, addressed them in these remarkable 
 words : " Wherefore, of these men who have com- 
 panied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus 
 went in and out among us, beginning from the bap- 
 tism of John unto that same day that he was taken 
 up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness 
 with us of his resurrection."* 
 
 There were numerous eye-witnesses then ; and 
 there might have been a larger number collected 
 on the occasion of the apostolic election, had it not 
 been that far the larger proportion of the five 
 hundred to whom Christ appeared, resided in 
 Galilee ; and it may be that but few comparatively 
 had the time or the opportunity to go to Jerusalem 
 so soon after the ascension. 
 
 But though the apostles had followed Christ's 
 ministry, and had been most deeply interested in his 
 character and works, they cannot be justly regarded 
 as being either prejudiced or credulous witnesses. 
 
 Alike with their countrymen, they had looked on 
 "him who should come," as a temporal Prince who 
 should lead Israel on to victory and renown ; and 
 they were not prepared to see him at last die the 
 death of the vilest malefactor. " Be it far from 
 thee. Lord," said Peter, when Christ told them that 
 the Jews would crucify him, and put him to death, 
 " this shall not be unto thee." 
 
 * Acts i. 21, 22. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 91 
 
 It was SO contrary to all they had expected of 
 their Messiah that they could not comprehend the 
 import of Christ's "saying," though it was uttered 
 several times ; and hence when he was arrested, 
 they fled ; when he was condemned, and executed, 
 they gave up in despair. Ah, '' we trusted that it 
 had been he which should have redeemed Israel ;" 
 and now he is dead and buried ! 
 
 In this state of mind therefore, they could have 
 had no more idea of ever seeing him again, than 
 of welcoming back to life either of the thieves that 
 had been crucified with him. 
 
 Notwithstanding their Lord's prediction, the pos- 
 sibility of his literally '"rising again" no more oc- 
 curred to them, than it did to the priests and elders, 
 who remembered the saying only to guard the 
 sepulchre, lest the disciples should steal his body, 
 and thus contrive to infect the public mind with the 
 idea that he had indeed risen from the dead. 
 
 Or, if the "saying" of Jesus had occurred to 
 the apostles when his body was laid in the tomb, 
 their agitation of mind must have been too great to 
 admit of their accrediting what, under other cir- 
 cumstances, and in the very presence of their 
 blessed Master, they had failed even to understand. 
 
 Hence, as we have seen, they were slow to believe, 
 when there was every reason to believe ; difficult to 
 be convinced, though proofs of the fact were con- 
 stantly accumulating. 
 
 The reports of the women seemed unworthy of 
 
92 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 credence. The testimony of Peter, and then that 
 of " the two disciples" caused them to wonder only 
 the more, and they believed not : one of them 
 stoutly resolving that he would accept of no evi- 
 dence short of that which the senses alone can give ; 
 and the very first time that Jesus appeared in person 
 to the body of the disciples, so far from welcoming 
 him, we have seen that they were affrighted : think- 
 ing as was perfectly natural for men of their habit 
 and mood of mind to think, that it was not Jesus, 
 but his ghost ! 
 
 It is the nature of despondency to close the heart 
 against the means of its own relief; and Jesus 
 was even constrained to upbraid them for their un- 
 belief. It was no easy task even for him to over- 
 come their obstinate resistance, and dissipate their 
 gloomy fears ; nor did they yield their cordial as- 
 sent until it is evident that they might as well have 
 questioned each other's individual existence, as deny 
 the fact that Jesus Christ himself who was crucified, 
 dead, and buried, now stands before them ! 
 
 If Jesus gave them the proofs of his resurrec- 
 tion which all the four evangelists state that he did, 
 it matters not whether they were all as impressible 
 as Peter, or as slow of heart as those dwellers at 
 Emmaus ; as loving as John, or as skeptical as 
 Thomas, there could have been no difference in their 
 verdict ; no unequal degrees of conviction in their 
 minds, so long as they were sane men with the 
 ordinary faculties and senses of men. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 93 
 
 All possibility of doubt was excluded when they 
 saw the same face, and the same form ; saw the 
 prints of the nails both on his hands and his feet ; 
 saw and pressed the wound in his side, saw him, 
 too, in the breaking of bread ; heard his Avords of 
 peaceful salutation ; recognized his voice ; followed 
 his directions ; notified others where he would meet 
 them ; travelled themselves a distance of eighty 
 miles to meet him according to his own appoint- 
 ment ; returned again to Jerusalem where he then 
 more particularly instructed them ; Avent with 
 him to Bethany, and Olivet, and there received 
 his last commands ; and then, steadfastly behold- 
 ing him, saw him taken up from earth out of their 
 sight. 
 
 Behold them, again assembled in that very room 
 where they had so often met with Jesus, where but 
 yesterday they had met him for the last time, and 
 heard him speak " of things pertaining to the king- 
 dom of God." 
 
 Behold them, praying there as men had never 
 prayed before, in the name, and for the saJce, of 
 Jesus ! 
 
 See them, " when the day of Pentecost w^as fully 
 come, all with one accord in one place," and "all 
 filled with the Holy Ghost," and each in turn 
 " speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gave 
 them utterance." 
 
 Hear them proclaiming to the representatives 
 of every nation under heaven, and to each " in 
 
94 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Lis own language " " the wonderful works of 
 God."* 
 
 Hear them preaching repentance for the remis- 
 sion of sins, in the name of Jesus Christ. 
 
 See them performing miracles in the name of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. 
 
 Mark how their hearers are '' pricked in their 
 hearts;" and how they cried out "Men and breth- 
 ren, What shall we do ?" And how the apostles bap- 
 tized them in the name of Jesus : yea, and on that 
 same day which they had been directed to wait for, 
 on which the promise of their ascended Lord was 
 to be verified, how they then baptized in the name 
 of Jesus " about three thousand souls " who " con- 
 tinued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fel- 
 lowship, and in the breaking of bread, and in 
 prayers, "t 
 
 How wonderful the change which, in so brief a 
 space, has come over their minds and hearts, since 
 the dark hour of their trial, when He whom they 
 had followed was nailed to the cross ! 
 
 How wonderful that they should teach and do, 
 what they had not the most remote conception of 
 doing when Jesus was put to death, what Christ 
 himself was never known to tell them before his 
 death ! 
 
 How wonderful that Jews should offer prayers, 
 and utter doctrines so strange to Jewish ears ! 
 That Galileans should speak fluently and intelligi- 
 
 * Acts ii. 1-13. t Acts ii. 37-42. 
 
CREDIBILITY OF THE WITNESSES. 95 
 
 bly to any foreigner in his own native tongue ! 
 That men, who had never before spoken in public, 
 should address an audience, mixed and numerous 
 as it was, wjth all the self-possession of experience, 
 and all the overmastering power of the most 
 studied oratory ! That men whose only skill had 
 been in mending the fisher's net, should cure dis- 
 eases which the observation of all Judea had pro- 
 nounced desperate ! Above all ; that a promiscuous 
 throng of people from other countries, as well as 
 of Jerusalem, should, as it were, at the bidding of 
 these recently commissioned apostles, repent of 
 their sins, especially of the sin of having crucified 
 the Lord of glory ; and in testimony of their faith 
 in what these apostles had declared, receive baptism 
 at their hands " in the name of the Father, and of 
 the Son, and of the Holy Ghost !" 
 
 Wonderful ? Inexplicable rather, unless there 
 was something in the life of Jesus that to their 
 minds bespoke a heaven-born origin and a Divine 
 mission ; something in his death that seemed to 
 have a solemn and momentous reference to all the 
 members of a dying race. 
 
 What do we say ? It is inexplicable unless 
 Christ himself did burst the bars of the sepulchre 
 in which his crucified body was laid, and they 
 themselves had seen him " after that he was risen 
 from the dead;" and Christ had then taught them 
 as no one else in all the world could have done ; 
 had commanded them to preach and to baptize 
 
96 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 in his name ; had endowed them with the power 
 which he himself had been known to exercise while 
 he was on earth ; and had given unto them the 
 Spirit of all truth and grace, which before his 
 ascension, according to his own declaration, he had 
 promised to pour out upon them on the day of 
 Pentecost. 
 
 If ever a body of men had the amplest possible 
 reasons to be convinced of any event, these apostles 
 had such reasons for being convinced that Jesus 
 Christ rose from the dead ! Whatever else they 
 might have been, they were not prejudiced, and 
 much less credulous witnesses for Christ. On 
 grounds, such as we have no more than barely 
 alluded to, "gave the apostles witness of the res- 
 urrection of the Lord Jesus."* 
 
 In view of the proofs to which they could refer, 
 it is clear that they did not render themselves justly 
 obnoxious to the charge of either arrogance or 
 dogmatism when they said : " We have not fol- 
 lowed cunningly devised fables when we made 
 known unto you the presence and power of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ ; but were eye-witnesses of his 
 majesty, "t "That which we have seen with our eyes, 
 which we have looked upon, and our hands have 
 handled of the word of life, that declare we unto 
 
 * Acts iv. 33. t 2 Peter i. 16. J 1 John i. 1-3. 
 
THE WITNESSES CHOSEN. 9T 
 
 CHAPTEK yil. 
 
 THE WITNESSES CHOSEN. 
 
 Admitting then, that the number of the apostles, 
 and the nature of the evidence that was submitted 
 to them, both separately and collectively, render it, 
 to say the least, most improbable that they could 
 have been deceived in relation to the event ; may 
 it not be viewed as a suspicious circumstance that 
 all the so-called witnesses had been previously en- 
 rolled among Christ's followers ? Why, it is asked, 
 did he not make himself known to the full convic- 
 tion of those who had not been his disciples ? 
 
 As well might it have been asked, why he did not 
 immediately perform some other miracle to convince 
 of his Messiahship those who did not believe in him, 
 even when they saw Lazarus come forth from the 
 grave at his omnipotent command. 
 
 It was after witnessing this wondrous work, that 
 the priests and Pharisees said in their council: "He 
 doeth many miracles ; if we let him alone all men 
 will believe on him ;" and " from that day they 
 took counsel together to put him to death."* Hav- 
 
 * John xi. 49-53. 
 
98 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 ing rejected such evidence, they could not reason- 
 ably have demanded more ; nor consistently with 
 the nature of his claims, or their own responsibility 
 to God, could Christ have given them more. 
 
 It followed from the very nature of Christ's 
 mission that, whilst all serious and honest truth- 
 seekers might understand and receive the teachings 
 of his miracles, they who were desirous of evad- 
 ing moral obligation, should, though seeing, see 
 not, and though hearing, hear not. 
 
 But if it was difficult for him to remove the 
 doubts of those who had long known him, and 
 whose unwillingness to admit that he was risen, 
 arose simply from the fact that they had seen him 
 put to death, and could therefore no longer hope 
 against hope ; much more difficult would it have 
 been to convince those of the fact of his resurrec- 
 tion who had seen him but seldom ; who had even 
 been accessary to his death, and were most viru- 
 lently opposed to the doctrines which he had 
 taught. 
 
 It were unreasonable then to suppose that the 
 risen Jesus would have appeared to his enemies ; 
 and if it be thought that for his own sake, to show 
 his superiority to all personal injury, and his dis- 
 interested regard for their salvation, he should 
 have appeared to all the Jews, whether they had 
 favoured or opposed his mission, then, by parity 
 of reasoning, he should have immediately made 
 himself known to the whole world : he should come 
 
THE WITNESSES CHOSEN. 99 
 
 in person to every individual of every successive 
 generation down to the end of time ! 
 
 Thus it appears that to throw suspicion on the 
 credibility of the witnesses simply because they had 
 all been Christ's disciples, is in effect to disparage 
 the proofs of a written revelation, if not to deny 
 its very possibility. 
 
 Christ had given to all his countrymen the 
 amplest opportunities to ascertain the nature and 
 grounds of his claims to the Messiahship ; and now 
 his work on earth, that work which the Father had 
 given him to do, is done. He will himself teach 
 the people no more. Never again will the scribes 
 and Pharisees hear his voice rebuking their hypoc- 
 risies, nor sinners calling them to repentance. 
 Never again will the promiscuous multitude see 
 him work another miracle in attestation of his 
 word. 
 
 All was finished when he gave up the ghost ; 
 and now that he has risen, it but remains to com- 
 mit to faithful men " the glorious gospel of the 
 grace of God." 
 
 He could die hut once for " the sin of the world;" 
 and as "he made an offering of himself once for 
 all," so to answer then, and in all after times, the 
 great end of his Redemptive Act, it was necessary 
 that he should rise from the grave ; and not more 
 so, than that he should certify the fact of his having 
 risen to some persons in particular. 
 
 And whom should he have selected, if not men of 
 
100 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 sound minds, taken not only from the ranks of the 
 people, but from among those who had been with 
 him from the beginning ? And how many should 
 he have selected, if tivelve sejjarate witnesses be not 
 enough to establish any fact ? though to these 
 might be added both Luke and Mark ; and Paul 
 also, who, though "born out of due time" was not 
 " a whit behind the very chiefest apostle." 
 
 But whoever might be employed to testify to 
 Christ's resurrection, must have "infallible signs" 
 of his personal re-appearance among them ; or they 
 will hardly attempt to make others believe what 
 they are by no means certain of themselves : they 
 must have an intimate acquaintance with the mind 
 and will of their risen Lord ; a full knowledge of 
 all things pertaining to his kingdom ; and be in 
 every respect qualified both to testify to what they 
 have seen, and to write and publish an accurate 
 account at once of his life and death, of his resur- 
 rection and ascension : so that the sons of men in 
 all after times might have "a perfect understand- 
 ing of all things from the first." 
 
 If any w^ere thus selected, and thus qualified for 
 the task, they would testify to the fact ; they would 
 proclaim it far and wide in every tongue, make it 
 known to the foes as well as to the friends of Jesus, 
 write about it, as well as speak of it : they would 
 seize the most public occasions, and favourable op- 
 portunities for giving their testimony ; entreat the 
 people to hear ; challenge inquiry ; defy refutation; 
 
THE WITNESSES CHOSEN. 101 
 
 and their testimony, if worthy of being received, 
 woukl be confirmed by miracles wrought by them 
 in the name of Him whom the priests and rulers 
 had " crucified and slain." 
 
 It was necessary, then, that Christ should appear 
 after his resurrection only to those whom he had 
 chosen to be the special witnesses of the fact. 
 
 Hence, Peter said : " Him God raised up, and 
 shewed him openly, not to all the people, but unto 
 witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did 
 eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead; 
 and he commanded us to preach unto the people and 
 to testify."* 
 
 Hence, " the word of the Lord was published " 
 both to Jew and to Gentile ; and " signs and 
 wonders" were wrought by the apostles of Jesus 
 in attestation of the truth of their doctrines. f 
 
 Hence, there are now extant, in twenty-seven 
 parts, different writings which were composed by 
 eight different persons not many years after the 
 events which they have recorded ; and that there 
 was no pre-concert among them, and no undue 
 haste, is evident from the respective dates of their 
 separate writings. 
 
 Though Matthew wrote his account within six or 
 eight years after the crucifixion ; and Mark his, 
 and under the eye of Peter, about the year of our 
 Lord sixty-one ; and Luke followed some two years 
 after " to set forth in order a declaration of those 
 
 * Acts X. 40-42. t Acts xiv. 3. 
 
 9 * 
 
102 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 things which were most surely believed," yet John, 
 the last surviving apostle, did not complete his 
 testimony until after an interval of about thirty 
 years.* 
 
 Not to dwell, however, on the written testimony 
 of different witnesses ; yet within a very few years 
 after the crucifixion, how great an amount of oral 
 testimony must have been delivered by the apostles 
 to the fact of the resurrection, how demonstrative 
 must have been their arguments, how weighty their 
 appeals, how conclusive their miraculous works 
 when so many of their countrymen could in one 
 day give up their Sabbaths, their Temple, and their 
 Priests ; and in their stead, adopt the Christian 
 Sabbath with its simple ordinances of prayer and 
 praise, and of " the breaking of bread !" 
 
 But if, notwithstanding all the supernatural 
 proofs with which the apostolic doctrine was ac- 
 companied, the priests and rulers, so far from ac- 
 knowledging their sin in having " crucified the Lord 
 of glory, " could command the witnesses not to preach 
 in the name of Jesus, and could threaten them with 
 stripes and bonds if they did ; nay, within a brief 
 period after the day of Pentecost, cause one of the 
 witnesses to be put to death, or connive at the 
 murderous deed,t is it to be gravely supposed that 
 they would have believed on Christ had he only 
 
 * A. D. 97. See in this connection, Ifosheim's Commentaries, voL 
 1. pp. 113, 114. Schaffs History of Christian Church, p. 265-6. 
 t Acts vii. 54-60. 
 
THE WITNESSES CHOSEN. 103 
 
 shown himself to them after the resurrection ? 
 And because he did not, is the testimony of those 
 to whom he did show himself to be received with 
 distrust and suspicion ? 
 
 These rulers and Pharisees had once said, " Show 
 us a sign and we will believe ;" and when the sign 
 was given, what said they ? '' He casteth out devils 
 by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils !" 
 
 But show us a sign from heaven^ said they ; and 
 a. sign from heaven was given : Christ, by a voice 
 from heaven, was declared to be *'the Son of God;" 
 and did they not then believe ? Far from it : they 
 charged him with blasphemy '' because he had made 
 himself equal with God." 
 
 The fact is, their unbelief was as wilful and per- 
 sistive as their malignity was unrelenting ; and now, 
 in the accomplishment of their dark purpose, these 
 same priests and rulers, these bigoted and desperate 
 Pharisees, are pressing round the cross of their 
 victim. 
 
 See how they scourge him, and spit upon him, 
 and revile him ! Hear their challenge : " If thou 
 be the Son of God, come down from the cross." 
 
 Christ did more: he came u]) alive from the grave ^ 
 though they themselves had so carefully and 
 strongly guarded his dead body ; and they knew 
 that their guard had kept the most vigilant watch ; 
 they knew that that body could not have been taken 
 away without the knowledge of their guard ; and 
 though they had not believed his words, they knew 
 
104 THE RESUERECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 that Christ had risen ; and did they then embrace 
 him as their Messiah ? No ; they told the soldiers 
 to lie for them, and to say that his disciples stole 
 him away while they slept. 
 
 So true is it, that a man's bigoted attachments 
 and evil passions may close his mental eye to all 
 the radiance of noon-tide certainty ; and hence it 
 is that no facts which involve a moral truth can 
 be accompanied with irresistible evidence. Chris- 
 tianity, as portrayed in the New Testament, labours 
 under no more disadvantage now than Christianity 
 did when its Founder moved in all his spotless 
 purity and God-like beneficence among the hills 
 of Galilee ; or lifted up his voice in the streets of 
 Jerusalem to make known to its inhabitants the 
 mighty works and true sayings of God. 
 
 Man's heart may be fortified against all the evi- 
 dences with which Christianity urges its claims ; 
 and when, as in the case of a Paul, God's grace 
 interposes, it is not to impart other or clearer evi- 
 dences ; it is only to humble, and to soften man's 
 proud and obdurate heart : thus endowing it, as it 
 were, with a capacity for admitting evidence, and 
 receiving the truth in the love of it. 
 
HYPOTHESES OF INEIDELITY. 105 
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 
 HYPOTSESES OF INFIDELITY. 
 
 Nor were these priests and elders more forward 
 to cloak their own sin bj impeaching the honesty 
 of the disciples, than infidels have ever been to 
 disparage the character of Christ's " chosen wit- 
 nesses." 
 
 " Chosen witnesses ? Say rather downright en- 
 thusiasts : for all enthusiasts have regarded them- 
 selves as the favourites of Heaven." 
 
 And it must be admitted that the apostles have 
 exposed themselves to the charge of enthusiasm, in 
 having styled themselves the " chosen witnesses," 
 unless they had been chosen, and had had certain 
 evidence of the fact. 
 
 But from all that we can gather of their history, 
 we know that they were not self-moved to follow 
 Christ, but called by him ; that they did not derive 
 their views of the kingdom of God from internal 
 suggestions, but from Christ's teachings ; and that 
 their apprehensions of the nature of his kingdom 
 were never clear until some time after his resurrec- 
 tion, they had received the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost. 
 
106 THE RESUREECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 We know, too, that it was no easy matter for 
 Christ to disahuse their minds of the prejudices of 
 their education ; and yet, that at last their views of 
 him were only in accordance with the prophetic 
 teachings of their own Scriptures ; and in relation 
 to the fact of the resurrection, we have already 
 seen that they were strangely slow to believe, most 
 difficult to be convinced ; and not convinced until 
 all doubt was morally impossible. 
 
 Having been instructed by Christ, they aimed to 
 teach others only what they had themselves been 
 taught : having submitted their own wills to his 
 authority, they would have others follow them, but 
 only so far as they followed Christ ; and no more 
 doubting what they had seen and heard from Christ 
 than their own personal existence, they were never 
 backward to refer inquirers to the absolute grounds 
 of their own belief. 
 
 In support of the novel doctrines which they 
 advanced, they appealed to facts which were 
 known to others as well as to themselves ; and 
 to miracles which they publicly wrought, not 
 in their own name, but in that of Jesus of 
 Nazareth. 
 
 In neither their narratives of events, their 
 epistles to converts, their addresses to the public, 
 nor in their controversies with either the Jews or the 
 Greeks, can there be detected any traces of a blind 
 zeal, or an ungoverned fancy ; and in the whole 
 course of their history, there is not an instance of 
 
HYPOTHESES OF INFIDELITY. 107 
 
 their appealing to their own impressions and feel- 
 ings in order to convince others. 
 
 They thought clearly without effort ; reasoned 
 closely without dogmatism ; spoke forcibly without 
 vociferation, and expressed themselves simply and 
 with brevity. 
 
 Their writings can now be read and re-read 
 by all who love to ponder truth, with the same 
 fresh interest that the lover of nature feels when 
 he returns to gaze on scenes which, however 
 familiar to his eye, never lose their charm to his 
 heart. 
 
 But without that tuition which they had enjoyed, 
 the scenes which they had witnessed, and the powers 
 with which they were endowed, had they merely 
 felt themselves to be the subjects of some immediate 
 and extraordinary communications from Heaven, as 
 is always the case with religious enthusiasts, how 
 differently would they have appeared ; and with 
 what different sentiments must their writings have 
 been viewed : if, indeed, their writings had survived 
 till now to indicate in the remote past a remarkable 
 period of religious delusion ! 
 
 Enthusiasm has its origin in unfounded impres- 
 sions ; and is a persuasion of the truth of the mind's 
 own imaginings in relation to religious matters, in- 
 dependently of either reason or fact. It sees 
 without light, knows without knowledge, and be- 
 lieves without proof; and the poor enthusiast ac- 
 cordingly is sure simply because he is sure, and ex- 
 
108 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 pects to be believed by all the world because he 
 himself believes ; and hence imperiously enjoins his 
 own internal suggestions, or groundless fancies, as 
 matters of implicit faith and obedience. 
 
 Not so men who " spake as they were moved by 
 the Holy Ghost." Moved to what? To narrate 
 the life and death, the resurrection and ascension 
 of Jesus Christ, and the acts of the apostles ; to 
 reveal the mind and will of God to man through 
 him whom God had sent, that we might have " a 
 perfect understanding of all things from the very 
 first," and "know the certainty of those things" 
 as they were " delivered to those who from the be- 
 ginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the 
 word ;" " and might believe that Jesus is the Christ, 
 the Son of God;" and that believing we "might 
 have life through his name."* 
 
 These men of Galilee were never moved but to 
 speak forth "the words of truth and soberness," 
 so that those who heard them, and those who could 
 only read what they had been moved to write, 
 might " prove all things and hold fast that which is 
 good." 
 
 Enthusiasm, sooner or later, allies itself with fa- 
 naticism. It is as proud and boastful as it is impul- 
 sive and dogmatic; and may be sour and malignant. 
 
 He who is wedded to fancy rather than to fact, 
 and loves self more than truth, will both unduly 
 extol, and perversely disparage; loving only those 
 
 *Lukei. 1-4. 1 John v. 13. 
 
HYPOTHESES OF INFIDELITY. 109 
 
 wlio favour his object ; hating and reviling all who 
 oppose. 
 
 How strange is it then, that these followers of 
 Jesus should have recorded his history with all its 
 wonderful passages, and superhuman excellencies 
 without a note of exclamation, and much less a word 
 of panegyric on their leader : he too the most extra- 
 ordinary personage the world had ever seen ! when, 
 though they saw him put to a death of agony and 
 shame, and knew the motives by which his enemies 
 had been actuated, that not an expression of anger, 
 nor even a censure should have escaped their lips. 
 
 This is not all : no men ever had more reason 
 for self-complacent exultation than these same wit- 
 nesses. 
 
 By their teachings which arrested listening 
 crowds ; by their miracles which none could deny, 
 and but few pervert ; by their fortitude which 
 enabled them to endure all things for the sake 
 of Christ ; by their perseverance which tri- 
 umphed over all obstacles, they attained an 
 influence over mind which no limits could define, 
 and which the lapse of ages has not been able to 
 impair. 
 
 Before this, what were they but fishermen, tax- 
 gatherers, and tent-makers? and who would not be 
 lifted up in heart, if raised so suddenly to dis- 
 tinction, and renown? Yet humility and self- 
 renunciation were prominent traits in their 
 character. 
 
110 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Some of them do not mention their own names ; 
 and John speaks of himself as " that other disciple 
 whom Jesus loved." 
 
 Paul, when constrained to vindicate his apostle- 
 ship, lest the Christian cause would suffer through 
 him, declares "• boasting to be folly :" that " not he 
 who commendeth himself is approved, but whom 
 the Lord commendeth ;" that in his self- vindication, 
 necessary as it was, he had " become a fool in glory- 
 ing;" that he was not meet to be an apostle ;* and 
 once having occasion to advert to his labours, he 
 checks himself, and adds with unfeigned modesty, 
 " Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with 
 me." 
 
 Though thus inspired to write and to preach, 
 they did not presume on the Divine favour, or con- 
 clude that they could not come short of the "prize 
 of their high calling in Christ Jesus ;" but feared, 
 aye, these chosen witnesses feared, lest, after all, 
 they themselves should "be castaways," because 
 they knew that they were " men of like passions" 
 with others. 
 
 What is still more striking, and admits of no ex- 
 planation in consistency with the supposition that 
 they were enthusiasts, they have put on record the 
 faults wherewith they were chargeable, and on ac- 
 count of which they were rebuked : their unbelief, 
 their pride, their emulations, their disputes, their 
 cowardice, and their desertion of their Master in 
 
 * See 2 Cor. x. xi. 
 
HYPOTHESES OF INFIDELITY. Ill 
 
 the hour of his need. Peter's denial is no 
 less conspicuous in their narrative than Judas' 
 treachery. 
 
 There is another hypothesis, and it is the last to 
 which Infidelity can have recourse. 
 
 The crucifixion, having caused great lamentation 
 among Christ's followers, and a frantic jubilee 
 among his enemies, could not have been forgotten 
 in a day. Months, if not years, may roll away, 
 and not a few among that " great company of peo- 
 ple" who followed on to Calvary will remember that 
 piteous spectacle ; nor will some at least among the 
 multitude of Christ's enemies forget how it was 
 that they effected his execution ; and why it was 
 that they had so strictly guarded the sepulchre 
 where his body was laid. 
 
 Never had the mind of a people been so agitated 
 by conflicting sentiments ; never had rulers ren- 
 dered themselves so perilously liable to be judged 
 for their own judicial acts ; and they knew that 
 they were ; and hence were only the more anxious 
 that he whom they had crucified should be the oc- 
 casion of no more popular excitement. 
 
 Now, aside from the fact that the disciples had 
 been scattered " like sheep without a shepherd," 
 none of them could have been ignorant of the in- 
 fluences which resulted in the death of their Mas- 
 ter ; and had any among them, whether for their 
 own vindictive gratification, or to reinstate them- 
 selves in the estimation of the community, been 
 
112 THE RESURRECTION OE JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 disposed to circulate a groundless rumour that 
 Christ had risen from the dead, they must have 
 been devoid of the ordinary qualifications of im- 
 postors had they not broached the story at first 
 in some far distant place, and so returned with 
 caution to Jerusalem ; or had they not postponed 
 all overt measures to effect their end, until the 
 tragic scenes of Calvary had ceased to stir the 
 public mind, and the prominent actors in that bloody 
 drama had themselves passed off the stage. Less 
 than knaves are they, if they can so outwit them- 
 selves as to go at once where they will certainly be 
 detected, and forthwith arrested. 
 
 But these witnesses of Christ's resurrection, so 
 soon as they returned from Bethany to Jerusalem 
 made known the fact to others ; and after only a 
 few days' delay proclaimed it on an occasion which 
 had drawn together men from every part of the 
 nation : made choice of this very occasion when 
 Jerusalem was crowded with strangers, that ..they 
 might have the greatest possible number of hearers ; 
 proclaimed it, too, within six weeks after the cruci- 
 fixion, and within the hearing of the holy family 
 whom they must have personally known ; within 
 the hearing, moreover, of those who had every 
 motive to prove, if they could, that it was false, and 
 all the requisite authority and means to conduct a 
 judicial examination. 
 
 It is against all human experience that some 
 twelve men should have united in telling a mere 
 
HYPOTHESES OF INFIDELITY. 113 
 
 storj of Christ's having risen, when at that very 
 time, and in their own presence were scores of men, 
 both of those who had followed Christ, and 
 those who had been consenting to his death, 
 who might with equal facility have exposed the 
 fraud ; and who, to say the least, could have had no 
 interest in conniving at a falsehood of such a 
 nature. 
 
 It is against all the national sentiments of the 
 Jews, moreover, that a fabrication of this nature 
 should have originated in Jerusalem ; and though 
 mythological inventions were familiar to the 
 Gentiles, yet had "Jesus and the Anastasis" been 
 excogitated by some Athenian mind, the doctrine 
 would not have been received as true, so foreign 
 was it to the notions of those whom Paul addressed: 
 much less, then, had it been accredited by the fol- 
 lowers of Moses ; and if it had not been first be- 
 lieved by some among the Jews, none of their 
 brethren according to the flesh would have been 
 converted to so novel a doctrine ; and, by conse- 
 quence, the Jews themselves had never published 
 the tidings in the ear of the Gentile world. 
 
 Nor could such a story have originated at a later 
 period than that to which the narrative refers, be- 
 cause it embodies certain miraculous facts which are 
 inseparably connected with certain publications, 
 and commemorative ordinances ; and he who in- 
 vented the former and forged the record of such 
 facts, must also have contrived the latter ; and it 
 10 ■» 
 
114 THE KESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 is not possible that any people could be persuaded 
 that they and their fathers, from the time of Christ's 
 death, had always believed, and always observed 
 what they had never heard of before, and knew 
 positively that they never had observed. 
 
 Certain it is that neither " Christian baptism," 
 nor the "Lord's supper," nor the "Lord's day" 
 could ever have been imposed on the observance of 
 the Jews, had the wonderful facts from which they 
 took their rise been absolute fictions ; and he who 
 would trace these commemorative ordinances to 
 their origin, must go back to the period of the great 
 events recorded in the New Testament ; or he is 
 not only false to history, but blind to reason. 
 
 It is too obvious to be formally remarked, that 
 Christianity must have had a beginning among men ; 
 but how could it have had a beginning unless the 
 Christian ministry and the Christian ordinances 
 prove the eredibility of the miraculous fact of the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ ? And if so, then the 
 narratives which embody the facts in Christ's history, 
 could not have been forged. 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE ARGUMENT. 115 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CONCIjZrSIOK OF THE AJtGVMEJfT. 
 
 Here we might rest the argument : for it is im- 
 possible to account for the ordinances of the Chris- 
 tian church, nay, for the existence of the Christian 
 sect at any time, unless it be a fact that Peter on 
 the day of Pentecost, in the city of Jerusalem, 
 (and it may be within sight of Calvary,) addressed 
 the multitude then and there collected, and affirmed 
 that Jesus, whom their rulers had but a short time 
 before crucified and slain, was raised up from the 
 dead in proof that he was "both Lord and Christ." 
 
 Nor is this the most remarkable fact in this con- 
 nection. So ample were the proofs which this wit- 
 ness adduced, so convincing his arguments, that as 
 we have seen, three thousand of his auditors believed. 
 Believed what ? That Jesus died and rose again ! 
 Believed, and were baptized into the name of Jesus ! 
 
 The apostles, therefore, must have uttered what 
 they knew to be both truth and fact ; or their so- 
 called three thousand converts were deceived as men 
 never were before. And if thousands of people, living 
 in Jerusalem, and knowing of Christ's death ; know- 
 ing too, how, and for what their rulers had compassed 
 
116 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 his ignominious death, were so confounded in their 
 whole mental habits of association and belief, by 
 false representations from Christ's pretended apos- 
 tles, as to abandon all their wonted modes of think- 
 ing, and rules of acting in religious matters, it were a 
 greater miracle than that Christ should have risen 
 from the dead ; a thousand-fold more difficult of 
 credence than that the apostles should have spoken 
 to them " the truth in Christ " and that they were 
 thus fairly, openly, and truly converted to the faith 
 in the risen Jesus ! 
 
 But no character is too pure for the truth-hater 
 to asperse ; no insinuation too base that will but 
 afford a pretext for unbelief. 
 
 As the disciples w^ere wantonly slandered by the 
 Jewish rulers, so have these witnesses been griev- 
 ously maligned, as if they had been the most daring 
 and adroit impostors that ever lived. And they 
 must have been so. There is now no alternative. 
 The issue must be met. If Christ rose not on the 
 third day after his crucifixion, those chosen wit- 
 nesses were false and black as hell ! 
 
 Satan himself once essayed to bring down Christ 
 to his own level ; and it is not strange that men, 
 consciously void of principle, should question the 
 integrity of Christ's w^itnesses. But there is no 
 more reason to conclude that they were impostors, 
 than there was for the priests and rulers to say 
 that they were thieves. 
 
 For had they been conscious of uttering what 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE ARGUMENT. 117 
 
 they knew to be false, as they must have been, 
 if Jesus did not convince them that he had 
 indeed risen, how could they have thought for 
 an instant that any one would believe them ? 
 Theirs was not a story to please the fancy, and 
 seduce the judgment ; or to gratify earth-born ap- 
 petites. Nothing could have been so expressly 
 adapted to enkindle the ire of the Jew, and pro- 
 voke the scorn of the Gentile. " While in its rela- 
 tion to the teachings of Christ, it tended to noth- 
 ing short of the demolition of all heathen systems 
 of religion, it served to bring against the Jews the 
 awful charge of having murdered God's own Son : 
 it mortified their pride of race ; struck at the root 
 of all their bigoted attachments ; dashed all their 
 hopes of deliverance from the Roman yoke, sounded 
 in their ear the death-knell of their national exist- 
 ence. 
 
 No Jew, therefore, could give credence to the 
 apostles' story without giving up his long cherished 
 hopes of civil freedom ; turning away from that 
 beautiful temple where his fathers had worshipped ; 
 and thus not only abandoning the ordinances of his 
 religion, but cutting himself oif from the sympa- 
 thies of his brethren according to the flesh ; for- 
 feiting his possessions, and jeoparding his life. 
 
 To combat thus with a people whose tenacious 
 adherence to their own religious customs was 
 equalled only by their national aversion to every 
 other system of religious belief, a people who 
 
118 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 through the medium of their priests and rulers had 
 opposed Christ from the beginning of his ministry, 
 nor desisted in their malicious work until they had 
 seen him doomed to a felon's death, was, to say the 
 least, a task of all others the least promising to 
 men who had no facts to adduce in proof of their 
 assertions. 
 
 Whatever might have been their mental qualities, 
 or their adventitious advantages, they must have 
 known that in such an enterprise all would be their 
 enemies, not excepting the many who had themselves 
 followed Christ : for it is not to be supposed that 
 all of them could have been drawn into the plot. 
 
 They must have known, also, that they would 
 have to face the same multitude that had so lately 
 thronged the cross of the despised Nazarene ; that 
 they would be met and resisted by the most honourr 
 able and powerful men in the land, themselves 
 most deeply concerned, both in honour and interest, 
 to detect and crush the imposture ; and how could 
 they have ventured to encounter obstacles and 
 dangers so formidable, had their testimony been 
 false ? The strength to do, to dare, to suffer, can 
 issue only from conscious sincerity. 
 
 What were they to gain ? By their own ac- 
 knowledgment, they had at the outset dismissed all 
 idea of a temporal kingdom ; and in consequence 
 of their Master's well remembered words, they had 
 laid their account with toil, and poverty, and 
 shame. 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE ARGUMENT. 119 
 
 Nor did they aifect to conceal the oiFence of the 
 cross, or refrain from forewarning those who might 
 accredit their statements, of the temporal conse- 
 quences of their faith in Christ: that they too 
 might be hated of all men for his sake. 
 
 How different were these men from any that ever 
 before appeared in Jerusalem ! No longer the 
 observers of Jewish ordinances, yet humbly obedient 
 to the God of Abraham : not false to Moses, and 
 yet true to Jesus. 
 
 Theirs are no earth-born views, no vulgar senti- 
 ments. If they speak, it is as the Spirit gives 
 them utterance. If they weep, it is because men 
 " are enemies to the cross of Christ." If they 
 glory, it is in " the cross of Christ," by which the 
 world is crucified to them, and they unto the world. 
 If they rejoice, it is that they may be " counted 
 worthy to suffer shame for the name of Christ." 
 All worldly losses seem to them trivial compared to 
 the loss of that " soul for which Christ died," all 
 worldly gains but dross, if they may but " win 
 Christ, and be found in him." Whether the world 
 smile or frown, nothing shall either seduce or terrify 
 them from the profession of their faith, and hope, 
 and joy in Christ. Man's judgment is a little 
 matter to them, so long as their testimony is on 
 high, and their record in heaven. Come what may 
 to flesh and blood, all they ask is that they may be 
 " faithful in their testimony unto death ;" and all 
 they are looking for is " a crown of righteousness" 
 
120 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 from the hand of their ascended Master. Unless 
 they can rely on his promise, and look forward with 
 the confidence of certainty to the rewards and joys 
 of his presence in heaven, they seem to be aware 
 that their cause is desperate, their condition de- 
 plorable. 
 
 If Christ be not risen, we are found false wit- 
 nesses of God ; because we have testified of God 
 that he raised up Christ. "If in this life only we 
 have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miser- 
 able."* 
 
 But in a case of this kind, we want something 
 more than an expression of their views, and sym- 
 pathies : for men may seem fair, and yet be false. 
 
 Nor is it conclusive, in evidence of their charac- 
 ters, that many believed their story ; for doubtless 
 there were credulous people then as there are now, 
 though the most credulous are not apt to be im- 
 posed on when the impostor offers to them no 
 worldly inducements, not even a moment of grati- 
 fied desire. 
 
 Nor does it necessarily follow that one's belief is 
 true, because he submits to death, rather than re- 
 cant. Various influences may combine to pervert 
 the understanding ; and the pride of opinion may 
 be greater at times than the love of life. 
 
 But in the case of tivelve witnesses to a matter of 
 fact, respecting which they could not have been de- 
 ceived ; which was contrary to their expectations, 
 
 * 1 Cor. XV. 14-19. 
 
COXCLUSIOX OP THE ARGUMENT. 121 
 
 contrary to their habits of thinking, and against 
 all their worldly interests to make known to their 
 countrymen ; which, without preconcert on their 
 part, had wrought so wonderful a change in their 
 whole mental and moral being, as impelled them 
 to give their instant testimony to the fact, and 
 on the very spot where the event must have 
 occurred, if it occurred at all : in the midst of 
 those who were under the strongest possible in- 
 ducements, and had every means, to prove it false; 
 yea, in the hearing of all the world, in such a case, 
 it becomes a matter of the extremest importance to 
 know, how they acted after the novelty of the event 
 had ceased to affect their imaginations, and the 
 ardour of their first impressions had had time to 
 abate : whether no one among them shortly faltered 
 and grew pale ; or whether they all persisted in the 
 same testimony in despite of dangers a thousand 
 fold greater than any they could have anticipated. 
 
 The fearful issue which their testimony to a fact 
 of this nature was too well adapted to provoke, has 
 at last come. See them scorned, vilified, execrated. 
 See them plundered, imprisoned, tortured ; and, 
 with the single exception of the apostle John, who 
 survived to complete the volume of their recorded 
 testimony, all in turn put to death, foully murdered 
 for their persistent testimony, and let him believe 
 who can, that their testimony was an absolute fic- 
 tion, wickedly invented to deceive mankind. 
 
 We cannot : any more than we can believe that 
 11 
 
122 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 there is pleasure in pain, glory in ignominy, or a 
 strong natural preference in man's nature of misery 
 to comfort, or of death to life : yea, the love of all 
 physical evils for the sake of adhering to known 
 falsehood. 
 
 The whole course of human events, as well as 
 man's nature, is in favour of the truth of such 
 testimony as these witnesses gave to the fact of the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ ; and to oppose expe- 
 rience to their testimony because the fact involved 
 is miraculous, is worthy only of a mind too sophisti- 
 cal to detect, or too trifling to admit, the self-con- 
 tradiction of such an argument. 
 
 What ! believe that twelve men of sound minds 
 will suffer the deprivation of all worldly good, and 
 cheerfully submit to toil, and poverty, and shame, 
 and hatred, and bonds, and stripes, and a bloody 
 death, simply and solely that they might persuade 
 mankind to believe what they knew to be false ? 
 
 But this is not the only difiiculty involved in the 
 hypothesis that the witnesses to the resurrection 
 were impostors. He who adopts it must believe, 
 so long as he reasons logically from his own premi- 
 ses, that men who thus lied against their own con- 
 sciences, and abused the confidence of their fellow- 
 men, and took God's name in vain, nevertheless 
 portrayed in living colours a perfect image of 
 human excellence, framed an unequalled code of 
 morals, unfolded the clearest views of God and im- 
 mortality, inculcated the purest principles, pre- 
 
CONCLUSION" OF THE ARGUMENT. 123 
 
 sented the noblest incentives to human action, lived 
 themselves the holiest lives, and inspired the multi- 
 tude of their followers, who had been so recently 
 either bigoted Jews or benighted heathen, with every 
 sentiment of love to God and good will to man ! 
 
 He must admit, too, that they took as much 
 pains, and suffered as many privations, and en- 
 countered as formidable difficulties to establish 
 what they knew was not the fact, as they could 
 have done, had they believed their own testimony, 
 and their own testimony been true ; that, though 
 men of ordinary abilities, with no education and 
 without alliances, they contrived to deceive those 
 whose duty and interest and honour it was to re- 
 fute their story : contrived to deceive multitudes, 
 so that, whether Jews or Greeks, they forthwith re- 
 nounced the customs of their fathers, observed the 
 j&rst day of the week in commemoration of the 
 story, and submitted to baptism in the name of the 
 young man who had been so recently crucified at 
 Jerusalem : contrived ere long to inveigle and en- 
 list in their plot the foremost man of all Israel ! 
 him who had been brought up after the straitest 
 sect of the Pharisees ; who had sat at the feet of 
 Gamaliel, and had breathed out threatenings and 
 slaughter against them, even held the clothes of the 
 witnesses when one of their number was stoned to 
 death ; and in connection with the subsequent life 
 and labours of this supposed convert, even contrived 
 to frame and publish a series of narratives and 
 
124 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 epistles, so unartistic and life-like, so undesigned in 
 their coincidences, and harmonious in their tenor, 
 that no plain, straightforward, and veritable matter 
 of fact history could bear a more rigorously critical 
 scrutiny. 
 
 More than all this : he must admit and hold that 
 although they could not but foresee the consequences 
 of persisting in their conscious fabrication, and had 
 indeed from day to day only the m.ore certain evidence 
 that it would plunge them into divers perils, yet that 
 not one of them wavered or prevaricated, but were 
 all alike firm and consistent ; as indissolubly linked 
 together by the tie of a common falsehood held in 
 secret between them, as if they had been united to 
 Christ by a living faith in his resurrection, and 
 actually commissioned by him to preach the gospel ; 
 j,hat with invincible resolution, when a violent death 
 was staring them in the face, they steadfastly per- 
 severed, clinging to their conscious falsehood to the 
 very last ; and with their last breath uttering them- 
 selves in accents of the sublimest devotion to their 
 ascended Lord ! 
 
 Christianity has indeed its mysteries as " dark 
 with excessive light" as the throne of the Eternal; 
 but it offers no solecisms to our reason, no contra- 
 dictions to our faith, no shadowy form to our affec- 
 tions. 
 
 In accordance with the Divine purpose from the 
 beginning ; with the hope of the promise made by 
 God unto the fathers ; with the concurring voice of 
 
CONCLUSION OF THE ARGUMENT. 125 
 
 ancient prophecy ; with the import of all divinely 
 appointed sacrifices ; yea, even with the expectation 
 of the world at the time, of the Messiah's advent, 
 it tells of One who, though "equal with God," 
 " took upon himself the form of a servant," "being 
 made under the law;" and who "died for our of- 
 fences and rose again for our justification :" and it 
 bids us hope in him, and live unto him, and die 
 unto him, that we ourselves may at last be raised 
 to a new and endless life, through him who, before 
 he " humbled himself" to die, declared himself to 
 be THE Resurrection and the Life. 
 
 Blessed be " the God and Father of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ," for the testimony of 
 those chosen witnesses ! What do we not owe to 
 those men " of whom the world was not worthy !" 
 
 But he who denies and falsifies their testimony, 
 what is his creed ? whence are his data ? 
 
 Alas ! if consistent with his own principles of 
 reasoning, he knows not whence he is, or whither 
 going ! 
 
 Some day or other he must lay himself down and 
 die ! This is all he knows with certainty ; and well 
 may we shudder as we approach his grave, and read 
 his epitaph : 
 
 " From nothing I sprang, to nothing I return : 
 all that remains of me is dust, ivhich here mingles 
 with its native dust.'' 
 11 * 
 
^5 
 
 126 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE MEIjATION OF THE FACT OF THE BESUBREC- 
 TION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 
 
 From the manner in which the preceding argu- 
 ment has been conducted, this relation -will be 
 obvious to those who prize the commonly received 
 <loctrines of Christian faith : knowing, as they do, 
 whom they have believed. 
 
 But as this relation, though strictly logical, has 
 been either evaded or overlooked to the rejection 
 or perversion of certain essential principles of be- 
 lief as inculcated by the sacred writers, it may not 
 be deemed a superfluous task to adduce a few ex- 
 amples in illustration of its importance. 
 
 Owing to the repulses which avowed infidel- 
 ity has often encountered in its direct and un- 
 blushing assaults on Christianity, it has of late 
 ceased to be an open question, whether such a per- 
 son as Jesus Christ ever lived. As well might we 
 doubt any universally admitted fact of ancient 
 history as that Jesus of Nazareth was the founder 
 of that system of religion which bears his name. 
 
 Nor is it an open question, whether he was put to 
 death in the reign of Caesar Tiberias by crucifixion; 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 127 
 
 and so by parity of reasoning the fact of his resur- 
 rection must be admitted ; for, though the super- 
 natural is interwoven with the texture of the sacred 
 narratives, the proofs are essentially of the same 
 nature, and derivable from the same sources 
 whether we consider his life, his death, or his re- 
 surrection. 
 
 It but remains, therefore, for men of a specula- 
 tive cast of mind, or averse to the distinctive fea- 
 tures of the gospel, to undermine by sophistry what 
 cannot be overthrown by logical reasonings ; to ex- 
 plain away by fanciful analogies or preconceived 
 notions, what by no well-known law of literary criti- 
 cism, nor by any legitimate principle of hermeneu- 
 tics, can be consistently denied ; to supersede by 
 ingenious theories what must be admitted either as 
 a matter of historical fact, or a truth according to 
 the fair and obvious import of the phraseology in 
 which it is couched. 
 
 Hence, on the one hand, the diiferent theories of 
 modern skeptics ; and on the other, the various per- 
 versions of the distinctive teachings of the Chris- 
 tian Scriptures : in either case, the object being the 
 same — to preclude the admission of Christ's 
 divinity, and the necessity of self-renouncing be- 
 lief in his atoning sacrifice : thus divesting Chris- 
 tianity of its essential character as a remedial sys- 
 tem for fallen man. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Christian doctrines are but the 
 exponents of the leading facts of the New Testa- 
 
128 THE RESURRECTION OF JEBUS CHRIST. 
 
 meiit. To this day, we should have had no knowl- 
 edge of the doctrines, had not the events recorded 
 by the Evangelists actually taken place, and thus 
 passed into history ; and as Ave cannot reject the 
 facts without virtually discarding all belief in prob- 
 able evidence, so we cannot pervert or raodify the 
 teachings of these facts — so as to bring these 
 teachings into seeming agreement with either our 
 intellectual preconcej^tions, or the affinities of self- 
 will, without violating the analogy of the scriptural 
 records. 
 
 Despite the " Development Theory," the Myth- 
 ical, and the more recent theory of Sensualism 
 — so thinly veiled under the garb of Pantheism, 
 — as we stand by the vacant sepulchre in the gar- 
 den, and look back from the hour that the " great 
 stone" was rolled against its door to the day when 
 coming from Nazareth of Galilee " Jesus was bap- 
 tized of John in Jordan," we still have "the wit- 
 ness within" that we are not surrendering our 
 mind to the pencilings of fancy, nor to the con- 
 clusions of philosophy. 
 
 Imagination cannot sketch, nor reason fathom, 
 what the human mind, unless supernaturally illu- 
 mined, could never have conceived. In vain shall 
 we search amid the galleries of art, or the dis- 
 coveries of science ; amid the tomes of human 
 erudition, the mysteries of the Oracles, the niches 
 of the Pantheon, or even the archives of God's 
 ancient people for the requisite material to con- 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 129 
 
 struct the life of Jesus ; and mucli less for the 
 original of a person who embodied in himself, 
 without inconsistency, or defect, both precept and 
 example. 
 
 See ; the form is visible ; the utterance distinct ; 
 the action natural ; the expression life-like, man- 
 like, God-like. 
 
 It is " the Son of man :" it is " the Son of God :" 
 full of grace and truth : in the sublimity of his 
 virtue himself a greater miracle than any he 
 wrought ; who, so far from bearing any impression 
 of the age and country in which he appeared, was 
 more distinguished from his countrymen than the 
 Jew from the Gentile ; to whom Moses, the 
 greatest of the prophets, bore no higher relation 
 than that of servant to a Son ;* to Avhom the angels 
 are inferior, and whom they are charged to wor- 
 ship ;f whose advent was announced so far back as 
 ^' man's fall ;" who was pointed out by Moses him- 
 self, and with gradually increasing distinctness by 
 all succeeding prophets, as the coming Messiah; 
 who was the hero of both the Patriarchal and 
 Levitical dispensation ; and constitutes at once the 
 perpetual theme and necessary key-stone of the 
 Christian dispensation ; whose conception and birth- 
 place, whose works and virtues, whose sufferings 
 and death answer with singular minuteness to a 
 long train of prophetic intimations ; whose character 
 and actions, moreover, accord with whatever may be 
 
 *- Heb. iii. 5, 6. f lb. i. 5, 6. 
 
130 THE KESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 our abstract conceptions of infinite purity and love. 
 There is nothing clear, no approach to clefinitenessin 
 our conceptions of God except as we gaze on the 
 face of Jesus Christ ; and hence the world never 
 had any conceptions worthy of the great God until 
 Christ appeared : " the brightness of the Father's 
 glory and the express image of his person." 
 
 Aside from all other considerations, and not ad- 
 mitting of any reasonable explanation save on 
 grounds rather more scientific than any skeptical 
 theory that has as yet been advanced : — He who 
 could work the most stupendous miracles in his 
 own name, and in sole reliance on himself; who 
 could predict coming events not as if he had been 
 inspired, but as an omniscient being speaks ; who 
 announced grander ideas than had ever entered the 
 mind of either the greatest men, or the most re- 
 nowned sages — in a way too that " never man 
 spoke;" who exemplified the surpassing purity of his 
 principles amid unparalleled temptations and trials 
 by a life of stainless virtue and self-sacrificing love, 
 must have been conscious of power, of prescience, 
 of wisdom, of truth and of holiness — such as no 
 man whatever his capacities, his acquirements, his 
 moral excellence, his aptitudes, or however keen 
 his introspection — ever detected in his own con- 
 sciousness ; must himself have been conscious with- 
 out design, without vanity, w^ithout enthusiasm, or 
 the possibility of mistake, that, though a man, he 
 was essentially, in the very constitution of his 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 131 
 
 person, different from the sons of men ; as, in fact, 
 historically he is, in the works of his power, in 
 the utterances of his thoughts, in the acts of his 
 life, and in the forms of his consciousness sublimely 
 alone in the world's history. 
 
 An effect must have a cause ; and if within the 
 wide domain of nature with its teachings of his- 
 tory, its experience of life, its well-known laws of 
 mental development, its scientific discoveries, and 
 inductions from facts, we can find no cause ade- 
 quate to the solution of the psychological problem 
 involved in the constitution of his person, then, as 
 honest truth-seekers, we are bound to admit the 
 thought that in this solitary instance there might 
 have been a real union of divinity with the human 
 soul. 
 
 If true to the immutable principles of credible 
 evidence ; true rather to the inexorable logic of 
 facts : if consistent with our necessary admission 
 of a, first cause uncaused, without which it is impos- 
 sible to account for the phenomena of the universe, 
 it follows that in this relation we cannot extricate 
 the mind from a serious dilemma without having 
 recourse to " a revealed mystery."* 
 
 Speculate as we may : bring the theories of 
 ancient or of modern skepticism with all the 
 boasted lights of art and science to unravel the 
 
 * Revealed, because never before known : inexplicable, because he 
 who made it known has not thought proper to tell us how, or why 
 it is. 
 
132 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 enigma, — there can be no conclusion worthy of 
 "this noble reason" which God has given us for 
 higher ends than to idolize and immortalize self, 
 much less relief from heavy thoughts of the future 
 of our moral being, — but in the light of that ever- 
 memorable morn when the angelic messenger who 
 had said to the virgin — " The Holy Ghost shall 
 come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall 
 overshadow thee, and that holy thing which shall 
 be born of thee shall be called the Son of God,"* 
 then proclaimed to the women who had come early 
 to the sepulchre : " He is not here, for he is risen 
 as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord 
 
 iay-"t 
 
 As all presumptive arguments in favour of his 
 being able to verify his own word, that the third day 
 after his decease he would rise again, would have 
 been fatally wanting as well as irrelevant, had he 
 not been seen to be singularly different from all 
 born of woman ; and incomparably superior to any 
 one previous to his advent who had appeared as a 
 prophet sent of God, so, by his resurrection, is 
 all doubt dispelled. " The Divine-human" in all 
 the mystery, but incontestable reality of his match- 
 less, ineffable personality, stands revealed. 
 
 Hence throughout the sacred records, from first 
 to last, all is in keeping with this wondrous idea of 
 the incarnate Word. Every saying that fell from 
 his lips ; every miracle that he wrought ; every 
 
 * Luke i. 35. f Matt, xxviii. 6. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 133 
 
 precept that he at once taught and exemplified ; 
 every expression that either irradiated or shaded 
 his countenance ; every prophecy respecting the 
 Messias ; every angelic announcement ; every 
 apostolic doctrine ; every tribute of 2:)raise to him, 
 whether from holy men on earth, or from " the 
 spirits of just men made perfect ;" from " the wit- 
 nesses under the altar," or from "the four and 
 twenty elders" who bow before "the throne ;" every 
 manifestation of his glory ^ whether to a Balaam 
 who saw his glory afar off — to Peter who was an 
 "eye-witness of his majesty" — to Saul when he 
 was struck with blindness, or to John who " fell at 
 his feet as dead" — all is in harmony with his own 
 revelation of the mysterious constitution of his 
 person, as well as with the prerogatives of his 
 mediatorship : / am he that liveth and was dead : 
 and behold^ I am alive for ever-more^ Amen ; and 
 have the heys of hell and of death.' '"^^ 
 
 In his death the infirmity of that nature which 
 he had taken on himself was clearly made known : 
 he was the Son of Man. In his resurrection the 
 high nature which he had from the beginning with 
 God, though veiled for a season "under the form of 
 a servant," was illustriously vindicated from the 
 aspersions of his enemies : demonstrated, published 
 and declared to the world. 
 
 " He was declared to be the Son of God with 
 power by his resurrection from the dead :"t power 
 
 * Rev. i. 18. t Rom. i. 14. 
 
 12 
 
134 THE RESUKRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 to " lead captivity captive," to return to '^ the glory 
 which he had with the Father before the world 
 was," and according to his word, "to send the 
 Comforter" to his sorrowing disciples: power to 
 commission his disciples " to go into all the world, 
 and preach the gospel to every creature ;" to " con- 
 vince" the world "of sin, of righteousness, and of 
 judgment to come;" to "gather his elect from the 
 four winds of heaven ;" to raise the dead at the 
 last day; and "to judge the world in righteous- 
 ness" — "whereof God hath given assurance unto 
 all men in that he hath raised him from the dead:"* 
 power to separate the righteous from the wicked ; 
 to exalt his believing followers " to be kings and 
 priests unto God," and to "put all enemies under 
 his feet:" power to be with his disciples "even 
 unto the end of the world;" aye, to fulfil his 
 promise to all who believe on his name, that where 
 he is there shall they be also. 
 
 Hence it was that on his rising from the dead, 
 — disprove it who can ? — a new ipowe.r entered into 
 the world's history ; and he himself became a living 
 power in the soul of every believer. 
 
 It will be recollected that Jesus spoke of the 
 manner of his decease which should be accomplished 
 at Jerusalem, as well as stated the time of his res- 
 urrection ; and it is no less clear from the fact of 
 his resurrection that he was the ''' Lamh of God'' 
 than "the Son of God." 
 
 * Acts xvii. 31. 
 
RELATION TU CHRISTIAX DOCTRINE. 135 
 
 Leave out of view the wondrous constitution of 
 his person as developed in the history of his life, 
 and attested by the fact of his coming to life 
 again in accordance with his own word ; and there 
 is no more significancy in his death than in that of 
 any other man, as has been already intimated. If 
 a mere man he^ could not have atoned for his own 
 sins ; — for sins he must have had, notwithstanding 
 the perfection ascribed to him, had he not been 
 born of a miraculous conception ; and sooner or 
 later he too must have died in obedience to the law 
 of mortality. 
 
 Were it necessary in this connection it might be 
 shown that no view of Christ's death can be right 
 which is at variance with his sinless perfection, and 
 the relation which he sustained to the Father; 
 much less which proceeds on the supposition that 
 sin is no evil, or that God is not a King as well as 
 a Father ; which denies either the equity or the 
 love of God : thus either subverting ethical distinc- 
 tions, or destroying the force of law ; while failing 
 necessarily to harmonize the outgoings of mercy 
 with the demands of justice. 
 
 It might be shown, moreover, from the teachings 
 of the sacred records, (and independently of these, 
 no man's opinion of the nature and design of 
 Christ's death is deserving of a moment's thought,) 
 that his death was a voluntary act of humiliation : 
 " he humbled himself, and became obedient unto 
 death, even the death of the cross ;" that he did 
 
136 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 not die merely to attest the truth of his doctrines ; 
 for the mighty works to which he had previously 
 referred had already attested the divine origin of 
 his mission ; and had this been the primary design 
 of his death, it could not have been consistently 
 said of him any more than of the martyr Stephen 
 or James that "he redeemed us witt his blood," or 
 "gave his life a ransom for many." 
 
 Much less is it reasonable to infer from the 
 teachings of the Scriptures, that he died merely to 
 set us an example of patience and resignation, or 
 even that he died to obtain the power of forgiving 
 sin, and give us an assurance of eternal life : even 
 had he not previously given sufficient proof of his 
 power in these respects, or ever exemplified the 
 passive virtues, it is evident that such an example 
 might have been given, and such lessons effectively 
 taught without God's subjecting an innocent being 
 to cruel sufferings. 
 
 From the terms employed by the Evangelists as 
 descriptive of his passion, he must have suffered — 
 not in his body, but in his mind more than any 
 other man ever did or can ; and yet being sinless 
 he had no grounds for self-reproach. HaviDg lived 
 solely for others' good, in his case there could have 
 been no disturbing thoughts for some wrong done, 
 or any private end defeated. He too who had 
 boldly faced the traitor, and calmly, s.ilently met 
 the charges of the Sanhedrim, could not have been 
 afraid to die ; nor could he have been unresigned 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 137 
 
 to his Father's will who was conscious of the ulti- 
 mate triumph of his cause ; and yet it would seem 
 from the narrative that " never was there sorrow 
 like unto his sorrow." 
 
 Certain it is that any one else would have shrunk 
 back from the scenes through which he passed. He 
 was alone in this Gethsemane hour of his myste- 
 rious forebodings : alone in the final scene of his 
 inscrutable agony : in the phenomena of his death 
 just as separate from human kind as he was in the 
 circumstances of his bir,th, or, as we have seen, in 
 the constitution of his person. 
 
 Why he was constrained "to tread the wine-press 
 of sorrow;" or what the precise nature of his 
 sufferings, is but imperfectly known. The accepted 
 formula of the church that he died to atone for sin 
 advances us but a step beyond the threshold of in- 
 quiry. In any point of view it is a great mystery 
 — a stupendous problem — not to be resolved by the 
 finite mind ; but most assuredly we know one thing 
 about it— if but one ; and which we should not 
 have known had Christ not risen from the grave to 
 become Ids own interpreter of his dying sufferings : 
 and that is, that his death was not a mischance ; 
 nor the inevitable result of hell's devices against 
 "the Lord's Anointed ;" but an unavoidable moral 
 necessity under God's government: the appoint- 
 ment of Infinite wisdom and love ; predetermined 
 in the divine councils ; preceded by a long series 
 of preparations, embracing a great variety of 
 12 « 
 
138 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 agencies ; and that by virtue of '' the propitiation 
 for sin"* God can " be just, and the justifier of him 
 that believeth in Jesus." 
 
 " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, 
 and to enter into his glory ?" said Jesus to the 
 desponding disciples the very same day of his res- 
 urrection : " And beginning at Moses, and all the 
 prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scrip- 
 tures the things concerning himself. And said 
 unto them : Thus it is written, and thus it behooved 
 Christ to suffer ; and to rise from the dead the third 
 day. And that repentance and remission of sins 
 should be preached in his name among all nations, 
 beginning at Jerusalem. "f 
 
 Hence the atonement lies at the basis of the 
 Christian System : its final proof rests immoveably 
 on the great fact of the Resurrection ; and the 
 doctrine " of Justification by faith," inseparably 
 associated as it is with Christ's resurrection,J pro- 
 claims to dying sinners the gracious end for 
 which he was raised from the dead. 
 
 Thus '' the mystery that was hid for ages" is 
 unveiled in the light of the resurrection morn. He 
 who came forth from the sepulchre of Joseph of 
 Arimathea, where his body was laid after that he 
 •was crucified, is exalted to be A prince, and a 
 Saviour. § 
 
 So thought, so felt "the chosen witnesses," as is 
 
 * Rom. iii. 25, 26. f Luke xxiv. 27, 46, 47". 
 
 % Rom. iv. 26. g Acts v. 31. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 139 
 
 evident from the various references to the death 
 and resurrection of Jesus Christ, everywhere scat- 
 tered throughout the Acts and Epistles of the sacred 
 writers. 
 
 The resurrection served not merely to disabuse 
 their minds of all their earth-born conceptions of 
 the Messiah of promise ; but to impress them with 
 a profounder sense of his claims on their love and 
 devotions : the true dignity — the transcendent 
 glory of their blessed Master, notwithstanding the 
 indignities and ignominy to which he had been sub- 
 jected. 
 
 That hour of darkness which came over the in- 
 nocent Sufferer as he drew nigh his end, is now seen 
 to have been but the eclipse of " the Sun of right- 
 eousness." 
 
 What, though his murderers should cast it into 
 their teeth that the God whom they adored was a 
 crucified malefactor : — they had seen him after he 
 was risen from the dead ; had been instructed by 
 him in all things pertaining to his kingdom ; had 
 been clothed with a Divine commission ; had been 
 assured by him who had given them incontestable 
 evidence of his ability to keep his word that he had 
 gone " to prepare a place for them in his Father's 
 mansions ;" and looking back on the teachings of 
 his entire history, and remembering at once his 
 example and his promise, — oh with what meek- 
 ness do they receive the taunts and jeers of their 
 blinded enemies ! with what sincerity of convic- 
 
140 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 tion do they exclaim, not only in the face of 
 ridicule and contempt, but of death in its 
 direst forms: " We count all things but loss for the 
 excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our 
 Lordr' 
 
 So may we. Though we can but read and pon- 
 der the sacred narratives, we know that the resur- 
 rection of Jesus is attested by historical and moral 
 evidence no less conclusive than ocular demonstra- 
 tion. We feel that there is nothing in the annals 
 of our race ; nothing in all history worthy of cre- 
 dence, if it be not a fact that Christ rose from the 
 dead. 
 
 Despite therefore the sneers of a godless world, 
 the rationalism of schools, or the malign sophistry, 
 the brazen effrontery, the debasing insinuations of 
 modern sensualism, the humiliation of Jesus need 
 be no rock of offence to us. We have nothing to 
 dread but the suggestions of that "evil heart" 
 which rendered the disciples even when they " saw 
 the Lord," so "slow to believe;" and which now 
 blinds so many minds lest they should behold " the 
 King in his glory." 
 
 All is clear and bright — resplendently glorious 
 about the man Christ Jesus, if we but turn our eye 
 from the garden of Gethsemane to the garden in 
 which there was a sepulchre ; from the place of 
 skulls to yonder mountain in Galilee ;* from Gol- 
 gotha to Bethany. t 
 
 * Matt, xxviii. 16-18. f Luke xxiv. 50. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE. 141 
 
 Lo ! the scandal of the cross has been ^wiped 
 away ! We can now worship Him even at the 
 foot of the cross. When his soul seems to sink 
 and die within him under the inconceivable pres- 
 sure of his heavy burden ; when he cries out as if 
 in agony, of his conscious abandonment by both God 
 and man — even then, — oh stupendous and blessed 
 paradox ! — and never so humbly as then — shall we 
 look up to him as the Lord our God whom 
 principalities and powers obey and worship ; who 
 left "the glory which he had with the Father be- 
 fore the world was," and "became flesh," and 
 shed his blood "a ransom for many ;" " who for 
 the jo^ that was set before him in bringing many 
 sons unto glory endured the cross, despising the 
 shame.'' 
 
 It became Him therefore to say ; — and no one 
 but he could have so affirmed with all the solemnity 
 of actual prescience ; — " He that believeth in me 
 shall never die.'' 
 
 His resurrection becomes at once the seal and 
 pledge of the resurrection of his people. " If 
 Christ is risen, so them also that sleep in Jesus will 
 God bring with him." The Head living for ever, 
 the members shall live also. The first fruits 
 being gathered in, the harvest must follow. 
 
 " For ever blessed, then, be the God and Father 
 of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who, ac- 
 cording to his abundant mercy hath begotten us 
 again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of 
 
142 THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST. 
 
 Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorrupti- 
 ble, undefiled, reserved in heaven for those who are 
 kept bj the power of God through faith unto salva- 
 tion.'' 
 
 THE END. 
 
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