CHAPTER II.

THE CHIEF MIRACLE OF ALL-THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST-THE FOUNDATION OF CHRISTIANITY.

UT we will go into the matter more minutely, and attempt to show, in detail, some of the consequences that must be faced, if all the miraculous and supernatural element be expunged from the New Testament; and we will first deal with that foundation-stone of the Christian religion -the alleged resurrection of Christ. We are willing to take this as a crucial test, believing that if it be untrue, the whole fabric of Christianity falls to the ground, and if it can be established, the other miracles recorded become both natural and credible.

Now, if it be untrue that Christ rose from the dead, the following difficulties must be faced. The four Evangelists all give a minute and particular account of the Resurrection, differing, it is true, in some trifling details, but agreeing in all the lead

ing features, and bearing every internal evidence of truthfulness. The very discrepancies show that there was no collusion between the writers, but that each described what he had seen or heard from his own point of view. The Evangelists themselves were either apostles who knew Christ intimately, or companions of the Apostles, and perfectly familiar with all that these knew about their Master, and who evidently wrote from the fulness of their knowledge. We are to suppose, then, that these godly men invented this pious fraud, and somehow palmed it off on the multitudes who embraced the Christian faith a few years after Christ's death; and we are further to believe that all the Apostles themselves conspired to propagate the fiction, and that they went about narrating everywhere that they had seen Christ repeatedly after His resurrection, that they had eaten and drunk with Him, handled Him, listened to His voice, and finally beheld Him, with their own eyes, ascending to Heaven from the Mount of Olives. We are further to believe that they invented a whole system of doctrines, based upon the resurrection of Christ, and that they went about the world proclaiming this as essential to the

salvation of men, appealing to God, in the most solemn manner, to sanction the falsehood, and willing to endure persecution, and to lay down life itself in attestation of the lie. We are further to believe that they taught this fabulous story so connectedly and harmoniously that their followers never detected any disagreement, or suspected them of inventing it. Though Peter and Paul and James are recorded to have differed on ceremonial questions, and to have had sharp disputes, yet we are to believe that they never suffered a hint to escape them in one unguarded moment, that their story of the resurrection was a myth; nay, that they kept the secret so well during their whole lives that a great multitude of believers, in all parts of the world, received it as the corner-stone of their religion, many of whom suffered and died for it, and not one of whom that we know of ever doubted it; and the countless millions of believers who have followed have all shared this delusion, lived in the belief that the risen Saviour was at God's right hand, and had given them in His resurrection a pledge that they would likewise rise from their graves.

Again, we have the memorable circumstance

that the Gospel narratives all record the Resurrection in a way that reflects discredit on the Apostles themselves. They are represented as having received from Christ Himself in His lifetime several intimations of His approaching death and resurrection, and yet when He was betrayed they all forsook Him and fled; and Peter, His boldest follower, denied Him thrice with oaths: and so entirely did they lose confidence in their Master, that when He rose from the grave they were utterly incredulous, and refused to believe till Christ had showed Himself to them several times in the most unmistakeable manner. How came it that the Apostles allowed such a discreditable version to get afloat if the whole affair was a concoction of their own? Was ever such an absurdity known as a body of men inventing a stupendous fiction, and then narrating it so as to mortify their self-esteem in the most poignant manner? Had they narrated the resurrection in such a way as to set forth their own glory, or secure some earthly advantage for themselves, it might have been maintained with some show of reason that they had conspired to delude the

world; but that they should have invented this lie, and told it, in a way most humiliating to themselves, and submitted to be treated as the offscourings of the earth all the rest of their lives, simply to hoax mankind, is a theory so preposterous that we marvel any man should hold it who has not parted company with his reason or his conscience.

But we will put aside this theory of wilful imposture, and deal with another alternativethat of unconscious illusion on the part of the Evangelists and all the twelve. This is the favourite view of modern rationalists; they have boundless faith in human credulity, and have no difficulty in reconciling the purest moral teaching with the most complete hallucination. They hold that the disciples of Christ were the victims of their heated imaginations, or, as some of them would put it, so impregnated with Messianic expectations that they fancied they saw Christ after He was risen, and dreamed the beautiful myth of His ascension from the Mount of Olives. What a mass of absurdities this theory brings to view! These men, so godly, so simple in their