"It should be borne in mind, and is too often lost sight of, that WE HAVE NO ACCOUNT OF THE RESURRECTION FROM ANY SOURCE WHATEVER. We have accounts of the visit of certain women to a tomb which they found empty; but this is not an account of a resurrection. We are told that Jesus Christ was seen alive after being thought to have been dead, but this again is not an account of a resurrection. It is a statement of a fact, but it is not an account of the circ.u.mstances which attended that fact. In the story told by Matthew we have what comes nearest to an account of the Resurrection, but even here the princ.i.p.al figure is wanting; the angel rolls away the stone and sits upon it, but we hear nothing about the body of Christ emerging from the tomb; we only meet with this, when we come to the Italian painters.
"Moreover, St. Matthew"s account is utterly incredible from first to last; we are therefore thrown back upon the other three Evangelists, none of whom professes to give us the smallest information as to the time and manner of Christ"s Resurrection. THERE IS NOTHING IN ANY OF THEIR ACCOUNTS TO PRECLUDE HIS HAVING RISEN WITHIN TWO HOURS FROM HIS HAVING BEEN LAID IN THE TOMB.
"If a man of note were condemned to death, crucified and afterwards seen alive, the almost instantaneous conclusion in the days of the Apostles, and in such minds as theirs, would be that he had risen from the dead; but the almost instantaneous conclusion now, among all whose judgement would carry the smallest weight, would be that he had never died--that there must have been some mistake. Children and inexperienced persons believe readily in all manner of improbabilities and impossibilities, which when they become older and wiser they cannot conceive their having ever seriously accepted. As with men, so with ages; an unusual train of events brings about unusual results, whereon the childlike age turns instinctively to miracle for a solution of the difficulty. In the days of Christ men would ask for evidence of the Crucifixion and the reappearance; when these two points had been established they would have been satisfied- -not unnaturally--that a great miracle had been performed: but no sane man would be contented now with the evidence that was sufficient then, any more than he would be content to accept many things which a child must take upon authority, and authority only. WE ought to require the most ample evidence that not only the appearance of death, but death itself, must have inevitably ensued upon the Crucifixion, and if this were not forthcoming we should not for a moment hesitate about refusing to believe that the reappearance was miraculous.
"And this is what would most a.s.suredly be done now by impartial examiners--by men of scientific mind who had no wish either to believe or disbelieve except according to the evidence; but even now, if their affections and their hopes of a glorious kingdom in a world beyond the grave were enlisted on the side of the miracle, it would go hard with the judgement of most men. How much more would this be so, if they had believed from earliest childhood that miracles were still occasionally worked in England, and that a few generations ago they had been much more signal and common?
"Can we wonder then, if we ourselves feel so strongly concerning events which are hull down upon the horizon of time, that those who lived in the very thick of them should have been possessed with an all absorbing ecstasy or even frenzy of excitement? a.s.suredly there is no blame on the score of credulity to be attached to those who propagated the Christian religion, but the beliefs which were natural and lawful to them, are, if natural, yet not lawful to ourselves: they should be resisted: they are neither right nor wise, and do not form any legitimate ground for faith: if faith means only the believing facts of history upon insufficient evidence, we deny the merit of faith; on the contrary, we regard it as one of the most deplorable of all errors--as sapping the foundations of all the moral and intellectual faculties. It is grossly immoral to violate one"s inner sense of truth by a.s.senting to things which, though they may appear to be supported by much, are still not supported by enough.
The man who can knowingly submit to such a derogation from the rights of his self-respect, deserves the injury to his mental eye-sight which such a course will surely bring with it. But the mischief will unfortunately not be confined to himself; it will devolve upon all who are ill-fated enough to be in his power; he will be reckless of the harm he works them, provided he can keep its consequences from being immediately offensive to himself. No: if a good thing can be believed legitimately, let us believe it and be thankful, otherwise the goodness will have departed out of it; it is no longer ours; we have no right to it, and shall suffer for it, we and our children, if we try to keep it. It has been said that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children"s teeth are set on edge, but, more truly, it is the eating of sweet and stolen fruit by the fathers that sets the teeth of the children jarring. Let those who love their children look to this, for on their own account they may be mainly trusted to avoid the sour. Hitherto the intensity of the belief of the Apostles has been the mainstay of our own belief. But that mainstay is now no longer strong enough. A rehearing of the evidence is imperatively demanded, that it may either be confirmed or overthrown."
It cannot be denied that there is much in the above with which all true Christians will agree, and little to find fault with except the self-complacency which would seem to imply that common sense and plain dealing belong exclusively to the unbelieving side. It is time that this spirit should be protested against not in word only but in deed. The fact is, that both we and our opponents are agreed that nothing should be believed unless it can be proved to be true. We repudiate the idea that faith means the accepting historical facts upon evidence which is insufficient to establish them. We do not call this faith; we call it credulity, and oppose it to the utmost of our power.
Our opponents imply that we regard as a virtue well-pleasing in the sight of G.o.d, and dignify with the name of faith, a state of mind which turns out to be nothing but a willingness to stand by all sorts of wildly improbable stories which have reached us from a remote age and country, and which, if true, must lead us to think otherwise of the whole course of nature than we should think if we were left to ourselves. This accusation is utterly false and groundless. Faith is the "evidence of things not seen," but it is not "insufficient evidence for things alleged to have been seen." It is "the substance of things hoped for," but "reasonably hoped for" was unquestionably intended by the Apostle. We base our faith in the deeper mysteries of our religion, as in the nature of the Trinity and the sacramental graces, upon the certainty that other things which are within the grasp of our reason can be shewn to be beyond dispute. We know that Christ died and rose again; therefore we believe whatever He sees fit to tell us, and follow Him, or endeavour to follow Him, whereinsoever He commands us, but we are not required to take both the commands of the Mediator AND HIS CREDENTIALS upon faith. It is because certain things within our comprehension are capable of the most irrefragable proof, that certain others out of it may justly be required to be believed, and indeed cannot be disbelieved without contumacy and presumption. And this applies to a certain extent to the credentials also: for although no man should be captious, nor ask for more evidence than would satisfy a well-disciplined mind concerning the truth of any ordinary fact (as one who not contented with the evidence of a seal, a handwriting and a matter not at variance with probability, would nevertheless refuse to act upon instructions because he had not with his own eyes actually seen the sender write and sign and seal), yet it is both reasonable and indeed necessary that a certain amount of care should be taken before the credentials are accepted. If our opponents mean no more than this we are at one with them, and may allow them to proceed.
"Turn then," they say, "to the account of the events which are alleged to have happened upon the morning of the Resurrection, as given in the fourth Gospel: and a.s.sume for the sake of the argument that that account, if not from John"s own hand, is nevertheless from a Johannean source, and virtually the work of the Apostle. The account runs as follows:
""The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene while it was yet dark unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, "They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid Him." Peter therefore went forth and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they both ran together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying, yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him and went into the sepulchre and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about His head not lying with the linen clothes but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw and believed. For as yet they knew not the Scripture that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went away again to their own home. But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping; and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain, and they say unto her, "Woman, why weepest thou?" She saith unto them, "Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him.""
"Then Mary sees Jesus himself, but does not at first recognise him.
"Now, let us see what the above amounts to, and, dividing it into two parts, let us examine first what we are told as having come actually under John"s own observation, and, secondly, what happened afterwards.
I. "It is clear that Mary had seen nothing miraculous before she came running to the two Apostles, Peter and John. She had found the tomb empty when she reached it. She did not know where the body of her Lord then was, NOR WAS THERE ANYTHING TO SHEW HOW LONG IT HAD BEEN REMOVED: all she knew was that within thirty-six hours from the time of its having been laid in the tomb it had disappeared, but how much earlier it had been gone neither did she know, nor shall we.
Peter and John went into the sepulchre and thoroughly examined it: they saw no angel, nor anything approaching to the miraculous, simply the grave clothes (WHICH WERE PROBABLY OF WHITE LINEN), lying IN TWO SEPARATE PLACES. Then, AND NOT TILL THEN, do they appear to have entertained their first belief or hope that Christ might have risen from the dead.
"This is plain and credible; but it amounts to an empty tomb, and to an empty tomb only.
"Here, for a moment, we must pause. Had these men but a few weeks previously seen Lazarus raised from the corruption of the grave--to say nothing of other resurrections from the dead? Had they seen their master override every known natural law, and prove that, as far as he was concerned, all human experience was worthless, by walking upon rough water, by actually talking to a storm of wind and making it listen to him, by feeding thousands with a few loaves, and causing the fragments that remained after all had eaten, to be more than the food originally provided? Had they seen events of this kind continually happening for a s.p.a.ce of some two years, and finally had they seen their master transfigured, conversing with the greatest of their prophets (men who had been dead for ages), and recognised by a voice from heaven as the Son of the Almighty, and had they also heard anything approaching to an announcement that he should himself rise from the dead--or had they not? They might have seen the raising of Lazarus and the rest of the miracles, but might not have antic.i.p.ated that Christ himself would rise, for want of any announcement that this should be so; or, again, they might have heard a prophecy of his Resurrection from the lips of Christ, but disbelieved it for the want of any previous miracles which should convince them that the prophecy came from no ordinary person; so that their not having expected the Resurrection is explicable by giving up either the prophecies, or the miracles, but it is impossible to believe that IN SPITE BOTH OF THE MIRACLES AND THE PROPHECIES, the Apostles should have been still without any expectation of the Resurrection. If they had both seen the miracles and heard the prophecies, they must have been in a state of inconceivably agitated excitement in antic.i.p.ation of their master"s reappearance. And this they were not; on the contrary, they were expecting nothing of the kind. The condition of mind ascribed to them considering their supposed surroundings, is one which belongs to the drama only; it is not of nature: it is so utterly at variance with all human experience that it should be dismissed at once as incredible.
"But it is very credible if Christ was seen alive after his Crucifixion, and his reappearance, though due to natural causes, was once believed to be miraculous, that this one seemingly well substantiated miracle should become the parent of all the others, and of the prophecies of the Resurrection. Thirty years in all probability elapsed between the reappearances of Christ and the earliest of the four Gospels; thirty years of oral communication and spiritual enthusiasm, among an oriental people, and in an unscientific age; an age by which the idea of an interference with the modes of the universe from a point outside of itself, was taken as a matter of course; an age which believed in an anthropomorphic Deity who had back parts, which Moses had been allowed to see through the hand of G.o.d; an age which, over and above all this, was at the time especially convulsed with expectations of deliverance from the Roman yoke. Have we not here a soil suitable for the growth of miracles, if the seed once fell upon it? Under such conditions they would even spring up of themselves, seedless.
"Once let the reappearances of Christ have been believed to be miraculous (and under all the circ.u.mstances they might easily have been believed to be so, though due to natural causes), and it is not wonderful that, in such an age and among such a people, the other miracles and the prophecies of the Resurrection should have become current within thirty years. Even we ourselves, with all our incalculably greater advantages, could not withstand so great a temptation to let our wish become father to our thoughts. If we had been the especially favoured friends of one whom we believed to have died, but who yet was not to beholden by death, no matter how careful and judicially minded we might be by nature, we should be blind to everything except the fact that we had once been the chosen companions of an immortal. There lives no one who could withstand the intoxication of such an idea. A single well-substantiated miracle in the present day, even though we had not seen it ourselves, would uproot the hedges of our caution; it would rob us of that sense of the continuity of nature, in which our judgements are, consciously or unconsciously, anch.o.r.ed; but if we were very closely connected with it in our own persons, we should dwell upon the recollection of it and on little else.
"Few of us can realise what happened so very long ago. Men believe in the Christian miracles, though they would reject the notion of a modern miracle almost with ridicule, and would hardly even examine the evidence in its favour. But the Christian miracles stand in their minds as things apart; their PRESTIGE is greater than that attaching to any other events in the whole history of mankind. They are hallowed by the unhesitating belief of many, many generations.
Every circ.u.mstance which should induce us to bow to their authority surrounds them with a bulwark of defences which may make us well believe that they must be impregnable, and sacred from attack. Small wonder then that the many should still believe them. Nevertheless they do not believe them so fully, nor nearly so fully, as they think they do. For even the strongest imagination can travel but a very little way beyond a man"s own experience; it will not bear the burden of carrying him to a remote age and country; it will flag, wander and dream; it will not answer truly, but will lay hold of the most obvious absurdity, and present it impudently to its tired master, who will accept it gladly and have done with it. Even recollection fails, but how much more imagination! It is a high flight of imagination to be able to realise how weak imagination is.
"We cannot therefore judge what would be the effect of immediate contact even with the wild hope of a miracle, from our conventional acceptance of the Christian miracles. If we would realise this we must look to modern alleged miracles--to the enthusiasm of the Irish and American revivals, when mind inflames mind till strong men burst into hysterical tears like children; we must look for it in the effect produced by the supposed Irvingite miracles on those who believed in them, or in the miracles that followed the Port Royal miracle of the holy thorn. There never was a miracle solitary yet: one will soon become the parent of many. The minds of those who have believed in a single miracle as having come within their own experience become ecstatic; so deeply impressed are they with the momentous character of what they have known, that their power of enlisting sympathy becomes immeasurably greater than that of men who have never believed themselves to have come into contact with the miraculous; their deep conviction carries others along with it, and so the belief is strengthened till adverse influences check it, or till it reaches a pitch of grotesque horror, as in the case of the later Jansenist miracles. There is nothing, therefore, extraordinary in the gradual development within thirty years of all the Christian miracles, if the Resurrection were once held to be well substantiated; and there is nothing wonderful, under the circ.u.mstances, in the reappearance of Christ alive after his Crucifixion having been a.s.signed to miracle. He had already made sufficient impression upon his followers to require but little help from circ.u.mstances. He had not so impressed them as to want NO help from any supposed miracle, but nevertheless any strange event in connection with him would pa.s.s muster, with little or no examination, as being miraculous. He had undoubtedly professed himself to be, and had been half accepted as, the promised Messiah. He had no less undoubtedly appeared to be dead, and had been believed to be so both by friends and foes. Let us also grant that he reappeared alive.
Would it, then, be very astonishing that the little missing link in the completeness of the chain of evidence--ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY CONCERNING THE ACTUALITY OF THE DEATH--should have been allowed to drop out of sight?
"Round such a centre, and in such an age, the other miracles would spring up spontaneously, and be accepted the moment that they arose; there is nothing in this which is foreign to the known tendencies of the human mind, but there would be something utterly foreign to all we know of human nature, in the fact of men not antic.i.p.ating that Christ would rise, if they had already seen him raise others from the dead and work the miracles ascribed to him, and if they had also heard him prophesy that he should himself rise from the dead. In fact nothing can explain the universally recorded incredulity of the Apostles as to the reappearance of Christ, except the fact that they had never seen him work a single miracle, or else that they had never heard him say anything which could lead them to suppose that he was to rise from the dead.
"We are therefore not unwilling to accept the facts recorded in the fourth Gospel, in so far as they inform us of things which came under the knowledge of the writer. Mary found the tomb empty. Ignorant alike of what had taken place and of what was going to happen, she came to Peter and John to tell them that the body was gone; this was all she knew. The two go to the tomb, and find all as Mary had said; on this it is not impossible that a wild dream of hope may have flashed upon their minds, that the aspirations which they had already indulged in were to prove well founded. Within an hour or two Christ was seen alive, nor can we wonder if the years which intervened between the morning of the Resurrection and the writing of the fourth Gospel, should have sufficed to make the writer believe that John had had an actual belief in the Resurrection, while in truth he had only wildly hoped it. This much is at any rate plain, that neither he nor Peter had as yet heard any clearly intelligible prophecy that their master should rise from the dead. Whatever subsequent interpretation may have been given to some of the sayings of Jesus Christ, no saying was yet known which would of itself have suggested any such inference. We may justly doubt the caution and accuracy of the first founders of Christianity, without, even in our hearts, for one moment impugning the honesty of their intentions. We are ready to admit that had we been in their places we should in all likelihood have felt, believed, and, we will hope, acted as they did; but we cannot and will not admit, in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, that they were superior to the intelligence of their times, or, in other words, that they were capable critics of an event, in which both their feelings and the prima facie view of the facts would be so likely to mislead them.
II. "Turning now to the narrative of what pa.s.sed when Peter and John were gone, we find that Mary, stooping down, looked through her tears into the darkness of the tomb, and saw two angels clothed in white, who asked her why she wept. We must remember the wide difference between believing what the writer of the fourth Gospel tells us that John saw, and what he tells us that Mary Magdalene saw. All we know on this point is that he believed that Mary had spoken truly. Peter and John were men, they went into the tomb itself, and we may say for a certainty that they saw no angel, nor indeed anything at all, but the grave clothes (WHICH WERE PROBABLY OF WHITE LINEN), lying IN TWO SEPARATE PLACES within it. Mary was a woman--a woman whose parallel we must look for among Spanish or Italian women of the lower orders at the present day; she had, we are elsewhere told, been at one time possessed with devils; she was in a state of tearful excitement, and looking through her tears from light into comparative darkness. Is it possible not to remember what Peter and John DID see when they were in the tomb? Is it possible not to surmise that Mary in good truth saw nothing more? She thought she saw more, but the excitement under which she was labouring at the time, an excitement which would increase tenfold after she had seen Christ (as she did immediately afterwards and before she had had time to tell her story), would easily distort either her vision or her memory, or both.
"The evidence of women of her cla.s.s--especially when they are highly excited--is not to be relied upon in a matter of such importance and difficulty as a miracle. Who would dare to insist upon such evidence now? And why should it be considered as any more trustworthy eighteen hundred years ago? We are indeed told that the angels spoke to her; but the speech was very short; the angels simply ask her why she weeps; she answers them as though it were the common question of common people, and then leaves them. This is in itself incredible; but it is not incredible that if Mary looking into the tomb saw two white objects within, she should have drawn back affrighted, and that her imagination, thrown into a fever by her subsequent interview with Christ, should have rendered her utterly incapable of recollecting the true facts of the case; or, again, it is not incredible that she should have been believed to have seen things which she never did see. All we can say for certain is that before the fourth Gospel was written, and probably shortly after the first reappearance of Christ, Mary Magdalene believed, or was thought to have believed, that she had seen angels in the tomb; and this being so, the development of the short and pointless question attributed to them--possibly as much due to the eager cross-questioning of others as to Mary herself--is not surprising.
"Before the Sunday of the Resurrection was over, the facts as derivable from the fourth Gospel would stand thus. Jesus Christ, who was supposed to have been verily and indeed dead, was known to be alive again. He had been seen, and heard to speak. He had been seen by those who were already prepared to accept him as their leader, and whose previous education, and tone of mind, would lead them rather to an excess of faith in a miracle, than of scepticism concerning its miraculous character. The Apostles would be in no impartial nor sceptical mood when they saw that Christ was alive. The miracle was too near themselves--too fascinating in its supposed consequences for themselves--to allow of their going into curious questions about the completeness of the death. The Master whom they had loved, and in whom they had hoped, had been crucified and was alive again. Is it a harsh or strained supposition, that what would have a.s.suredly been enough for ourselves, if we had known and loved Christ and had been attuned in mind as the Apostles were, should also have been enough for them? Who can say so? The nature of our belief in our Master would have been changed once and for ever; and so we find it to have been with the Christian Apostles.
"Over and above the reappearance of Christ, there would also be a report (probably current upon the very Sunday of the Resurrection), that Mary Magdalene had seen a vision of angels in the tomb in which Christ"s body had been laid; and this, though a matter of small moment in comparison with the reappearance of Christ himself, will nevertheless concern us nearly when we come to consider the narratives of the other Evangelists."
CHAPTER VIII--THE PRECEDING CHAPTER CONTINUED
"Let us now turn to Luke. His account runs as follows:-
""Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. AND THEY FOUND THE STONE ROLLED AWAY FROM THE SEPULCHRE. AND THEY ENTERED IN, AND FOUND NOT THE BODY OF THE LORD JESUS. And it came to pa.s.s as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments, 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 WHEN 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 REMEMBERED HIS WORDS, and returned from the sepulchre, and told all these things unto the eleven, and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, and other women that were with them which told these things unto the Apostles. AND THEIR WORDS SEEMED UNTO THEM AS IDLE TALES, AND THEY BELIEVED THEM NOT. Then arose Peter, and went unto the sepulchre: and, stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed wondering in himself at that which was come to pa.s.s."
"When we compare this account with John"s we are at once struck with the resemblances and the discrepancies. Luke and John indeed are both agreed that Christ was seen alive after the Crucifixion. Both agree that the tomb was found empty very early on the Sunday morning (i.e., within thirty-six hours of the deposition from the Cross), and neither writer affords us any clue whatever as to the time and manner of the removal of the body; but here the resemblances end; the angelic vision of Mary, seen AFTER Peter and John had departed from the tomb, and seen apparently by Mary alone, in Luke finds its way into the van of the narrative, and Peter is represented as having gone to the tomb, NOT IN CONSEQUENCE OF HAVING BEEN SIMPLY TOLD THAT THE BODY OF CHRIST WAS MISSING, BUT BECAUSE HE REFUSED TO BELIEVE THE MIRACULOUS STORY WHICH WAS TOLD HIM BY THE WOMEN. In the fourth Gospel we heard of no miraculous story being carried by Mary to Peter and John. The angels instead of being seen by one person only, as would have appeared from the fourth Gospel, are now seen BY MANY; and the women instead of being almost stolidly indifferent to the presence of supernatural beings, are afraid, and bow down their faces to the earth; instead of merely wanting to be informed why Mary was weeping, the angels speak with definite point, and as angels might be expected to speak; they allude, also, to past prophecy, which the women at once remember.
"Strange, that they should want reminding! And stranger still that a few verses lower down we should find the Apostles remembering no prophetic saying, but regarding the story of the women as mere idle tales. What shall we say? Are not these differences precisely similar to those which we are continually meeting with, when a case of exaggeration comes before us? Can we accept BOTH the stories? Is this one of those cases in which all would be made clear if we did but know ALL the facts, or is it rather one in which we can understand how easily the story given by the one writer might become distorted into the version of the other? Does it seem in any way improbable that within the forty years or so between the occurrences recorded by John and the writing of Luke"s Gospel, the apparently trifling, yet truly most important, differences between the two writers should have been developed?
"No one will venture to say that the facts, upon the face of them, do not strongly suggest such an inference, and that, too, with no conscious fraud on the part of any of those through whose mouths the story must have pa.s.sed. If the fourth Gospel be a.s.signed to John (and if it is NOT a.s.signed to John the difficulties on the Christian side become so great that the cause may be declared lost), his story is that of a princ.i.p.al actor and eye-witness; it bears every impress of truth and none of exaggeration upon any point which came under his own observation. Even when he tells of what Mary Magdalene said she saw, we see the myth in its earliest and crudest form; there is no attempt at circ.u.mstance in connection with it, and abundant reason for suspecting its supernatural character is given along with it; reason which to our minds is at any rate sufficient to make us doubt it, but which would naturally have no weight whatever with John after he had once seen Christ alive, or indeed with us if we had been in his place. It is not to be wondered at that in such times many a fresh bud should be grafted on to the original story; indeed it was simply inevitable that this should have been the case. No one would mean to deceive, but we know how, among uneducated and enthusiastic persons, the marvellous has an irresistible tendency to become more marvellous still; and, as far as we can gather, all the causes which bring this about were more actively at work shortly after the time of Christ"s first reappearance than at any other time which can be readily called to mind. The main facts, as we derive them from the consent of BOTH writers, were simply these:- That the tomb of Christ was found unexpectedly empty on the Sunday morning; that this fact was reported to the Apostles; that Peter went into the tomb and saw the linen clothes laid by themselves; that Mary Magdalene said that she had seen angels; and that eventually Christ shewed himself undoubtedly alive. Both writers agree so far, but it is impossible to say that they agree farther.
"Some may say that it is of little moment whether the angels appeared first or last; whether they were seen by many or by one; whether, if seen only by one, that one had previously been insane; whether they spoke as angels might be expected to speak, i.e., to the point, and are shewn to have been recognised as angels by the fear which their appearance caused; or whether they caused no alarm, and said nothing which was in the least equal to the occasion. But most men will feel that the whole complexion of the story changes according to the answers which can be made to these very questions. Surely they will also begin to feel a strong suspicion that the story told by Luke is one which has not lost in the telling. How natural was it that the angelic vision should find its way into the foreground of the picture, and receive those little circ.u.mstantial details of which it appeared most to stand in need; how desirable also that the testimony of Mary should be corroborated by that of others who were with her, and out of whom no devils had been cast. The first Christians would not have been men and women at all unless they had felt thus; but they WERE men and women, and hence they acted after the fashion of their age and unconsciously exaggerated; the only wonder is that they did not exaggerate more, for we must remember that even though the Apostles themselves be supposed to have been more judicially unimpa.s.sioned and less liable to inaccuracy than we have reason to believe they were, yet that from the very earliest ages of the Church there would be some converts of an inferior stamp. No matter how small a society is, there will be bad in it as well as good--there was a Judas even in the twelve.
"But to speak less harshly, there must from the first have been some converts who would be capable of reporting incautiously; visions and dreams were vouchsafed to many, and not a few marvels may be referable to this source; there is no trusting an age in which men are liable to give a supernatural interpretation to an extraordinary dream, nor is there any end to what may come of it, if people begin seriously confounding their sleeping and waking impressions. In such times, then, Luke may have said with a clear conscience that he had carefully sifted the truth of what he wrote; but the world has not pa.s.sed through the last two thousand years in vain, and we are bound to insist upon a higher standard of credibility. Luke would believe at once, and as a matter of course, things which we should as a matter of course reject; yet it is probable that he too had heard much that he rejected; he seems to have been dissatisfied with all the records with the existence of which he was aware; the account which he gives is possibly derived from some very early report; even if this report arose at Jerusalem, and within a week after the Crucifixion, it might well be very inaccurate, though apparently supported by excellent authority, so that there is no necessity for charging Luke with unusual credulity. No one can be expected to be greatly in advance of his surroundings; it is well for every one except himself if he should happen to be so, but no man is to be blamed if he is not; it is enough to save him if he is fairly up to the standard of his own times. "Morality" is rather of the custom which IS, than of the custom which ought to be.
"Turning now to the account of Mark, we find the following:-
""And when the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome had bought sweet spices that they might come and anoint him. And very early in the morning, the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun. And they said among themselves,
"Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?"
And when they looked they saw that the stone was rolled away; for it was very great. And entering into the sepulchre they saw A YOUNG MAN sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them, "Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth which was crucified; he is risen; he is not here; behold the place where they laid him. But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there ye shall see him, as he said unto you." And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; FOR THEY TREMBLED AND WERE AMAZED, NEITHER SAID THEY ANY THING TO ANY MAN, FOR THEY WERE AFRAID. Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had cast seven devils. And she went and told them that had been with him as they mourned and wept. And they, when they heard that he was alive, and had been seen of her, BELIEVED NOT."
"Here we have substantially the same version as that given by Luke; there is only one angel mentioned, but it may be said that it is possible that there may have been another who is not mentioned, inasmuch as he remained silent; the angelic vision, however, is again brought into the foreground of the story and the fear of the women is even more strongly insisted on than it was in Luke. The angel reminds the women that Christ had said that he should be seen by his Apostles in Galilee, of which saying we again find that the Apostles seem to have had no recollection. The linen clothes have quite dropped out of the story, and we can detect no trace of Peter and John"s visit to the tomb, but it is remarkable that the women are represented as not having said anything about the presence of the angel immediately on their having seen him; and this fact, which might be in itself suspicious, is apologised for on the score of fear, notwithstanding that their silence was a direct violation of the command of the being whom they so greatly feared. We should have expected that if they had feared him so much they would have done as he told them, but here again everybody seems to act as in a dream or drama, in defiance of all the ordinary principles of human action.
"Throughout the preceding paragraph we have a.s.sumed that Mark intended his readers to understand that the young man seen in the tomb was an angel; but, after all, this is rather a bold a.s.sumption.
On what grounds is it supported? Because Luke tells us that when the women reached the tomb they found TWO white angels within it, are we therefore to conclude that Mark, who wrote many years earlier, and as far as we can gather with much greater historical accuracy, must have meant an angel when he spoke of a "young man"? Yet this can be the only reason, unless the young man"s having worn a long white robe is considered as sufficient cause for believing him to have been an angel; and this, again, is rather a bold a.s.sumption. But if St. Mark meant no more than he said, and when he wrote of a "young man"
intended to convey the idea of a young man and of nothing more, what becomes of the angelic visions at the tomb of Christ? For St.
Matthew"s account is wholly untenable; St. Luke is a much later writer, who must have got all his materials second or third hand; and although we granted, and are inclined to believe, that the accounts of the visits of Mary Magdalene, and subsequently of Peter and John to the tomb, which are given in the fourth Gospel, are from a Johannean source, if we were asked our reasons for this belief, we should be very hard put to it to give them. Nevertheless we think it probable.
"But take it either way; if the account in the fourth Gospel is supposed to have been derived from the Apostle John, we have already seen that there is nothing miraculous about it, so far as it deals with what came under John"s own observation; if, on the other hand, it is NOT authentic we are thrown back upon St. Mark as incomparably our best authority for the facts that occurred on the Sunday after the Crucifixion, and he tells us of nothing but a tomb found empty, with the exception that there was a young man in it who wore a long white dress and told the women to tell the Apostles to go to Galilee, where they should see Christ. On the strength of this we are asked to believe that the reappearance of Christ alive, after a hurried crucifixion, must have been due to supernatural causes, and supernatural causes only! It will be easily seen what a number of threads might be taken up at this point, and followed with not uninteresting results. For the sake, however, of brevity, we grant it as most probable that St. Mark meant the young man said to have been seen in the tomb, to be considered as an angel; but we must also express our conviction that this supposed angelic vision is a misplaced offshoot of the report that Mary Magdalene had seen angels in the tomb after Peter and John had left it.
"It is possible that Mark"s account may be the most historic of all those that we have; but we incline to think otherwise, inasmuch as the angelic vision placed in the foreground by Mark and Luke, would not be likely to find its way into the background again, as it does in the fourth Gospel, unless in consequence of really authentic information; no unnecessary detraction from the miraculous element is conceivable as coming from the writer who has handed down to us the story of the raising of Lazarus, where we have, indeed, A REAL ACCOUNT OF A RESURRECTION, the continuity of the evidence being unbroken, and every link in the chain forged fast and strong, even to the unwrapping of the grave clothes from the body as it emerged from the sepulchre. Is it possible that the writer may have given the story of the raising of Lazarus (of which we find no trace except in the fourth Gospel), because he felt that in giving the Apostolic version with absolute or substantial accuracy, he was so weakening the miraculous element in connection with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, that it became necessary to introduce an incontrovertible account of the resurrection of some other person, which should do, as it were, vicarious duty?
"Nevertheless there are some points on which all the three writers are agreed: we have the same substratum of facts, namely, THE TOMB FOUND ALREADY EMPTY WHEN THE WOMEN REACHED IT, a confused and contradictory report of an angel or angels seen within it, and the subsequent reappearance of Christ. Not one of the three writers affords us the slightest clue as to the time and manner of the removal of the body from the tomb; there is nothing in any of the narratives which is incompatible with its having been taken away on the very night of the Crucifixion itself.
"Is this a case in which the defenders of Christianity would clamour for ALL the facts, unless they exceedingly well knew that there was no chance of their getting them? ALL the facts, indeed--what tricks does our imagination play us! One would have thought that there were quite enough facts given as the matter stands to make the defenders of Christianity wish that there were not so many; and then for them to say that if we had more, those that we have would become less contradictory! What right have they to a.s.sume that if they had all the facts, the accounts of the Resurrection would cease to puzzle us, more than we have to say that if we had all the facts, we should find these accounts even more inexplicable than we do at present? Had WE argued thus we should have been accused of shameless impudence; of a desire to maintain any position in which we happened to find ourselves, and by which we made money, regardless of every common principle of truth or honour, or whatever else makes the difference between upright men and self-deceivers.
"It may be said by some that the discrepancies between the three accounts given above are discrepancies concerning details only, but that all three writers agree about the "main fact." We are continually hearing about this "main fact," but n.o.body is good enough to tell us precisely what fact is meant. Is the main fact the fact that Jesus Christ was crucified? Then no one denies it. We all admit that Jesus Christ was crucified. Or, is it that he was seen alive several times after the Crucifixion? This also we are not disposed to deny. We believe that there is a considerable preponderance of evidence in its favour. But if the "main fact"
turns out to be that Christ was crucified, DIED, and then came to life again, we admit that here too all the writers are agreed, but we cannot find with any certainty that one of them was present when Christ died or when his body was taken down from the Cross, or that there was any such examination of the body as would be absolutely necessary in order to prove that a man had been dead who was afterwards seen alive. If Christ reappeared alive, there is not only no t.i.ttle of evidence in support of his death which would be allowed for a moment in an English court of justice, but there is an overwhelming amount of evidence which points inexorably in the direction of his never having died. If he reappeared, there is no evidence of his having died. If he did not reappear, there is no evidence of his having risen from the dead.
"We are inclined, however, as has been said already, to believe that Jesus Christ really did reappear shortly after the Crucifixion, and that his reappearance, though due to natural causes, was conceived to be miraculous. We believe also that Mary fancied that she had seen angels in the tomb, and openly said that she had done so; who would doubt her when so far greater a marvel than this had been made palpably manifest to all? Who would care to inquire very particularly whether there were two angels or only one? Whether there were other women with Mary or whether she was quite alone? Who would compare notes about the exact moment of their appearing, and what strictly accurate account of their words could be expected in the ferment of such excitement and such ignorance? Any speech which sounded tolerably plausible would be accepted under the circ.u.mstances, and none will complain of Mark as having wilfully attempted to deceive, any more than he will of Luke: the amplification of the story was inevitable, and the very candour and innocence with which the writers leave loophole after loophole for escape from the miraculous, is alone sufficient proof of their sincerity; nevertheless, it is also proof that they were all more or less inaccurate; we can only say in their defence, that in the reappearance of Christ himself we find abundant palliation of their inaccuracy. Given one great miracle, proved with a sufficiency of evidence for the capacities and proclivities of the age, and the rest is easy. The groundwork of the after-structure of the other miracles is to be found in the fact that Christ was crucified, and was afterwards seen alive."
There is no occasion for me to examine St. Matthew"s account of the Resurrection in company with the unhappy men whose views I have been endeavouring to represent above. For reasons which have already been sufficiently dwelt upon I freely own that I agree with them in rejecting it. I shall therefore admit that the story of the sealing of the tomb, and setting of the guard, the earthquake, the descent of the angel from Heaven, his rolling away the stone, sitting upon it, and addressing the women therefrom, is to be treated for all controversial purposes as though it had never been written. By this admission, I confess to complete ignorance of the time when the stone was removed from the mouth of the tomb, or the hour when the Redeemer rose. I should add that I agree with our opponents in believing that our Lord never foretold His Resurrection to the Apostles. But how little does it matter whether He foretold His Resurrection or not, and whether He rose at one hour or another. It is enough for me that he rose at all; for the rest I care not.