However, I know you wish to do your work thoroughly; I want, therefore, to make a trifling suggestion which you will take pro tanto: it is this:-Paley, in his third book, professes to give "a brief consideration of some popular objections," and begins Chap. I.
with "The discrepancies between the several Gospels."
Now, I know you have a Paley, but I know also that you are ill, and that people who are ill like being saved from small exertions. I have, therefore, bought a second-hand Paley for a shilling, and have cut out the chapter to which I especially want to call your attention. Will you kindly read it through from beginning to end?
Is it fair? Is the statement of our objections anything like what we should put forward ourselves? And can you believe that Paley with his profoundly critical instinct, and really great knowledge of the New Testament, should not have been perfectly well aware that he was misrepresenting and ignoring the objections which he professed to be removing?
He must have known very well that the principle of confirmation by discrepancy is one of very limited application, and that it will not cover anything approaching to such wide divergencies as those which are presented to us in the Gospels. Besides, how CAN he talk about Matthew"s object as he does, and yet omit all allusion to the wide and important differences between his account of the Resurrection, and those of Mark, Luke, and John? Very few know what those differences really are, in spite of their having the Bible always open to them. I suppose that Paley felt pretty sure that his readers would be aware of no difficulty unless he chose to put them up to it, and wisely declined to do so. Very prudent, but very (as it seems to me) wicked. Now don"t do this yourself. If you are going to meet us, meet us fairly, and let us have our say. Don"t pretend to let us have our say while taking good care that we get no chance of saying it. I know you won"t.
However, will you point out Paley"s unfairness in heading this part of his work "A brief consideration of some popular objections," and then proceeding to give a chapter on "the discrepancies between the several Gospels," without going into the details of any of those important discrepancies which can have been known to none better than himself? This is the only place, so far as I remember, in his whole book, where he even touches upon the discrepancies in the Gospels.
Does he do so as a man who felt that they were unimportant and could be approached with safety, or as one who is determined to carry the reader"s attention away from them, and fix it upon something else by a coup de main?
This chapter alone has always convinced me that Paley did not believe in his own book. No one could have rested satisfied with it for moment, if he felt that he was on really strong ground. Besides, how insufficient for their purpose are his examples of discrepancies which do not impair the credibility of the main fact recorded!
How would it have been if Lord Clarendon and three other historians had each told us that the Marquis of Argyll CAME TO LIFE AGAIN AFTER BEING BEHEADED, and then set to work to contradict each other hopelessly as to the manner of his reappearance? How if Burnet, Woodrow, and Heath had given an account which was not at all incompatible with a natural explanation of the whole matter, while Clarendon gave a circ.u.mstantial story in flat contradiction to all the others, and carefully excluded any but a supernatural explanation? Ought we to, or should we, allow the discrepancies to pa.s.s unchallenged? Not for an hour--if indeed we did not rather order the whole story out of court at once, as too wildly improbable to deserve a hearing.
You will, I know, see all this, and a great deal more, and will point it better than I can. Let me as an old friend entreat you not to pa.s.s this over, but to allow me to continue to think of you as I always have thought of you hitherto, namely, as the most impartial disputant in the world.--Yours, &c.
(Extract from Paley"s "Evidences."--Part III., Chapter 1. "The Discrepancies between the Gospels.")
"I know not a more rash or unphilosophical conduct of the understanding, than to reject the substance of a story, by reason of some diversity in the circ.u.mstances with which it is related. The usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under circ.u.mstantial variety. This is what the daily experience of courts of justice teaches. When accounts of a transaction come from the mouths of different witnesses, it is seldom that it is not possible to pick out apparent or real inconsistencies between them. These inconsistencies are studiously displayed by an adverse pleader, but oftentimes with little impression upon the minds of the judges. On the contrary, close and minute agreement induces the suspicion of confederacy and fraud. When written histories touch upon the same scenes of action, the comparison almost always affords ground for a like reflection. Numerous and sometimes important variations present themselves; not seldom, also, absolute and final contradictions; yet neither one nor the other are deemed sufficient to shake the credibility of the main fact. The emba.s.sy of the Jews to deprecate the execution of Claudian"s order to place his statue in their temple Philo places in harvest, Josephus in seed-time, both contemporary writers. No reader is led by this inconsistency to doubt whether such an emba.s.sy was sent, or whether such an order was given. Our own history supplies examples of the same kind. In the account of the Marquis of Argyll"s death in the reign of Charles II., we have a very remarkable contradiction. Lord Clarendon relates that he was condemned to be hanged, which was performed the same day; on the contrary, Burnet, Woodrow, Heath, Echard, concur in stating that he was condemned upon the Sat.u.r.day, and executed upon a Monday. {3} Was any reader of English history ever sceptic enough to raise from hence a question, whether the Marquis of Argyll was executed or not? Yet this ought to be left in uncertainty, according to the principles upon which the Christian religion has sometimes been attacked. Dr.
Middleton contended that the different hours of the day a.s.signed to the Crucifixion of Christ by John and the other Evangelists, did not admit of the reconcilement which learned men had proposed; and then concludes the discussion with this hard remark: "We must be forced, with several of the critics, to leave the difficulty just as we found it, chargeable with all the consequences of manifest inconsistency."
{4} But what are these consequences? By no means the discrediting of the history as to the princ.i.p.al fact, by a repugnancy (even supposing that repugnancy not to be resolvable into different modes of computation) in the time of the day in which it is said to have taken place.
A great deal of the discrepancy observable in the Gospels arises from OMISSION; from a fact or a pa.s.sage of Christ"s life being noticed by one writer, which is unnoticed by another. Now, omission is at all times a very uncertain ground of objection. We perceive it not only in the comparison of different writers, but even in the same writer, when compared with himself. There are a great many particulars, and some of them of importance, mentioned by Josephus in his Antiquities, which as we should have supposed, ought to have been put down by him in their place in the Jewish Wars. {5} Suetonius, Tacitus, Dion Ca.s.sius have all three written of the reign of Tiberius. Each has mentioned many things omitted by the rest, {6} yet no objection is from thence taken to the respective credit of their histories. We have in our own times, if there were not something indecorous in the comparison, the life of an eminent person, written by three of his friends, in which there is very great variety in the incidents selected by them, some apparent, and perhaps some real, contradictions: yet without any impeachment of the substantial truth of their accounts, of the authenticity of the books, of the competent information or general fidelity of the writers.
But these discrepancies will be still more numerous, when men do not write histories, but MEMOIRS; which is perhaps the true name and proper description of our Gospels; that is, when they do not undertake, or ever meant to deliver, in order of time, a regular and complete account of ALL the things of importance which the person who is the subject of their history did or said; but only, out of many similar ones, to give such pa.s.sages, or such actions and discourses, as offered themselves more immediately to their attention, came in the way of their enquiries, occurred to their recollection, or were suggested by their PARTICULAR DESIGN at the time of writing.
This particular design may appear sometimes, but not always, nor often. Thus I think that the particular design which St. Matthew had in view whilst he was writing the history of the Resurrection, was to attest the faithful performance of Christ"s promise to his disciples to go before them into Galilee; because he alone, except Mark, who seems to have taken it from him, has recorded this promise, and he alone has confined his narrative to that single appearance to the disciples which fulfilled it. It was the preconcerted, the great and most public manifestation of our Lord"s person. It was the thing which dwelt upon St. Matthew"s mind, and he adapted his narrative to it. But, that there is nothing in St. Matthew"s language which negatives other appearances, or which imports that this his appearance to his disciples in Galilee, in pursuance of his promise, was his first or only appearance, is made pretty evident by St.
Mark"s Gospel, which uses the same terms concerning the appearance in Galilee as St. Matthew uses, yet itself records two other appearances prior to this: "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" (xvi., 7). We might be apt to infer from these words, that this was the FIRST time they were to see him: at least, we might infer it with as much reason as we draw the inference from the same words in Matthew; yet the historian himself did not perceive that he was leading his readers to any such conclusion, for in the twelfth and two following verses of this chapter, he informs us of two appearances, which, by comparing the order of events, are shown to have been prior to the appearance in Galilee. "He appeared in another form unto two of them, as they walked, and went into the country: and they went and told it unto the residue: neither believed they them. Afterward He appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and upbraided them with their unbelief, because they believed not them which had seen Him after He was risen." Probably the same observation, concerning the PARTICULAR DESIGN which guided the historian, may be of use in comparing many other pa.s.sages of the Gospels."
[My brother"s work, which has been interrupted by the letter and extract just given, will now be continued. What follows should be considered as coming immediately after the preceding chapter.--W. B.
O.]
But there is a much worse set of notes than those on the twenty- eighth chapter of St. Matthew, and so important is it that we should put an end to such a style of argument, and get into a manner which shall commend itself to sincere and able adversaries, that I shall not apologise for giving them in full here. They refer to the spear wound recorded in St. John"s Gospel as having been inflicted upon the body of our Lord.
The pa.s.sage in St. John"s Gospel stands thus (John xix., 32-37)-- "Then came the soldiers and brake the legs of the first and of the other which was crucified with Him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that He was dead already they brake not His legs: but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water. And he that saw it bare record, and we know that his record is true, and he knoweth that he saith true that ye might believe. For these things were done that the Scripture should be fulfilled, "A bone of Him shall not be broken" and again another Scripture saith, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced."
In his note upon the thirty-fourth verse Dean Alford writes--"The lance must have penetrated deep, for the object was to ENSURE death."
Now what warrant is there for either of these a.s.sertions? We are told that the soldiers saw that our Lord was dead already, and that for this reason they did not break his legs: if there had been any doubt about His being dead can we believe that they would have hesitated? There is ample proof of the completeness of the death in the fact that those whose business it was to a.s.sure themselves of its having taken place were so satisfied that they would be at no further trouble; what need to kill a dead man? If there had been any question as to the possibility of life remaining, it would not have been resolved by the thrust of the spear, but in a way which we must shudder to think of. It is most painful to have had to write the foregoing lines, but are they not called for when we see a man so well intentioned and so widely read as the late Dean Alford condescending to argument which must only weaken the strength of his cause in the eyes of those who have not yet been brought to know the blessings and comfort of Christianity? From the words of St. John no one can say whether the wound was a deep one, or why it was given-- yet the Dean continues, "and see John xx., 27," thereby implying that the wound must have been large enough for Thomas to get his hand into it, because our Lord says, "reach hither thine hand and thrust it into my side." This is simply shocking. Words cannot be pressed in this way. Dean Alford then says that the spear was thrust "probably into the LEFT side on account of the position of the soldier" (no one can arrive at the position of the soldier, and no one would attempt to do so, unless actuated by a nervous anxiety to direct the spear into the heart of the Redeemer), "and of what followed" (the Dean here implies that the water must have come from the pericardium; yet in his next note we are led to infer that he rejects this supposition, inasmuch as the quant.i.ty of water would have been "so small as to have scarcely been observed"). Is this fair and manly argument, and can it have any other effect than to increase the scepticism of those who doubt?
Here this note ends. The next begins upon the words "blood and water."
"The spear," says the Dean, "perhaps pierced the pericardium or envelope of the heart" (but why introduce a "perhaps" when there is ample proof of the death without it?), "in which case a liquid answering to the description of water may have" (MAY have) "flowed with the blood, but the quant.i.ty would have been so small as scarcely to have been observed" (yet in the preceding note he has led us to suppose that he thinks the water "probably came from near the heart).
"It is scarcely possible that the separation of the blood into placenta and serum should have taken place so soon, or that if it had, it should have been described by an observe as blood and water.
It is more probable that the fact here so strongly testified was a consequence of the extreme exhaustion of the body of the Redeemer."
(Now if this is the case, the spear-wound does not prove the death of Him on whom it was inflicted, and Dean Alford has weakened a strong case for nothing.) "The medical opinions on the subject are very various and by no means satisfactory." Satisfactory! What does Dean Alford mean by satisfactory? If the evidence does not go to prove that the spear-wound must have been necessarily fatal why not have said so at once, and have let the whole matter rest in the obscurity from which no human being can remove it. The wound may have been severe or may not have been severe, it may have been given in mere wanton mockery of the dead King of the Jews, for the indignity"s sake: or it may have been the savage thrust of an implacable foe, who would rejoice at the mutilation of the dead body of his enemy: none can say of what nature it was, nor why it was given; but the object of its having been recorded is no mystery, for we are expressly told that it was in order to shew THAT PROPHECY WAS THUS FULFILLED: the Evangelist tells us so in the plainest language: he even goes farther, for he says that these things were DONE for this end (not only that they were RECORDED)--so that the primary motive of the Almighty in causing the soldier to be inspired with a desire to inflict the wound is thus graciously vouchsafed to us, and we have no reason to harrow our feelings by supposing that a deeper thrust was given than would suffice for the fulfilment of the prophecy. May we not then well rest thankful with the knowledge which the Holy Spirit has seen fit to impart to us, without causing the weak brother to offend by our special pleading?
The reader has now seen the two first of Dean Alford"s notes upon this subject, and I trust he will feel that I have used no greater plainness, and spoken with no greater severity than the case not only justifies but demands. We can hardly suppose that the Dean himself is not firmly convinced that our Lord died upon the Cross, but there are millions who are not convinced, and whose conviction should be the nearest wish of every Christian heart. How deeply, therefore, should we not grieve at meeting with a style of argument from the pen of one of our foremost champions, which can have no effect but that of making the sceptic suspect that the evidences for the death of our Lord are felt, even by Christians, to be insufficient. For this is what it comes to.
Let us, however, go on to the note on John xix., 35, that is to say on St. John"s emphatic a.s.sertion of the truth of what he is recording. The note stands thus, "This emphatic a.s.sertion of the fact seems rather to regard the whole incident than the mere outflowing of the blood and water. It was the object of John to shew that the Lord"s body was a REAL BODY and UNDERWENT REAL DEATH. (This is not John"s own account--supposing that John is the writer of the fourth Gospel--either of his own object in recording, or yet of the object of the wound"s having been inflicted; his words, as we have seen above, run thus:- "and he that saw it bare record, and we know that his record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true that ye might believe. FOR THESE THINGS WERE DONE THAT THE SCRIPTURE SHOULD BE FULFILLED which saith "a bone of him shall not be broken," and, again, another Scripture saith, "they shall look upon" him whom they pierced."" Who shall dare to say that St. John had any other object than to show that the event which he relates had been long foreseen, and foretold by the words of the Almighty?) And both these were shewn by what took place, NOT SO MUCH BY THE PHENOMENON OF THE WATER AND BLOOD" (then here we have it admitted that so much disingenuousness has been resorted to for no advantage, inasmuch as the fact of the water and blood having flowed is not per se proof of a necessarily fatal wound) "as by the infliction of such a wound"
(Such a wound! What can be the meaning of this? What has Dean Alford made clear about the wound? We know absolutely nothing about the severity or intention of the wound, and it is mere baseless conjecture and a.s.sumption to say that we do; neither do we know anything concerning its effect unless it be shewn that the issuing of the blood and water PROVE that death must have ensued, and this Dean Alford has just virtually admitted to be not shewn), after which, EVEN IF DEATH HAD NOT TAKEN PLACE BEFORE (this is intolerable), THERE COULD NOT BY ANY POSSIBILITY BE LIFE REMAINING." (The italics on this page are mine.)
With this climax of presumptuous a.s.sertion these disgraceful notes are ended. They have shewn clearly that the wound does not in itself prove the death: they shew no less clearly that the Dean does not consider that the death is proved beyond possibility of doubt WITHOUT the wound; what therefore should be the legitimate conclusion?
Surely that we have no proof of the completeness of Christ"s death upon the Cross--or in other words no proof of His having died at all!
Couple this with the notes upon the Resurrection considered above, and we feel rather as though we were in the hands of some Jesuitical unbeliever, who was trying to undermine our faith in our most precious convictions under the guise of defending them, than in those of one whom it is almost impossible to suspect of such any design.
What should we say if we had found Newton, Adam Smith or Darwin, arguing for their opinions thus? What should we think concerning any scientific cause which we found thus defended? We should exceedingly well know that it was lost. And yet our leading theologians are to be applauded and set in high places for condescending to such sharp practice as would be despised even by a disreputable attorney, as too transparently shallow to be of the smallest use to him.
After all that has been said either by Dean Alford or any one else, we know nothing more than what we are told by the Apostle, namely, that immediately before being taken down from the Cross our Lord"s body was wounded more severely, or less severely, as the case may be, with the point of a spear, that from this wound there flowed something which to the eyes of the writer resembled blood and water, and that the whole was done in order that a well-known prophecy might be fulfilled. Yet his sentences in reference to this fact being ended, without his having added one iota to our knowledge upon the subject, the Dean gravely winds up by throwing a doubt upon the certainty of our Lord"s death which was not felt by a single one of those upon the spot, and resting his clenching proof of its having taken place upon a wound, which he has just virtually admitted to have not been necessarily fatal. Nothing can be more deplorable either as morality or policy.
Yet the Dean is justified by the event. One would have thought he could have been guilty of nothing short of infatuation in hoping that the above notes would pa.s.s muster with any ordinarily intelligent person, but he knew that he might safely trust to the force of habit and prejudice in the minds of his readers, and his confidence has not been misplaced. Of all those engaged in the training of our young men for Holy Orders, of all our Bishops and clergy and tutors at colleges, whose very profession it is to be lovers of truth and candour, who are paid for being so, and who are mere shams and wolves in sheep"s clothing if they are not ever on the look-out for falsehood, to make war upon it as the enemy of our souls--not one, NO, NOT A SINGLE ONE, so far as I know, has raised his voice in protest. If a man has not lost his power of weeping let him weep for this; if there is any who realises the crime of self-deception, as perhaps the most subtle and hideous of all forms of sin, let him lift up his voice and proclaim it now; for the times are not of peace, but of a sowing of wind for the reaping of whirlwinds, and of the calm that is the centre of the hurricane.
Either Christianity is the truth of truths--the one which should in this world overmaster all others in the thoughts of all men, and compared with which all other truths are insignificant except as grouping themselves around it--or it is at the best a mistake which should be set right as soon as possible. There is no middle course.
Either Jesus Christ was the Son of G.o.d, or He was not. If He was, His great Father forbid that we should juggle in order to prove Him so--that we should higgle for an inch of wound more, or an inch less, and haggle for the root ??y in the Greek word e???e. Better admit that the death of Christ must be ever a matter of doubt, should so great a sacrifice be demanded of us, than go near to the handling of a lie in order to make a.s.surance doubly sure. No truthful mind can doubt that the cause of Christ is far better served by exposing an insufficient argument than by silently pa.s.sing it over, or else that the cause of Christ is one to be attacked and not defended.
CHAPTER VII--DIFFICULTIES FELT BY OUR OPPONENTS
There are some who avoid all close examination into the circ.u.mstances attendant upon the death of our Lord, using the plea that however excellent a quality intellect may be, and however desirable that the facts connected with the Crucifixion should be intelligently considered, yet that after all it is spiritual insight which is wanted for a just appreciation of spiritual truths, and that the way to be preserved from error is to cultivate holiness and purity of life. This is well for those who are already satisfied with the evidences for their convictions. We could hardly give them any better advice than simply to "depart from evil, do good, seek peace and ensue it" (Psalm x.x.xiv., 14), if we could only make sure that their duty would never lead them into contact with those who hold the external evidences of Christianity to be insufficient. When, however, they meet with any of these unhappy persons they will find their influence for good paralysed; for unbelievers do not understand what is meant by appealing to their spiritual insight as a thing which can in any way affect the evidence for or against an alleged fact in history--or at any rate as forming evidence for a fact which they believe to be in itself improbable and unsupported by external proof. They have not got any spiritual insight in matters of this sort; nor, indeed, do they recognise what is meant by the words at all, unless they be interpreted as self-respect and regard for the feelings and usages of other people. What spiritual insight they have, they express by the very nearly synonymous terms, "current feeling," or "common sense," and however deep their reverence for these things may be, they will never admit that goodness or right feeling can guide them into intuitive accuracy upon a matter of history. On the contrary, in any such case they believe that sentiment is likely to mislead, and that the well-disciplined intellect is alone trustworthy. The question is, whether it is worth while to try and rescue those who are in this condition or not. If it IS worth while, we must deal with them according to their sense of right and not ours: in other words, if we meet with an unbeliever we must not expect him to accept our faith unless we take much pains with him, and are prepared to make great sacrifice of our own peace and patience.
Yet how many shrink from this, and think that they are doing G.o.d service by shrinking; the only thing from which they should really shrink, is the falsehood which has overlaid the best established fact in all history with so much sophistry, that even our own side has come to fear that there must be something lurking behind which will not bear daylight; to such a pa.s.s have we been brought by the desire to prove too much.
Now for the comfort of those who may feel an uneasy sense of dread, as though any close examination of the events connected with the Crucifixion might end in suggesting a natural instead of a miraculous explanation of the Resurrection, for the comfort of such--and they indeed stand in need of comfort--let me say at once that the ablest of our adversaries would tell them that they need be under no such fear. Strauss himself admits that our Lord died upon the Cross; he does not even attempt to dispute it, but writes as though he were well aware that there was no room for any difference of opinion about the matter. He has therefore been compelled to adopt the hallucination theory, with a result which we have already considered.
Yet who can question that Strauss would have maintained the position that our Lord did not die upon the Cross, unless he had felt that it was one in which he would not be able to secure the support even of those who were inclined to disbelieve? We cannot doubt that the conviction of the reality of our Lord"s death has been forced upon him by a weight of testimony which, like St. Paul, he has found himself utterly unable to resist.
Here then, we might almost pause. Strauss admits that our Lord died upon the Cross. Yet can the reader help feeling that the vindication of the reality of our Lord"s reappearances, and the refutation of Strauss"s theories with which this work opened, was triumphant and conclusive? Then what follows? That Christ died and rose again!
The central fact of our faith is proved. It is proved externally by the most solid and irrefragable proofs, such as should appeal even to minds which reject all spiritual evidence, and recognise no canons of investigation but those of the purest reason.
But anything and everything is believable concerning one whose resurrection from death to life has been established. What need, then, to enter upon any consideration of the other miracles? Of the Ascension? Of the descent of the Holy Spirit? Who can feel difficulty about these things? Would not the miracle rather be that they should NOT have happened! May we not now let the wings of our soul expand, and soar into the heaven of heavens, to the footstool of the Throne of Grace, secure that we have earned the right to hope and to glory by having consented to the pain of understanding?
We may: and I have given the reader this foretaste of the prize which he may justly claim, lest he should be swallowed up in overmuch grief at the journey which is yet before him ere he shall have done all which may justly be required of him. For it is not enough that his own sense of security should be perfected. This is well; but let him also think of others.
What then is their main difficulty, now that it has been shewn that the reappearances of our Lord were not due to hallucination?
I propose to shew this by collecting from all the sources with which I was familiar in former years, and throwing the whole together as if it were my own. I shall spare no pains to make the argument tell with as much force as fairness will allow. I shall be compelled to be very brief, but the unbeliever will not, I hope, feel that anything of importance to his side has been pa.s.sed over. The believer, on the other hand, will be thankful both to know the worst and to see how shallow and impotent it will appear when it comes to be tested. Oh! that this had been done at the beginning of the controversy, instead of (as I heartily trust) at the end of it.
Our opponents, therefore, may be supposed to speak somewhat after the following manner:- "Granted," they will say, "for the sake of argument, that Jesus Christ did reappear alive after his Crucifixion; it does not follow that we should at once necessarily admit that his reappearance was due to miracle. What was enough, and reasonably enough, to make the first Christians accept the Resurrection, and hence the other miracles of Christ, is not enough and ought not to be enough to make men do so now. If we were to hear now of the reappearance of a man who had been believed to be dead, our first impulse would be to learn the when and where of the death, and the when and where of the first reappearance. What had been the nature of the death? What conclusive proof was there that the death had been actual and complete? What examination had been made of the body? And to whom had it been delivered on the completeness of the death having been established? How long had the body been in the grave--if buried? What was the condition of the grave on its being first revisited? It is plain to any one that at the present day we should ask the above questions with the most jealous scrutiny and that our opinion of the character of the reappearance would depend upon the answers which could be given to them.
"But it is no less plain that the distance of the supposed event from our own time and country is no bar to the necessity for the same questions being as jealously asked concerning it, as would be asked if it were alleged to have happened recently and nearer home. On the contrary, distance of time and s.p.a.ce introduces an additional necessity for caution. It is one thing to know that the first Christians unanimously believed that their master had miraculously risen from death to life; it is another to know their reasons for so thinking. Times have changed, and tests of truth are infinitely better understood, so that the reasonable of those days is reasonable to us no longer. Nor would it be enough that the answers given could be just strained into so much agreement with one another as to allow of a modus vivendi between them, AND NOT TO EXCLUDE THE POSSIBILITY OF DEATH, THEY MUST EXCLUDE ALL POSSIBILITY OF LIFE HAVING REMAINED, or we should not hesitate for a moment about refusing to believe that the reappearance had been miraculous: indeed, so long as any c.h.i.n.k or cranny or loophole for escape from the miraculous was afforded to us, we should unhesitatingly escape by it; this, at least, is the course which would be adopted by any judge and jury of sensible men if such a case were to come before their unprejudiced minds in the common course of affairs.
"We should not refuse to believe in a miracle even now, if it were supported by such evidence as was considered to be conclusive by the bench of judges and by the leading scientific men of the day: in such a case as this we should feel bound to accept it; but we cannot believe in a miracle, no matter how deeply it has been engrained into the creeds of the civilised world, merely because it was believed by "unlettered fishermen" two thousand years ago. This is not a source from which such an event as a miracle should be received without the closest investigation. We know, indeed, that the Apostles were sincere men, and that they firmly believed that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead; their lives prove their faith; but we cannot forget that the fact itself of Christ"s having been crucified and afterwards seen alive, would be enough, under the circ.u.mstances, to incline the men of that day to believe that he had died and had been miraculously restored to life, although we should ourselves be bound to make a far more searching inquiry before we could arrive at any such conclusion. A miracle was not and could not be to them, what it is and ought to be to ourselves--a matter to be regarded a priori with the very gravest suspicion. To them it was what it is now to the lower and more ignorant cla.s.ses of Irish, French, Spanish and Italian peasants: that is to say, a thing which was always more or less likely to happen, and which hardly demanded more than a prima facie case in order to establish its credibility. If we would know what the Apostles felt concerning a miracle, we must ask ourselves how the more ignorant peasants of to-day feel: if we do this we shall have to admit that a miracle might have been accepted upon very insufficient grounds, and that, once accepted, it would not have had one-hundredth part so good a chance of being refuted as it would have now.