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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Fair Haven, by Samuel Butler
+(#12 in our series by Samuel Butler)
+
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+Title: The Fair Haven
+
+Author: Samuel Butler
+
+Release Date: July, 2004  [EBook #6092]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 4, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE FAIR HAVEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1913 A. C. Fifield edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+THE FAIR HAVEN
+A Work in Defence of the Miraculous Element in our Lord's Ministry
+upon Earth, both as against Rationalistic Impugners and certain
+Orthodox Defenders, by the late John Pickard Owen, with a Memoir of
+the Author by William Bickersteth Owen.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION BY R. A. STREATFEILD
+
+
+
+The demand for a new edition of The Fair Haven gives me an
+opportunity of saying a few words about the genesis of what, though
+not one of the most popular of Samuel Butler's books, is certainly
+one of the most characteristic.  Few of his works, indeed, show more
+strikingly his brilliant powers as a controversialist and his
+implacable determination to get at the truth of whatever engaged his
+attention.
+
+To find the germ of The Fair Haven we should probably have to go back
+to the year 1858, when Butler, after taking his degree at Cambridge,
+was preparing himself for holy orders by acting as a kind of lay
+curate in a London parish.  Butler never took things for granted, and
+he felt it to be his duty to examine independently a good many points
+of Christian dogma which most candidates for ordination accept as
+matters of course.  The result of his investigations was that he
+eventually declined to take orders at all.  One of the stones upon
+which he then stumbled was the efficacy of infant baptism, and I have
+no doubt that another was the miraculous element of Christianity,
+which, it will be remembered, was the cause of grievous searchings of
+heart to Ernest Pontifex in Butler's semi-autobiographical novel, The
+Way of All Flesh.  While Butler was in New Zealand (1859-64) he had
+leisure for prosecuting his Biblical studies, the result of which he
+published in 1865, after his return to England, in an anonymous
+pamphlet entitled "The Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ
+as given by the Four Evangelists critically examined."  This pamphlet
+passed unnoticed; probably only a few copies were printed and it is
+now extremely rare.  After the publication of Erewhon in 1872, Butler
+returned once more to theology, and made his anonymous pamphlet the
+basis of the far more elaborate Fair Haven, which was originally
+published as the posthumous work of a certain John Pickard Owen,
+preceded by a memoir of the deceased author by his supposed brother,
+William Bickersteth Owen.  It is possible that the memoir was the
+fruit of a suggestion made by Miss Savage, an able and witty woman
+with whom Butler corresponded at the time.  Miss Savage was so much
+impressed by the narrative power displayed in Erewhon that she urged
+Butler to write a novel, and we shall probably not be far wrong in
+regarding the biography of John Pickard Owen as Butler's trial trip
+in the art of fiction--a prelude to The Way of All Flesh, which he
+began in 1873.
+
+It has often been supposed that the elaborate paraphernalia of
+mystification which Butler used in The Fair Haven was deliberately
+designed in order to hoax the public.  I do not believe that this was
+the case.  Butler, I feel convinced, provided an ironical framework
+for his arguments merely that he might render them more effective
+than they had been when plainly stated in the pamphlet of 1865.  He
+fully expected his readers to comprehend his irony, and he
+anticipated that some at any rate of them would keenly resent it.
+Writing to Miss Savage in March, 1873 (shortly before the publication
+of the book), he said:  "I should hope that attacks on The Fair Haven
+will give me an opportunity of excusing myself, and if so I shall
+endeavour that the excuse may be worse than the fault it is intended
+to excuse."  A few days later he referred to the difficulties that he
+had encountered in getting the book accepted by a publisher:  " ---
+were frightened and even considered the scheme of the book
+unjustifiable.  --- urged me, as politely as he could, not to do it,
+and evidently thinks I shall get myself into disgrace even among
+freethinkers.  It's all nonsense.  I dare say I shall get into a row-
+-at least I hope I shall."  Evidently there is here no anticipation
+of The Fair Haven being misunderstood.  Misunderstood, however, it
+was, not only by reviewers, some of whom greeted it solemnly as a
+defence of orthodoxy, but by divines of high standing, such as the
+late Canon Ainger, who sent it to a friend whom he wished to convert.
+This was more than Butler could resist, and he hastened to issue a
+second edition bearing his name and accompanied by a preface in which
+the deceived elect were held up to ridicule.
+
+Butler used to maintain that The Fair Haven did his reputation no
+harm.  Writing in 1901, he said:
+
+"The Fair Haven got me into no social disgrace that I have ever been
+able to discover.  I might attack Christianity as much as I chose and
+nobody cared one straw; but when I attacked Darwin it was a different
+matter.  For many years Evolution, Old and New, and Unconscious
+Memory made a shipwreck of my literary prospects.  I am only now
+beginning to emerge from the literary and social injury which those
+two perfectly righteous books inflicted on me.  I dare say they
+abound with small faults of taste, but I rejoice in having written
+both of them."
+
+Very likely Butler was right as to the social side of the question,
+but I am convinced that The Fair Haven did him grave harm in the
+literary world.  Reviewers fought shy of him for the rest of his
+life.  They had been taken in once, and they took very good care that
+they should not be taken in again.  The word went forth that Butler
+was not to be taken seriously, whatever he wrote, and the results of
+the decree were apparent in the conspiracy of silence that greeted
+not only his books on evolution, but his Homeric works, his writings
+on art, and his edition of Shakespeare's sonnets.  Now that he has
+passed beyond controversies and mystifications, and now that his
+other works are appreciated at their true value, it is not too much
+to hope that tardy justice will be accorded also to The Fair Haven.
+It is true that the subject is no longer the burning question that it
+was forty years ago.  In the early seventies theological polemics
+were fashionable.  Books like Seeley's Ecce Homo and Matthew Arnold's
+Literature and Dogma were eagerly devoured by readers of all classes.
+Nowadays we take but a languid interest in the problems that
+disturbed our grandfathers, and most of us have settled down into
+what Disraeli described as the religion of all sensible men, which no
+sensible man ever talks about.  There is, however, in The Fair Haven
+a good deal more than theological controversy, and our Laodicean age
+will appreciate Butler's humour and irony if it cares little for his
+polemics.  The Fair Haven scandalised a good many people when it
+first appeared, but I am not afraid of its scandalising anybody now.
+I should be sorry, nevertheless, if it gave any reader a false
+impression of Butler's Christianity, and I think I cannot do better
+than conclude with a passage from one of his essays which represents
+his attitude to religion perhaps more faithfully than anything in The
+Fair Haven:  "What, after all, is the essence of Christianity?  What
+is the kernel of the nut?  Surely common sense and cheerfulness, with
+unflinching opposition to the charlatanisms and Pharisaisms of a
+man's own times.  The essence of Christianity lies neither in dogma,
+nor yet in abnormally holy life, but in faith in an unseen world, in
+doing one's duty, in speaking the truth, in finding the true life
+rather in others than in oneself, and in the certain hope that he who
+loses his life on these behalfs finds more than he has lost.  What
+can Agnosticism do against such Christianity as this?  I should be
+shocked if anything I had ever written or shall ever write should
+seem to make light of these things."
+
+R. A. STREATFEILD.
+August, 1913.
+
+
+
+BUTLER'S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
+
+
+
+The occasion of a Second Edition of The Fair Haven enables me to
+thank the public and my critics for the favourable reception which
+has been accorded to the First Edition.  I had feared that the
+freedom with which I had exposed certain untenable positions taken by
+Defenders of Christianity might have given offence to some reviewers,
+but no complaint has reached me from any quarter on the score of my
+not having put the best possible case for the evidence in favour of
+the miraculous element in Christ's teaching--nor can I believe that I
+should have failed to hear of it, if my book had been open to
+exception on this ground.
+
+An apology is perhaps due for the adoption of a pseudonym, and even
+more so for the creation of two such characters as JOHN PICKARD OWEN
+and his brother.  Why could I not, it may be asked, have said all
+that I had to say in my own proper person?
+
+Are there not real ills of life enough already?  Is there not a "lo
+here!" from this school with its gushing "earnestness," it
+distinctions without differences, its gnat strainings and camel
+swallowings, its pretence of grappling with a question while
+resolutely bent upon shirking it, its dust throwing and
+mystification, its concealment of its own ineffable insincerity under
+an air of ineffable candour?  Is there not a "lo there!" from that
+other school with its bituminous atmosphere of exclusiveness and
+self-laudatory dilettanteism?  Is there not enough actual exposition
+of boredom come over us from many quarters without drawing for new
+bores upon the imagination?  It is true I gave a single drop of
+comfort.  JOHN PICKARD OWEN was dead.  But his having ceased to exist
+(to use the impious phraseology of the present day) did not cancel
+the fact of his having once existed.  That he should have ever been
+born gave proof of potentialities in Nature which could not be
+regarded lightly.  What hybrids might not be in store for us next?
+Moreover, though JOHN PICKARD was dead, WILLIAM BICKERSTETH was still
+living, and might at any moment rekindle his burning and shining lamp
+of persistent self-satisfaction.  Even though the OWENS had actually
+existed, should not their existence have been ignored as a disgrace
+to Nature?  Who then could be justified in creating them when they
+did not exist?
+
+I am afraid I must offer an apology rather than an excuse.  The fact
+is that I was in a very awkward position.  My previous work, Erewhon,
+had failed to give satisfaction to certain ultra-orthodox Christians,
+who imagined that they could detect an analogy between the English
+Church and the Erewhonian Musical Banks.  It is inconceivable how
+they can have got hold of this idea; but I was given to understand
+that I should find it far from easy to dispossess them of the notion
+that something in the way of satire had been intended.  There were
+other parts of the book which had also been excepted to, and
+altogether I had reason to believe that if I defended Christianity in
+my own name I should not find Erewhon any addition to the weight
+which my remarks might otherwise carry.  If I had been suspected of
+satire once, I might be suspected again with no greater reason.
+Instead of calmly reviewing the arguments which I adduced, The Rock
+might have raised a cry of non tali auxilio.  It must always be
+remembered that besides the legitimate investors in Christian stocks,
+if so homely a metaphor may be pardoned, there are unscrupulous
+persons whose profession it is to be bulls, bears, stags, and I know
+not what other creatures of the various Christian markets.  It is all
+nonsense about hawks not picking out each other's eyes--there is
+nothing they like better.  I feared The Guardian, The Record, The
+John Bull, etc., lest they should suggest that from a bear I now
+turned bull with a view to an eventual bishopric.  Such insinuations
+would have impaired the value of The Fair Haven as an anchorage for
+well-meaning people.  I therefore resolved to obey the injunction of
+the Gentile Apostle and avoid all appearance of evil, by dissociating
+myself from the author of Erewhon as completely as possible.  At the
+moment of my resolution JOHN PICKARD OWEN came to my assistance; I
+felt that he was the sort of man I wanted, but that he was hardly
+sufficient in himself.  I therefore summoned his brother.  The pair
+have served their purpose; a year nowadays produces great changes in
+men's thoughts concerning Christianity, and the little matter of
+Erewhon having quite blown over I feel that I may safely appear in my
+true colours as the champion of orthodoxy, discard the OWENS as other
+than mouthpieces, and relieve the public from uneasiness as to any
+further writings from the pen of the surviving brother.
+
+Nevertheless I am bound to own that, in spite of a generally
+favourable opinion, my critics have not been unanimous in their
+interpretation of The Fair Haven.  Thus, The Rock (April 25, 1873,
+and May 9, 1873), says that the work is "an extraordinary one,
+whether regarded as a biographical record or a theological treatise.
+Indeed the importance of the volume compels us to depart from our
+custom of reviewing with brevity works entrusted to us, and we shall
+in two consecutive numbers of The Rock lay before its readers what
+appear to us to be the merits and demerits of this posthumous
+production."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"His exhibition of the certain proofs furnished of the Resurrection
+of our Lord is certainly masterly and convincing."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"To the sincerely inquiring doubter, the striking way in which the
+truth of the Resurrection is exhibited must be most beneficial, but
+such a character we are compelled to believe is rare among those of
+the schools of neology."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"Mr. OWEN'S exposition and refutation of the hallucination and
+mythical theories of Strauss and his followers is most admirable, and
+all should read it who desire to know exactly what excuses men make
+for their incredulity.  The work also contains many beautiful
+passages on the discomfort of unbelief, and the holy pleasure of a
+settled faith, which cannot fail to benefit the reader."
+
+On the other hand, in spite of all my precautions, the same
+misfortune which overtook Erewhon has also come upon The Fair Haven.
+It has been suspected of a satirical purpose.  The author of a
+pamphlet entitled Jesus versus Christianity says:-
+
+"The Fair Haven is an ironical defence of orthodoxy at the expense of
+the whole mass of Church tenet and dogma, the character of Christ
+only excepted.  Such at least is our reading of it, though critics of
+the Rock and Record order have accepted the book as a serious defence
+of Christianity, and proclaimed it as a most valuable contribution in
+aid of the faith.  Affecting an orthodox standpoint it most bitterly
+reproaches all previous apologists for the lack of candour with which
+they have ignored or explained away insuperable difficulties and
+attached undue value to coincidences real or imagined.  One and all
+they have, the author declares, been at best, but zealous 'liars for
+God,' or what to them was more than God, their own religious system.
+This must go on no longer.  We, as Christians having a sound cause,
+need not fear to let the truth be known.  He proceeds accordingly to
+set forth the truth as he finds it in the New Testament; and in a
+masterly analysis of the account of the Resurrection, which he
+selects as the principal crucial miracle, involving all other
+miracles, he shows how slender is the foundation on which the whole
+fabric of supernatural theology has been reared."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"As told by our author the whole affords an exquisite example of the
+natural growth of a legend."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"If the reader can once fully grasp the intention of the style, and
+its affectation of the tone of indignant orthodoxy, and perceive also
+how utterly destructive are its 'candid admissions' to the whole
+fabric of supernaturalism, he will enjoy a rare treat.  It is not
+however for the purpose of recommending what we at least regard as a
+piece of exquisite humour, that we call attention to The Fair Haven,
+but &c. &c."
+
+* * * * *
+
+This is very dreadful; but what can one do?
+
+Again, The Scotsman speaks of the writer as being "throughout in
+downright almost pathetic earnestness."  While The National Reformer
+seems to be in doubt whether the book is a covert attack upon
+Christianity or a serious defence of it, but declares that both
+orthodox and unorthodox will find matter requiring thought and
+answer.
+
+I am not responsible for the interpretations of my readers.  It is
+only natural that the same work should present a very different
+aspect according as it is approached from one side or the other.
+There is only one way out of it--that the reader should kindly
+interpret according to his own fancies.  If he will do this the book
+is sure to please him.  I have done the best I can for all parties,
+and feel justified in appealing to the existence of the widely
+conflicting opinions which I have quoted, as a proof that the balance
+has been evenly held, and that I was justified in calling the book a
+defence--both as against impugners and defenders.
+
+S. BUTLER.
+Oct. 8, 1873.
+
+
+
+
+MEMOIR OF THE LATE JOHN PICKARD OWEN
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+The subject of this Memoir, and Author of the work which follows it,
+was born in Goodge Street, Tottenham Court Road, London, on the 5th
+of February, 1832.  He was my elder brother by about eighteen months.
+Our father and mother had once been rich, but through a succession of
+unavoidable misfortunes they were left with but a very moderate
+income when my brother and myself were about three and four years
+old.  My father died some five or six years afterwards, and we only
+recollected him as a singularly gentle and humorous playmate who
+doted upon us both and never spoke unkindly.  The charm of such a
+recollection can never be dispelled; both my brother and myself
+returned his love with interest, and cherished his memory with the
+most affectionate regret, from the day on which he left us till the
+time came that the one of us was again to see him face to face.  So
+sweet and winning was his nature that his slightest wish was our law-
+-and whenever we pleased him, no matter how little, he never failed
+to thank us as though we had done him a service which we should have
+had a perfect right to withhold.  How proud were we upon any of these
+occasions, and how we courted the opportunity of being thanked!  He
+did indeed well know the art of becoming idolised by his children,
+and dearly did he prize the results of his own proficiency; yet truly
+there was no art about it; all arose spontaneously from the
+wellspring of a sympathetic nature which knew how to feel as others
+felt, whether old or young, rich or poor, wise or foolish.  On one
+point alone did he neglect us--I refer to our religious education.
+On all other matters he was the kindest and most careful teacher in
+the world.  Love and gratitude be to his memory!
+
+My mother loved us no less ardently than my father, but she was of a
+quicker temper, and less adept at conciliating affection.  She must
+have been exceedingly handsome when she was young, and was still
+comely when we first remembered her; she was also highly
+accomplished, but she felt my father's loss of fortune more keenly
+than my father himself, and it preyed upon her mind, though rather
+for our sake than for her own.  Had we not known my father we should
+have loved her better than any one in the world, but affection goes
+by comparison, and my father spoiled us for any one but himself;
+indeed, in after life, I remember my mother's telling me, with many
+tears, how jealous she had often been of the love we bore him, and
+how mean she had thought it of him to entrust all scolding or
+repression to her, so that he might have more than his due share of
+our affection.  Not that I believe my father did this consciously;
+still, he so greatly hated scolding that I dare say we might often
+have got off scot free when we really deserved reproof had not my
+mother undertaken the onus of scolding us herself.  We therefore
+naturally feared her more than my father, and fearing more we loved
+less.  For as love casteth out fear, so fear love.
+
+This must have been hard to bear, and my mother scarcely knew the way
+to bear it.  She tried to upbraid us, in little ways, into loving her
+as much as my father; the more she tried this, the less we could
+succeed in doing it; and so on and so on in a fashion which need not
+be detailed.  Not but what we really loved her deeply, while her
+affection for us was unsurpassable still, we loved her less than we
+loved my father, and this was the grievance.
+
+My father entrusted our religious education entirely to my mother.
+He was himself, I am assured, of a deeply religious turn of mind, and
+a thoroughly consistent member of the Church of England; but he
+conceived, and perhaps rightly, that it is the mother who should
+first teach her children to lift their hands in prayer, and impart to
+them a knowledge of the One in whom we live and move and have our
+being.  My mother accepted the task gladly, for in spite of a certain
+narrowness of view--the natural but deplorable result of her earlier
+surroundings--she was one of the most truly pious women whom I have
+ever known; unfortunately for herself and us she had been trained in
+the lowest school of Evangelical literalism--a school which in after
+life both my brother and myself came to regard as the main obstacle
+to the complete overthrow of unbelief; we therefore looked upon it
+with something stronger than aversion, and for my own part I still
+deem it perhaps the most insidious enemy which the cause of Christ
+has ever encountered.  But of this more hereafter.
+
+My mother, as I said, threw her whole soul into the work of our
+religious education.  Whatever she believed she believed literally,
+and, if I may say so, with a harshness of realisation which left very
+little scope for imagination or mystery.  Her plans of Heaven and
+solutions of life's enigmas were direct and forcible, but they could
+only be reconciled with certain obvious facts--such as the
+omnipotence and all-goodness of God--by leaving many things
+absolutely out of sight.  And this my mother succeeded effectually in
+doing.  She never doubted that her opinions comprised the truth, the
+whole truth, and nothing but the truth; she therefore made haste to
+sow the good seed in our tender minds, and so far succeeded that when
+my brother was four years old he could repeat the Apostles' Creed,
+the General Confession, and the Lord's Prayer without a blunder.  My
+mother made herself believe that he delighted in them; but, alas! it
+was far otherwise; for, strange as it may appear concerning one whose
+later life was a continual prayer, in childhood he detested nothing
+so much as being made to pray and to learn his Catechism.  In this I
+am sorry to say we were both heartily of a mind.  As for Sunday, the
+less said the better.
+
+I have already hinted (but as a warning to other parents I had
+better, perhaps, express myself more plainly), that this aversion was
+probably the result of my mother's undue eagerness to reap an
+artificial fruit of lip service, which could have little meaning to
+the heart of one so young.  I believe that the severe check which the
+natural growth of faith experienced in my brother's case was due
+almost entirely to this cause, and to the school of literalism in
+which he had been trained; but, however this may be, we both of us
+hated being made to say our prayers--morning and evening it was our
+one bugbear, and we would avoid it, as indeed children generally
+will, by every artifice which we could employ.  Thus we were in the
+habit of feigning to be asleep shortly before prayer time, and would
+gratefully hear my father tell my mother that it was a shame to wake
+us; whereon he would carry us up to bed in a state apparently of the
+profoundest slumber when we were really wide awake and in great fear
+of detection.  For we knew how to pretend to be asleep, but we did
+not know how we ought to wake again; there was nothing for it
+therefore when we were once committed, but to go on sleeping till we
+were fairly undressed and put to bed, and could wake up safely in the
+dark.  But deceit is never long successful, and we were at last
+ignominiously exposed.
+
+It happened one evening that my mother suspected my brother John, and
+tried to open his little hands which were lying clasped in front of
+him.  Now my brother was as yet very crude and inconsistent in his
+theories concerning sleep, and had no conception of what a real
+sleeper would do under these circumstances.  Fear deprived him of his
+powers of reflection, and he thus unfortunately concluded that
+because sleepers, so far as he had observed them, were always
+motionless, therefore, they must be quite rigid and incapable of
+motion, and indeed that any movement, under any circumstances (for
+from his earliest childhood he liked to carry his theories to their
+legitimate conclusion), would be physically impossible for one who
+was really sleeping; forgetful, oh! unhappy one, of the flexibility
+of his own body on being carried upstairs, and, more unhappy still,
+ignorant of the art of waking.  He, therefore, clenched his fingers
+harder and harder as he felt my mother trying to unfold them while
+his head hung listless, and his eyes were closed I as though he were
+sleeping sweetly.  It is needless to detail the agony of shame that
+followed.  My mother begged my father to box his ears, which my
+father flatly refused to do.  Then she boxed them herself, and there
+followed a scene and a day or two of disgrace for both of us.
+
+Shortly after this there happened another misadventure.  A lady came
+to stay with my mother, and was to sleep in a bed that had been
+brought into our nursery, for my father's fortunes had already
+failed, and we were living in a humble way.  We were still but four
+and five years old, so the arrangement was not unnatural, and it was
+assumed that we should be asleep before the lady went to bed, and be
+downstairs before she would get up in the morning.  But the arrival
+of this lady and her being put to sleep in the nursery were great
+events to us in those days, and being particularly wanted to go to
+sleep, we of course sat up in bed talking and keeping ourselves awake
+till she should come upstairs.  Perhaps we had fancied that she would
+give us something, but if so we were disappointed.  However, whether
+this was the case or not, we were wide awake when our visitor came to
+bed, and having no particular object to gain, we made no pretence of
+sleeping.  The lady kissed us both, told us to lie still and go to
+sleep like good children, and then began doing her hair.
+
+I remember that this was the occasion on which my brother discovered
+a good many things in connection with the fair sex which had hitherto
+been beyond his ken; more especially that the mass of petticoats and
+clothes which envelop the female form were not, as he expressed it to
+me, "all solid woman," but that women were not in reality more
+substantially built than men, and had legs as much as he had, a fact
+which he had never yet realised.  On this he for a long time
+considered them as impostors, who had wronged him by leading him to
+suppose that they had far more "body in them" (so he said), than he
+now found they had.  This was a sort of thing which he regarded with
+stern moral reprobation.  If he had been old enough to have a
+solicitor I believe he would have put the matter into his hands, as
+well as certain other things which had lately troubled him.  For but
+recently my mother had bought a fowl, and he had seen it plucked, and
+the inside taken out; his irritation had been extreme on discovering
+that fowls were not all solid flesh, but that their insides--and
+these formed, as it appeared to him, an enormous percentage of the
+bird--were perfectly useless.  He was now beginning to understand
+that sheep and cows were also hollow as far as good meat was
+concerned; the flesh they had was only a mouthful in comparison with
+what they ought to have considering their apparent bulk--
+insignificant, mere skin and bone covering a cavern.  What right had
+they, or anything else, to assert themselves as so big, and prove so
+empty?  And now this discovery of woman's falsehood was quite too
+much for him.  The world itself was hollow, made up of shams and
+delusions, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
+
+Truly a prosaic young gentleman enough.  Everything with him was to
+be exactly in all its parts what it appeared on the face of it, and
+everything was to go on doing exactly what it had been doing
+hitherto.  If a thing looked solid, it was to be very solid; if
+hollow, very hollow; nothing was to be half and half, and nothing was
+to change unless he had himself already become accustomed to its
+times and manners of changing; there were to be no exceptions and no
+contradictions; all things were to be perfectly consistent, and all
+premises to be carried with extremest rigour to their legitimate
+conclusions.  Heaven was to be very neat (for he was always tidy
+himself), and free from sudden shocks to the nervous system, such as
+those caused by dogs barking at him, or cows driven in the streets.
+God was to resemble my father, and the Holy Spirit to bear some sort
+of indistinct analogy to my mother.
+
+Such were the ideal theories of his childhood--unconsciously formed,
+but very firmly believed in.  As he grew up he made such
+modifications as were forced upon him by enlarged perceptions, but
+every modification was an effort to him, in spite of a continual and
+successful resistance to what he recognised as his initial mental
+defect.
+
+I may perhaps be allowed to say here, in reference to a remark in the
+preceding paragraph, that both my brother and myself used to notice
+it as an almost invariable rule that children's earliest ideas of God
+are modelled upon the character of their father--if they have one.
+Should the father be kind, considerate, full of the warmest love,
+fond of showing it, and reserved only about his displeasure, the
+child having learned to look upon God as His Heavenly Father through
+the Lord's Prayer and our Church Services, will feel towards God as
+he does towards his own father; this conception will stick to a man
+for years and years after he has attained manhood--probably it will
+never leave him.  For all children love their fathers and mothers, if
+these last will only let them; it is not a little unkindness that
+will kill so hardy a plant as the love of a child for its parents.
+Nature has allowed ample margin for many blunders, provided there be
+a genuine desire on the parent's part to make the child feel that he
+is loved, and that his natural feelings are respected.  This is all
+the religious education which a child should have.  As he grows older
+he will then turn naturally to the waters of life, and thirst after
+them of his own accord by reason of the spiritual refreshment which
+they, and they only, can afford.  Otherwise he will shrink from them,
+on account of his recollection of the way in which he was led down to
+drink against his will, and perhaps with harshness, when all the
+analogies with which he was acquainted pointed in the direction of
+their being unpleasant and unwholesome.  So soul-satisfying is family
+affection to a child, that he who has once enjoyed it cannot bear to
+be deprived of the hope that he is possessed in Heaven of a parent
+who is like his earthly father--of a friend and counsellor who will
+never, never fail him.  There is no such religious nor moral
+education as kindly genial treatment and a good example; all else may
+then be let alone till the child is old enough to feel the want of
+it.  It is true that the seed will thus be sown late, but in what a
+soil!  On the other hand, if a man has found his earthly father harsh
+and uncongenial, his conception of his Heavenly Parent will be
+painful.  He will begin by seeing God as an exaggerated likeness of
+his father.  He will therefore shrink from Him.  The rottenness of
+stillborn love in the heart of a child poisons the blood of the soul,
+and hence, later, crime.
+
+To return, however, to the lady.  When she had put on her night-gown,
+she knelt down by her bedside and, to our consternation, began to say
+her prayers.  This was a cruel blow to both of us; we had always been
+under the impression that grownup people were not made to say their
+prayers, and the idea of any one saying them of his or her own accord
+had never occurred to us as possible.  Of course the lady would not
+say her prayers if she were not obliged; and yet she did say them;
+therefore she must be obliged to say them; therefore we should be
+obliged to say them, and this was a very great disappointment.  Awe-
+struck and open-mouthed we listened while the lady prayed in sonorous
+accents, for many things which I do not now remember, and finally for
+my father and mother and for both of us--shortly afterwards she rose,
+blew out the light and got into bed.  Every word that she said had
+confirmed our worst apprehensions; it was just what we had been
+taught to say ourselves.
+
+Next morning we compared notes and drew the most painful inferences;
+but in the course of the day our spirits rallied.  We agreed that
+there were many mysteries in connection with life and things which it
+was high time to unravel, and that an opportunity was now afforded us
+which might not readily occur again.  All we had to do was to be true
+to ourselves and equal to the occasion.  We laid our plans with great
+astuteness.  We would be fast asleep when the lady came up to bed,
+but our heads should be turned in the direction of her bed, and
+covered with clothes, all but a single peep-hole.  My brother, as the
+eldest, had clearly a right to be nearest the lady, but I could see
+very well, and could depend on his reporting faithfully whatever
+should escape me.
+
+There was no chance of her giving us anything--if she had meant to do
+so she would have done it sooner; she might, indeed, consider the
+moment of her departure as the most auspicious for this purpose, but
+then she was not going yet, and the interval was at our own disposal.
+We spent the afternoon in trying to learn to snore, but we were not
+certain about it, and in the end regretfully concluded that as
+snoring was not de rigueur we had better dispense with it.
+
+We were put to bed; the light was taken away; we were told to go to
+sleep, and promised faithfully that we would do so; the tongue indeed
+swore, but the mind was unsworn.  It was agreed that we should keep
+pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep.  We did so at
+frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy
+creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and
+presently our victim entered.
+
+To cut a long story short, the lady on satisfying herself that we
+were asleep, never said her prayers at all; during the remainder of
+her visit whenever she found us awake she always said them, but when
+she thought we were asleep, she never prayed.  It is needless to add
+that we had the matter out with her before she left, and that the
+consequences were unpleasant for all parties; they added to the
+troubles in which we were already involved as to our prayers, and
+were indirectly among the earliest causes which led my brother to
+look with scepticism upon religion.
+
+For a while, however, all went on as though nothing had happened.  An
+effect of distrust, indeed, remained after the cause had been
+forgotten, but my brother was still too young to oppose anything that
+my mother told him, and to all outward appearance he grew in grace no
+less rapidly than in stature.
+
+For years we led a quiet and eventless life, broken only by the one
+great sorrow of our father's death.  Shortly after this we were sent
+to a day school in Bloomsbury.  We were neither of us very happy
+there, but my brother, who always took kindly to his books, picked up
+a fair knowledge of Latin and Greek; he also learned to draw, and to
+exercise himself a little in English composition.  When I was about
+fourteen my mother capitalised a part of her income and started me
+off to America, where she had friends who could give me a helping
+hand; by their kindness I was enabled, after an absence of twenty
+years, to return with a handsome income, but not, alas, before the
+death of my mother.
+
+Up to the time of my departure my mother continued to read the Bible
+with us and explain it.  She had become deeply impressed with the
+millenarian fervour which laid hold of so many some twenty-five or
+thirty years ago.  The Apocalypse was perhaps her favourite book in
+the Bible, and she was imbued with the fullest conviction that all
+the threatened horrors with which it teems were upon the eve of their
+accomplishment.  The year eighteen hundred and forty-eight was to be
+(as indeed it was) a time of general bloodshed and confusion, while
+in eighteen hundred and sixty-six, should it please God to spare her,
+her eyes would be gladdened by the visible descent of the Son of Man
+with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, with the trump of God;
+and the dead in Christ should rise first; then she, as one of them
+that were alive, would be caught up with other saints into the air,
+and would possibly receive while rising some distinguishing token of
+confidence and approbation which should fall with due impressiveness
+upon the surrounding multitude; then would come the consummation of
+all things, and she would be ever with the Lord.  She died peaceably
+in her bed before she could know that a commercial panic was the
+nearest approach to the fulfilment of prophecy which the year
+eighteen hundred and sixty-six brought forth.
+
+These opinions of my mother's were positively disastrous--injuring
+her naturally healthy and vigorous mind by leading her to indulge in
+all manner of dreamy and fanciful interpretations of Scripture, which
+any but the most narrow literalist would feel at once to be
+untenable.  Thus several times she expressed to us her conviction
+that my brother and myself were to be the two witnesses mentioned in
+the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation, and dilated upon the
+gratification she should experience upon finding that we had indeed
+been reserved for a position of such distinction.  We were as yet
+mere children, and naturally took all for granted that our mother
+told us; we therefore made a careful examination of the passage which
+threw light upon our future; but on finding that the prospect was
+gloomy and full of bloodshed we protested against the honours which
+were intended for us, more especially when we reflected that the
+mother of the two witnesses was not menaced in Scripture with any
+particular discomfort.  If we were to be martyrs, my mother ought to
+wish to be a martyr too, whereas nothing was farther from her
+intention.  Her notion clearly was that we were to be massacred
+somewhere in the streets of London, in consequence of the anti-
+Christian machinations of the Pope; that after lying about unburied
+for three days and a half we were to come to life again; and,
+finally, that we should conspicuously ascend to heaven, in front,
+perhaps, of the Foundling Hospital.
+
+She was not herself indeed to share either our martyrdom or our
+glorification, but was to survive us many years on earth, living in
+an odour of great sanctity and reflected splendour, as the central
+and most august figure in a select society.  She would perhaps be
+able indirectly, through her sons' influence with the Almighty, to
+have a voice in most of the arrangements both of this world and of
+the next.  If all this were to come true (and things seemed very like
+it), those friends who had neglected us in our adversity would not
+find it too easy to be restored to favour, however greatly they might
+desire it--that is to say, they would not have found it too easy in
+the case of one less magnanimous and spiritually-minded than herself.
+My mother said but little of the above directly, but the fragments
+which occasionally escaped her were pregnant, and on looking back it
+is easy to perceive that she must have been building one of the most
+stupendous aerial fabrics that have ever been reared.
+
+I have given the above in its more amusing aspect, and am half afraid
+that I may appear to be making a jest of weakness on the part of one
+of the most devotedly unselfish mothers who have ever existed.  But
+one can love while smiling, and the very wildness of my mother's
+dream serves to show how entirely her whole soul was occupied with
+the things which are above.  To her, religion was all in all; the
+earth was but a place of pilgrimage--only so far important as it was
+a possible road to heaven.  She impressed this upon both of us by
+every word and action--instant in season and out of season, so that
+she might fill us more deeply with a sense of God.  But the
+inevitable consequences happened; my mother had aimed too high and
+had overshot her mark.  The influence indeed of her guileless and
+unworldly nature remained impressed upon my brother even during the
+time of his extremest unbelief (perhaps his ultimate safety is in the
+main referable to this cause, and to the happy memories of my father,
+which had predisposed him to love God), but my mother had insisted on
+the most minute verbal accuracy of every part of the Bible; she had
+also dwelt upon the duty of independent research, and on the
+necessity of giving up everything rather than assent to things which
+our conscience did not assent to.  No one could have more effectually
+taught us to try TO THINK the truth, and we had taken her at her word
+because our hearts told us that she was right.  But she required
+three incompatible things.  When my brother grew older he came to
+feel that independent and unflinching examination, with a
+determination to abide by the results, would lead him to reject the
+point which to my mother was more important than any other--I mean
+the absolute accuracy of the Gospel records.  My mother was
+inexpressibly shocked at hearing my brother doubt the authenticity of
+the Epistle to the Hebrews; and then, as it appeared to him, she
+tried to make him violate the duties of examination and candour which
+he had learnt too thoroughly to unlearn.  Thereon came pain and an
+estrangement which was none the less profound for being mutually
+concealed.
+
+This estrangement was the gradual work of some five or six years,
+during which my brother was between eleven and seventeen years old.
+At seventeen, I am told that he was remarkably well informed and
+clever.  His manners were, like my father's, singularly genial, and
+his appearance very prepossessing.  He had as yet no doubt concerning
+the soundness of any fundamental Christian doctrine, but his mind was
+too active to allow of his being contented with my mother's child-
+like faith.  There were points on which he did not indeed doubt, but
+which it would none the less be interesting to consider; such for
+example as the perfectibility of the regenerate Christian, and the
+meaning of the mysterious central chapters of the Epistle to the
+Romans.  He was engaged in these researches though still only a boy,
+when an event occurred which gave the first real shock to his faith.
+
+He was accustomed to teach in a school for the poorest children every
+Sunday afternoon, a task for which his patience and good temper well
+fitted him.  On one occasion, however, while he was explaining the
+effect of baptism to one of his favourite pupils, he discovered to
+his great surprise that the boy had never been baptised.  He pushed
+his inquiries further, and found that out of the fifteen boys in his
+class only five had been baptised, and, not only so, but that no
+difference in disposition or conduct could be discovered between the
+regenerate boys and the unregenerate.  The good and bad boys were
+distributed in proportions equal to the respective numbers of the
+baptised and unbaptised.  In spite of a certain impetuosity of
+natural character, he was also of a matter-of-fact and experimental
+turn of mind; he therefore went through the whole school, which
+numbered about a hundred boys, and found out who had been baptised
+and who had not.  The same results appeared.  The majority had not
+been baptised; yet the good and bad dispositions were so distributed
+as to preclude all possibility of maintaining that the baptised boys
+were better than the unbaptised.
+
+The reader may smile at the idea of any one's faith being troubled by
+a fact of which the explanation is so obvious, but in truth my
+brother was seriously and painfully shocked.  The teacher to whom he
+applied for a solution of the difficulty was not a man of any real
+power, and reported my brother to the rector for having disturbed the
+school by his inquiries.  The rector was old and self-opinionated;
+the difficulty, indeed, was plainly as new to him as it had been to
+my brother, but instead of saying so at once, and referring to any
+recognised theological authority, he tried to put him off with words
+which seemed intended to silence him rather than to satisfy him;
+finally he lost his temper, and my brother fell under suspicion of
+unorthodoxy.
+
+This kind of treatment might answer with some people, but not with my
+brother.  He alludes to it resentfully in the introductory chapter of
+his book.  He became suspicious that a preconceived opinion was being
+defended at the expense of honest scrutiny, and was thus driven upon
+his own unaided investigation.  The result may be guessed:  he began
+to go astray, and strayed further and further.  The children of God,
+he reasoned, the members of Christ and inheritors of the kingdom of
+Heaven, were no more spiritually minded than the children of the
+world and the devil.  Was then the grace of God a gift which left no
+trace whatever upon those who were possessed of it--a thing the
+presence or absence of which might be ascertained by consulting the
+parish registry, but was not discernible in conduct?  The grace of
+man was more clearly perceptible than this.  Assuredly there must be
+a screw loose somewhere, which, for aught he knew, might be
+jeopardising the salvation of all Christendom.  Where then was this
+loose screw to be found?
+
+He concluded after some months of reflection that the mischief was
+caused by the system of sponsors and by infant baptism.  He
+therefore, to my mother's inexpressible grief, joined the Baptists
+and was immersed in a pond near Dorking.  With the Baptists he
+remained quiet about three months, and then began to quarrel with his
+instructors as to their doctrine of predestination.  Shortly
+afterwards he came accidentally upon a fascinating stranger who was
+no less struck with my brother than my brother with him, and this
+gentleman, who turned out to be a Roman Catholic missionary, landed
+him in the Church of Rome, where he felt sure that he had now found
+rest for his soul.  But here, too, he was mistaken; after about two
+years he rebelled against the stifling of all free inquiry; on this
+rebellion the flood-gates of scepticism were opened, and he was soon
+battling with unbelief.  He then fell in with one who was a pure
+Deist, and was shorn of every shred of dogma which he had ever held,
+except a belief in the personality and providence of the Creator.
+
+On reviewing his letters written to me about this time, I am
+painfully struck with the manner in which they show that all these
+pitiable vagaries were to be traced to a single cause--a cause which
+still exists to the misleading of hundreds of thousands, and which, I
+fear, seems likely to continue in full force for many a year to come-
+-I mean, to a false system of training which teaches people to regard
+Christianity as a thing one and indivisible, to be accepted entirely
+in the strictest reading of the letter, or to be rejected as
+absolutely untrue.  The fact is, that all permanent truth is as one
+of those coal measures, a seam of which lies near the surface, and
+even crops up above the ground, but which is generally of an inferior
+quality and soon worked out; beneath it there comes a layer of sand
+and clay, and then at last the true seam of precious quality and in
+virtually inexhaustible supply.  The truth which is on the surface is
+rarely the whole truth.  It is seldom until this has been worked out
+and done with--as in the case of the apparent flatness of the earth--
+that unchangeable truth is discovered.  It is the glory of the Lord
+to conceal a matter:  it is the glory of the king to find it out.  If
+my brother, from whom I have taken the above illustration, had had
+some judicious and wide-minded friend to correct and supplement the
+mainly admirable principles which had been instilled into him by my
+mother, he would have been saved years of spiritual wandering; but,
+as it was, he fell in with one after another, each in his own way as
+literal and unspiritual as the other--each impressed with one aspect
+of religious truth, and with one only.  In the end he became perhaps
+the widest-minded and most original thinker whom I have ever met; but
+no one from his early manhood could have augured this result; on the
+contrary, he shewed every sign of being likely to develop into one of
+those who can never see more than one side of a question at a time,
+in spite of their seeing that side with singular clearness of mental
+vision.  In after life, he often met with mere lads who seemed to him
+to be years and years in advance of what he had been at their age,
+and would say, smiling, "With a great sum obtained I this freedom;
+but thou wast free-born."
+
+Yet when one comes to think of it, a late development and laborious
+growth are generally more fruitful than those which are over-early
+luxuriant.  Drawing an illustration from the art of painting, with
+which he was well acquainted, my brother used to say that all the
+greatest painters had begun with a hard and precise manner from which
+they had only broken after several years of effort; and that in like
+manner all the early schools were founded upon definiteness of
+outline to the exclusion of truth of effect.  This may be true; but
+in my brother's case there was something even more unpromising than
+this; there was a commonness, so to speak, of mental execution, from
+which no one could have foreseen his after-emancipation.  Yet in the
+course of time he was indeed emancipated to the very uttermost, while
+his bonds will, I firmly trust, be found to have been of inestimable
+service to the whole human race.
+
+For although it was so many years before he was enabled to see the
+Christian scheme AS A WHOLE, or even to conceive the idea that there
+was any whole at all, other than each one of the stages of opinion
+through which he was at the time passing; yet when the idea was at
+length presented to him by one whom I must not name, the discarded
+fragments of his faith assumed shape, and formed themselves into a
+consistently organised scheme.  Then became apparent the value of his
+knowledge of the details of so many different sides of Christian
+verity.  Buried in the details, he had hitherto ignored the fact that
+they were only the unessential developments of certain component
+parts.  Awakening to the perception of the whole after an intimate
+acquaintance with the details, he was able to realise the position
+and meaning of all that he had hitherto experienced in a way which
+has been vouchsafed to few, if any others.
+
+Thus he became truly a broad Churchman.  Not broad in the ordinary
+and ill-considered use of the term (for the broad Churchman is as
+little able to sympathise with Romanists, extreme High Churchmen and
+Dissenters, as these are with himself--he is only one of a sect which
+is called by the name broad, though it is no broader than its own
+base), but in the true sense of being able to believe in the
+naturalness, legitimacy, and truth qua Christianity even of those
+doctrines which seem to stand most widely and irreconcilably asunder.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+But it was impossible that a mind of such activity should have gone
+over so much ground, and yet in the end returned to the same position
+as that from which it started.
+
+So far was this from being the case that the Christianity of his
+maturer life would be considered dangerously heterodox by those who
+belong to any of the more definite or precise schools of theological
+thought.  He was as one who has made the circuit of a mountain, and
+yet been ascending during the whole time of his doing so:  such a
+person finds himself upon the same side as at first, but upon a
+greatly higher level.  The peaks which had seemed the most important
+when he was in the valley were now dwarfed to their true proportions
+by colossal cloud-capped masses whose very existence could not have
+been suspected from beneath:  and again, other points which had
+seemed among the lowest turned out to be the very highest of all--as
+the Finster-Aarhorn, which hides itself away in the centre of the
+Bernese Alps, is never seen to be the greatest till one is high and
+far off.
+
+Thus he felt no sort of fear or repugnance in admitting that the New
+Testament writings, as we now have them, are not by any means
+accurate records of the events which they profess to chronicle.
+This, which few English Churchmen would be prepared to admit, was to
+him so much of an axiom that he despaired of seeing any sound
+theological structure raised until it was universally recognised.
+
+And here he would probably meet with sympathy from the more advanced
+thinkers within the body of the Church, but so far as I know, he
+stood alone as recognising the wisdom of the Divine counsels in
+having ordained the wide and apparently irreconcilable divergencies
+of doctrine and character which we find assigned to Christ in the
+Gospels, and as finding his faith confirmed, not by the supposition
+that both the portraits drawn of Christ are objectively true, but
+THAT BOTH ARE OBJECTIVELY INACCURATE, AND THAT THE ALMIGHTY INTENDED
+THEY SHOULD BE INACCURATE, inasmuch as the true spiritual conception
+in the mind of man could be indirectly more certainly engendered by a
+strife, a warring, a clashing, so to speak, of versions, all of them
+distorting slightly some one or other of the features of the
+original, than directly by the most absolutely correct impression
+which human language could convey.  Even the most perfect human
+speech, as has been often pointed out, is a very gross and imperfect
+vehicle of thought.  I remember once hearing him say that it was not
+till he was nearly thirty that he discovered "what thick and sticky
+fluids were air and water," how crass and dull in comparison with
+other more subtle fluids; he added that speech had no less deceived
+him, seeming, as it did, to be such a perfect messenger of thought,
+and being after all nothing but a shuffler and a loiterer.
+
+With most men the Gospels are true in spite of their discrepancies
+and inconsistencies; with him Christianity, as distinguished from a
+bare belief in the objectively historical character of each part of
+the Gospels, was true because of these very discrepancies; as his
+conceptions of the Divine manner of working became wider, the very
+forces which had at one time shaken his faith to its foundations
+established it anew upon a firmer and broader base.  He was gradually
+led to feel that the ideal presented by the life and death of our
+Saviour could never have been accepted by Jews at all, if its whole
+purport had been made intelligible during the Redeemer's life-time;
+that in order to insure its acceptance by a nucleus of followers it
+must have been endowed with a more local aspect than it was intended
+afterwards to wear; yet that, for the sake of its subsequent
+universal value, the destruction of that local complexion was
+indispensable; that the corruptions inseparable from viva voce
+communication and imperfect education were the means adopted by the
+Creator to blur the details of the ideal, and give it that breadth
+which could not be otherwise obtainable--and that thus the value of
+the ideal was indefinitely enhanced, and DESIGNEDLY ENHANCED, alike
+by the waste of time and by its incrustations; that all ideals gain
+by a certain amount of vagueness, which allows the beholder to fill
+in the details according to his own spiritual needs, and that no
+ideal can be truly universal and permanents unless it have an
+elasticity which will allow of this process in the minds of those who
+contemplate it; that it cannot become thus elastic unless by the loss
+of no inconsiderable amount of detail, and that thus the half, as Dr.
+Arnold used to say, "becomes greater than the whole," the sketch more
+preciously suggestive than the photograph.  Hence far from deploring
+the fragmentary, confused, and contradictory condition of the Gospel
+records, he saw in this condition the means whereby alone the human
+mind could have been enabled to conceive--not the precise nature of
+Christ--but THE HIGHEST IDEAL OF WHICH EACH INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN SOUL
+WAS CAPABLE.  As soon as he had grasped these conceptions, which will
+be found more fully developed in one of the later chapters of his
+book, the spell of unbelief was broken.
+
+But, once broken, it was dissolved utterly and entirely; he could
+allow himself to contemplate fearlessly all sorts of issues from
+which one whose experiences had been less varied would have shrunk.
+He was free of the enemy's camp, and could go hither and thither
+whithersoever he would.  The very points which to others were
+insuperable difficulties were to him foundation-stones of faith.  For
+example, to the objection that if in the present state of the records
+no clear conception of the nature of Christ's life and teaching could
+be formed, we should be compelled to take one for our model of whom
+we knew little or nothing certain, I have heard him answer, "And so
+much the better for us all.  The truth, if read by the light of man's
+imperfect understanding, would have been falser to him than any
+falsehood.  It would have been truth no longer.  BETTER BE LED ARIGHT
+BY AN ERROR WHICH IS SO ADJUSTED AS TO COMPENSATE FOR THE ERRORS IN
+MAN'S POWERS OF UNDERSTANDING, THAN BE MISLED BY A TRUTH WHICH CAN
+NEVER BE TRANSLATED FROM OBJECTIVITY TO SUBJECTIVITY.  In such a
+case, it is the error which is the truth and the truth the error.
+
+Fearless himself, he could not understand the fears felt by others;
+and this was perhaps his greatest sympathetic weakness.  He was
+impatient of the subterfuges with which untenable interpretations of
+Scripture were defended, and of the disingenuousness of certain
+harmonists; indeed, the mention of the word harmony was enough to
+kindle an outbreak of righteous anger, which would sometimes go to
+the utmost limit of righteousness.  "Harmonies!" he would exclaim,
+"the sweetest harmonies are those which are most full of discords,
+and the discords of one generation of musicians become heavenly music
+in the hands of their successors.  Which of the great musicians has
+not enriched his art not only by the discovery of new harmonies, but
+by proving that sounds which are actually inharmonious are
+nevertheless essentially and eternally delightful?  What an outcry
+has there not always been against the 'unwarrantable licence' with
+the rules of harmony whenever a Beethoven or a Mozart has broken
+through any of the trammels which have been regarded as the
+safeguards of the art, instead of in their true light of fetters, and
+how gratefully have succeeding musicians acquiesced in and adopted
+the innovation."  Then would follow a tirade with illustration upon
+illustration, comparison of this passage with that, and an exhaustive
+demonstration that one or other, or both, could have had no sort of
+possible foundation in fact; he could only see that the persons from
+whom he differed were defending something which was untrue and which
+they ought to have known to be untrue, but he could not see that
+people ought to know many things which they do not know.
+
+Had he himself seen all that he ought to have been able to see from
+his own standpoints?  Can any of us do so?  The force of early bias
+and education, the force of intellectual surroundings, the force of
+natural timidity, the force of dulness, were things which he could
+appreciate and make allowance for in any other age, and among any
+other people than his own; but as belonging to England and the
+Nineteenth Century they had no place in his theory of Nature; they
+were inconceivable, unnatural, unpardonable, whenever they came into
+contact with the subject of Christian evidences.  Deplorable, indeed,
+they are, but this was just the sort of word to which he could not
+confine himself.  The criticisms upon the late Dean Alford's notes,
+which will be given in the sequel, display this sort of temper; they
+are not entirely his own, but he adopted them and endorsed them with
+a warmth which we cannot but feel to be unnecessary, not to say more.
+Yet I am free to confess that whatever editorial licence I could
+venture to take has been taken in the direction of lenity.
+
+On the whole, however, he valued Dean Alford's work very highly,
+giving him great praise for the candour with which he not
+unfrequently set the harmonists aside.  For example, in his notes
+upon the discrepancies between St. Luke's and St. Matthew's accounts
+of the early life of our Lord, the Dean openly avows that it is quite
+beyond his purpose to attempt to reconcile the two.  "This part of
+the Gospel history," he writes, "is one where the harmonists, by
+their arbitrary reconcilement of the two accounts, have given great
+advantage to the enemies of the faith.  AS THE TWO ACCOUNTS NOW
+STAND, it is wholly impossible to suggest any satisfactory method of
+UNITING THEM, every one who has attempted it has in some part or
+other of his hypothesis violated probability and common sense," but
+in spite of this, the Dean had no hesitation in accepting both the
+accounts.  With reference to this the author of The Jesus of History
+(Williams and Norgate, 1866)--a work to which my brother admitted
+himself to be under very great obligations, and which he greatly
+admired, in spite of his utter dissent from the main conclusion
+arrived at, has the following note:-
+
+"Dean Alford, N.T. for English readers, admits that the narratives as
+they stand are contradictory, but he believes both.  He is even
+severe upon the harmonists who attempt to frame schemes of
+reconciliation between the two, on account of the triumph they thus
+furnish to the 'enemies of the faith,' a phrase which seems to imply
+all who believe less than he does.  The Dean, however, forgets that
+the faith which can believe two (apparently) contradictory
+propositions in matters of fact is a very rare gift, and that for one
+who is so endowed there are thousands who can be satisfied with a
+plausible though demonstrably false explanation.  To the latter class
+the despised harmonists render a real service."
+
+Upon this note my brother was very severe.  In a letter, dated Dec.
+18, 1866, addressed to a friend who had alluded to it, and expressed
+his concurrence with it as in the main just, my brother wrote:  "You
+are wrong about the note in The Jesus of History, there is more of
+the Christianity of the future in Dean Alford's indifference to the
+harmony between the discordant accounts of Luke and Matthew than
+there would have been EVEN IN THE MOST CONVINCING AND SATISFACTORY
+explanation of the way in which they came to differ.  No such
+explanation is possible; both the Dean and the author of The Jesus of
+History were very well aware of this, but the latter is unjust in
+assuming that his opponent was not alive to the absurdity of
+appearing to believe two contradictory propositions at one and the
+same time.  The Dean takes very good care that he shall not appear to
+do this, for it is perfectly plain to any careful reader that he must
+really believe that one or both narratives are inaccurate, inasmuch
+as the differences between them are too great to allow of
+reconciliation by a supposed suppression of detail.
+
+"This, though not said so clearly as it should have been, is yet
+virtually implied in the admission that no sort of fact which could
+by any possibility be admitted as reconciling them had ever occurred
+to human ingenuity; what, then, Dean Alford must have really felt was
+that the spiritual value of each account was no less precious for not
+being in strict accordance with the other; that the objective truth
+lies somewhere between them, and is of very little importance, being
+long dead and buried, and living in its results only, in comparison
+with the subjective truth conveyed by both the narratives, which
+lives in our hearts independently of precise knowledge concerning the
+actual facts.  Moreover, that though both accounts may perhaps be
+inaccurate, yet that A VERY LITTLE natural inaccuracy on the part of
+each writer would throw them apparently very wide asunder, that such
+inaccuracies are easily to be accounted for, and would, in fact, be
+inevitable in the sixty years of oral communication which elapsed
+between the birth of our Lord and the writing of the first Gospel,
+and again in the eighty or ninety years prior to the third, so that
+the details of the facts connected with the conception, birth,
+genealogy, and earliest history of our Saviour are irrecoverable--a
+general impression being alone possible, or indeed desirable.
+
+"It might perhaps have been more satisfactory if Dean Alford had
+expressed the above more plainly; but if he had done this, who would
+have read his book?  Where would have been that influence in the
+direction of truly liberal Christianity which has been so potent
+during the last twenty years?  As it was, the freedom with which the
+Dean wrote was the cause of no inconsiderable scandal.  Or, again, he
+may not have been fully conscious of his own position:  few men are;
+he had taken the right one, but more perhaps by spiritual instinct
+than by conscious and deliberate exercise of his intellectual
+faculties.  Finally, compromise is not a matter of good policy only,
+it is a solemn duty in the interests of Christian peace, and this not
+in minor matters only--we can all do this much--but in those
+concerning which we feel most strongly, for here the sacrifice is
+greatest and most acceptable to God.  There are, of course, limits to
+this, and Dean Alford may have carried compromise too far in the
+present instance, but it is very transparent.  The narrowness which
+leads the author of The Jesus of History to strain at such a gnat is
+the secret of his inability to accept the divinity and miracles of
+our Lord, and has marred the most exhaustively critical exegesis of
+the life and death of our Saviour with an impotent conclusion."
+
+It is strange that one who could write thus should occasionally have
+shown himself so little able to apply his own principles.  He seems
+to have been alternately under the influence of two conflicting
+spirits--at one time writing as though there were nothing precious
+under the sun except logic, consistency, and precision, and breathing
+fire and smoke against even very trifling deviations from the path of
+exact criticism--at another, leading the reader almost to believe
+that he disregarded the value of any objective truth, and speaking of
+endeavour after accuracy in terms that are positively contemptuous.
+Whenever he was in the one mood he seemed to forget the possibility
+of any other; so much so that I have sometimes thought that he did
+this deliberately and for the same reasons as those which led Adam
+Smith to exclude one set of premises in his Theory of Moral
+Sentiments and another in his Wealth of Nations.  I believe, however,
+that the explanation lies in the fact that my brother was inclined to
+underrate the importance of belief in the objective truth of any
+other individual features in the life of our Lord than his
+Resurrection and Ascension.  All else seemed dwarfed by the side of
+these events.  His whole soul was so concentrated upon the centre of
+the circle that he forgot the circumference, or left it out of sight.
+Nothing less than the strictest objective truth as to the main facts
+of the Resurrection and Ascension would content him; the other
+miracles and the life and teaching of our Lord might then be left
+open; whatever view was taken of them by each individual Christian
+was probably the one most desirable for the spiritual wellbeing of
+each.
+
+Even as regards the Resurrection and Ascension, he did not greatly
+value the detail.  Provided these facts were so established that they
+could never henceforth be controverted, he thought that the less
+detail the broader and more universally acceptable would be the
+effect.  Hence, when Dean Alford's notes seemed to jeopardise the
+evidences for these things, he could brook no trifling; for unless
+Christ actually died and actually came to life again, he saw no
+escape from an utter denial of any but natural religion.  Christ
+would have been no more to him than Socrates or Shakespeare, except
+in so far as his teaching was more spiritual.  The triune nature of
+the Deity--the Resurrection from the dead--the hope of Heaven and
+salutary fear of Hell--all would go but for the Resurrection and
+Ascension of Jesus Christ; nothing would remain except a sense of the
+Divine as a substitute for God, and the current feeling of one's
+peers as the chief moral check upon misconduct.  Indeed, we have seen
+this view openly advocated by a recent writer, and set forth in the
+very plainest terms.  My brother did not live to see it, but if he
+had, he would have recognised the fulfilment of his own prophecies as
+to what must be the inevitable sequel of a denial of our Lord's
+Resurrection.
+
+It will be seen therefore that he was in no danger of being carried
+away by a "pet theory."  Where light and definition were essential,
+he would sacrifice nothing of either; but he was jealous for his
+highest light, and felt "that the whole effect of the Christian
+scheme was indefinitely heightened by keeping all other lights
+subordinate"--this at least was the illustration which he often used
+concerning it.  But as there were limits to the value of light and
+"finding"--limits which had been far exceeded, with the result of an
+unnatural forcing of the lights, and an effect of garishness and
+unreality--so there were limits to the as yet unrecognised
+preciousness of "losing" and obscurity; these limits he placed at the
+objectivity of our Lord's Resurrection and Ascension.  Let there be
+light enough to show these things, and the rest would gain by being
+in half-tone and shadow.
+
+His facility of illustration was simply marvellous.  From his
+conversation any one would have thought that he was acquainted with
+all manner of arts and sciences of which he knew little or nothing.
+It is true, as has been said already, that he had had some practice
+in the art of painting, and was an enthusiastic admirer of the
+masterpieces of Raphael, Titian, Guido, Domenichino, and others; but
+he could never have been called a painter; for music he had
+considerable feeling; I think he must have known thorough-bass, but
+it was hard to say what he did or did not know.  Of science he was
+almost entirely ignorant, yet he had assimilated a quantity of stray
+facts, and whatever he assimilated seemed to agree with him and
+nourish his mental being.  But though his acquaintance with any one
+art or science must be allowed to have been superficial only, he had
+an astonishing perception of the relative bearings of facts which
+seemed at first sight to be quite beyond the range of one another,
+and of the relations between the sciences generally; it was this
+which gave him his felicity and fecundity of illustration--a gift
+which he never abused.  He delighted in its use for the purpose of
+carrying a clear impression of his meaning to the mind of another,
+but I never remember to have heard him mistake illustration for
+argument, nor endeavour to mislead an adversary by a fascinating but
+irrelevant simile.  The subtlety of his mind was a more serious
+source of danger to him, though I do not know that he greatly lost by
+it in comparison with what he gained; his sense, however, of
+distinctions was so fine that it would sometimes distract his
+attention from points of infinitely greater importance in connection
+with his subject than the particular distinction which he was trying
+to establish at the moment.
+
+The reader may be glad to know what my brother felt about retaining
+the unhistoric passages of Scripture.  Would he wish to see them
+sought for and sifted out?  Or, again, what would he propose
+concerning such of the parables as are acknowledged by every liberal
+Churchman to be immoral, as, for instance, the story of Dives and
+Lazarus and the Unjust Steward--parables which can never have been
+spoken by our Lord, at any rate not in their present shape?  And here
+we have a remarkable instance of his moderation and truly English
+good sense.  "Do not touch one word of them," was his often-repeated
+exclamation.  "If not directly inspired by the mouth of God they have
+been indirectly inspired by the force of events, and the force of
+events is the power and manifestation of God; they could not have
+been allowed to come into their present position if they had not been
+recognised in the counsels of the Almighty as being of indirect
+service to mankind; there is a subjective truth conveyed even by
+these parables to the minds of many, that enables them to lay hold of
+other and objective truths which they could not else have grasped.
+
+"There can be no question that the communistic utterances of the
+third gospel, as distinguished from St. Matthew's more spiritual and
+doubtless more historic rendering of the same teaching, have been of
+inestimable service to Christianity.  Christ is not for the whole
+only, but also for them that are sick, for the ill-instructed and
+what we are pleased to call 'dangerous' classes, as well as for the
+more sober thinkers.  To how many do the words, 'Blessed be ye poor:
+for your's is the kingdom of Heaven' (Luke vi., 20), carry a comfort
+which could never be given by the 'Blessed are the poor in spirit' of
+Matthew v., 3.  In Matthew we find, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit:
+for their's is the kingdom of Heaven.  Blessed are they that mourn:
+for they shall be comforted.  Blessed are the meek:  for they shall
+inherit the earth.  Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
+righteousness:  for they shall be filled.  Blessed are the merciful:
+for they shall obtain mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart:  for
+they shall see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers:  for they shall be
+called the children of God.  Blessed are they which are persecuted
+for righteousness' sake:  for their's is the kingdom of heaven.
+Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and
+shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.
+Rejoice, and be exceeding glad:  for great is your reward in heaven:
+for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.'  In Luke
+we read, 'Blessed are ye that hunger now:  for ye shall be filled.
+Blessed are ye that weep now:  for ye shall laugh. . . .  But woe
+unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.  Woe
+unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger.  Woe unto you that laugh
+now! for ye shall mourn and weep.  Woe unto you, when all men shall
+speak well of you! for so did THEIR fathers to the false prophets,'
+where even the grammar of the last sentence, independently of the
+substance, is such as it is impossible to ascribe to our Lord
+himself.
+
+"The 'upper' classes naturally turn to the version of Matthew, but
+the 'lower,' no less naturally to that of Luke, nor is it likely that
+the ideal of Christ would be one-tenth part so dear to them had not
+this provision for them been made, not by the direct teaching of the
+Saviour, but by the indirect inspiration of such events as were seen
+by the Almighty to be necessary for the full development of the
+highest ideal of which mankind was capable.  All that we have in the
+New Testament is the inspired word, directly or indirectly, of God,
+the unhistoric no less than the historic; it is for us to take
+spiritual sustenance from whatever meats we find prepared for us, not
+to order the removal of this or that dish; the coarser meats are for
+the coarser natures; as they grow in grace they will turn from these
+to the finer:  let us ourselves partake of that which we find best
+suited to us, but do not let us grudge to others the provision that
+God has set before them.  There are many things which though not
+objectively true are nevertheless subjectively true to those who can
+receive them; and subjective truth is universally felt to be even
+higher than objective, as may be shown by the acknowledged duty of
+obeying our consciences (which is the right TO US) rather than any
+dictate of man however much more objectively true.  It is that which
+is true TO US that we are bound each one of us to seek and follow."
+
+Having heard him thus far, and being unable to understand, much less
+to sympathise with teaching so utterly foreign to anything which I
+had heard elsewhere, I said to him, "Either our Lord did say the
+words assigned to him by St. Luke or he did not.  If he did, as they
+stand they are bad, and any one who heard them for the first time
+would say that they were bad; if he did not, then we ought not to
+allow them to remain in our Bibles to the misleading of people who
+will thus believe that God is telling them what he never did tell
+them--to the misleading of the poor, whom even in low self-interest
+we are bound to instruct as fully and truthfully as we can."
+
+He smiled and answered, "That is the Peter Bell view of the matter.
+I thought so once, as, indeed, no one can know better than yourself."
+
+The expression upon his face as he said this was sufficient to show
+the clearness of his present perception, nevertheless I was anxious
+to get to the root of the matter, and said that if our Lord never
+uttered these words their being attributed to him must be due to
+fraud; to pious fraud, but still to fraud.
+
+"Not so," he answered, "it is due to the weakness of man's powers of
+memory and communication, and perhaps in some measure to unconscious
+inspiration.  Moreover, even though wrong of some sort may have had
+its share in the origin of certain of the sayings ascribed to our
+Saviour, yet their removal now that they have been consecrated by
+time would be a still greater wrong.  Would you defend the spoliation
+of the monasteries, or the confiscation of the abbey lands?  I take
+it no--still less would you restore the monasteries or take back the
+lands; a consecrated change becomes a new departure; accept it and
+turn it to the best advantage.  These are things to which the theory
+of the Church concerning lay baptism is strictly applicable.  Fieri
+non debet, factum valet.  If in our narrow and unsympathetic
+strivings after precision we should remove the hallowed imperfections
+whereby time has set the glory of his seal upon the gospels as well
+as upon all other aged things, not for twenty generations will they
+resume that ineffable and inviolable aspect which our fussy
+meddlesomeness will have disturbed.  Let them alone.  It is as they
+stand that they have saved the world.
+
+"No change is good unless it is imperatively called for.  Not even
+the Reformation was good; it is good now; I acquiesce in it, as I do
+in anything which in itself not vital has received the sanction of
+many generations of my countrymen.  It is sanction which sanctifieth
+in matters of this kind.  I would no more undo the Reformation now
+than I would have helped it forward in the sixteenth century.  Leave
+the historic, the unhistoric, and the doubtful to grow together until
+the harvest:  that which is not vital will perish and rot unnoticed
+when it has ceased to have vitality; it is living till it has done
+this.  Note how the very passages which you would condemn have died
+out of the regard of any but the poor.  Who quotes them?  Who appeals
+to them?  Who believes in them?  Who indeed except the poorest of the
+poor attaches the smallest weight to them whatever?  To us they are
+dead, and other passages will die to us in like manner, noiselessly
+and almost imperceptibly, as the services for the fifth of November
+died out of the Prayer Book.  One day the fruit will be hanging upon
+the tree, as it has hung for months, the next it will be lying upon
+the ground.  It is not ripe until it has fallen of itself, or with
+the gentlest shaking; use no violence towards it, confident that you
+cannot hurry the ripening, and that if shaken down unripe the fruit
+will be worthless.  Christianity must have contained the seeds of
+growth within itself, even to the shedding of many of its present
+dogmas.  If the dogmas fall quietly in their maturity, the precious
+seed of truth (which will be found in the heart of every dogma that
+has been able to take living hold upon the world's imagination) will
+quicken and spring up in its own time:  strike at the fruit too soon
+and the seed will die."
+
+I should be sorry to convey an impression that I am responsible for,
+or that I entirely agree with, the defence of the unhistoric which I
+have here recorded.  I have given it in my capacity of editor and in
+some sort biographer, but am far from being prepared to maintain that
+it is likely, or indeed ought, to meet with the approval of any
+considerable number of Christians.  But, surely, in these days of
+self-mystification it is refreshing to see the boldness with which my
+brother thought, and the freedom with which he contemplated all sorts
+of issues which are too generally avoided.  What temptation would
+have been felt by many to soften down the inconsistencies and
+contradictions of the Gospels.  How few are those who will venture to
+follow the lead of scientific criticism, and admit what every scholar
+must well know to be indisputable.  Yet if a man will not do this, he
+shows that he has greater faith in falsehood than in truth.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+On my brother's death I came into possession of several of his early
+commonplace books filled with sketches for articles; some of these
+are more developed than others, but they are all of them fragmentary.
+I do not think that the reader will fail to be interested with the
+insight into my brother's spiritual and intellectual progress which a
+few extracts from these writings will afford, and have therefore,
+after some hesitation, decided in favour of making them public,
+though well aware that my brother would never have done so.  They are
+too exaggerated to be dangerous, being so obviously unfair as to
+carry their own antidote.  The reader will not fail to notice the
+growth not only in thought but also in literary style which is
+displayed by my brother's later writings.
+
+In reference to the very subject of the parables above alluded to, he
+had written during his time of unbelief:- "Why are we to interpret so
+literally all passages about the guilt of unbelief, and insist upon
+the historical character of every miraculous account, while we are
+indignant if any one demands an equally literal rendering of the
+precepts concerning human conduct?  He that hath two coats is not to
+give to him that hath none:  this would be 'visionary,' 'utopian,'
+'wholly unpractical,' and so forth.  Or, again, he that is smitten on
+the one cheek is not to turn the other to the smiter, but to hand the
+offender over to the law; nor are the commands relative to
+indifference as to the morrow and a neglect of ordinary prudence to
+be taken as they stand; nor yet the warnings against praying in
+public; nor can the parables, any one of them, be interpreted
+strictly with advantage to human welfare, except perhaps that of the
+Good Samaritan; nor the Sermon on the Mount, save in such passages as
+were already the common property of mankind before the coming of
+Christ.  The parables which every one praises are in reality very
+bad:  the Unjust Steward, the Labourers in the Vineyard, the Prodigal
+Son, Dives and Lazarus, the Sower and the Seed, the Wise and Foolish
+Virgins, the Marriage Garment, the Man who planted a Vineyard, are
+all either grossly immoral, or tend to engender a very low estimate
+of the character of God--an estimate far below the standard of the
+best earthly kings; where they are not immoral, or do not tend to
+degrade the character of God, they are the merest commonplaces
+imaginable, such as one is astonished to see people accept as having
+been first taught by Christ.  Such maxims as those which inculcate
+conciliation and a forgiveness of injuries (wherever practicable) are
+certainly good, but the world does not owe their discovery to Christ,
+and they have had little place in the practice of his followers.
+
+"It is impossible to say that as a matter of fact the English people
+forgive their enemies more freely now than the Romans did, we will
+say in the time of Augustus.  The value of generosity and magnanimity
+was perfectly well known among the ancients, nor do these qualities
+assume any nobler guise in the teaching of Christ than they did in
+that of the ancient heathen philosophers.  On the contrary, they have
+no direct equivalent in Christian thought or phraseology.  They are
+heathen words drawn from a heathen language, and instinct with the
+same heathen ideas of high spirit and good birth as belonged to them
+in the Latin language; they are no part or parcel of Christianity,
+and are not only independent of it, but savour distinctly of the
+flesh as opposed to the spirit, and are hence more or less
+antagonistic to it, until they have undergone a certain modification
+and transformation--until, that is to say, they have been mulcted of
+their more frank and genial elements.  The nearest approach to them
+in Christian phrase is 'self-denial,' but the sound of this word
+kindles no smile of pleasure like that kindled by the ideas of
+generosity and nobility of conduct.  At the thought of self-denial we
+feel good, but uncomfortable, and as though on the point of
+performing some disagreeable duty which we think we ought to pretend
+to like, but which we do not like.  At the thought of generosity, we
+feel as one who is going to share in a delightfully exhilarating but
+arduous pastime--full of the most pleasurable excitement.  On the
+mention of the word generosity we feel as if we were going out
+hunting; at the word 'self-denial,' as if we were getting ready to go
+to church.  Generosity turns well-doing into a pleasure, self-denial
+into a duty, as of a servant under compulsion.
+
+"There are people who will deny this, but there are people who will
+deny anything.  There are some who will say that St. Paul would not
+have condemned the Falstaff plays, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, A
+Midsummer Night's Dream, and almost everything that Shakspeare ever
+wrote; but there is no arguing against this.  'Every man,' said Dr.
+Johnson, 'has a right to his own opinion, and every one else has a
+right to knock him down for it.'  But even granting that generosity
+and high spirit have made some progress since the days of Christ,
+allowance must be made for the lapse of two thousand years, during
+which time it is only reasonable to suppose that an advance would
+have been made in civilisation--and hence in the direction of
+clemency and forbearance--whether Christianity had been preached or
+not, but no one can show that the modern English, if superior to the
+ancients in these respects, show any greater superiority than may be
+ascribed justly to centuries of established order and good
+government."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"Again, as to the ideal presented by the character of Christ, about
+which so much has been written; is it one which would meet with all
+this admiration if it were presented to us now for the first time?
+Surely it offers but a peevish view of life and things in comparison
+with that offered by other highest ideals--the old Roman and Greek
+ideals, the Italian ideal, and the Shakespearian ideal."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"As with the parables so with the Sermon on the Mount--where it is
+not commonplace it is immoral, and vice versa; the admiration which
+is so freely lavished upon the teachings of Jesus Christ turns out to
+be but of the same kind as that bestowed upon certain modern writers,
+who have made great reputations by telling people what they perfectly
+well knew; and were in no particular danger of forgetting.  There is,
+however, this excuse for those who have been carried away with such
+musical but untruthful sentences as 'Blessed are they that mourn:
+for they shall be comforted,' namely, that they have not come to the
+subject with unbiassed minds.  It is one thing to see no merit in a
+picture, and another to see no merit in a picture when one is told
+that it is by Raphael; we are few of us able to stand against the
+PRESTIGE of a great name; our self-love is alarmed lest we should be
+deficient in taste, or, worse still, lest we should be considered to
+be so; as if it could matter to any right-minded person whether the
+world considered him to be of good taste or not, in comparison with
+the keeping of his own soul truthful to itself.
+
+"But if this holds good about things which are purely matters of
+taste, how much more does it do so concerning those who make a
+distinct claim upon us for moral approbation or the reverse?  Such a
+claim is most imperatively made by the teaching of Jesus Christ:  are
+we then content to answer in the words of others--words to which we
+have no title of our own--or shall we strip ourselves of preconceived
+opinion, and come to the question with minds that are truly candid?
+Whoever shrinks from this is a liar to his own self, and as such, the
+worst and most dangerous of liars.  He is as one who sits in an
+impregnable citadel and trembles in a time of peace--so great a
+coward as not even to feel safe when he is in his own keeping.  How
+loose of soul if he knows that his own keeping is worthless, how
+aspen-hearted if he fears lest others should find him out and hurt
+him for communing truthfully with himself!
+
+* * * * *
+
+"That a man should lie to others if he hopes to gain something
+considerable--this is reckoned cheating, robbing, fraudulent dealing,
+or whatever it may be; but it is an intelligible offence in
+comparison with the allowing oneself to be deceived.  So in like
+manner with being bored.  The man who lets himself be bored is even
+more contemptible than the bore.  He who puts up with shoddy
+pictures, shoddy music, shoddy morality, shoddy society, is more
+despicable than he who is the prime agent in any of these things.  He
+has less to gain, and probably deceives himself more; so that he
+commits the greater crime for the less reward.  And I say
+emphatically that the morality which most men profess to hold as a
+Divine revelation was a shoddy morality, which would neither wash nor
+wear, but was woven together from a tissue of dreams and blunders,
+and steeped in blood more virulent than the blood of Nessus.
+
+"Oh! if men would but leave off lying to themselves!  If they would
+but learn the sacredness of their own likes and dislikes, and
+exercise their moral discrimination, making it clear to themselves
+what it is that they really love and venerate.  There is no such
+enemy to mankind as moral cowardice.  A downright vulgar self-
+interested and unblushing liar is a higher being than the moral cur
+whose likes and dislikes are at the beck and call of bullies that
+stand between him and his own soul; such a creature gives up the most
+sacred of all his rights for something more unsubstantial than a mess
+of pottage--a mental serf too abject even to know that he is being
+wronged.  Wretched emasculator of his own reason, whose jejune
+timidity and want of vitality are thus omnipresent in the most secret
+chambers of his heart!
+
+"We can forgive a man for almost any falsehood provided we feel that
+he was under strong temptation and well knew that he was deceiving.
+He has done wrong--still we can understand it, and he may yet have
+some useful stuff about him--but what can we feel towards one who for
+a small motive tells lies even to himself, and does not know that he
+is lying?  What useless rotten fig-wood lumber must not such a thing
+be made of, and what lies will there not come out of it, falling in
+every direction upon all who come within its reach.  The common self-
+deceiver of modern society is a more dangerous and contemptible
+object than almost any ordinary felon, a matter upon which those who
+do not deceive themselves need no enlightenment."
+
+* * * * *
+
+"But why insist so strongly on the literal interpretation of one part
+of the sayings of Christ, and be so elastic about that of the
+passages which inculcate more than those ordinary precepts which all
+had agreed upon as early as the days of Solomon and probably earlier?
+We have cut down Christianity so as to make it appear to sanction our
+own conventions; but we have not altered our conventions so as to
+bring them into harmony with Christianity.  We do not give to him
+that asketh; we take good care to avoid him; yet if the precept meant
+only that we should be liberal in assisting others--it wanted no
+enforcing:  the probability is that it had been enforced too much
+rather than too little already; the more literally it has been
+followed the more terrible has the mischief been; the saying only
+becomes harmless when regarded as a mere convention.  So with most
+parts of Christ's teaching.  It is only conventional Christianity
+which will stand a man in good stead to live by; true Christianity
+will never do so.  Men have tried it and found it fail; or, rather,
+its inevitable failure was so obvious that no age or country has ever
+been mad enough to carry it out in such a manner as would have
+satisfied its founders.  So said Dean Swift in his Argument against
+abolishing Christianity.  'I hope,' he writes, 'no reader imagines me
+so weak as to stand up in defence of real Christianity, such as used
+in primitive times' (if we may believe the authors of those ages) 'to
+have an influence upon men's beliefs and actions.  To offer at the
+restoring of that would be, indeed, a wild project; it would be to
+dig up foundations, to destroy at one blow all the wit and half the
+learning of the kingdom, to break the entire frame and constitution
+of things, to ruin trade, extinguish arts and sciences, with the
+professors of them; in short, to turn our courts of exchange and
+shops into deserts; and would be full as absurd as the proposal of
+Horace where he advises the Romans all in a body to leave their city,
+and to seek a new seat in some remote part of the world by way of
+cure for the corruption of their manners.
+
+"'Therefore, I think this caution was in itself altogether
+unnecessary (which I have inserted only to prevent all possibility of
+cavilling), since every candid reader will easily understand my
+discourse to be intended only in defence of nominal Christianity, the
+other having been for some time wholly laid aside by general consent
+as utterly inconsistent with our present schemes of wealth and
+power.'
+
+"Yet but for these schemes of wealth and power the world would
+relapse into barbarianism; it is they and not Christianity which have
+created and preserved civilisation.  And what if some unhappy wretch,
+with a serious turn of mind and no sense of the ridiculous, takes all
+this talk about Christianity in sober earnest, and tries to act upon
+it?  Into what misery may he not easily fall, and with what life-long
+errors may he not embitter the lives of his children!
+
+* * * * *
+
+"Again, we do not cut off our right hand nor pluck out our eyes if
+they offend us; we conventionalise our interpretations of these
+sayings at our will and pleasure; we do take heed for the morrow, and
+should be inconceivably wicked and foolish were we not to do so; we
+do gather up riches, and indeed we do most things which the
+experience of mankind has taught us to be to our advantage, quite
+irrespectively of any precept of Christianity for or against.  But
+why say that it is Christianity which is our chief guide, when the
+words of Christ point in such a very different direction from that
+which we have seen fit to take?  Perhaps it is in order to compensate
+for our laxity of interpretation upon these points that we are so
+rigid in stickling for accuracy upon those which make no demand upon
+our comfort or convenience?  Thus, though we conventionalise
+practice, we never conventionalise dogma.  Here, indeed, we stickle
+for the letter most inflexibly; yet one would have thought that we
+might have had greater licence to modify the latter than the former.
+If we say that the teaching of Christ is not to be taken according to
+its import--why give it so much importance?  Teaching by exaggeration
+is not a satisfactory method, nor one worthy of a being higher than
+man; it might have been well once, and in the East, but it is not
+well now.  It induces more and more of that jarring and straining of
+our moral faculties, of which much is unavoidable in the existing
+complex condition of affairs, but of which the less the better.  At
+present the tug of professed principles in one direction, and of
+necessary practice in the other, causes the same sort of wear and
+tear in our moral gear as is caused to a steam-engine by continually
+reversing it when it is going it at full speed.  No mechanism can
+stand it."
+
+The above extracts (written when he was about twenty-three years old)
+may serve to show how utter was the subversion of his faith.  His
+mind was indeed in darkness!  Who could have hoped that so brilliant
+a day should have succeeded to the gloom of such mistrust?  Yet as
+upon a winter's morning in November when the sun rises red through
+the smoke, and presently the fog spreads its curtain of thick
+darkness over the city, and then there comes a single breath of wind
+from some more generous quarter, whereupon the blessed sun shines
+again, and the gloom is gone; or, again, as when the warm south-west
+wind comes up breathing kindness from the sea, unheralded, suspected,
+when the earth is in her saddest frost, and on the instant all the
+lands are thawed and opened to the genial influences of a sweet
+springful whisper--so thawed his heart, and the seed which had lain
+dormant in its fertile soil sprang up, grew, ripened, and brought
+forth an abundant harvest.
+
+Indeed now that the result has been made plain we can perhaps feel
+that his scepticism was precisely of that nature which should have
+given the greatest ground for hope.  He was a genuine lover of truth
+in so far as he could see it.
+
+His lights were dim, but such as they were he walked according to
+them, and hence they burnt ever more and more clearly, till in later
+life they served to show him what is vouchsafed to such men and to
+such only--the enormity of his own mistakes.  Better that a man
+should feel the divergence between Christian theory and Christian
+practice, that he should be shocked at it--even to the breaking away
+utterly from the theory until he has arrived at a wider comprehension
+of its scope--than that he should be indifferent to the divergence
+and make no effort to bring his principles and practice into harmony
+with one another.  A true lover of consistency, it was intolerable to
+him to say one thing with his lips and another with his actions.  As
+long as this is true concerning any man, his friends may feel sure
+that the hand of the Lord is with him, though the signs thereof be
+hidden from mortal eyesight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+During the dark and unhappy time when he had, as it seems to me,
+bullied himself, or been bullied into infidelity, he had been utterly
+unable to realise the importance even of such a self-evident fact as
+that our Lord addressing an Eastern people would speak in such a way
+as Eastern people would best understand; it took him years to
+appreciate this.  He could not see that modes of thought are as much
+part of a language as the grammar and words which compose it, and
+that before a passage can be said to be translated from one language
+into another it is often not the words only which must be rendered,
+but the thought itself which must be transformed; to a people
+habituated to exaggeration a saying which was not exaggerated would
+have been pointless--so weak as to arrest the attention of no one; in
+order to translate it into such words as should carry precisely the
+same meaning to colder and more temperate minds, the words would
+often have to be left out of sight altogether, and a new sentence or
+perhaps even simile or metaphor substituted; this is plainly out of
+the question, and therefore the best course is that which has been
+taken, i.e., to render the words as accurately as possible, and leave
+the reader to modify the meaning.  But it was years before my brother
+could be got to feel this, nor did he ever do so fully, simple and
+obvious though it must appear to most people, until he had learned to
+recognise the value of a certain amount of inaccuracy and
+inconsistency in everything which is not comprehended in mechanics or
+the exact sciences.  "It is this," he used to say, "which gives
+artistic or spiritual value as contrasted with mechanical precision."
+
+In inaccuracy and inconsistency, therefore (within certain limits),
+my brother saw the means whereby our minds are kept from regarding
+things as rigidly and immutably fixed which are not yet fully
+understood, and perhaps may never be so while we are in our present
+state of probation.  Life is not one of the exact sciences, living is
+essentially an art and not a science.  Every thing addressed to human
+minds at all must be more or less of a compromise; thus, to take a
+very old illustration, even the definitions of a point and a line--
+the fundamental things in the most exact of the sciences--are mere
+compromises.  A point is supposed to have neither length, breadth,
+nor thickness--this in theory, but in practice unless a point have a
+little of all these things there is nothing there.  So with a line; a
+line is supposed to have length, but no breadth, yet in practice we
+never saw a line which had not breadth.  What inconsistency is there
+here, in requiring us to conceive something which we cannot conceive,
+and which can have no existence, before we go on to the investigation
+of the laws whereby the earth can alone be measured and the orbits of
+the planets determined.  I do not think that this illustration was
+presented to my brother's mind while he was young, but I am sure that
+if it had been it would have made him miserable.  He would have had
+no confidence in mathematics, and would very likely have made a
+furious attack upon Newton and Galileo, and been firmly convinced
+that he was discomfiting them.  Indeed I cannot forget a certain look
+of bewilderment which came over his face when the idea was put before
+him, I imagine, for the first time.  Fortunately he had so grown that
+the right inference was now in no danger of being missed.  He did not
+conclude that because the evidences for mathematics were founded upon
+compromises and definitions which are inaccurate--therefore that
+mathematics were false, or that there were no mathematics, but he
+learnt to feel that there might be other things which were no less
+indisputable than mathematics, and which might also be founded on
+facts for which the evidences were not wholly free from
+inconsistencies and inaccuracies.
+
+To some he might appear to be approaching too nearly to the "Sed tu
+vera puta" argument of Juvenal.  I greatly fear that an attempt may
+be made to misrepresent him as taking this line; that is to say, as
+accepting Christianity on the ground of the excellence of its moral
+teaching, and looking upon it as, indeed, a superstition, but
+salutary for women and young people.  Hardly anything would have
+shocked him more profoundly.  This doctrine with its plausible show
+of morality appeared to him to be, perhaps, the most gross of all
+immoralities, inasmuch as it cuts the ground from under the feet of
+truth, luring the world farther and farther from the only true
+salvation--the careful study of facts and of the safest inferences
+that may be drawn from them.  Every fact was to him a part of nature,
+a thing sacred, pregnant with Divine teaching of some sort, as being
+the expression of Divine will.  It was through facts that he saw God;
+to tamper with facts was, in his view, to deface the countenance of
+the Almighty.  To say that such and such was so and so, when the
+speaker did not believe it, was to lead people to worship a false God
+instead of a true one; an e?d????; setting them, to quote the words
+of the Psalmist, "a-whoring after their own imaginations."  He saw
+the Divine presence in everything--the evil as well as the good; the
+evil being the expression of the Divine will that such and such
+courses should not go unpunished, but bring pain and misery which
+should deter others from following them, and the good being his sign
+of approbation.  There was nothing good for man to know which could
+not be deduced from facts.  This was the only sound basis of
+knowledge, and to found things upon fiction which could be made to
+stand upon facts was to try and build upon a quicksand.
+
+He, therefore, loathed the reasoning of Juvenal with all the
+intensity of his nature.  It was because he believed that the
+Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord were just as much matters of
+actual history as the assassination of Julius Caesar, and that they
+happened precisely in the same way as every daily event happens at
+present--that he accepted the Christian scheme in its essentials.
+Then came the details.  Were these also objectively true?  He
+answered, "Certainly not in every case."  He would not for the world
+have had any one believe that he so considered them; but having made
+it perfectly clear that he was not going to deceive himself, he set
+himself to derive whatever spiritual comfort he could from them, just
+as he would from any noble fiction or work of art, which, while not
+professing to be historical, was instinct with the soul of genius.
+That there were unhistorical passages in the New Testament was to him
+a fact; therefore it was to be studied as an expression of the Divine
+will.  What could be the meaning of it?  That we should consider them
+as true?  Assuredly not this.  Then what else?  This--that we should
+accept as subjectively true whatever we found spiritually precious,
+and be at liberty to leave all the rest alone--the unhistoric element
+having been introduced purposely for the sake of giving greater scope
+and latitude to the value of the ideal.
+
+Of course one who was so firmly persuaded of the objective truth of
+the Resurrection and Ascension could be in no sort of danger of
+relapsing into infidelity as long as his reason remained.  During the
+years of his illness his mind was clearly impaired, and no longer
+under his own control; but while his senses were his own it was
+absolutely impossible that he could be shaken by discrepancies and
+inconsistencies in the gospels.  What small and trifling things are
+such discrepancies by the side of the great central miracle of the
+Resurrection!  Nevertheless their existence was indisputable, and was
+no less indisputably a cause of stumbling to many, as it had been to
+himself.  His experience of his own sufferings as an unbeliever gave
+him a keener sympathy with those who were in that distressing
+condition than could be felt by any one who had not so suffered, and
+fitted him, perhaps, more than any one who has yet lived to be the
+interpreter of Christianity to the Rationalist, and of Rationalism to
+the Christian.  This, accordingly, was the task to which he set
+himself, having been singularly adapted for it by Nature, and as
+singularly disciplined by events.
+
+It seemed to him that the first thing was to make the two parties
+understand one another--a thing which had never yet been done, but
+which was not at all impossible.  For Protestantism is raised
+essentially upon a Rationalistic base.  When we come to a definition
+of Rationalism nothing can be plainer than that it demands no
+scepticism from any one which an English Protestant would not approve
+of.  It is another matter with the Church of Rome.  That Church
+openly declares it as an axiom that religion and reason have nothing
+to do with one another, and that religion, though in flat
+contradiction to reason, should yet be accepted from the hands of a
+certain order as an act of unquestioning faith.  The line of
+separation therefore between the Romanist and the Rationalist is
+clear, and definitely bars any possibility of arrangement between the
+two.  Not so with the Protestant, who as heartily as the Rationalist
+admits that nothing is required to be believed by man except such
+things as can be reasonably proved--i.e., proved to the satisfaction
+of the reason.  No Protestant would say that the Christian scheme
+ought to be accepted in spite of its being contrary to reason; we say
+that Christianity is to be believed because it can be shewn to follow
+as the necessary consequence of using our reason rightly.  We should
+be shocked at being supposed to maintain otherwise.  Yet this is pure
+Rationalism.  The Rationalist would require nothing more; he demurs
+to Christianity because he maintains that if we bring our reason to
+bear upon the evidences which are brought forward in support of it,
+we are compelled to reject it; but he would accept it without
+hesitation if he believed that it could be sustained by arguments
+which ought to carry conviction to the reason.  Thus both are agreed
+in principle that if the evidences of Christianity satisfy human
+reason, then Christianity should be received, but that on any other
+supposition it should be rejected.
+
+Here then, he said, we have a common starting-point and the main
+principle of Rationalism turns out to be nothing but what we all
+readily admit, and with which we and our fathers have been as
+familiar for centuries as with the air we breathe.  Every Protestant
+is a Rationalist, or else he ought to be ashamed of himself.  Does he
+want to be called an "Irrationalist"?  Hardly--yet if he is not a
+Rationalist what else can he be?  No:  the difference between us is
+one of detail, not of principle.  This is a great step gained.
+
+The next thing therefore was to make each party understand the view
+which the other took concerning the position which they had agreed to
+hold in common.  There was no work, so far as he knew, which would be
+accepted both by Christians and unbelievers as containing a fair
+statement of the arguments of the two contending parties:  every book
+which he had yet seen upon either side seemed written with the view
+of maintaining that its own side could hold no wrong, and the other
+no right:  neither party seemed to think that they had anything to
+learn from the other, and neither that any considerable addition to
+their knowledge of the truth was either possible or desirable.  Each
+was in possession of truth already, and all who did not see and feel
+this must be either wilfully blinded, or intensely stupid, or
+hypocrites.
+
+So long as people carried on a discussion thus, what agreement was
+possible between them?  Yet where, upon the Christian side, was the
+attempt to grapple with the real difficulties now felt by
+unbelievers?  Simply nowhere.  All that had been done hitherto was
+antiquated.  Modern Christianity seemed to shrink from grappling with
+modern Rationalism, and displayed a timidity which could not be
+accounted for except by the supposition of secret misgiving that
+certain things were being defended which could not be defended
+fairly.  This was quite intolerable; a misgiving was a warning voice
+from God, which should be attended to as a man valued his soul.  On
+the other hand, the conviction reasonably entertained by unbelievers
+that they were right on many not inconsiderable details of the
+dispute, and that so-called orthodox Christians in their hearts knew
+it but would not own it--or that if they did not know it, they were
+only in ignorance because it suited their purpose to be so--this
+conviction gave an overweening self-confidence to infidels, as though
+they must be right in the whole because they were so in part; they
+therefore blinded themselves to all the more fundamental arguments in
+support of Christianity, because certain shallow ones had been put
+forward in the front rank, and been far too obstinately defended.
+They thus regarded the question too superficially, and had erred even
+more through pride of intellect and conceit than their opponents
+through timidity.
+
+What then was to be done?  Surely this; to explain the two contending
+parties to one another; to show to Rationalists that Christians are
+right upon Rationalistic principles in all the more important of
+their allegations; that is to say, to establish the Resurrection and
+Ascension of the Redeemer upon a basis which should satisfy the most
+imperious demands of modern criticism.  This would form the first and
+most important part of the task.  Then should follow a no less
+convincing proof that Rationalists are right in demurring to the
+historical accuracy of much which has been too obstinately defended
+by so-called orthodox writers.  This would be the second part.  Was
+there not reason to hope that when this was done the two parties
+might understand one another, and meet in a common Christianity?  He
+believed that there was, and that the ground had been already cleared
+for such mutual compromise as might be accepted by both sides, not
+from policy but conviction.  Therefore he began writing the book
+which it has devolved upon myself to edit, and which must now speak
+for itself.  For him it was to suffer and to labour; almost on the
+very instant of his having done enough to express his meaning he was
+removed from all further power of usefulness.
+
+The happy change from unbelief to faith had already taken place some
+three or four years before my return from America.  With it had also
+come that sudden development of intellectual and spiritual power
+which so greatly astonished even those who had known him best.  The
+whole man seemed changed--to have become possessed of an unusually
+capacious mind, instead of one which was acute, but acute only.  On
+looking over the earlier letters which I received from him when I was
+in America, I can hardly believe that they should have been written
+by the same person as the one to whom, in spite of not a few great
+mental defects, I afterwards owed more spiritual enrichment than I
+have owed to any other person.  Yet so it was.  It came upon me
+imperceptibly that I had been very stupid in not discovering that my
+brother was a genius; but hardly had I made the discovery, and hardly
+had the fragment which follows this memoir received its present
+shape, when his overworked brain gave way and he fell into a state
+little better than idiocy.  His originally cheerful spirits left him,
+and were succeeded by a religious melancholy which nothing could
+disturb.  He became incapable either of mental or physical exertion,
+and was pronounced by the best physicians to be suffering from some
+obscure disease of the brain brought on by excitement and undue
+mental tension:  in this state he continued for about four years, and
+died peacefully, but still as one in the profoundest melancholy, on
+the 15th of March, 1872, aged 40.
+
+Always hopeful that his health would one day be restored, I never
+ventured to propose that I should edit his book during his own life-
+time.  On his death I found his papers in the most deplorable
+confusion.  The following chapters had alone received anything like a
+presentable shape--and these providentially are the most essential.
+
+A dream is a dream only, yet sometimes there follows a fulfilment
+which bears a strange resemblance to the thing dreamt of.  No one now
+believes that the Book of Revelation is to be taken as foretelling
+events which will happen in the same way as the massacre, for
+instance, of St. Bartholomew, indeed it is doubtful how far the whole
+is not to be interpreted as an allegory, descriptive of spiritual
+revolutions; yet surely my mother's dream as to the future of one, at
+least, of her sons has been strangely verified, and it is believed
+that the reader when he lays down this volume will feel that there
+have been few more potent witnesses to the truth of Christ than John
+Pickard Owen.
+
+
+
+
+THE FAIR HAVEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--INTRODUCTION
+
+
+
+It is to be feared that there is no work upon the evidences of our
+faith, which is as satisfactory in its completeness and convincing
+power as we have a right to expect when we consider the paramount
+importance of the subject and the activity of our enemies.  Otherwise
+why should there be no sign of yielding on the part of so many
+sincere and eminent men who have heard all that has been said upon
+the Christian side and are yet not convinced by it?  We cannot think
+that the many philosophers who make no secret of their opposition to
+the Christian religion are unacquainted with the works of Butler and
+Paley--of Mansel and Liddon.  This cannot be:  they must be
+acquainted with them, and find them fail.
+
+Now, granting readily that in some minds there is a certain wilful
+and prejudiced self-blindness which no reasoning can overcome, and
+granting also that men very much preoccupied with any one pursuit
+(more especially a scientific one) will be apt to give but scant and
+divided attention to arguments upon other subjects such as religion
+or politics, nevertheless we have so many opponents who profess to
+have made a serious study of Christian evidences, and against whose
+opinion no exception can be fairly taken, that it seems as though we
+were bound either to admit that our demonstrations require
+rearrangement and reconsideration, or to take the Roman position, and
+maintain that revelation is no fit subject for evidence but is to be
+accepted upon authority.  This last position will be rejected at once
+by nine-tenths of Englishmen.  But upon rejecting it we look in vain
+for a work which shall appear to have any such success in arresting
+infidelity as attended the works of Butler and Paley in the last
+century.  In their own day these two great men stemmed the current of
+infidelity:  but no modern writers have succeeded in doing so, and it
+will scarcely be said that either Butler or Paley set at rest the
+many serious and inevitable questions in connection with Christianity
+which have arisen during the last fifty years.  We could hardly
+expect one of the more intelligent students at Oxford or Cambridge to
+find his mind set once and for ever free from all rising doubt either
+by the Analogy or the Evidences.  Suppose, for example, that he has
+been misled by the German writers of the Tubingen school, how will
+either of the above-named writers help him?  On the contrary, they
+will do him harm, for they will not meet the requirements of the
+case, and the inference is too readily drawn that nothing else can do
+so.  It need hardly be insisted upon that this inference is a most
+unfair one, but surely the blame of its being drawn rests in some
+measure at the door of those whose want of thoroughness has left
+people under the impression that no more can be said than what has
+been said already.
+
+It is the object, therefore, of this book to contribute towards
+establishing Christian evidences upon a more secure and self-evident
+base than any upon which they are made to rest at present, so far,
+that is to say, as a work which deliberately excludes whole fields of
+Christian evidence can tend towards so great a consummation.  In
+spite of the narrow limits within which I have resolved to keep my
+treatment of the subject, I trust that I may be able to produce such
+an effect upon the minds of those who are in doubt concerning the
+evidences for the hope that is in them, that henceforward they shall
+never doubt again.  I am not sanguine enough to suppose that I shall
+be able to induce certain eminent naturalists and philosophers to
+reopen a question which they have probably long laid aside as
+settled; unfortunately it is not in any but the very noblest
+Christian natures to do this, nevertheless, could they be persuaded
+to read these pages I believe that they would find so much which
+would be new to them, that their prejudices would be greatly shaken.
+To the younger band of scientific investigators I appeal more
+hopefully.
+
+It may be asked why not have undertaken the whole subject and devoted
+a life-time to writing an exhaustive work?  The answer suggests
+itself that the believer is in no want of such a book, while the
+unbeliever would be repelled by its size.  Assuredly there can be no
+doubt as to the value of a great work which should meet objections
+derived from certain recent scientific theories, and confute
+opponents who have arisen since the death of our two great
+apologists, but as a preliminary to this a smaller and more
+elementary book seems called for, which shall give the main outlines
+of our position with such boldness and effectiveness as to arrest the
+attention of any unbeliever into whose hands it may fall, and induce
+him to look further into what else may be urged upon the Christian
+side.  We are bound to adapt our means to our ends, and shall have a
+better chance of gaining the ear of our adversaries if we can offer
+them a short and pregnant book than if we come to them with a long
+one from which whole chapters might be pruned.  We have to bring the
+Christian religion to men who will look at no book which cannot be
+read in a railway train or in an arm-chair; it is most deplorable
+that this should be the case, nevertheless it is indisputably a fact,
+and as such must be attended to by all who hope to be of use in
+bringing about a better state of things.  And let me add that never
+yet was there a time when it so much behoved all who are impressed
+with the vital power of religion to bestir themselves; for the
+symptoms of a general indifference, not to say hostility, must be
+admitted to be widely diffused, in spite of an imposing array of
+facts which can be brought forward to the contrary; and not only
+this, but the stream of infidelity seems making more havoc yearly, as
+it might naturally be expected to do, when met by no new works of any
+real strength or permanence.
+
+Bearing in mind, therefore, the necessity for prompt action, it
+seemed best to take the most overwhelming of all miracles--the
+Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and show that it can be so
+substantiated that no reasonable man should doubt it.  This I have
+therefore attempted, and I humbly trust that the reader will feel
+that I have not only attempted it, but done it, once and for all so
+clearly and satisfactorily and with such an unflinching examination
+of the most advanced arguments of unbelievers, that the question can
+never be raised hereafter by any candid mind, or at any rate not
+until science has been made to rest on different grounds from those
+on which she rests at present.
+
+But the truth of our Lord's resurrection having been once
+established, what need to encumber this book with further evidences
+of the miraculous element in his ministry?  The other miracles can be
+no insuperable difficulty to one who accepts the Resurrection.  It is
+true that as Christians we cannot dwell too minutely upon every act
+and incident in the life of the Redeemer, but unhappily we have to
+deal with those who are not Christians, and must consider rather what
+we can get them to take than what we should like to give them:  "Be
+ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves," saith the Saviour.  A
+single miracle is as good as twenty, provided that it be well
+established, and can be shewn to be so:  it is here that even the
+ablest of our apologists have too often failed; they have professed
+to substantiate the historical accuracy of all the recorded miracles
+and sayings of our Lord, with a result which is in some instances
+feeble and conventional, and occasionally even unfair (oh! what
+suicidal folly is there in even the remotest semblance of
+unfairness), instead of devoting themselves to throwing a flood of
+brilliancy upon the most important features and leaving the others to
+shine out in the light reflected from these.  Even granting that some
+of the miracles recorded of our Lord are apocryphal, what of that?
+We do not rest upon them:  we have enough and more than enough
+without them, and can afford to take the line of saying to the
+unbeliever, "Disbelieve this miracle or that if you find that you
+cannot accept it, but believe in the Resurrection, of which we will
+put forward such ample proofs that no healthy reason can withstand
+them, and, having accepted the Resurrection, admit it as the
+manifestation of supernatural power, the existence of which can thus
+no longer be denied."
+
+Does not the reader feel that there is a ring of truth and candour
+about this which must carry more weight with an opponent than any
+strained defence of such a doubtful miracle as the healing of the
+impotent man at the pool of Bethesda?  We weight ourselves as against
+our opponents by trying to defend too much; no matter how sound and
+able the defence of one part of the Christian scheme may have been,
+its effect is often marred by contiguity with argument which the
+writer himself must have suspected, or even known, to be ingenious
+rather than sound:  the moment that this is felt in any book its
+value with an opponent is at an end, for he must be continually in
+doubt whether the spirit which he has detected here or there may not
+be existing and at work in a hundred other places where he has not
+detected it.  What carries weight with an antagonist is the feeling
+that his position has been mastered and his difficulties grasped with
+thoroughness and candour.
+
+On this point I am qualified to speak from long and bitter
+experience.  I say that want of candour and the failure to grasp the
+position occupied, however untenably, by unbelievers is the chief
+cause of the continuance of unbelief.  When this cause has been
+removed unbelief will die a natural death.  For years I was myself a
+believer in nothing beyond the personality and providence of God:
+yet I feel (not without a certain sense of bitterness, which I know
+that I should not feel but cannot utterly subdue) that if my first
+doubts had been met with patient endeavour to understand their nature
+and if I had felt that the one in whom I confided had been ready to
+go to the root of the matter, and even to yield up the convictions of
+a life-time could it be shewn that they were unsafely founded, my
+doubts would have been resolved in an hour or two's quiet
+conversation, and would at once have had the effect, which they have
+only had after long suffering and unrest, of confirming me in my
+allegiance to Christ.  But I was met with anger and impatience.
+There was an instinct which told me that my opponent had never heard
+a syllable against his own convictions, and was determined not to
+hear one:  on this I assumed rashly that he must have good reason for
+his resolution; and doubt ripened into unbelief.  Oh! what years of
+heart-burning and utter drifting followed.  Yet when I was at last
+brought within the influence of one who not only believed all that my
+first opponent did, but who also knew that the more light was thrown
+upon it the more clearly would its truth be made apparent--a man who
+talked with me as though he was anxious that I should convince him if
+he were in error, not as though bent on making me believe whatever
+habit and circumstances had imposed as a formula upon himself--my
+heart softened at once, and the dry places of my soul were watered.
+
+The above may seem too purely personal to warrant its introduction
+here, yet the experience is one which should not be without its value
+to others.  Its effect upon myself has been to give me an unutterable
+longing to save others from sufferings like my own; I know so well
+where it is that, to use a homely metaphor, the shoe pinches.  And it
+is chiefly here--in the fact that the unbeliever does not feel as
+though we really wanted to understand him.  This feeling is in many
+cases lamentably well founded.  No one likes hearing doubt thrown
+upon anything which he regards as settled beyond dispute, and this,
+happily, is what most men feel concerning Christianity.  Again,
+indolence or impotence of mind indisposes many to intellectual
+effort; others are pained by coming into contact with anything which
+derogates from the glory due to the great sacrifice of Christ, or to
+his Divine nature, and lastly not a few are withheld by moral
+cowardice from daring to bestow the pains upon the unbeliever which
+his condition requires.  But from whichever of these sources the
+disinclination to understand him comes, its effect is equally
+disastrous to the unbeliever.  People do not mind a difference of
+opinion, if they feel that the one who differs from them has got a
+firm grasp of their position; or again, if they feel that he is
+trying to understand them but fails from some defect either of
+intellect or education, even in this case they are not pained by
+opposition.  What injures their moral nature and hardens their hearts
+is the conviction that another could understand them if he chose, but
+does not choose, and yet none the less condemns them.  On this they
+become imbued with that bitterness against Christianity which is
+noticeable in so many free-thinkers.
+
+Can we greatly wonder?  For, sad though the admission be, it is only
+justice to admit that we Christians have been too often contented to
+accept our faith without knowing its grounds, in which case it is
+more by luck than by cunning that we are Christians at all, and our
+faith will be in continual danger.  The greater number even of those
+who have undertaken to defend the Christian faith have been sadly
+inclined to avoid a difficulty rather than to face it, unless it is
+so easy as to be no real difficulty at all.  I do not say that this
+is unnatural, for the Christian writer must be deeply impressed with
+the sinfulness of unbelief, and will therefore be anxious to avoid
+raising doubts which will probably never yet have occurred to his
+reader, and might possibly never do so; nor does there at first sight
+appear to be much advantage in raising difficulties for the sole
+purpose of removing them; nevertheless I cannot think that if either
+Butler or Paley could have foreseen the continuance of unbelief, and
+the ruin of so many souls whom Christ died to save, they would have
+been contented to act so almost entirely upon the defensive.
+
+Yet it is impossible not to feel that we in their place should have
+done as they did.  Infidelity was still in its infancy:  the nature
+of the disease was hardly yet understood; and there seemed reason to
+fear lest it might be aggravated by the very means taken to cure it;
+it seemed safer therefore in the first instance to confine attention
+to the matter actually in debate, and leave it to time to suggest a
+more active treatment should the course first tried prove
+unsatisfactory.  Who can be surprised that the earlier apologists
+should have felt thus in the presence of an enemy whose novelty made
+him appear more portentous than he can ever seem to ourselves?  They
+were bound to venture nothing rashly; what they did they did, for
+their own age, thoroughly; we owe it to their cautious pioneering
+that we so know the weakness of our opponents and our own strength as
+to be able to do fearlessly what may well have seemed perilous to our
+forefathers:  nevertheless it is easy to be wise after the event, and
+to regret that a bolder course was not taken at the outset.  If
+Butler and Paley had fought as men eager for the fray, as men who
+smelt the battle from afar, it is impossible to believe that
+infidelity could have lasted as long as it has.  What can be done now
+could have been done just as effectively then, and though we cannot
+be surprised at the caution shewn at first, we are bound to deplore
+it as short-sighted.
+
+The question, however, for ourselves is not what dead men might have
+done better long ago, but what living men and women can do most
+wisely now; and in answer to it I would say that there is no policy
+so unwise as fear in a good cause:  the bold course is also the wise
+one; it consists in being on the lookout for objections, in finding
+the very best that can be found and stating them in their most
+intelligible form, in shewing what are the logical consequences of
+unbelief, and thus carrying the war into the enemy's country; in
+fighting with the most chivalrous generosity and a determination to
+take no advantage which is not according to the rules of war most
+strictly interpreted against ourselves, but within such an
+interpretation showing no quarter.  This is the bold course and the
+true course:  it will beget a confidence which can never be felt in
+the wariness, however well-intentioned, of the old defenders.
+
+Let me, therefore, beg the reader to follow me patiently while I do
+my best to put before him the main difficulties felt by unbelievers.
+When he is once acquainted with these he will run in no danger of
+confirming doubt through his fear in turning away from it in the
+first instance.  How many die hardened unbelievers through the
+treatment which they have received from those to whom their
+Christianity has been a matter of circumstances and habit only?  Hell
+is no fiction.  Who, without bitter sorrow, can reflect upon the
+agonies even of a single soul as being due to the selfishness or
+cowardice of others?  Awful thought!  Yet it is one which is daily
+realised in the case of thousands.
+
+In the commonest justice to brethren, however sinful, each one of us
+who tries to lead them to the Saviour is bound not only to shew them
+the whole strength of our own arguments, but to make them see that we
+understand the whole strength of theirs; for men will not seriously
+listen to those whom they believe to know one side of a question
+only.  It is this which makes the educated infidel so hard to deal
+with; he knows very well that an intelligent apprehension of the
+position held by an opponent is indispensable for profitable
+discussion; but he very rarely meets with this in the case of those
+Christians who try to argue with him; he therefore soon acquires a
+habit of avoiding the subject of religion, and can seldom be induced
+to enter upon an argument which he is convinced can lead to nothing.
+
+He who would cure a disease must first know what it is, and he who
+would convert an infidel must know what it is that he is to be
+converted from, as well as what he is to be led to; nothing can be
+laid hold of unless its whereabouts is known.  It is deplorable that
+such commonplaces should be wanted; but, alas! it is impossible to do
+without them.  People have taken a panic on the subject of infidelity
+as though it were so infectious that the very nurses and doctors
+should run away from those afflicted with it; but such conduct is no
+less absurd than cruel and disgraceful.  INFIDELITY IS ONLY
+INFECTIOUS WHEN IT IS NOT UNDERSTOOD.  The smallest reflection should
+suffice to remind us that a faith which has satisfied the most
+brilliant and profound of human intellects for nearly two thousand
+years must have had very sure foundations, and that any digging about
+them for the purpose of demonstrating their depth and solidity, will
+result, not in their disturbance, but in its being made clear to
+every eye that they are laid upon a rock which nothing can shake--
+that they do indeed satisfy every demand of human reason, which
+suffers violence not from those who accept the scheme of the
+Christian redemption, but from those who reject it.
+
+This being the case, and that it is so will, I believe, appear with
+great clearness in the following pages, what need to shrink from the
+just and charitable course of understanding the nature of what is
+urged by those who differ from us?  How can we hope to bring them to
+be of one mind in Christ Jesus with ourselves, unless we can resolve
+their difficulties and explain them?  And how can we resolve their
+difficulties until we know what they are?  Infidelity is as a reeking
+fever den, which none can enter safely without due precautions, but
+the taking these precautions is within our own power; we can all rely
+upon the blessed promises of the Saviour that he will not desert us
+in our hour of need if we will only truly seek him; there is more
+infidelity in this shrinking and fear of investigation than in almost
+any open denial of Christ; the one who refuses to examine the doubts
+felt by another, and is prevented from making any effort to remove
+them through fear lest he should come to share them, shews either
+that he has no faith in the power of Christianity to stand
+examination, or that he has no faith in the promises of God to guide
+him into all truth.  In either case he is hardly less an unbeliever
+than those whom he condemns.
+
+Let the reader therefore understand that he will here find no attempt
+to conceal the full strength of the arguments relied on by
+unbelievers.  This manner of substantiating the truth of Christianity
+has unhappily been tried already; it has been tried and has failed as
+it was bound to fail.  Infidelity lives upon concealment.  Shew it in
+broad daylight, hold it up before the world and make its hideousness
+manifest to all--then, and not till then, will the hours of unbelief
+be numbered.  WE have been the mainstay of unbelief through our
+timidity.  Far be it from me, therefore, that I should help any
+unbeliever by concealing his case for him.  This were the most cruel
+kindness.  On the contrary, I shall insist upon all his arguments and
+state them, if I may say so without presumption, more clearly than
+they have ever been stated within the same limits.  No one knows what
+they are better than I do.  No one was at one time more firmly
+persuaded that they were sound.  May it be found that no one has so
+well known how also to refute them.
+
+The reader must not therefore expect to find fictitious difficulties
+in the way of accepting Christianity set up with one hand in order to
+be knocked down again with the other:  he will find the most powerful
+arguments against all that he holds most sacred insisted on with the
+same clearness as those on his own side; it is only by placing the
+two contending opinions side by side in their utmost development that
+the strength of our own can be made apparent.  Those who wish to cry
+peace, peace, when there is no peace, those who would take their
+faith by fashion as the take their clothes, those who doubt the
+strength of their own cause and do not in their heart of heart
+believe that Christianity will stand investigation, those, again, who
+care not who may go to Hell provided they are comfortably sure of
+going to Heaven themselves, such persons may complain of the line
+which I am about to take.  They on the other hand whose faith is such
+that it knows no fear of criticism, and they whose love for Christ
+leads them to regard the bringing of lost souls into his flock as the
+highest earthly happiness--such will admit gladly that I have been
+right in tearing aside the veil from infidelity and displaying it
+uncloaked by the side of faith itself.
+
+At the same time I am bound to confess that I never should have been
+able to see the expediency, not to say the absolute necessity for
+such a course, unless I had been myself for many years an unbeliever.
+It is this experience, so bitterly painful, that has made me feel so
+strongly as to the only manner in which others can be brought from
+darkness into light.  The wisdom of the Almighty recognised that if
+man was to be saved it must be done by the assumption of man's nature
+on the part of the Deity.  God must make himself man, or man could
+never learn the nature and attributes of God.  Let us then follow the
+sublime example of the incarnation, and make ourselves as unbelievers
+that we may teach unbelievers to believe.  If Paley and Butler had
+only been REAL INFIDELS for a single year, instead of taking the
+thoughts and reasonings of their opponents at second-hand, what a
+difference should we not have seen in the nature of their work.
+Alas! their clear and powerful intellects had been trained early in
+the severest exercises; they could not be misled by any of the
+sophistries of their opponents; but, on the other hand, never having
+been misled they knew not the thread of the labyrinth as one who has
+been shut up therein.
+
+I should also warn the reader of another matter.  He must not expect
+to find that I can maintain everything which he could perhaps desire
+to see maintained.  I can prove, to such a high degree of presumption
+as shall amount virtually to demonstration, that our Lord died upon
+the cross, rose again from the dead upon the third day, and ascended
+into Heaven:  but I cannot prove that none of the accounts of these
+events which have come down to us have suffered from the hand of
+time:  on the contrary, I must own that the reasons which led me to
+conclude that there must be confusion in some of the accounts of the
+Resurrection continue in full force with me even now.  I see no way
+of escaping from this conclusion:  but it seems equally strange that
+the Christian should have such an indomitable repugnance to accept
+it, and that the unbeliever should conceive that it inflicts any
+damage whatever upon the Christian evidences.  Perhaps the error of
+each confirms that of the other, as will appear hereafter.
+
+I have spoken hitherto as though I were writing only for men, but the
+help of good women can never be so precious as in the salvation of
+human souls; if there is one work for which women are better fitted
+than another, it is that of arresting the progress of unbelief.  Can
+there be a nobler one?  Their superior tact and quickness give them a
+great advantage over men; men will listen to them when they would
+turn away from one of their own sex; and though I am well aware that
+courtesy is no argument, yet the natural politeness shewn by a man to
+a woman will compel attention to what falls from her lips, and will
+thus perhaps be the means of bringing him into contact with Divine
+truths which would never otherwise have reached him.  Yet this is a
+work from which too many women recoil in horror--they know that they
+can do nothing unless they are intimately acquainted with the
+opinions of those from whom they differ, and from such an intimacy
+they believe that they are right in shrinking.
+
+Oh, my sisters, my sisters, ye who go into the foulest dens of
+disease and vice, fearless of the pestilence and of man's brutality,
+ye whose whole lives bear witness to the cross of Christ and the
+efficacy of the Divine love, did one of you ever fear being corrupted
+by the vice with which you came in contact?  Is there one of you who
+fears to examine why it is that even the most specious form of vice
+is vicious?  You fear not infection here, for you know that you are
+on sure ground, and that there is no form of vice of which the
+viciousness is not clearly provable; but can you doubt that the
+foundation of your faith is sure also, and can you not see that your
+cowardice in not daring to examine the foul and soul-destroying den
+of infidelity is a stumbling-block to those who have not yet known
+their Saviour?  Your fear is as the fear of children who dare not go
+in the dark; but alas! the unbeliever does not understand it thus.
+He says that your fear is not of the darkness but of the light, and
+that you dare not search lest you should find that which would make
+against you.  Hideous blasphemy against the Lord!  But is not the sin
+to be laid partly at the door of those whose cowardice has given
+occasion for it?
+
+Is there none of you who knows that as to the pure all things are
+pure, so to the true and loyal heart all things will confirm its
+faith?  You shrink from this last trial of your allegiance, partly
+from the pain of even seeing the wounds of your Redeemer laid open--
+of even hearing the words of those enemies who have traduced him and
+crucified him afresh--but you lose the last and highest of the
+prizes, for great as is your faith now, be very sure that from this
+crowning proof of your devotion you would emerge with greater still.
+
+Has none of you seen a savage dog barking and tearing at the end of
+his chain as though he were longing to devour you, and yet if you
+have gone bravely up to him and bade him be still, he is cowed and
+never barks again?  Such is the genius of infidelity; it loves to
+threaten those who retreat, yet it shrinks daunted back from those
+who meet it boldly; it is the lack of boldness on the part of the
+Christian which gives it all its power; when Christians are strong in
+the strength of their own cause infidels will know their impotence,
+but as long as there are cowards there will be those who prey upon
+cowardice, and as long as those who should defend the cross of Christ
+hide themselves behind battlements, so long will the enemy come up to
+the very walls of the defence and trouble them that are within.  The
+above words must have sounded harsh and will I fear have given pain
+to many a tender heart which is conscious of the depth of its own
+love for the Redeemer, and would be shocked at the thought that
+anything had been neglected in his service, but has not the voice of
+such a heart returned answer to itself that what I have written is
+just?
+
+Again, I have been told by some that they have been aware of the
+necessity of doing their best towards putting a stop to infidelity,
+and that they have been unceasing in their prayers for friends or
+husbands or relations who know not Christ, but that with prayers
+their efforts have ended.  Now, there can be no one in the whole
+world who has had more signal proofs of the efficacy of prayer than
+the writer of these pages, but he would lie if he were to say that
+prayer was ever answered when it was only another name for idleness,
+a cloak for the avoidance of obvious duty.  God is no helper of the
+indolent and the coward; if this were so, what need to work at all?
+Why not sit still, and trust in prayer for everything?  No; to the
+women who have prayed, and prayed only, the answer is ready at hand,
+that work without prayer is bad, but prayer without work worse.  Let
+them do their own utmost in the way of sowing, planting, and
+watering, and then let them pray to God that he will vouchsafe them
+the increase; but they can no more expect the increase to be of God's
+free gift without the toil of sowing than did the blessed Apostle St.
+Paul.  If God did not convert the heathen for Paul and Apollos in
+answer to their prayers alone, how can we expect that he will convert
+the infidel for ourselves, unless we have first followed in the
+footsteps of the Apostles?  The sin of infidelity will rest upon us
+and our children until we have done our best to shake it off; and
+this not timidly and disingenuously as those who fear for the result,
+but with the certainty that it is the infidel and not the Christian
+who need fear investigation, if the investigation only goes deep
+enough.  Herein has lain our error, we have feared to allow the
+unbeliever to put forth all his strength lest it should prove
+stronger than we thought it was, when in truth the world would only
+have known the sooner of its weakness; and this shall now at last be
+abundantly shewn, for, as I said above, I will help no infidel by
+concealing his case; it shall appear in full, and as nearly in his
+own words as the limits at my disposal will allow.  Out of his own
+mouth shall he be condemned, and yet, I trust, not condemned alone;
+but converted as I myself, and by the same irresistible chain of
+purest reason; one thing only is wanted on the part of the reader, it
+is this, the desire to attain truth regardless of past prejudices.
+
+If an unbeliever has made up his mind that we must be wrong, without
+having heard our side, and if he presumes to neglect the most
+ordinary precaution against error--that of understanding the position
+of an opponent--I can do nothing with him or for him.  No man can
+make another see, if the other persists in shutting his eyes and
+bandaging them:  if it is a victory to be able to say that they
+cannot see the truth under these circumstances, the victory is with
+our opponents; but for those who can lay their hands upon their heart
+and say truly before God and man that they care nothing for the
+maintenance of their own opinions, but only that they may come to
+know the truth, for such I can do much.  I can put the matter before
+them in so clear a light that they shall never doubt hereafter.
+
+Never was there a time when such an exposition was wanted so much as
+now.  The specious plausibilities of a pseudo-science have led
+hundreds of thousands into error; the misapplication of geology has
+ensnared a host of victims, and a still greater misapplication of
+natural history seems likely to devour those whom the perversion of
+geology has spared.  Not that I have a word to say against TRUE
+science:  true science can never be an enemy of the Bible, which is
+the text-book of the science of the salvation of human souls as
+written by the great Creator and Redeemer of the soul itself, but the
+Enemy of Mankind is never idle, and no sooner does God vouchsafe to
+us any clearer illumination of his purposes and manner of working,
+than the Evil One sets himself to consider how he can turn the
+blessing into a curse; and by the all-wise dispensation of Providence
+he is allowed so much triumph as that he shall sift the wise from the
+foolish, the faithful from the traitors.  God knoweth his own.  Still
+there is no surer mark that one is among the number of those whom he
+hath chosen than the desire to bring all to share in the gracious
+promises which he has vouchsafed to those that will take advantage of
+them; and there are few more certain signs of reprobation than
+indifference as to the existence of unbelief, and faint-heartedness
+in trying to remove it.  It is the duty of all those who love Christ
+to lead their brethren to love him also; but how can they hope to
+succeed in this until they understand the grounds on which he is
+rejected?
+
+For there ARE grounds, insufficient ones, untenable ones, grounds
+which a little loving patience and, if I may be allowed the word,
+ingenuity, will shew to be utterly rotten; but as long as their
+rottenness is only to be asserted and not proved, so long will
+deluded people build upon them in fancied security.  As yet the proof
+has never been made sufficiently clear.  If displayed sufficiently
+for one age it has been necessary to do the work again for the next.
+As soon as the errors of one set of people have been made apparent,
+another set has arisen with fresh objections, or the old fallacies
+have reappeared in another shape.  It is not too much to say that it
+has never yet been so clearly proved that Christ rose again from the
+dead, that a jury of educated Englishmen should be compelled to
+assent to it, even though they had never before heard of
+Christianity.  This therefore it is my object to do once and for ever
+now.
+
+It is not for me to pry into the motives of the Almighty, nor to
+inquire why it is that for nearly two thousand years the perfection
+of proof should never have been duly produced, but if I dare hazard
+an opinion I should say that such proof was never necessary until
+now, but that it has lain ready to be produced at a moment's notice
+on the arrival of the fitting time.  In the early stages of the
+Church the viva voce testimony of the Apostles was still so near that
+its force was in no way spent; from those times until recently the
+universality of belief was such that proof was hardly needed; it is
+only for a hundred years or so (which in the sight of God are but as
+yesterday) that infidelity has made real progress.  Then God raised
+his hand in wrath; revolution taught men to see the nature of
+unbelief and the world shrank back in horror; the time of fear passed
+by; unbelief has again raised itself; whereon we can see that other
+and even more fearful revolutions {1} are daily threatening.  What
+country is safe?  In what part of the world do not men feel an uneasy
+foreboding of the wrath which will surely come if they do not repent
+and turn unto the Lord their God?  Go where we will we are conscious
+of that heaviness and oppression which is the precursor of the
+hurricane and the earthquake; none escape it:  an all-pervading sense
+of rottenness and fearful waiting upon judgment is upon the hearts of
+all men.  May it not be that this awe and silence have been ordained
+in order that the still small voice of the Lord may be the more
+clearly heard and welcomed as salvation?  Is it not possible that the
+infinite mercy of God is determined to give mankind one last chance,
+before the day of that coming which no creature may abide?  I dare
+not answer:  yet I know well that the fire burneth within me, and
+that night and day I take no rest but am consumed until the work
+committed to me is done, that I may be clear from the blood of all
+men.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--STRAUSS AND THE HALLUCINATION THEORY
+
+
+
+It has been well established by Paley, and indeed has seldom been
+denied, that within a very few years of Christ's crucifixion a large
+number of people believed that he had risen from the dead.  They
+believed that after having suffered actual death he rose to actual
+life, as a man who could eat and drink and talk, who could be seen
+and handled.  Some who held this were near relations of Christ, some
+had known him intimately for a considerable time before his
+crucifixion, many must have known him well by sight, but all were
+unanimous in their assertion that they had seen him alive after he
+had been dead, and in consequence of this belief they adopted a new
+mode of life, abandoning in many cases every other earthly
+consideration save that of bearing witness to what they had known and
+seen.  I have not thought it worth while to waste time and space by
+introducing actual proof of the above.  This will be found in Paley's
+opening chapters, to which the reader is referred.
+
+How then did this intensity of conviction come about?  Differ as they
+might and did upon many of the questions arising out of the main fact
+which they taught, as to the fact itself they differed not in the
+least degree.  In their own life-time and in that of those who could
+confute them their story gained the adherence of a very large and
+ever increasing number.  If it could be shewn that the belief in
+Christ's reappearance did not arise until after the death of those
+who were said to have seen him, when actions and teachings might have
+been imputed to them which were not theirs, the case would then be
+different; but this cannot be done; there is nothing in history
+better established than that the men who said that they had seen
+Christ alive after he had been dead, were themselves the first to lay
+aside all else in order to maintain their assertion.  If it could be
+maintained that they taught what they did in order to sanction laxity
+of morals, the case would again be changed.  But this too is
+impossible.  They taught what they did because of the intensity of
+their own conviction and from no other motive whatsoever.
+
+What then can that thing have been which made these men so beyond all
+measure and one-mindedly certain?  Were they thus before the
+Crucifixion?  Far otherwise.  Yet the men who fled in the hour of
+their master's peril betrayed no signs of flinching when their own
+was no less imminent.  How came it that the cowardice and fretfulness
+of the Gospels should be transformed into the lion-hearted
+steadfastness of the Acts?
+
+The Crucifixion had intervened.  Yes, but surely something more than
+the Crucifixion.  Can we believe that if their experience of Christ
+had ended with the Cross, the Apostles would have been in that state
+of mind which should compel them to leave all else for the sake of
+preaching what he had taught them?  It is a hard thing for a man to
+change the scheme of his life; yet this is not a case of one man but
+of many, who became changed as if struck with an enchanter's wand,
+and who, though many, were as one in the vehemence with which they
+protested that their master had reappeared to them alive.  Their
+converse with Christ did not probably last above a year or two, and
+was interrupted by frequent absence.  If Christ had died once and for
+all upon the Cross, Christianity must have died with him; but it did
+not die; nay, it did not begin to live with full energy until after
+its founder had been crucified.  We must ask again, what could that
+thing have been which turned these querulous and faint-hearted
+followers into the most earnest and successful body of propagandists
+which the world has ever seen, if it was not that which they said it
+was--namely, that Christ had reappeared to them alive after they had
+themselves known him to be dead?  This would account for the change
+in them, but is there anything else that will?
+
+They had such ample opportunities of knowing the truth that the
+supposition of mistake is fraught with the greatest difficulties;
+they gave such guarantees of sincerity as that none have given
+greater; their unanimity is perfect; there is not the faintest trace
+of any difference of opinion amongst them as to the main fact of the
+Resurrection.  These are things which never have been and never can
+be denied, but if they do not form strong prima facie ground for
+believing in the truth and actuality of Christ's Resurrection, what
+is there which will amount to a prima facie case for anything
+whatever?
+
+Nevertheless the matter does not rest here.  While there exists the
+faintest possibility of mistake we may be sure that we shall deal
+most wisely by examining its character and value.  Let us inquire
+therefore whether there are any circumstances which seem to indicate
+that the early Christians might have been mistaken, and been firmly
+persuaded that they had seen Christ alive, although in point of fact
+they had not really seen him?  Men have been very positive and very
+sincere about things wherein we should have conceived mistake
+impossible, and yet they have been utterly mistaken.  A strong
+predisposition, a rare coincidence, an unwonted natural phenomenon, a
+hundred other causes, may turn sound judgments awry, and we dare not
+assume forthwith that the first disciples of Christ were superior to
+influences which have misled many who have had better chances of
+withstanding them.  Visions and hallucinations are not uncommon even
+now.  How easily belief in a supernatural occurrence obtains among
+the peasantry of Italy, Ireland, Belgium, France, and Spain; and how
+much more easily would it do so among Jews in the days of Christ,
+when belief in supernatural interferences with this world's economy
+was, so to speak, omnipresent.  Means of communication, that is to
+say of verification, were few, and the tone of men's minds as regards
+accuracy of all kinds was utterly different from that of our own;
+science existed not even in name as the thing we now mean by it; few
+could read and fewer write, so that a story could seldom be confined
+to its original limits; error, therefore, had much chance and truth
+little as compared with our own times.  What more is needed to make
+us feel how possible it was for the purest and most honest of men to
+become parents of all fallacy?
+
+Strauss believes this to have been the case.  He supposes that the
+earliest Christians were under hallucination when they thought that
+they had seen Christ alive after his Crucifixion; in other words,
+that they never saw him at all, but only thought that they had done
+so.  He does not imagine that they conceived this idea at once, but
+that it grew up gradually in the course of a few years, and that
+those who came under its influence antedated it unconsciously
+afterwards.  He appears to believe that within a few months of the
+Crucifixion, and in consequence of some unexplained combination of
+internal and external causes, some one of the Apostles came to be
+impressed with the notion that he had seen Christ alive; the
+impression, however made, was exceedingly strong, and was
+communicated as soon as might be to some other or others of the
+Apostles:  the idea was welcome--as giving life to a hope which had
+been fondly cherished; each inflamed the imagination of the other,
+until the original basis of the conception slipped unconsciously from
+recollection, while the intensity of the conviction itself became
+stronger and stronger the more often the story was repeated.  Strauss
+supposes that on seeing the firm conviction of two or three who had
+hitherto been leaders among them, the other Apostles took heart, and
+that thus the body grew together again perhaps within a twelve-month
+of the Crucifixion.  According to him, the idea of the Resurrection
+having been once started, and having once taken root, the soil was so
+congenial that it grew apace; the rest of the Apostles, perhaps
+assembled together in a high state of mental enthusiasm and
+excitement, conceived that they saw Christ enter the room in which
+they were sitting and afford some manifest proof of life and
+identity; or some one else may have enlarged a less extraordinary
+story to these dimensions, so that in a short time it passed current
+everywhere (there have been instances of delusions quite as
+extraordinary gaining a foothold among men whose sincerity is not to
+be disputed), and finally they conceived that these appearances of
+their master had commenced a few months--and what is a few months?--
+earlier than they actually had, so that the first appearance was soon
+looked upon as having been vouchsafed within three days of the
+Crucifixion.
+
+The above is not in Strauss's words, but it is a careful resume of
+what I gather to be his conception of the origin of the belief in the
+Resurrection of Christ.  The belief, and the intensity of the belief,
+need explanation; the supernatural explanation, as we should
+ourselves readily admit, cannot be accepted unless all others are
+found wanting; he therefore, if I understand him rightly, puts
+forward the above as being a reasonable and natural solution of the
+difficulty--the only solution which does not fail upon examination,
+and therefore the one which should be accepted.  It is founded upon
+the affection which the Apostles had borne towards their master, and
+their unwillingness to give up their hope that they had been chosen,
+as the favoured lieutenants of the promised Messiah.
+
+No man would be willing to give up such hope easily; all men would
+readily welcome its renewal; it was easy in the then intellectual
+condition of Palestine for hallucination to originate, and still
+easier for it to spread; the story touched the hearts of men too
+nearly to render its propagation difficult.  Men and women like
+believing in the marvellous, for it brings the chance of good fortune
+nearer to their own doors; but how much more so when they are
+themselves closely connected with the central figure of the marvel,
+and when it appears to give a clue to the solution of that mystery
+which all would pry into if they could--our future after death?
+There can be no great cause for wonder that an hallucination which
+arose under such conditions as these should have gained ground and
+conquered all opposition, even though its origin may be traced to the
+brain of but a single person.
+
+He would be a bold man who should say that this was impossible;
+nevertheless it cannot be accepted.  For, in the first place, we
+collect most certainly from the Gospel records that the Apostles were
+NOT a compact and devoted body of adherents at the time of the
+Crucifixion; yet it is hard to see how Strauss's hallucination theory
+can be accepted, unless this was the case.  If Strauss believed the
+earliest followers of Christ to have been already immovably fixed in
+their belief that he was the Son of God--the promised Messiah, of
+whom they were themselves the especially chosen ministers--if he
+considered that they believed in their master as the worker of
+innumerable miracles which they had themselves witnessed; as one whom
+they had seen raise others from death to life, and whom, therefore,
+death could not be expected to control--if he held the followers of
+Christ to have been in this frame of mind at the time of the
+Crucifixion, it might be intelligible that he should suppose the
+strength of their faith to have engendered an imaginary reappearance
+in order to save them from the conclusion that their hopes had been
+without foundation; that, in point of fact, they should have accepted
+a new delusion in order to prop up an old one; but we know very well
+that Strauss does not accept this position.  He denies that the
+Apostles had seen any miracles; independently therefore of the many
+and unmistakable traces of their having been but partial and wavering
+adherents, which have made it a matter of common belief among those
+who have studied the New Testament that the faith of the Apostles was
+unsteadfast before the Crucifixion, he must have other and stronger
+reasons for thinking that this was so, inasmuch as he does not look
+upon them as men who had seen our Lord raise any one from the dead,
+nor restore the eyes of the blind.
+
+According to him, they may have seen Christ exercise unusual power
+over the insane, and temporary alleviations of sickness, due perhaps
+to mental excitement, may have taken place in their presence and
+passed for miracles; he would doubt how far they had even seen this
+much, for he would insist on many passages in the Gospels which would
+point in the direction of our Lord's never having professed to work a
+single miracle; but even though he granted that they had seen certain
+extraordinary cases of healing, there is no amount of testimony which
+would for a moment satisfy him of their having seen more.  WE see the
+Apostles as men who before the Crucifixion had seen Lazarus raised
+from death to life after the corruption of the grave had begun its
+work, and who had seen sight given to one that had been born
+sightless; as men who had seen miracle after miracle, with every
+loophole for escape from a belief in the miraculous carefully
+excluded; who had seen their master walking upon the sea, and bidding
+the winds be still; our difficulty therefore is to understand the
+incredulity of the Apostles as displayed abundantly in the Gospels;
+but Strauss can have none such; for he must see them as men over whom
+the influence of their master had been purely personal, and due to
+nothing more than to a strength and beauty of character which his
+followers very imperfectly understood.  HE does not believe that
+Lazarus was raised at all, or that the man who had been born blind
+ever existed; he considers the fourth gospel, which alone records
+these events, to be the work of a later age, and not to be depended
+on for facts, save here and there; certainly not where the facts
+recorded are miraculous.  He must therefore be even more ready than
+we are to admit that the faith of the Apostles was weak before the
+Crucifixion; but whether he is or not, we have it on the highest
+authority that their faith was not strong enough to maintain them at
+the very first approach of danger, nor to have given them any hope
+whatever that our Lord should rise again; whereas for Strauss's
+theory to hold good, it must already have been in a white heat of
+enthusiasm.
+
+But even granting that this was so--in the face of all the evidence
+we can reach--men so honest and sincere as the Apostles proved
+themselves to be, would have taken other ground than the assertion
+that their master had reappeared to them alive, unless some very
+extraordinary occurrences had led them to believe that they had
+indeed seen him.  If their faith was glowing and intense at the time
+of the Crucifixion--so intense that they believed in Christ as much,
+or nearly as much, after the Crucifixion as before it (and unless
+this were so the hallucinations could never have arisen at all, or at
+any rate could never have been so unanimously accepted)--it would
+have been so intense as to stand in no need of a reappearance.  In
+this case, if they had found that their master did not return to
+them, the Apostles would probably have accepted the position that he
+had, contrary to their expectation, been put to a violent death; they
+would, perhaps, have come sooner or later to the conclusion that he
+was immediately on death received into Heaven, and was sitting on the
+right hand of God; while some extraordinary dream might have been
+construed into a revelation of the fact with the manner of its
+occurrence, and been soon generally believed; but the idea of our
+Lord's return to earth in a gross material body whereon the wounds
+were still unhealed, was perhaps the last thing that would have
+suggested itself to them by way of hallucination.  If their faith had
+been great enough, and their spirits high enough to have allowed
+hallucination to originate at all, their imagination would have
+presented them at once with a glorious throne, and the splendours of
+the highest Heaven as appearing through the opened firmament; it
+would not surely have rested satisfied with a man whose hands and
+side were wounded, and who could eat of a piece of broiled fish and
+of an honeycomb.  A fabric so utterly baseless as the reappearances
+of our Lord (on the supposition of their being unhistoric) would have
+been built of gaudier materials.  To repeat, it seems impossible that
+the Apostles should have attempted to connect their hallucinations
+circumstantially and historically with the events which had
+immediately preceded them.  Hallucination would have been conscious
+of a hiatus and not have tried to bridge it over.  It would not have
+developed the idea of our Lord's return to this grovelling and
+unworthy earth prior to his assumption into glory, unless those who
+were under its influence had either seen other resurrections from the
+dead--in which case there is no difficulty attaching to the
+Resurrection of our Lord himself--or been forced into believing it by
+the evidence of their own senses; this, on the supposition that the
+devotion of the first disciples was intense before the Crucifixion;
+but if, on the other hand, they were at that time anything but
+steadfast, as both a priori and a posteriori evidence would seem to
+indicate, if they were few and wavering, and if what little faith
+they had was shaken to its foundations and apparently at an end for
+ever with the death of Christ, it becomes indeed difficult to see how
+the idea of his return to earth alive could have ever struck even a
+single one of them, much less that hallucinations which could have
+had no origin but in the disordered brain of some one member of the
+Apostolic body, should in a short time have been accepted by all as
+by one man without a shadow of dissension, and been strong enough to
+convert them, as was said above, into the most earnest and successful
+body of propagandists that the world has ever seen.
+
+Truly this is not too much to say of them; and yet we are asked to
+believe that this faith, so intensely energetic, grew out of one
+which can hardly be called a faith at all, in consequence of day-
+dreams whose existence presupposes a faith hardly if any less intense
+than that which it is supposed to have engendered.  Are we not
+warranted in asserting that a movement which is confined to a few
+wavering followers, and which receives any very decisive check, which
+scatters and demoralises the few who have already joined it, will be
+absolutely sure to die a speedy natural death unless something
+utterly strange and new occurs to give it a fresh impetus?  Such a
+resuscitating influence would have been given to the Christian
+religion by the reappearance of Christ alive.  This would meet the
+requirements of the case, for we can all feel that if we had already
+half believed in some gifted friend as a messenger from God, and if
+we had seen that friend put to death before our eyes, and yet found
+that the grave had no power over him, but that he could burst its
+bonds and show himself to us again unmistakably alive, we should from
+that moment yield ourselves absolutely his; but our faith would die
+with him unless it had been utter before his death.
+
+The devotion of the Apostles is explained by their belief in the
+Resurrection, but their belief in the Resurrection is not explained
+by a supposed hallucination; for their minds were not in that state
+in which alone such a delusion could establish itself firmly, and
+unless it were established firmly by the most apparently irrefragable
+evidence of many persons, it would have had no living energy.  How an
+hallucination could occur in the requisite strength to the requisite
+number of people is neither explained nor explicable, except upon the
+supposition that the Apostles were in a very different frame of mind
+at the time of Christ's Crucifixion from that which all the evidence
+we can get would seem to indicate.  If Strauss had first made this
+point clear we could follow him.  But he has not done so.
+
+Strauss says, the conception that Christ's body had been reawakened
+and changed, "a double miracle, exceeding far what had occurred in
+the case of Enoch and Elijah, could only be credible to one who saw
+in him a prophet far superior to them"--i.e., to one who
+notwithstanding his death was persuaded that he was the Messiah:
+"this conviction" (that a double miracle had been performed) "was the
+first to which the Apostles had to attain in the days of their
+humiliation after the Crucifixion."  Yes--but how were they to attain
+to it, being now utterly broken down and disillusioned?  Strauss
+admits that before they could have come to hold what he supposes them
+to have held, they must have seen in Christ even after his
+Crucifixion a prophet far greater than either Moses or Elias; whereas
+in point of fact it is very doubtful whether they ever believed this
+much of their master even before the Crucifixion, and hardly
+questionable that after it they disbelieved in him almost entirely,
+until he shewed himself to them alive.  Is it possible that from the
+dead embers of so weak a faith, so vast a conflagration should have
+been kindled?
+
+I submit, therefore, that independently of any direct evidence as to
+the when and where of Christ's reappearances, the fact that the
+Apostles before the Crucifixion were irresolute, and after it
+unspeakably resolute, affords strong ground for believing that they
+must have seen something, or come to know something, which to their
+minds was utterly overwhelming in its convincing power:  when we find
+the earliest and most trustworthy records unanimously asserting that
+that something was the reappearance of Christ alive, we feel that
+such a reappearance was an adequate cause for the result actually
+produced; and when we think over the condition of mind which both
+probability and evidence assign to the Apostles, we also feel that no
+other circumstance would have been adequate, nor even this unless the
+proof had been such as none could reasonably escape from.
+
+Again, Strauss's supposition that the Apostles antedated their
+hallucinations suggests no less difficulty.  Suppose that, after all,
+Strauss is right, and that there was no actual reappearance; whatever
+it was that led the Apostles to believe in such reappearance must
+have been, judging by its effect, intense and memorable:  it must
+have been as a shock obliterating everything save the memory of
+itself and the things connected with it:  the time and manner of such
+a shock could never have been forgotten, nor misplaced without
+deliberate intention to deceive, and no one will impute any such
+intention to the Apostles.
+
+It may be said that if they were capable of believing in the reality
+of their visions they would be also capable of antedating them; this
+is true; but the double supposition of self-delusion, first in seeing
+the visions at all, and then in unconsciously antedating them,
+reduces the Apostles to such an exceedingly low level of intelligence
+and trustworthiness, that no good and permanent work could come from
+such persons; the men who could be weak enough, and crazed enough, if
+the reader will pardon the expression, to do as Strauss suggests,
+could never have carried their work through in the way they did.
+Such men would have wrecked their undertaking a hundred times over in
+the perils which awaited it upon every side; they would have become
+victims of their own fancies and desires, with little or no other
+grounds than these for any opinions they might hold or teach:  from
+such a condition of mind they must have gone on to one still worse;
+and their tenets would have perished with them, if not sooner.
+
+Again, as regards this antedating; unless the visions happened at
+once, it is inconceivable that they should have happened at all.
+Strauss believes that the disciples fled in their first terror to
+their homes:  that when there, "outside the range to which the power
+of the enemies and murderers of their master extended, the spell of
+terror and consternation which had been laid upon their minds gave
+way," and that under the circumstances a reaction up to the point at
+which they might have visions of Christ is capable of explanation.
+The answer to this is that it is indeed likely that the spell of
+terror would give way when they found themselves safe at home, but
+that it is not at all likely that any reaction would take place in
+favour of one to whom their allegiance had never been thorough, and
+whom they supposed to have met with a violent and accursed end.  It
+might be easy to imagine such a reaction if we did not also attempt
+to imagine the circumstances that must have preceded it; the moment
+we try to do this, we find it to be an impossibility.  If once the
+Apostles had been dispersed, and had returned home to their former
+avocations without having seen or heard anything of their master's
+return to earth, all their expectations would have been ended; they
+would have remained peaceable fishermen for the rest of their lives,
+and been cured once and for ever of their enthusiasm.
+
+Can we believe that the disciples, returning to Galilee in fear, and
+bereaved of that master mind which had kept them from falling out
+with one another, would have remained a united and enthusiastic body?
+Strauss admits that their enthusiasm was for the time ended.  Is it
+then likely that they would have remained in any sense united, or is
+it not much more likely that they would have shunned each other and
+disliked allusions to the past?  What but Christ's actual
+reappearance could rekindle this dead enthusiasm, and fan it to such
+a burning heat?  Suppose that one or two disciples recovered faith
+and courage, the majority would never do so.  If Christ himself with
+the magic of his presence could not weld them into a devoted and
+harmonious company, would the rumour arising at a later time that
+some one had seen him after death, be acceptable enough to make the
+others believe that they too had actually seen and handled him?
+Perhaps--if the rumour was believed.  But WOULD it have been
+believed?  Or at any rate have been believed so utterly?
+
+We cannot think it.  For the belief and assertion are absolutely
+without trace of dissent within the Christian body, and that body was
+in the first instance composed entirely of the very persons who had
+known and followed Christ before the Crucifixion.  If some of the
+original twelve had remained aloof and disputed the reappearances of
+Christ, is it possible that no trace of such dissension should appear
+in the Epistles of St. Paul?  Paul differed widely enough from those
+who were Apostles before him, and his language concerning them is
+occasionally that of ill-concealed contempt and hatred rather than of
+affection; but is there a word or hint which would seem to indicate
+that a single one of those who had the best means of knowing doubted
+the Resurrection?  There is nothing of the kind; on the contrary,
+whatever we find is such as to make us feel perfectly sure that none
+of them DID doubt it.  Is it then possible that this unanimity should
+have sprung from the original hallucinations of a small minority?
+True--it is plain from the Epistle to the Corinthians that there were
+some of Paul's contemporaries who denied the Resurrection.  But who
+were they?  We should expect that many among the more educated
+Gentile converts would throw doubt upon so stupendous a miracle, but
+is there anything which would point in the direction of these doubts
+having been held within the original body of those who said that they
+had seen Christ alive?  By the eleven, or by the five hundred who saw
+him at once?  There is not one single syllable.  Those who heard the
+story second-hand would doubtless some of them attempt to explain
+away its miraculous character, but if it had been founded on
+hallucination it is not from these alone that the doubts would have
+come.
+
+Something is imperatively demanded in order to account for the
+intensity of conviction manifested by the earliest Christians shortly
+after the Crucifixion; for until that time they were far from being
+firmly convinced, and the Crucifixion was the very last thing to have
+convinced them.  Given (to speak of our Lord as he must probably
+appear to Strauss) an unusually gifted teacher of a noble and
+beautiful character:  given also, a small body of adherents who were
+inclined to adopt him as their master and to regard him as the coming
+liberator, but who were nevertheless far from settled in their
+conviction:  given such a man and such followers:  the teacher is put
+to a shameful death about two years after they had first known him,
+and the followers forsake him instantly:  surely without his
+reappearing in some way upon the scene they would have concluded that
+their doubts had been right and their hopes without foundation:  but
+if he reappeared, their faith would, for the first time, become
+intense, all-absorbing.  Surely also they might be trusted to know
+whether they had really seen their master return to them or not, and
+not to sacrifice themselves in every way, and spend their whole lives
+in bearing testimony to pure hallucination?
+
+There is one other point on which a few words will be necessary,
+before we proceed to the arguments in favour of the objective
+character of Christ's Resurrection as derivable from the conversion
+and testimony of St. Paul.  It is this.  Strauss and those who agree
+with him will perhaps maintain that the Apostles were in truth wholly
+devoted to Christ before the Crucifixion, but that the Evangelists
+have represented them as being only half-hearted, in order to
+heighten the effect of their subsequent intense devotion.  But this
+looks like falling into the very error which Rationalists condemn
+most loudly when it comes from so-called orthodox writers.  They
+complain, and with too much justice, that our apologists have made
+"anything out of anything."  Yet if the Apostles were not
+unsteadfast, and did not desert their master in his hour of peril,
+and if all the accounts of Christ's reappearances are the creations
+of disordered fancy, we may as well at once declare the Evangelists
+to be worthless as historians, and had better give up all attempt at
+the construction of history with their assistance.  We cannot take
+whatever we wish, and leave whatever we wish, and alter whatever we
+wish.  If we admit that upon the whole the Gospel writings or at any
+rate the first three Gospels, contain a considerable amount of
+historic matter, we should also arrive at some general principles by
+which we will consistently abide in separating the historic from the
+unhistoric.  We cannot deal with them arbitrarily, accepting whatever
+fits in with our fancies, and rejecting whatever is at variance with
+them.
+
+Now can it be maintained that the Evangelists would be so likely to
+overrate the half-heartedness of the Apostles, that we should look
+with suspicion upon the many and very plain indications of their
+having been only half-hearted?  Certainly not.  If there was any
+likelihood of a tendency one way or the other it would be in the
+direction of overrating their faith.  Would not the unbelief of the
+Apostles in the face of all the recorded miracles be a most damaging
+thing in the eyes of the unconverted?  Would not the Apostles
+themselves, after they were once firmly convinced, be inclined to
+think that they had from the first believed more firmly than they
+really had done?  This at least would be in accordance with the
+natural promptings of human instinct:  we are all of us apt to be
+wise after the event, and are far more prone to dwell upon things
+which seem to give some colour to a pretence of prescience, than upon
+those which force from us a confession of our own stupidity.  It
+might seem a damaging thing that the Apostles should have doubted as
+much as long as they clearly did; would then the Evangelists go out
+of their way to introduce more signs of hesitation?  Would any one
+suggest that the signs of doubt and wavering had been overrated,
+unless there were some theory or other to be supported, in order to
+account for which this overrating was necessary?  Would the opinion
+that the want of faith had been exaggerated arise prior to the
+formation of a theory, or subsequently?  This is the fairest test;
+let the reader apply it for himself.
+
+On the other hand, there are many reasons which should incline us to
+believe that, before the Resurrection, the Apostles were less
+convinced than is generally supposed, but it would be dangerous to
+depart either to the right hand or to the left of that which we find
+actually recorded, namely, that in the main the Apostles were
+prepared to accept Christ before the Crucifixion, but that they were
+by no means resolute and devoted followers.  I submit that this is a
+fair rendering of the spirit of what we find in the Gospels.  It is
+just because Strauss has chosen to depart from it that he has found
+himself involved in the maze of self-contradiction through which we
+have been trying to follow him.  There is no position so absurd that
+it cannot be easily made to look plausible, if the strictly
+scientific method of investigation is once departed from.
+
+But if I had been in Strauss's place, and had wished to make out a
+case against Christianity without much heed of facts, I should not
+have done it by a theory of hallucinations.  A much prettier, more
+novel and more sensational opening for such an attempt is afforded by
+an attack upon the Crucifixion itself.  A very neat theory might be
+made, that there may have been some disturbance at one of the Jewish
+passovers, during which some persons were crucified as an example by
+the Romans:  that during this time Christ happened to be missing;
+that he reappeared, and finally departed, whither, no man can say:
+that the Apostles, after his last disappearance, remembering that he
+had been absent during the tumult, little by little worked themselves
+up into the belief that on his reappearance they had seen wounds upon
+him, and that the details of the Crucifixion were afterwards revealed
+in a vision to some favoured believer, until in the course of a few
+years the narrative assumed its present shape:  that then the
+reappearance of Christ was denied among the Jews, while the
+Crucifixion as attaching disgrace to him was not disputed, and that
+it thus became so generally accepted as to find its way into Pliny
+and Josephus.  This tissue of absurdity may serve as an example of
+what the unlicensed indulgence of theory might lead to; but truly it
+would be found quite as easy of belief as that the early Christian
+faith in the Resurrection was due to hallucination only.
+
+Considering, then, that Christianity was not crushed but overran the
+most civilised portions of the world; that St. Paul was undoubtedly
+early told, in such a manner as for him to be thoroughly convinced of
+the fact, that on some few but sufficient occasions Christ was seen
+alive after he had been crucified; that the general belief in the
+reappearance of our Lord was so strong that those who had the best
+means of judging gave up all else to preach it, with a unanimity and
+singleness of purpose which is irreconcilable with hallucination;
+that all our records most definitely insist upon this belief and that
+there is no trace of its ever having been disputed among the Jewish
+Christians, it seems hard to see how we can escape from admitting
+that Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried, and yet that he
+was verily and indeed seen alive again by those who expected nothing
+less, but who, being once convinced, turned the whole world after
+them.
+
+It is now incumbent upon us to examine the testimony of St. Paul, to
+which I would propose to devote a separate chapter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE CHARACTER AND CONVERSION OF ST. PAUL
+
+
+
+Setting aside for the present the story of St. Paul's conversion as
+given in the Acts of the Apostles--for I am bound to admit that there
+are circumstances in connection with that account which throw doubt
+upon its historical accuracy--and looking at the broad facts only, we
+are struck at once with the following obvious reflection, namely,
+that Paul was an able man, a cultivated man, and a bitter opponent of
+Christianity; but that in spite of the strength of his original
+prejudices, he came to see what he thought convincing reasons for
+going over to the camp of his enemies.  He went over, and with the
+result we are all familiar.
+
+Now even supposing that the miraculous account of Paul's conversion
+is entirely devoid of foundation, or again, as I believe myself, that
+the story given in the Acts is not correctly placed, but refers to
+the vision alluded to by Paul himself (I. Cor. xv.), and to events
+which happened, not coincidently with his conversion, but some years
+after it--does not the importance of the conversion itself rather
+gain than lose in consequence?  A charge of unimportant inaccuracy
+may be thus sustained against one who wrote in a most inaccurate age;
+but what is this in comparison with the testimony borne to the
+strength of the Christian evidences by the supposition that OF THEIR
+OWN WEIGHT ALONE, AND WITHOUT MIRACULOUS ASSISTANCE, THEY SUCCEEDED
+IN CONVINCING THE MOST BITTER, AND AT THE SAME TIME THE ABLEST, OF
+THEIR OPPONENTS?  This is very pregnant.  No man likes to abandon the
+side which he has once taken.  The spectacle of a man committing
+himself deeply to his original party, changing without rhyme or
+reason, and then remaining for the rest of his life the most devoted
+and courageous adherent of all that he had opposed, without a single
+human inducement to make him do so, is one which has never been
+witnessed since man was man.  When men who have been committed deeply
+and spontaneously to one cause, leave it for another, they do so
+either because facts have come to their knowledge which are new to
+them and which they cannot resist, or because their temporal
+interests urge them, or from caprice:  but if they change from
+caprice in important matters and after many pledges given, they will
+change from caprice again:  they will not remain for twenty-five or
+thirty years without changing a jot of their capriciously formed
+opinions.  We are therefore warranted in assuming that St. Paul's
+conversion to Christianity was not dictated by caprice:  it was not
+dictated by self-interest:  it must therefore have sprung from the
+weight of certain new facts which overbore all the resistance which
+he could make to them.
+
+What then could these facts have been?
+
+Paul's conduct as a Jew was logical and consistent:  he did what any
+seriously-minded man who had been strictly brought up would have done
+in his situation.  Instead of half believing what he had been taught,
+he believed it wholly.  Christianity was cutting at the root of what
+was in his day accepted as fundamental:  it was therefore perfectly
+natural that he should set himself to attack it.  There is nothing
+against him in this beyond the fact of his having done it, as far as
+we can see, with much cruelty.  Yet though cruel, he was cruel from
+the best of motives--the stamping out of an error which was harmful
+to the service of God; and cruelty was not then what it is now:  the
+age was not sensitive and the lot of all was harder.  From the first
+he proved himself to be a man of great strength of character, and
+like many such, deeply convinced of the soundness of his opinions,
+and deeply impressed with the belief that nothing could be good which
+did not also commend itself as good to him.  He tested the truth of
+his earlier convictions not by external standards, but by the
+internal standard of their own strength and purity--a fearful error
+which but for God's mercy towards him would have made him no less
+wicked than well-intentioned.
+
+Even after having been convinced by a weight of evidence which no
+prejudice could resist, and after thus attaining to a higher
+conception of right and truth and goodness than was possible to him
+as a Jew, there remained not a few traces of the old character.
+Opposition beyond certain limits was a thing which to the end of his
+life he could not brook.  It is not too much to say that he regarded
+the other Apostles--and was regarded by them--with suspicion and
+dislike; even if an angel from Heaven had preached any other doctrine
+than what Paul preached, the angel was to be accursed (Gal. i., 8),
+and it is not probable that he regarded his fellow Apostles as
+teaching the same doctrine as himself, or that he would have allowed
+them greater licence than an angel.  It is plain from his undoubted
+Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians that the other Apostles, no
+less than his converts, exceedingly well knew that he was not a man
+to be trifled with.  If the arm of the law had been as much on his
+side after his conversion as before it, it would have gone hardly
+with dissenters; they would have been treated with politic tenderness
+the moment that they yielded, but woe betide them if they presumed on
+having any very decided opinions of their own.
+
+On the other hand, his sagacity is beyond dispute; it is certain that
+his perception of what the Gentile converts could and could not bear
+was the main proximate cause of the spread of Christianity.  He
+prevented it from becoming a mere Jewish sect, and it has been well
+said that but for him the Jews would now be Christians, and the
+Gentiles unbelievers.  Who can doubt his tact and forbearance, where
+matters not essential were concerned?  His strength in not yielding a
+fraction upon vital points was matched only by his suppleness and
+conciliatory bearing upon all others.  To use his own words, he did
+indeed become "all things to all men" if by any means he could gain
+some, and the probability is that he pushed this principle to its
+extreme (see Acts xxi., 20-26).
+
+Now when we see a man so strong and yet so yielding--the writer
+moreover of letters which shew an intellect at once very vigorous and
+very subtle (not to say more of them), and when we know that there
+was no amount of hardship, pain, and indignity, which he did not bear
+and count as gain in the service of Jesus Christ; when we also
+remember that he continued thus for all the known years of his life
+after his conversion, can we think that that conversion could have
+been the result of anything even approaching to caprice?  Or again,
+is it likely that it could have been due to contact with the
+hallucinations of his despised and hated enemies?  Paul the Christian
+appears to be the same sort of man in most respects as Paul the Jew,
+yet can we imagine Paul the Christian as being converted from
+Christianity to some other creed, by the infection of hallucinations?
+On the contrary, no man would more quickly have come to the bottom of
+them, and assigned them to diabolical agency.  What then can that
+thing have been, which wrenched the strong and able man from all that
+had the greatest hold upon him, and fixed him for the rest of his
+life as the most self-sacrificing champion of Christianity?  In
+answer to this question we might say, that it is of no great
+importance how the change was made, inasmuch as the fact of its
+having been made at all is sufficiently pregnant.  Nevertheless it
+will be interesting to follow Strauss in his remarks upon the account
+given in the Acts, and I am bound to add that I think he has made out
+his case.  Strange! that he should have failed to see that the
+evidences in support of the Resurrection are incalculably
+strengthened by his having done so.  How short-sighted is mere
+ingenuity!  And how weak and cowardly are they who shut their eyes to
+facts because they happen to come from an opponent!
+
+Strauss, however, writes as follows:- "That we are not bound to the
+individual features of the account in the Acts is shewn by comparing
+it with the substance of the statement twice repeated in the language
+of Paul himself:  for there we find that the author's own account is
+not accurate, and that he attributed no importance to a few
+variations more or less.  Not only is it said on one occasion that
+the attendants stood dumb-foundered:  on another that they fell with
+Paul to the ground; on one occasion that they heard the voice but saw
+no one; on another that they saw the light but did not hear the voice
+of him who spoke with Paul:  but also the speech of Jesus himself, in
+the third repetition, gets the well known addition about "kicking
+against the pricks," to say nothing of the fact that the appointment
+to the Apostleship of the Gentiles, which according to the two
+earlier accounts was made partly by Ananias, partly on the occasion
+of a subsequent vision in the Temple at Jerusalem, is in this last
+account incorporated in the speech of Jesus.  There is no occasion to
+derive the three accounts of this occurrence in the Acts from
+different sources, and even in this case one must suppose that the
+author of the Acts must have remarked and reconciled the
+discrepancies; that he did not do so, or rather that without
+following his own earlier narrative he repeated it in an arbitrary
+form, proves to us how careless the New Testament writers are about
+details of this kind, important as they are to one who strives after
+strict historical accuracy.
+
+"But even if the author of the Acts had gone more accurately to work,
+still he was not an eye witness, scarcely even a writer who took the
+history from the narrative of an eye witness.  Even if we consider
+the person who in different places comprehends himself and the
+Apostle Paul under the word 'we' or 'us' to have been the composer of
+the whole work, that person was not on the occasion of the occurrence
+before Damascus as yet in the company of the Apostle.  Into this he
+did not enter until much later, in the Troad, on the Apostle's second
+missionary journey (Acts xvi., 10).  But that hypothesis with regard
+to the author of the Acts of the Apostles is, moreover, as we have
+seen above, erroneous.  He only worked up into different passages of
+his composition the memoranda of a temporary companion of the Apostle
+about the journeys performed in his company, and we are therefore not
+justified in considering the narrator to have been an eye witness in
+those passages and sections in which the 'we' is wanting.  Now among
+these is found the very section in which appear the two accounts of
+his conversion which Paul gives, first, to the Jewish people in
+Jerusalem, secondly, to Agrippa and Festus in Caesarea.  The last
+occasion on which the 'we' was found was xxi., 18, that of the visit
+of Paul to James, and it does not appear again until xxvii., 1, when
+the subject is the Apostle's embarkation for Italy.  Nothing
+therefore compels us to assume that we have in the reports of these
+speeches the account of any one who had been a party to the hearing
+of them, and, in them, Paul's own narrative of the occurrences that
+took place on his conversion."
+
+The belief in the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures having been
+long given up by all who have considered the awful consequences which
+it entails, the Bible records have been opened to modern criticism:-
+the result has been that their general accuracy is amply proved,
+while at the same time the writers must be admitted to have fallen in
+with the feelings and customs of their own times, and must
+accordingly be allowed to have been occasionally guilty of what would
+in our own age be called inaccuracies.  There is no dependence to be
+placed on the verbal, or indeed the substantial, accuracy of any
+ancient speeches, except those which we know to have been reported
+verbatim, they were (as with the Herodotean and Thucydidean speeches)
+in most cases the invention of the historian himself, as being what
+seemed most appropriate to be said by one in the position of the
+speaker.  Reporting was a rare art among the ancients, and was
+confined to a few great centres of intellectual activity; accuracy,
+moreover, was not held to be of the same importance as at the present
+day.  Yet without accurate reporting a speech perishes as soon as it
+is uttered, except in so far as it lives in the actions of those who
+hear it.  Even a hundred years ago the invention of speeches was
+considered a matter of course, as in the well-known case of Dr.
+Johnson, than whom none could be more conscientious, and--according
+to his lights--accurate.  I may perhaps be pardoned for quoting the
+passage in full from Boswell, who gives it on the authority of Mr.
+John Nichols; the italics are mine.  "He said that the Parliamentary
+debates were the only part of his writings which then gave him any
+compunction:  BUT THAT AT THE TIME HE WROTE THEM HE HAD NO CONCEPTION
+THAT HE WAS IMPOSING UPON THE WORLD, THOUGH THEY WERE FREQUENTLY
+WRITTEN FROM VERY SLENDER MATERIALS, AND OFTEN FROM NONE AT ALL--THE
+MERE COINAGE OF HIS OWN IMAGINATION.  HE never wrote any part of his
+works with equal velocity.  (Boswell's Life of Johnson, chap.
+lxxxii.)
+
+This is an extreme case, yet there can be no question about its
+truth.  It is only one among the very many examples which could be
+adduced in order to shew that the appreciation of the value of
+accuracy is a thing of modern date only--a thing which we owe mainly
+to the chemical and mechanical sciences, wherein the inestimable
+difference between precision and inaccuracy became most speedily
+apparent.  If the reader will pardon an apparent digression, I would
+remark that that sort of care is wanted on behalf of Christianity
+with which a cashier in a bank counts out the money that he tenders--
+counting it and recounting it as though he could never be sure enough
+before he allowed it to leave his hands.  This caution would have
+saved the wasting of many lives, and the breaking of many hearts.
+
+We, on the other hand, however reckless we may be ourselves, are in
+the habit of assuming that any historian whom we may have occasion to
+consult, and on whose testimony we would fain rely, must have himself
+weighed and re-weighed his words as the cashier his money; an error
+which arises from want of that sympathy which should make us bear
+constantly in mind what lights men had, under what influences they
+wrote, and what we should ourselves have done had we been so placed
+as they.  But if any will maintain that though the general run of
+ancient speeches were, as those supposed to have been reported by
+Johnson, pure invention, yet that it is not likely that one reporting
+the words of Almighty God should have failed to feel the awful
+responsibility of his position, we can only answer that the writer of
+the Acts did most indisputably so fail, as is shewn by the various
+reports of those words which he has himself given:  if he could in
+the innocency of his heart do this, and at one time report the
+Almighty as saying this, and at another that, as though, more or
+less, this or that were a matter of no moment, what certainty can we
+have concerning such a man that inaccuracy shall not elsewhere be
+found in him?  None.  He is a warped mirror which will distort every
+object that it reflects.
+
+It follows, then, that from the Acts of the Apostles we have no data
+for arriving at any conclusion as to the manner of Paul's change of
+faith, nor the circumstances connected with it.  To us the accounts
+there given should be simply non-existent; but this is not easy, for
+we have heard them too often and from too early an age to be able to
+escape their influence; yet we must assuredly ignore them if we are
+anxious to arrive at truth.  We cannot let the story told in the Acts
+enter into any judgement which we may form concerning Paul's
+character.  The desire to represent him as having been converted by
+miracle was very natural.  He himself tells us that he saw visions,
+and received his apostleship by revelation--not necessarily at the
+time of, or immediately after, his conversion, but still at some
+period or other in his life; it would be the most natural thing in
+the world for the writer of the Acts to connect some version of one
+of these visions with the conversion itself:  the dramatic effect
+would be heightened by making the change, while the change itself
+would be utterly unimportant in the eyes of such a writer; be this
+however as it may, we are only now concerned with the fact that we
+know nothing about Paul's conversion from the Acts of the Apostles,
+which should make us believe that that conversion was wrought in him
+by any other means, than by such an irresistible pressure of evidence
+as no sane person could withstand.
+
+From the Apostle's own writings we can glean nothing about his
+conversion which would point in the direction of its having been
+sudden or miraculous.  It is true that in the Epistle to the
+Galatians he says, "After it had pleased God to reveal his Son in
+me," but this expression does not preclude the supposition that his
+conversion may have been led up to by a gradual process, the
+culmination of which (if that) he alone regarded as miraculous.  Thus
+we are forced to admit that we know nothing from any source
+concerning the manner and circumstances of St. Paul's change from
+Judaism to Christianity, and we can only conclude therefore that he
+changed because he found the weight of the evidence to be greater
+than he could resist.  And this, as we have seen, is an exceedingly
+telling fact.  The probability is, that coming much into contact with
+Christians through his persecution of them, and submitting them to
+the severest questioning, he found that they were in all respects
+sober plainspoken men, that their conviction was intense, their story
+coherent, and the doctrines which they had received simple and
+ennobling; that these results of many inquisitions were so unvarying
+that he found conviction stealing gradually upon him against his
+will; common honesty compelled him to inquire further; the answers
+pointed invariably in one direction only; until at length he found
+himself utterly unable to resist the weight of evidence which he had
+collected, and resolved, perhaps at the last suddenly, to yield
+himself a convert to Christianity.
+
+Strauss says that, "in the presence of the believers in Jesus," the
+conviction that he was a false teacher--an impostor--"must have
+become every day more doubtful to him.  They considered it not only
+publicly honourable to be as convinced of his Resurrection as they
+were of their own life--but they shewed also a state of mind, a quiet
+peace, a tranquil cheerfulness, even under suffering, which put to
+shame the restless and joyless zeal of their persecutor.  Could HE
+have been a false teacher who had adherents such as these?  Could
+that have been a false pretence which gave such rest and security? on
+the one hand, he saw the new sect, in spite of all persecutions, nay,
+in consequence of them, extending their influence wider and wider
+round them; on the other, as their persecutor, he felt that inward
+tranquillity growing less and less which he could observe in so many
+ways in the persecuted.  We cannot therefore be surprised if in hours
+of inward despondency and unhappiness he put to himself the question,
+'Who after all is right, thou, or the crucified Galilean about whom
+these men are so enthusiastic?'  And when he had got as far as this,
+the result, with his bodily and mental characteristics, naturally
+followed in an ecstasy in which the very same Christ whom up to this
+time he had so passionately persecuted, appeared to him in all the
+glory of which his adherents spoke so much, shewed him the perversity
+and folly of his conduct, and called him to come over to his
+service."
+
+The above comes simply to this, that Paul in his constant contact
+with Christians found that they had more to say for themselves than
+he could answer, and should, one would have thought, have suggested
+to Strauss what he supposes to have occurred to Paul, namely, that it
+was not likely that these men had made a mistake in thinking that
+they had seen Christ alive after his Crucifixion.  There can be no
+doubt about Strauss's being right as to the Christian intensity of
+conviction, strenuousness of assertion, and readiness to suffer for
+the sake of their faith in Christ; and these are the main points with
+which we are concerned.  We arrive therefore at the conclusion that
+the first Christians were sufficiently unanimous, coherent and
+undaunted to convince the foremost of their enemies.  They were not
+so BEFORE the Crucifixion; they could not certainly have been made so
+by the Crucifixion alone; something beyond the Crucifixion must have
+occurred to give them such a moral ascendancy as should suffice to
+generate a revulsion of feeling in the mind of the persecuting Saul.
+Strauss asks us to believe that this missing something is to be found
+in the hallucinations of two or three men whose names have not been
+recorded and who have left no mark of their own.  Is there any
+occasion for answer?
+
+It is inconceivable that he who could write the Epistle to the Romans
+should not also have been as able as any man who ever lived to
+question the early believers as to their converse with Christ, and to
+report faithfully the substance of what they told him.  That he knew
+the other Apostles, that he went up to Jerusalem to hold conferences
+with them, that he abode fifteen days with St. Peter--as he tells us,
+in order "to question him"--these things are certain.  The Greek word
+?st???sa? is a very suggestive one.  It is so easy to make too much
+out of anything that I hardly dare to say how strongly the use of the
+verb ?st??e?? suggests to me "getting at the facts of the case,"
+"questioning as to how things happened," yet such would be the most
+obvious meaning of the word from which our own "history" and "story"
+are derived.  Fifteen days was time enough to give Paul the means of
+coming to an understanding with Peter as to what the value of Peter's
+story was, nor can we believe that Paul should not both receive and
+transmit perfectly all that he was then told.  In fact, without
+supposing these men to be so utterly visionary that nothing durable
+could come out of them, there is no escape from holding that Peter
+was justified in firmly believing that he had seen Christ alive
+within a very few days of the Crucifixion, that he succeeded also in
+satisfying Paul that this belief was well-founded, and that in the
+account of Christ's reappearances, as given I. Cor. xv., we have a
+virtually verbatim report of what Paul heard from Peter and the other
+Apostles.  Of course the possibility remains that Paul may have been
+too easily satisfied, and not have cross-examined Peter as closely as
+he might have done.  But then Paul was converted BEFORE this
+interview; and this implies that he had already found a general
+consent among the Christians whom he had met with, that the story
+which he afterwards heard from Peter (or one to the same effect) was
+true.  Whence then the unanimity of this belief?  Strauss answers as
+before--from the hallucinations of an originally small minority.  We
+can only again reply that for the reasons already given we find it
+quite impossible to agree with him.
+
+[The quotation from Strauss given in this chapter will be found pp.
+414, 415, 420, of the first volume of the English translation,
+published by Williams and Norgate, 1865.  I believe that my brother
+intended to make a fresh translation from the original passages, but
+he never carried out his intention, and in his MS. the page of the
+English translation with the first and last words of each passage are
+alone given.  I could hardly venture to undertake the responsibility
+of making a fresh translation myself, and have therefore adhered
+almost word for word to the published English translation--here and
+there, however, a trifling alteration was really irresistible on the
+scores alike of euphony and clearness.--W. B. O.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--PAUL'S TESTIMONY CONSIDERED
+
+
+
+Enough has perhaps been said to cause the reader to agree with the
+view of St. Paul's conversion taken above--that is to say, to make
+him regard the conversion as mainly, if not entirely, due to the
+weight of evidence afforded by the courage and consistency of the
+early Christians.
+
+But, the change in Paul's mind being thus referred to causes which
+preclude all possibility of hallucination or ecstasy on his own part,
+it becomes unnecessary to discuss the attempts which have been made
+to explain away the miraculous character of the account given in the
+Acts.  I believe that this account is founded upon fact, and that it
+is derived from some description furnished by St. Paul himself of the
+vision mentioned, I. Cor. xv., which again is very possibly the same
+as that of II. Cor. xii.  For the purposes of the present
+investigation, however, the whole story must be set aside.  At the
+same time it should be borne in mind, that any detraction from the
+historical accuracy of the writer of the Acts, is more than
+compensated for, by the additional weight given to the conversion of
+St. Paul, whom we are now able to regard as having been converted by
+evidence which was in itself overpowering, and which did not stand in
+need of any miraculous interference in order to confirm it.
+
+It is important to observe that the testimony of Paul should carry
+more weight with those who are bent upon close critical investigation
+than that even of the Evangelists.  St. Paul is one whom we know, and
+know well.  No syllable of suspicion has ever been breathed, even in
+Germany, against the first four of the Epistles which have been
+generally assigned to him; friends and foes of Christianity are alike
+agreed to accept them as the genuine work of the Apostle.  Few
+figures, therefore, in ancient history stand out more clearly
+revealed to us than that of St. Paul, whereas a thick veil of
+darkness hangs over that of each one of the Evangelists.  Who St.
+Matthew was, and whether the gospel that we have is an original work,
+or a translation (as would appear from Papias, our highest
+authority), and how far it has been modified in translation, are
+things which we shall never know.  The Gospels of St. Mark and St.
+Luke are involved in even greater obscurity.  The authorship, date,
+and origin of the fourth Gospel have been, and are being, even more
+hotly contested than those of the other three, and all that can be
+affirmed with certainty concerning it is, that no trace of its
+existence can be found before the latter half of the second century,
+and that the spirit of the work itself is eminently anti-Judaistic,
+whereas St. John appears both from the Gospels and from St. Paul's
+Epistles to have been a pillar of Judaism.
+
+With St. Paul all is changed:  we not only know him better than we
+know nine-tenths of our own most eminent countrymen of the last
+century, but we feel a confidence in him which grows greater and
+greater the more we study his character.  He combines to perfection
+the qualities that make a good witness--capacity and integrity:  add
+to this that his conclusions were forced upon him.  We therefore feel
+that, whereas from a scientific point of view, the Gospel narratives
+can only be considered as the testimony of early and sincere writers
+of whom we know little or nothing, yet that in the evidence of St.
+Paul we find the missing link which connects us securely with actual
+eye-witnesses and gives us a confidence in the general accuracy of
+the Gospels which they could never of themselves alone have imparted.
+We could indeed ill spare either the testimony of the Evangelists or
+that of St. Paul, but if we were obliged to content ourselves with
+one only, we should choose the Apostle.
+
+Turning then to the evidence of St. Paul as derivable from I. Cor.
+xv. we find the following:
+
+"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached
+unto you, which also ye have received and wherein ye stand.  By which
+also ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you,
+unless ye have believed in vain.  For I delivered unto you first of
+all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins
+according to the Scriptures:  and that He was buried, and that He
+rose again the third day according to the Scriptures; and that He was
+seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:  after that He was seen of above
+five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater portion remain
+unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.  After that He was
+seen of James; then of all the Apostles.  And last of all He was seen
+of me also, as of one born out of due time."
+
+In the first place we must notice Paul's assertion that the Gospel
+which he was then writing was identical with that which he had
+originally preached.  We may assume that each of the appearances of
+Christ here mentioned had in Paul's mind a definite time and place,
+derived from the account which he had received and which probably led
+to his conversion; the words "that which I also received" surely
+imply "that which I also received IN THE FIRST INSTANCE":  now we
+know from his own mouth (Gal. i., 16, 17) that AFTER his conversion
+he "conferred not with flesh and blood"--"neither," he continues,
+"went I up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me, but I
+went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus:  then after three
+years I went up to Jerusalem to see (?st???sa?) Peter, and abode with
+him fifteen days, but others of the Apostles saw I none, save James
+the Lord's brother."  Since, then, he must have heard SOME story
+concerning Christ's reappearances before his conversion and
+subsequent sojourn in Arabia, and since he had heard nothing from
+eye-witnesses until the time of his going up to Jerusalem three years
+later, it is probable that the account quoted above is the substance
+of what he found persisted in by the Christians whom he was
+persecuting at Damascus, and was at length compelled to believe.  But
+this is very unimportant:  it is more to the point to insist upon the
+fact that St. Paul must have received the account given I. Cor. xv.,
+3-8 within a very few years of the Crucifixion itself, and that it
+was subsequently confirmed to him by Peter, and probably by James and
+John, during his stay of fifteen days in Peter's house.
+
+This account can have been nothing new even then, for it is plain
+that at the time of Paul's conversion the Christian Church had spread
+far:  Paul speaks of RETURNING to Damascus, as though the writer of
+the Acts was right as regards the place of his conversion; but the
+fact of there having been a church in Damascus of sufficient
+importance for Paul to go thither to persecute it, involves the lapse
+of considerable time since the original promulgation of our Lord's
+Resurrection, and throws back the origin of the belief in that event
+to a time closely consequent upon the Crucifixion itself.
+
+Now Paul informs us that he was told (we may assume by Peter and
+James) that Christ first reappeared WITHIN THREE DAYS OF THE
+CRUCIFIXION.  There is no sufficient reason for doubting this; and
+one fact of weekly recurrence even to this day, affords it striking
+confirmation--I refer to the institution of Sunday as the Lord's day.
+We know that the observance of this day in commemoration of the
+Resurrection was a very early practice, nor is there anything which
+would seem to throw doubt upon the fact of the first "Sunday" having
+been also the Sunday of the Resurrection.  Another confirmation of
+the early date assigned to the Resurrection by St. Paul, is to be
+found in the fact that every instinct would warn the Apostles AGAINST
+the third day as being dangerously early, and as opening a door for
+the denial of the completeness of the death.  The fortieth day would
+far more naturally have been chosen.
+
+Turning now from the question of the date of the first reappearance
+to what is told us of the reappearances themselves, we find that the
+earliest was vouchsafed to St. Peter, which is at first sight opposed
+to the Evangelistic records; but this is a discrepancy upon which no
+stress should be laid; St. Paul might well be aware that Mary
+Magdalene was the first to look upon her risen Lord, and yet have
+preferred to dwell upon the more widely known names of Peter and his
+fellow Apostles.  The facts are probably these, that our Lord first
+shewed Himself to the women, but that Peter was the first of the
+Apostolic body to see Him; it was natural that if our Lord did not
+choose to show Himself to the Apostles without preparation, Peter
+should have been chosen as the one best fitted to prepare them:
+Peter probably collected the other Apostles, and then the Redeemer
+shewed Himself alive to all together.  This is what we should gather
+from St. Paul's narrative; a narrative which it would seem arbitrary
+to set aside in the face of St. Paul's character, opportunities and
+antecedent prejudices against Christianity--in the face also of the
+unanimity of all the records we have, as well as of the fact that the
+Christian religion triumphed, and of the endless difficulties
+attendant on the hallucination theory.
+
+We conclude therefore that Paul was satisfied by sufficient evidence
+that our Lord had appeared to Peter on the third day after the
+Crucifixion, nor can any reasonable doubt be thrown upon the other
+appearances of which he tells us.  It is true that on the occasion of
+his visit to Peter he saw none other of the Apostles save James--but
+there is nothing to lead us to suppose that there was any want of
+unanimity among them:  no trace of this has come down to us, and
+would surely have done so if it had existed.  If any dependence at
+all is to be placed on the writers of the New Testament it did not
+exist.  Stronger evidence than this unanimity it would be hard to
+find.
+
+Another most noticeable feature is the fewness of the recorded
+appearances of Christ.  They commenced according to Paul (and this is
+virtually according to Peter and James) immediately after the
+Crucifixion.  Paul mentions only five appearances:  this does not
+preclude the supposition that he knew of more, nor that the women who
+came to the sepulchre had also seen Him, but it does seem to imply
+that the reappearances were few in number, and that they continued
+only for a very short time.  They were sufficient for their purpose:
+one of preparation to Peter--another to the Apostles--another to the
+outside world, and then one or two more--but still not more than
+enough to establish the fact beyond all possibility of dispute.  The
+writer of the Acts tells us that Christ was seen for a space of forty
+days--presumably not every day, but from time to time.  Now forty
+days is a mystical period, and one which may mean either more or
+less, within a week or two, than the precise time stated; it seems
+upon the whole most reasonable to conclude that the reappearances
+recorded by Paul, and some few others not recorded, extended over a
+period of one or two months after the Crucifixion, and that they then
+came to an end; for there can be no doubt that St. Paul conceived
+them as having ended with the appearance to the assembled Apostles
+mentioned I. Cor. xv., 7, and, though he does not say so expressly,
+there is that in the context which suggests their having been
+confined to a short space of time.
+
+It is perfectly clear that St. Paul did not believe that any one had
+seen Christ in the interval between the last recorded appearance to
+the eleven, and the vision granted to himself.  The words "and last
+of all he was seen also of me AS OF ONE BORN OUT OF DUE TIME" point
+strongly in the direction of a lapse of some years between the second
+appearance to the eleven and his own vision.  This confirms and is
+confirmed by the writer of the Acts.  St. Paul never could have used
+the words quoted above, if he had held that the appearances which he
+records had been spread over a space of years intervening between the
+Crucifixion and his own vision.  Where would be the force of "born
+out of due time" unless the time of the previous appearances had long
+passed by?  But if, at the time of St. Paul's conversion, it was
+already many years since the last occasion upon which Christ had been
+seen by his disciples, we find ourselves driven back to a time
+closely consequent upon the Crucifixion as the only possible date of
+the reappearances.  But this is in itself sufficient condemnation of
+Strauss's theory:  that theory requires considerable time for the
+development of a perfectly unanimous and harmonious belief in the
+hallucinations, while every particle of evidence which we can get
+points in the direction of the belief in the Resurrection having
+followed very closely upon the Crucifixion.
+
+To repeat:  had the reappearances been due to hallucination only,
+they would neither have been so few in number nor have come to an end
+so soon.  When once the mind has begun to run riot in hallucination,
+it is prodigal of its own inventions.  Favoured believers would have
+been constantly seeing Christ even up to the time of Paul's letter to
+the Corinthians, and the Apostle would have written that even then
+Christ was still occasionally seen of those who trusted in him, and
+served him faithfully.  But we meet with nothing of the sort:  we are
+told that Christ was seen a few times shortly after the Crucifixion,
+then AFTER A LAPSE OF SEVERAL YEARS (I am surely warranted in saying
+this) Paul himself saw Him--but no one in the interval, and no one
+afterwards.  This is not the manner of the hallucinations of
+uneducated people.  It is altogether too sober:  the state of mind
+from which alone so baseless a delusion could spring, is one which
+never could have been contented with the results which were evidently
+all, or nearly all, that Paul knew of.  St. Paul's words cannot be
+set aside without more cause than Strauss has shewn:  instead of
+betraying a tendency towards exaggeration, they contain nothing
+whatever, with the exception of his own vision, that is not
+imperatively demanded in order to account for the rise and spread of
+Christianity.
+
+Concerning that vision Strauss writes as follows:
+
+"With regard to the appearance he (Paul) witnessed--he uses the same
+word (?f??) as with regard to the others:  he places it in the same
+category with them only in the last place, as he names himself the
+last of the Apostles, but in exactly the same rank with the others.
+Thus much, therefore, Paul knew--or supposed--that the appearances
+which the elder disciples had seen soon after the Resurrection of
+Jesus had been of the same kind as that which had been, only later,
+vouchsafed to himself.  Of what sort then was this?"
+
+I confess that I am wholly unable to feel the force of the above.
+Strauss says that Paul's vision was ecstatic--subjective and not
+objective--that Paul thought he saw Christ, although he never really
+saw him.  But, says Strauss, he uses the same word for his own vision
+and for the appearances to the earlier Apostles:  it is plain
+therefore that he did not suppose the earlier Apostles to have seen
+Christ in the same sort of way in which they saw themselves and other
+people, but to have seen him as Paul himself did, i.e., by
+supernatural revelation.
+
+But would it not be more fair to say that Paul's using the same word
+for all the appearances--his own vision included--implies that he
+considered this last to have been no less real than those vouchsafed
+earlier, though he may have been perfectly well aware that it was
+different in kind?  The use of the same word for all the appearances
+is quite compatible with a belief in Paul's mind that the manner in
+which he saw Christ was different from that in which the Apostles had
+seen him:  indeed, so long as he believed that he had seen Christ no
+less really than the others, one cannot see why he should have used
+any other word for his own vision than that which he had applied to
+the others:  we should even expect that he would do so, and should be
+surprised at his having done otherwise.  That Paul did believe in the
+reality of his own vision is indisputable, and his use of the word
+?f?? was probably dictated by a desire to assert this belief in the
+strongest possible way, and to place his own vision in the same
+category with others, which were so universally known among
+Christians to have been material and objective, that there was no
+occasion to say so.  Nevertheless there is that in Paul's words on
+which Strauss does not dwell, but which cannot be passed over without
+notice.  Paul does not simply say, "and last of all he was seen also
+of me"--but he adds the words "as of one born out of due time."
+
+It is impossible to say decisively that this addition implies that
+Paul recognised a difference in kind between the appearances,
+inasmuch as the words added may only refer to time--still they would
+explain the possible use of [?f??] in a somewhat different sense, and
+I cannot but think that they will suggest this possibility to the
+reader.  They will make him feel, if he does not feel it without
+them, how strained a proceeding it is to bind Paul down to a
+rigorously identical meaning on every occasion on which the same word
+came from his pen, and to maintain that because he once uses it on
+the occasion of an appearance which he held to be vouchsafed by
+revelation, therefore, wherever else he uses it, he must have
+intended to refer to something seen by revelation:  the words "as of
+one born out of due time" imply the utterly unlooked for and
+transcendent nature of the favour, and suggest, even though they do
+not compel, the inference that while the other Apostles had seen
+Christ in the common course of nature, as a visible tangible being
+before their waking eyes, he had himself seen Him not less truly, but
+still only by special and unlooked for revelation.  If such thoughts
+were in his mind he would not probably have expressed them farther
+than by the touching words which he has added concerning his own
+vision.  So much for the objection that the evidence of Paul
+concerning the earlier appearances is impaired by his having used the
+same word for them, and for the appearance to himself.  It only
+remains therefore to review in brief the general bearings of Paul's
+testimony as given I. Cor. xv., 1-8.
+
+Firstly, there is the early commencement of the reappearances:  this
+is incompatible with hallucination, for the hallucination must be
+supposed to have occurred when most easy to refute, and when the
+spell of shame and fear was laid most heavily upon the Apostles.
+Strauss maintains that the appearances were unconsciously antedated
+by Peter; we can only say that the circumstances of the case, as
+entered into more fully above, render this very improbable; that if
+Peter told Paul that he saw Christ on the third day after the
+Crucifixion, he probably firmly believed that he did see Him; and
+that if he believed this, he was also probably right in so believing.
+
+Secondly, there is the fact that the reappearances were few, and
+extended over a short time only.  Had they been due to hallucination
+there would have been no limit either to their number or duration.
+Paul seems to have had no idea that there ever had been, or ever
+would be, successors to the five hundred brethren who saw Christ at
+one time.  Some were fallen asleep--the rest would in time follow
+them.  It is incredible that men should have so lost all count of
+fact, so debauched their perception of external objects, so steeped
+themselves in belief in dreams which had no foundation but in their
+own disordered brains, as to have turned the whole world after them
+by the sheer force of their conviction of the truth of their
+delusions, and yet that suddenly, within a few weeks from the
+commencement of this intoxication, they should have come to a dead
+stop and given no further sign of like extravagance.  The
+hallucinations must have been so baseless, and would argue such an
+utter subordination of judgement to imagination, that instead of
+ceasing they must infallibly have ended in riot and disorganisation;
+the fact that they did cease (which cannot be denied) and that they
+were followed by no disorder, but by a solemn sober steadfastness of
+purpose, as of reasonable men in deadly earnest about a matter which
+had come to their knowledge, and which they held it vital for all to
+know--this fact alone would be sufficient to overthrow the
+hallucination theory.  Such intemperance could never have begotten
+such temperance:  from such a frame of mind as Strauss assigns to the
+Apostles no religion could have come which should satisfy the highest
+spiritual needs of the most civilised nations of the earth for nearly
+two thousand years.
+
+When, therefore, we look at the want of faith of the Apostles before
+the Crucifixion, and to their subsequent intense devotion; at their
+unanimity at their general sobriety; at the fact that they succeeded
+in convincing the ablest of their enemies and ultimately the whole of
+Europe; at the undeviating consent of all the records we have; at the
+early date at which the reappearances commenced,--at their small
+number and short duration--things so foreign to the nature of
+hallucination; at the excellent opportunities which Paul had for
+knowing what he tells us; at the plain manner in which he tells it,
+and the more than proof which he gave of his own conviction of its
+truth; at the impossibility of accounting for the rise of
+Christianity without the reappearance of its Founder after His
+Crucifixion; when we look at all these things we shall admit that it
+is impossible to avoid the belief that after having died, Christ DID
+reappear to his disciples, and that in this fact we have the only
+intelligible explanation of the triumph of Christianity.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--A CONSIDERATION OF CERTAIN ILL-JUDGED METHODS OF DEFENCE
+
+
+
+The reader has now heard the utmost that can be said against the
+historic character of the Resurrection by the ablest of its
+impugners.  I know of nothing in any of Strauss's works which can be
+considered as doing better justice to his opinions than the passages
+which I have quoted and, I trust, refuted.  I have quoted fully, and
+have kept nothing in the background.  If I had known of anything
+stronger against the Resurrection from any other source, I should
+certainly have produced it.  I have answered in outline only, but I
+do not believe that I have passed any difficulty on one side.
+
+What then does the reader think?  Was the attack so dangerous, or the
+defence so far to seek?  I believe he will agree with me that the
+combat was one of no great danger when it was once fairly entered
+upon.  But the wonder, and, let me add, the disgrace, to English
+divines, is that the battle should have been shirked so long.  What
+is it that has made the name of Strauss so terrible to the ears of
+English Churchmen?  Surely nothing but the ominous silence which has
+been maintained concerning him in almost all quarters of our Church.
+For what can he say or do against the other miracles if he be
+powerless against the Resurrection?  He can make sentences which
+sound plausible, but that is no great feat.  Can he show that there
+is any a priori improbability whatever, in the fact of miracles
+having been wrought by one who died and rose from the dead?  If a man
+did this it is a small thing that he should also walk upon the waves
+and command the winds.  But if there is no a priori difficulty with
+regard to these miracles, there is certainly none other.
+
+Let this, however, for the present pass, only let me beg of the
+reader to have patience while I follow out the plan which I have
+pursued up to the present point, and proceed to examine certain
+difficulties of another character.  I propose to do so with the same
+unflinching examination as heretofore, concealing nothing that has
+been said, or that can be said; going out of my way to find arguments
+for opponents, if I do not think that they have put forward all that
+from their own point of view they might have done, and careless how
+many difficulties I may bring before the reader which may never yet
+have occurred to him, provided I feel that I can also shew him how
+little occasion there is to fear them.
+
+I must, however, maintain two propositions, which may perhaps be
+unfamiliar to some of those who have not as yet given more than a
+conventional and superficial attention to the Scriptural records, but
+which will meet with ready assent from all whose studies have been
+deeper.  Fain would I avoid paining even a single reader, but I am
+convinced that the arresting of infidelity depends mainly upon the
+general recognition of two broad facts.  The first is this--that the
+Apostles, even after they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit
+were still fallible though holy men; the second--that there are
+certain passages in each of the Gospels as we now have them, which
+were not originally to be found therein, and others which, though
+genuine, are still not historic.  This much of concession we must be
+prepared to make, and we shall find (as in the case of the conversion
+of St. Paul) that our position is indefinitely strengthened by doing
+so.
+
+When shall we Christians learn that the truest ground is also the
+strongest?  We may be sure that until we have done so we shall find a
+host of enemies who will say that truth is not ours.  It is we who
+have created infidelity, and who are responsible for it.  WE are the
+true infidels, for we have not sufficient faith in our own creed to
+believe that it will bear the removal of the incrustations of time
+and superstition.  When men see our cowardice, what can they think
+but that we must know that we have cause to be afraid?  We drive men
+into unbelief in spite of themselves, by our tenacious adherence to
+opinions which every unprejudiced person must see at a glance that we
+cannot rightfully defend, and then we pride ourselves upon our love
+for Christ and our hatred of His enemies.  If Christ accepts this
+kind of love He is not such as He has declared Himself.
+
+We mistake our love of our own immediate ease for the love of Christ,
+and our hatred of every opinion which is strange to us, for zeal
+against His enemies.  If those to whom the unfamiliarity of an
+opinion or its inconvenience to themselves is a test of its
+hatefulness to Christ, had been born Jews, they would have crucified
+Him whom they imagine that they are now serving:  if Turks, they
+would have massacred both Jew and Christian; if Papists at the time
+of the Reformation they would have persecuted Protestants:  if
+Protestants, under Elizabeth, Papists.  Truth is to them an accident
+of birth and training, and the Christian faith is in their eyes true
+because these accidents, as far as they are concerned, have decided
+in its favour.  But such persons are not Christians.  It is they who
+crucify Christ, who drive men from coming to Him whose every instinct
+would lead them to love and worship Him, but who are warned off by
+observing the crowd of sycophants and time-servers who presume to
+call Him Lord.
+
+But to look at the matter from another point of view; when there is a
+long sustained contest between two bodies of capable and seriously
+disposed people, (and none can deny that many of our adversaries have
+been both one and the other), and when this contest shews no sign of
+healing, but rather widens from generation to generation, and each
+party accuses the other of disingenuousness, obstinacy and other like
+serious defects of mind--it may be certainly assumed that the truth
+lies wholly with neither side, but that each should make some
+concessions to the other.  A third party sees this at a glance, and
+is amazed because neither of the disputants can perceive that his
+opponent must be possessed of some truths, in spite of his trying to
+defend other positions which are indefensible.  Strange! that a thing
+which it seems so easy to avoid, should so seldom be avoided!  Homer
+said well:
+
+
+"Perish strife, both from among gods and men,
+And wrath which maketh even him that is considerate, cruel,
+Which getteth up in the heart of a man like smoke,
+And the taste thereof is sweeter than drops of honey."
+
+
+But strife can never cease without concessions upon both sides.  We
+agree to this readily in the abstract, but we seldom do so when any
+given concession is in question.  We are all for concession in the
+general, but for none in the particular, as people who say that they
+will retrench when they are living beyond their income, but will not
+consent to any proposed retrenchment.  Thus many shake their heads
+and say that it is impossible to live in the present age and not be
+aware of many difficulties in connection with the Christian religion;
+they have studied the question more deeply than perhaps the
+unbeliever imagines; and having said this much they give themselves
+credit for being wide-minded, liberal and above vulgar prejudices:
+but when pressed as to this or that particular difficulty, and asked
+to own that such and such an objection of the infidel's needs
+explanation, they will have none of it, and will in nine cases out of
+ten betray by their answers that they neither know nor want to know
+what the infidel means, but on the contrary that they are resolute to
+remain in ignorance.  I know this kind of liberality exceedingly
+well, and have ever found it to harbour more selfishness, idleness,
+cowardice and stupidity than does open bigotry.  The bigot is
+generally better than his expressed opinions, these people are
+invariably worse than theirs.
+
+The above principle has been largely applied in the writings of so-
+called orthodox commentators, not unfrequently even by men who might
+have been assumed to be above condescending to such trickery.  A
+great preface concerning candour, with a flourish of trumpets in the
+praise of truth, seems to have exhausted every atom of truth and
+candour from the work that follows it.
+
+It will be said that I ought not to make use of language such as this
+without bringing forward examples.  I shall therefore adduce them.
+
+One of the most serious difficulties to the unbeliever is the
+inextricable confusion in which the accounts of the Resurrection have
+reached us:  no one can reconcile these accounts with one another,
+not only in minute particulars, but in matters on which it is of the
+highest importance to come to a clear understanding.  Thus, to omit
+all notice of many other discrepancies, the accounts of Mark, Luke,
+and John concur in stating that when the women came to the tomb of
+Jesus very early on the Sunday morning, they found it ALREADY EMPTY:
+the stone was gone when they came there, and, according to John,
+there was not even an angelic vision for some time afterwards.  There
+is nothing in any of these three accounts to preclude the possibility
+of the stone's having been removed within an hour or two of the
+body's having been laid in the tomb.
+
+But when we turn to Matthew we find all changed:  we are told that
+the stone was gone NOT when the women came, but that on their arrival
+there was a great earthquake, and that an angel came down from
+Heaven, and rolled away the stone, AND SAT UPON IT, and that the
+guard who had been set over the tomb (of whom we hear nothing from
+any of the other evangelists) became as dead men while the angel
+addressed the women.
+
+Now this is not one of those cases in which the supposition can be
+tolerated that all would be clear if the whole facts of the case were
+known to us.  No additional facts can make it come about that the
+tomb should have been sealed and guarded, and yet NOT sealed and
+guarded; that the same women, at the same time and place, should have
+witnessed an earthquake, and yet NOT witnessed one; have found a
+stone already gone from a tomb, and yet NOT found it gone; have seen
+it rolled away, and NOT seen it, and so on; those who say that we
+should find no difficulty if we knew ALL the facts are still careful
+to abstain from any example (so far as I know) of the sort of
+additional facts which would serve their purpose.  They cannot give
+one; any mind which is truly candid--white--not scrawled and
+scribbled over till no character is decipherable--will feel at once
+that the only question to be raised is, which is the more correct
+account of the Resurrection--Matthew's or those given by the other
+three Evangelists?  How far is Matthew's account true, and how far is
+it exaggerated?  For there must be either exaggeration or invention
+somewhere.  It is inconceivable that the other writers should have
+known the story told by Matthew, and yet not only made no allusion to
+it, but introduced matter which flatly contradicts it, and it is also
+inconceivable that the story should be true, and yet that the other
+writers should not have known it.
+
+This is how the difficulty stands--a difficulty which vanishes in a
+moment if it be rightly dealt with, but which, when treated after our
+unskilful English method, becomes capable of doing inconceivable
+mischief to the Christian religion.  Let us see then what Dean
+Alford--a writer whose professions of candour and talk about the duty
+of unflinching examination leave nothing to be desired--has to say
+upon this point.  I will first quote the passage in full from
+Matthew, and then give the Dean's note.  I have drawn the greater
+part of the comments that will follow it from an anonymous pamphlet
+{2} upon the Resurrection, dated 1865, but without a publisher's
+name, so that I presume it must have been printed for private
+circulation only.
+
+St. Matthew's account runs:-
+
+"Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the
+chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, 'Sir,
+we remember that that deceiver 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.'  Pilate said
+unto them, 'Ye have a watch:  go your way, make it as sure as ye
+can.'  So they went and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone
+and setting a watch.  In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn
+towards the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other
+Mary to see the sepulchre.  And, behold, there was a great
+earthquake:  for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and
+came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.  His
+countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow:  And
+for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.  And
+the angel answered and said unto the women, 'Fear not ye:  for I know
+that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified.  He is not here:  for he is
+risen, as he said.  Come, see the place where the Lord lay.  And go
+quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and,
+behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him:
+lo, I have told you.'  And they departed quickly from the sepulchre
+with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.
+And as they went to tell his disciples, Jesus met them, saying, 'All
+hail.'  And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him
+(cf. John xx., 16, 17).  Then said Jesus unto them, 'Be not afraid:
+go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they
+see me.'  Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came
+into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that
+were done.  And when they were assembled 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.'  So they took the money, and did as they were taught:
+and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day."
+
+Let us turn now to the Dean's note on Matt. xxvii., 62-66.
+
+With regard to the setting of the watch and sealing of the stone, he
+tells us that the narrative following (i.e., the account of the guard
+and the earthquake) "has been much impugned and its historical
+accuracy very generally given up even by the best of the German
+commentators (Olshausen, Meyer; also De Wette, Hase, and others).
+The chief difficulties found in it seem to be:  (1) How should the
+chief priests, &c., KNOW OF HIS HAVING SAID 'in three days I will
+rise again,' when the saying was hid even from His own disciples?
+The answer to this is easy.  The MEANING of the saying may have been,
+and was hid from the disciples; BUT THE FACT OF ITS HAVING BEEN SAID
+could be no secret.  Not to lay any stress on John ii., 19 (Jesus
+answered and said unto them, 'Destroy this temple and in three days I
+will build it up'), we have the direct prophecy of Matt. xii., 40
+('For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly,
+so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart
+of the earth):  besides this there would be a rumour current, through
+the intercourse of the Apostles with others, that He had been in the
+habit of so saying.  (From what source can Dean Alford know that our
+Lord WAS in the habit of so saying?  What particle of authority is
+there for this alleged habit of our Lord?)  As to the UNDERSTANDING
+of the words we must remember that HATRED IS KEENER SIGHTED THAN
+LOVE:  that the RAISING OF LAZARUS would shew WHAT SORT OF A THING
+RISING FROM THE DEAD WAS TO BE; and the fulfilment of the Lord's
+announcement of his CRUCIFIXION would naturally lead them to look
+further to WHAT MORE he had announced. (2) How should the women who
+were solicitous about the REMOVAL of the stone not have been still
+more so about its being sealed and a guard set?  The answer to this
+last has been given above--THEY WERE NOT AWARE OF THE CIRCUMSTANCE
+BECAUSE THE GUARD WAS NOT SET TILL THE EVENING BEFORE.  There would
+be no need of the application before the APPROACH OF THE THIRD DAY--
+it is only made for a watch, [Greek text] (ver. 64), and it is not
+probable that the circumstance would transpire that night--certainly
+it seems not to have done so. (3) That Gamaliel was of the council,
+and if such a thing as this and its sequel (chap. xxviii., 11-15) had
+really happened, he need not have expressed himself doubtfully (Acts
+v., 39), but would have been certain that this was from God.  But,
+first, it does not necessarily follow that EVERY MEMBER of the
+Sanhedrim was present, and applied to Pilate, or even had they done
+so, that all bore a part in the act of xxviii., 12" (the bribing of
+the guard to silence).  "One who like Joseph had not consented to the
+deed before--and we may safely say that there were others such--would
+naturally withdraw himself from further proceedings against the
+person of Jesus. (4) Had this been so the three other Evangelists
+would not have passed over so important a testimony to the
+Resurrection.  But surely we cannot argue in this way--for thus every
+important fact narrated by ONE EVANGELIST ALONE must be rejected,
+e.g. (which stands in much the same relation), THE SATISFACTION OF
+THOMAS--ANOTHER SUCH NARRATIONS.  TILL WE KNOW MORE ABOUT THE
+CIRCUMSTANCES UNDER WHICH, AND THE SCOPE WITH WHICH, EACH GOSPEL WAS
+COMPILED, ALL A PRIORI ARGUMENTS OF THIS KIND ARE GOOD FOR NOTHING."
+
+(The italics in the above, and throughout the notes quoted, are the
+Dean's, unless it is expressly stated otherwise.)
+
+I will now proceed to consider this defence of Matthew's accuracy
+against the objections of the German commentators.
+
+I.  The German commentators maintain that the chief priests are not
+likely to have known of any prophecy of Christ's Resurrection when
+His own disciples had evidently heard of nothing to this effect.
+Dean Alford's answer amounts to this:-
+
+1.  They had heard the words but did not understand their meaning;
+hatred enabled the chief priests to see clearly what love did not
+reveal to the understanding of the Apostles.  True, according to
+Matthew, Christ had said that as Jonah was three days and three
+nights in the whale's belly, so the Son of Man should be three days
+and three nights in the heart of the earth; but it would be only
+hatred which would suggest the interpretation of so obscure a
+prophecy:  love would not be sufficiently keen-sighted to understand
+it.
+
+But in the first place I would urge that if the Apostles had ever
+heard any words capable of suggesting the idea that Christ should
+rise, after they had already seen the raising of Lazarus, on whom
+corruption had begun its work, they MUST have expected the
+Resurrection.  After having seen so stupendous a miracle, any one
+would expect anything which was even suggested by the One who had
+performed it.  And, secondly, hatred is not keener sighted than love.
+
+2.  Dean Alford says that the raising of Lazarus would shew the chief
+priests what sort of a thing the Resurrection from the dead was to
+be, and that the fulfilment of Christ's prophecy concerning his
+Crucifixion would naturally lead them to look further to what else he
+had announced.
+
+But, if the raising of Lazarus would shew the chief priests what sort
+of thing the Resurrection was to be, it would shew the Apostles also;
+and again if the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Crucifixion would
+lead the chief priests to look further to the fulfilment of the
+prophecy of the Resurrection, so would it lead the Apostles; this
+supposition of one set of men who can see everything, and of another
+with precisely the same opportunities and no less interest, who can
+see nothing, is vastly convenient upon the stage, but it is not
+supported by a reference to Nature; self-interest would have opened
+the eyes of the Apostles.
+
+II.  The German commentators ask how was it possible that the women
+who were solicitous about the removal of the stone, should not be
+still more so about "its being sealed and a guard set?"  If the
+German commentators have asked their question in this shape, they
+have asked it badly, and Dean Alford's answer is sufficient:  they
+might have asked, how the other three writers could all tell us that
+the stone was already gone when the women got there, and yet
+Matthew's story be true? and how Matthew's story could be true
+without the other writers having known it? and how the other writers
+could have introduced matter contradictory to it, if they had known
+it to be true?
+
+III.  The German commentators say that in the Acts of the Apostles we
+find Gamaliel expressing himself as doubtful whether or no
+Christianity was of God, whereas had he known the facts related by
+Matthew he could have had no doubt at all.  He must have KNOWN that
+Christianity was of God.
+
+Dean Alford answers that perhaps Gamaliel was not there.  To which I
+would rejoin that though Gamaliel might have had no hand in the
+bribery, supposing it to have taken place, it is inconceivable that
+such a story should have not reached him; the matter could never have
+been kept so quiet but that it must have leaked out.  Men are not so
+utterly bad or so utterly foolish as Dean Alford seems to imply; and
+whether Gamaliel was or was not present when the guard were bribed,
+he must have been equally aware of the fact before making the speech
+which is assigned to him in the Acts.
+
+IV.  The German commentators argue from the silence of the other
+Evangelists:  Dean Alford replies by denying that this silence is any
+argument:  but I would answer, that on a matter which the other three
+writers must have known to have been of such intense interest, their
+silence is a conclusive proof either of their ignorance or their
+indolence as historians.  Dean Alford has well substantiated the
+independence of the four narratives, he has well proved that the
+writer of the fourth Gospel could never have seen the other Gospels,
+and yet he supposes that that writer either did not know the facts
+related by Matthew, or thought it unnecessary to allude to them.
+Neither of these suppositions is tenable:  but there would
+nevertheless be a shadow of ground for Dean Alford to stand upon if
+the other Evangelists were simply silent:  but why does he omit all
+notice of their introducing matter which is absolutely incompatible
+with Matthew's accuracy?
+
+There is one other consideration which must suggest itself to the
+reader in connection with this story of the guard.  It refers to the
+conduct of the chief priests and the soldiers themselves.  The
+conduct assigned to the chief priests in bribing the guard to lie
+against one whom they must by this time have known to be under
+supernatural protection, is contrary to human nature.  The chief
+priests (according to Matthew) knew that Christ had said he should
+rise:  in spite of their being well aware that Christ had raised
+Lazarus from the dead but very recently they did not believe that he
+WOULD rise, but feared (so Matthew says) that the Apostles would
+steal the body and pretend a resurrection:  up to this point we admit
+that the story, though very improbable, is still possible:  but when
+we read of their bribing the guards to tell a lie under such
+circumstances as those which we are told had just occurred, we say
+that such conduct is impossible:  men are too great cowards to be
+capable of it.  The same applies to the soldiers:  they would never
+dare to run counter to an agency which had nearly killed them with
+fright on that very selfsame morning.  Let any man put himself in
+their position:  let him remember that these soldiers were previously
+no enemies to Christ, nor, as far as we can judge, is it likely that
+they were a gang of double-dyed villains:  but even if they were,
+they would not have dared to act as Matthew says they acted.
+
+And now let us turn to another note of Dean Alford's.
+
+Speaking of the independence of the four narratives (in his note on
+Matt. xxviii., 1-10) and referring to their "minor discrepancies,"
+the Dean says SUPPOSING US TO BE ACQUAINTED WITH EVERY THING SAID AND
+DONE IN ITS ORDER AND EXACTNESS, WE SHOULD DOUBTLESS BE ABLE TO
+RECONCILE, OR ACCOUNT FOR, THE PRESENT FORMS OF THE NARRATIVES; but
+not having this key to the harmonising of them, all attempts to do so
+in minute particulars must be full of arbitrary assumptions, and
+carry no certainty with them:  and I may remark that OF ALL HARMONIES
+those of the INCIDENTS OF THESE CHAPTERS are to me the MOST
+UNSATISFACTORY.  Giving their compilers all credit for the best
+intentions, I confess they seem to me to WEAKEN instead of
+strengthening the evidence, which now rests (speaking merely
+OBJECTIVELY) on the unexceptionable testimony of three independent
+narrators, and one who besides was an eye witness of much that
+happened.  If we are to compare the four and ask which is to be taken
+as most nearly reporting the EXACT words and incidents, on this there
+can, I think, be no doubt.  On internal as well as external ground
+THAT OF JOHN takes the HIGHEST PLACE, but not of course to the
+exclusion of those parts of the narrative which he DOES NOT TOUCH."
+
+Surely the above is a very extraordinary note.  The difficulty of the
+irreconcilable differences between the four narratives is not met nor
+attempted to be met:  the Dean seems to consider the attempt as
+hopeless:  no one, according to him, has been as yet successful,
+neither can he see any prospect of succeeding better himself:  the
+expedient therefore which he proposes is that the whole should be
+taken on trust; that it should be assumed that no discrepancy which
+could not be accounted for would be found, if the facts were known in
+the exact order in which they occurred.  In other words, he leaves
+the difficulty where it was.  Yet surely it is a very grave one.  The
+same events are recorded by three writers (one being professedly an
+eye-witness, and the others independent writers), in a way which is
+virtually the same, in spite of some unimportant variations in the
+manner of telling it, while a fourth gives a totally different and
+irreconcilable account; the matter stands in such confusion at
+present that even Dean Alford admits that any attempt to reconcile
+the differences leaves them in worse confusion than ever; the ablest
+and most spiritually minded of the German commentators suggest a way
+of escape; nevertheless, according to the Dean we are not to profit
+by it, but shall avoid the difficulty better by a simpler process--
+the process of passing it over.
+
+A man does well to be angry when he sees so solemn and momentous a
+subject treated thus.  What is trifling if this is not trifling?
+What is disingenuousness if not this?  It involves some trouble and
+apparent danger to admit that the same thing has happened to the
+Christian records which has happened to all others--i.e., that they
+have suffered--miraculously little, but still something--at the hands
+of time; people would have to familiarise themselves with new ideas,
+and this can seldom be done without a certain amount of wrangling,
+disturbance, and unsettling of comfortable ease:  it is therefore by
+all means and at all risks to be avoided.  Who can doubt that some
+such feeling as this was in Dean Alford's mind when the notes above
+criticised were written?  Yet what are the means taken to avoid the
+recognition of obvious truth?  They are disingenuous in the very
+highest degree.  Can this prosper?  Not if Christ is true.
+
+What is the practical result?  The loss of many souls who would
+gladly come to the Saviour, but who are frightened off by seeing the
+manner in which his case is defended.  And what after all is the
+danger that would follow upon candour?  None.  Not one particle.
+Nevertheless, danger or no danger, we are bound to speak the truth.
+We have nothing to do with consequences and moral tendencies and risk
+to this or that fundamental principle of our belief, nor yet with the
+possibility of lurid lights being thrown here or there.  What are
+these things to us?  They are not our business or concern, but rest
+with the Being who has required of US that we should reverently,
+patiently, unostentatiously, yet resolutely, strive to find out what
+things are true and what false, and that we should give up all,
+rather than forsake our own convictions concerning the truth.
+
+This is our plain and immediate duty, in pursuance of which we
+proceed to set aside the account of the Resurrection given in St.
+Matthew's Gospel.  That account must be looked upon as the invention
+of some copyist, or possibly of the translator of the original work,
+at a time when men who had been eye-witnesses to the actual facts of
+the Resurrection were becoming scarce, and when it was felt that some
+more unmistakably miraculous account than that given in the other
+three Gospels would be a comfort and encouragement to succeeding
+generations.  We, however, must now follow the example of "even the
+best" of the German commentators, and discard it as soon as possible.
+On having done this the whole difficulty of the confusion of the four
+accounts of the Resurrection vanishes like smoke, and we find
+ourselves with three independent writers whose differences are
+exactly those which we might expect, considering the time and
+circumstances in which they wrote, but which are still so trifling as
+to disturb no man's faith.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--MORE DISINGENUOUSNESS
+
+
+
+[Here, perhaps, will be the fittest place for introducing a letter to
+my brother from a gentleman who is well known to the public, but who
+does not authorise me to give his name.  I found this letter among my
+brother's papers, endorsed with the words "this must be attended to,"
+but with nothing more.  I imagine that my brother would have
+incorporated the substance of his correspondent's letter into this or
+the preceding chapter, but not venturing to do so myself, I have
+thought it best to give the letter and extract in full, and thus to
+let them speak for themselves.--W. B. O.]
+
+June 15, 1868.
+
+My dear Owen,
+
+Your brother has told me what you are doing, and the general line of
+your argument.  I am sorry that you should be doing it, for I need
+not tell you that I do not and cannot sympathise with the great and
+unexpected change in your opinions.  You are the last man in the
+world from whom I should have expected such a change:  but, as you
+well know, you are also the last man in the world whose sincerity in
+making it I should be inclined to question.  May you find peace and
+happiness in whatever opinions you adopt, and let me trust also that
+you will never forget the lessons of toleration which you learnt as
+the disciple of what you will perhaps hardly pardon me for calling a
+freer and happier school of thought than the one to which you now
+believe yourself to belong.
+
+Your brother tells me that you are ill; I need not say that I am
+sorry, and that I should not trouble you with any personal matter--I
+write solely in reference to the work which I hear that you have
+undertaken, and which I am given to understand consists mainly in the
+endeavour to conquer unbelief, by really entering into the
+difficulties felt by unbelievers.  The scheme is a good one IF
+THOROUGHLY CARRIED OUT.  We imagine that we stand in no danger from
+any such course as this, and should heartily welcome any book which
+tried to grapple with us, even though it were to compel us to admit a
+great deal more than I at present think it likely that even you can
+extort from us.  Much more should we welcome a work which made people
+understand us better than they do; this would indeed confer a lasting
+benefit both upon them and us.
+
+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 circumstantial 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
+pass 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
+pass 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 circumstances with which it is related.  The
+usual character of human testimony is substantial truth under
+circumstantial 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 embassy 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 embassy 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 Saturday, 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 assigned 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 principal 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 passage 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
+Cassius 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 passages, 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 passages 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 passage 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 assertions?  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 assure 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 quantity 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 quantity 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 assertion of the truth of what he is
+recording.  The note stands thus, "This emphatic assertion 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 assumption 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 assertion 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 pass 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 God, 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 assurance doubly sure.  No truthful mind can
+doubt that the cause of Christ is far better served by exposing an
+insufficient argument than by silently passing 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 circumstances
+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 xxxiv., 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 God
+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 pass 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 passed 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 space 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 chink
+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 circumstances, 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 classes 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.
+
+"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 circumstances
+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
+principal 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 assuredly 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?  Assuredly 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 assenting 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 God, 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 assume 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 space 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 anticipated
+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 anticipation 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 God; 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 circumstances 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, anchored; 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 circumstance 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
+circumstances, in the reappearance of Christ alive after his
+Crucifixion having been assigned to miracle.  He had already made
+sufficient impression upon his followers to require but little help
+from circumstances.  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 pass 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 anticipating 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 passed 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 class--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 assuredly 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 pass 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 pass.'
+
+"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 passed.  If the fourth Gospel be assigned to John
+(and if it is NOT assigned to John the difficulties on the Christian
+side become so great that the cause may be declared lost), his story
+is that of a principal 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 circumstance 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 circumstantial 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
+unimpassioned 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
+passed 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 assumed 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 assumption.
+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 assumption.  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 assume 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 nobody 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 tittle 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
+circumstances, 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.
+
+"Yet, see," our opponents will exclaim in answer, "what a mighty
+river has come from a little spring.  We heard first of two men going
+into an empty tomb, finding two bundles of grave clothes, and
+departing.  Then there comes a certain person, concerning whom we are
+elsewhere told a fact which leaves us with a very uncomfortable
+impression, and SHE sees, not two bundles of grave clothes, but two
+white angels, who ask a dreamy pointless question, and receive an
+appropriate answer.  Then we find the time of this apparition
+shifted; it is placed in the front, not in the background, and is
+seen by many, instead of being vouchsafed to no one but to a weeping
+woman looking into the bottom of a tomb.  The speech of the angels,
+also, becomes effective, and the linen clothes drop out of sight
+entirely, unless some faint trace of them is to be found in the 'long
+white garment' which Mark tells us was worn by the young man who was
+in the tomb when the women reached it.  Finally, we have a guard set
+upon the tomb, and the stone which was rolled in front of it is
+sealed; the angel IS SEEN TO DESCEND FROM HEAVEN, to roll away the
+stone, and sit upon it, and there is a great earthquake.  Oh! how
+things grow, how things grow!  And, oh! how people believe!
+
+"See by what easy stages the story has grown up from the smallest
+seed, as the mustard tree in the parable, and how the account given
+by Matthew changes the whole complexion of the events.  And see how
+this account has been dwelt upon to the exclusion of the others by
+the great painters and sculptors from whom, consciously or
+unconsciously, our ideas of the Christian era are chiefly drawn.
+Yes.  These men have been the most potent of theologians, for their
+theology has reached and touched most widely.  We have mistaken their
+echo of the sound for the sound itself, and what was to them an
+aspiration, has, alas! been to us in the place of science and
+reality.
+
+"Truly the ease with which the plainest inferences from the Gospel
+narratives have been overlooked is the best apology for those who
+have attributed unnatural blindness to the Apostles.  If we are so
+blind, why not they also?  A pertinent question, but one which raises
+more difficulties than it solves.  The seeing of truth is as the
+finding of gold in far countries, where the shepherd has drunk of the
+stream and used it daily to cleanse the sweat of his brow, and recked
+little of the treasure which lay abundantly concealed therein, until
+one luckier than his fellows espies it, and the world comes flocking
+thither.  So with truth; a little care, a little patience, a little
+sympathy, and the wonder is that it should have lain hidden even from
+the merest child, not that it should now be manifest.
+
+"How early must it have been objected that there was no evidence that
+the tomb had not been tampered with (not by the Apostles, for they
+were scattered, and of him who laid the body in the tomb--Joseph of
+Arimathaea--we hear no more) and that the body had been delivered not
+to enemies, but friends; how natural that so desirable an addition to
+the completeness of the evidences in favour of a miraculous
+Resurrection should have been early and eagerly accepted.  Would not
+twenty years of oral communication and Spanish or Italian
+excitability suffice for the rooting of such a story?  Yet, as far as
+we can gather, the Gospel according to St. Matthew was even then
+unwritten.  And who was Matthew?  And what was his original Gospel?
+
+"There is one part of his story, and one only, which will stand the
+test of criticism, and that is this:- That the saying that the
+disciples came by night and stole the body of Jesus away was current
+among the Jews, at the time when the Gospel which we now have
+appeared.  Not that they did so--no one will believe this; but the
+allegation of the rumour (which would hardly have been ventured
+unless it would command assent as true) points in the direction of
+search having been made for the body of Jesus--and made in vain.
+
+"We have now seen that there is no evidence worth the name, for any
+miracle in connection with the tomb of Christ.  He probably
+reappeared alive, but not with any circumstances which we are
+justified in regarding as supernatural.  We are therefore at length
+led to a consideration of the Crucifixion itself.  Is there evidence
+for more than this--that Christ was crucified, was afterwards seen
+alive, and that this was regarded by his first followers as a
+sufficient proof of his having risen from the dead?  This would
+account for the rise of Christianity, and for all the other miracles.
+Take the following passage from Gibbon:- 'The grave and learned
+Augustine, whose understanding scarcely admits the excuse of
+credulity, has attested the innumerable prodigies which were worked
+in Africa by the relics of St. Stephen, and this marvellous narrative
+is inserted in the elaborate work of "The City of God," which the
+Bishop designed as a solid and immortal proof of the truth of
+Christianity.  Augustine solemnly declares that he had selected those
+miracles only which had been publicly certified by persons who were
+either the objects or the spectators of the powers of the martyr.
+Many prodigies were omitted or forgotten, and Hippo had been less
+favourably treated than the other cities of the province, yet the
+Bishop enumerates above seventy miracles, of which three were
+resurrections from the dead, within the limits of his own diocese.
+If we enlarge our view to all the dioceses and all the saints of the
+Christian world, it will not be easy to calculate the fables and
+errors which issued from this inexhaustible source.  But we may
+surely be allowed to observe that a miracle in that age of
+superstition and credulity lost its name and its merits, since it
+could hardly be considered as a deviation from the established laws
+of Nature.'--(Gibbon's Decline and Fall, chap. xxviii., sec. 2).
+
+"Who believes in the miracles, or who would dare to quote them?  Yet
+on what better foundation do those of the New Testament rest?  For
+the death of Christ there is no evidence at all.  There is evidence
+that he was believed to have been dead (under circumstances where a
+misapprehension was singularly likely to arise), by men whose minds
+were altogether in a different clef to ours as regards the
+miraculous, and whom we cannot therefore fairly judge by any modern
+standard.  We cannot judge THEM, but we are bound to weigh the facts
+which they relate, not in their balance, but in our own.  It is not
+what might have seemed reasonably believable to them, but what is
+reasonably believable in our own more enlightened age which can be
+alone accepted sinlessly by ourselves.  Men's modes of thought
+concerning facts change from age to age; but the facts change not at
+all, and it is of them that we are called to judge.
+
+"We turn to the fourth Gospel, as that from which we shall derive the
+most accurate knowledge of the facts connected with the Crucifixion.
+Here we find that it was about twelve o'clock when Pilate brought out
+Christ for the last time; the dialogue that followed, the
+preparations for the Crucifixion, and the leading Christ outside the
+city to the place where the Crucifixion was to take place, could
+hardly have occupied less than an hour.  By six o'clock (by consent
+of all writers) the body was entombed, so that the actual time during
+which Christ hung upon the cross was little more than four hours.
+Let us be thankful to hope that the time of suffering may have been
+so short--but say five hours, say six, say whatever the reader
+chooses, the Crucifixion was avowedly too hurried for death in an
+ordinary case to have ensued.  The thieves had to be killed, as yet
+alive.  Immediately before being taken down from the cross the body
+was delivered to friends.  Within thirty-six hours afterwards the
+tomb in which it had been laid was discovered to have been opened;
+for how long it had been open we do not know, but a few hours later
+Christ was seen alive.
+
+"Let it be remembered also that the fact of the body having been
+delivered to Joseph BEFORE the taking down from the cross, greatly
+enhanced the chance of an escape from death, inasmuch as the duties
+of the soldiers would have ended with the presentation of the order
+from Pilate.  If any faint symptom of returning animation shewed
+itself in consequence of the mere change of position and the
+inevitable shock attendant upon being moved, the soldiers would not
+know it; their task was ended, and they would not be likely either to
+wish, or to be allowed, to have anything to do with the matter.
+Joseph appears to have been a rich man, and would be followed by
+attendants.  Moreover, although we are told by Mark that Pilate sent
+for the centurion to inquire whether Christ was dead, yet the same
+writer also tells us that this centurion had already come to the
+conclusion that Christ was the Son of God, a statement which is
+supported by the accounts of Matthew and Luke; Mark is the only
+Evangelist who tells us that the centurion WAS sent for, but even
+granting that this was so, would not one who had already recognised
+Christ as the Son of God be inclined to give him every assistance in
+his power?  He would be frightened, and anxious to get the body down
+from the cross as fast as possible.  So long as Christ appeared to be
+dead, there would be no unnecessary obstacle thrown in the way of the
+delivery of the body to Joseph, by a centurion who believed that he
+had been helping to crucify the Son of God.  Besides Joseph was rich,
+and rich people have many ways of getting their wishes attended to.
+
+"We know of no one as assisting at the taking down or the removal of
+the body, except Joseph of Arimathaea, for the presence of Nicodemus,
+and indeed his existence, rests upon the slenderest evidence.  None
+of the Apostles appear to have had anything to do with the
+deposition, nor yet the women who had come from Galilee, who are
+represented as seeing where the body was laid (and by Luke as seeing
+HOW it was laid), but do not seem to have come into close contact
+with the body.
+
+"Would any modern jury of intelligent men believe under similar
+circumstances that the death had been actual and complete?  Would
+they not regard--and ought they not to regard--reappearance as
+constituting ample proof that there had been no death?  Most
+assuredly, unless Christ had had his head cut off, or had been seen
+to be burnt to ashes.  Again, if unexceptionable medical testimony as
+to the completeness of the death had reached us, there would be no
+help for it; we should have to admit that something had happened
+which was at variance with all our experience of the course of
+nature; or again if his legs had been broken, or his feet pierced, we
+could say nothing; but what irreparable mischief is done to any vital
+function of the body by the mere act of crucifixion?  The feet were
+not always, 'nor perhaps generally,' pierced (so Dean Alford tells
+us, quoting from Justin Martyr), nor is there a particle of evidence
+to shew that any exception was made in the present instance.  A man
+who is crucified dies from sheer exhaustion, so that it cannot be
+deemed improbable that he might swoon away, and that every outward
+appearance of death might precede death by several hours.
+
+"Are we to suppose that a handful of ignorant soldiers should be
+above error, when we remember that men have been left for dead, been
+laid out for burial and buried by their best friends--nay, that they
+have over and over again been pronounced dead by skilled physicians,
+when the facilities for knowing the truth were far greater, and when
+a mistake was much less likely to occur, than at the hurried
+Crucifixion of Jesus Christ?  The soldiers would apply no polished
+mirror to the lips, nor make use of any of those tests which, under
+the circumstances, would be absolutely necessary before life could be
+pronounced to be extinct; they would see that the body was lifeless,
+inanimate, to all outward appearance like the few other dead bodies
+which they had probably observed closely; with this they would rest
+contented.
+
+"It is true, they probably believed Christ to be dead at the time
+they handed over the body to his friends, and if we had heard nothing
+more of the matter we might assume that they were right; but the
+reappearance of Christ alive changes the whole complexion of the
+story.  It is not very likely that the Roman soldiers would have been
+mistaken in believing him to be dead, unless the hurry of the whole
+affair, and the order from Pilate, had disposed them to carelessness,
+and to getting the matter done as fast as possible; but it is much
+less likely that a dead man should come to life again than that a
+mistake should have been made about his having being dead.  The
+latter is an event which probably happens every week in one part of
+the world or another; the former has never yet been known.
+
+"It is not probable that a man officially executed should escape
+death; but that a DEAD MAN should escape from it is more improbable
+still; in addition to the enormous preponderance of probability on
+the side of Christ's never having died which arises from this
+consideration alone, we are told many facts which greatly lessen the
+improbability of his having escaped death, inasmuch as the
+Crucifixion was hurried, and the body was immediately delivered to
+friends without the known destruction of any organic function, and
+while still hanging upon the cross.
+
+"Joseph and Nicodemus (supposing that Nicodemus was indeed a party to
+the entombment) may be believed to have thought that Christ was dead
+when they received the body, but they could not refuse him their
+assistance when they found out their mistake, nor, again, could they
+forfeit their high position by allowing it to be known that they had
+restored the life of one who was so obnoxious to the authorities.
+They would be in a very difficult position, and would take the
+prudent course of backing out of the matter at the first moment that
+humanity would allow, of leaving the rest to chance, and of keeping
+their own counsel.  It is noticeable that we never hear of them
+again; for there were no two people in the world better able to know
+whether the Resurrection was miraculous or not, and none who would be
+more deeply interested in favour of the miracle.  They had been
+faithful when the Apostles themselves had failed, and if their faith
+had been so strong while everything pointed in the direction of the
+utter collapse of Christianity, what would it be, according to every
+natural impulse of self-approbation, when so transcendent a miracle
+as a resurrection had been worked almost upon their own premises, and
+upon one whose remains they had generously taken under their
+protection at a time when no others had ventured to shew them
+respect?
+
+"We should have fancied that Mary would have run to Joseph and
+Nicodemus, not to the Apostles; that Joseph and Nicodemus would then
+have sent for the Apostles, or that, to say the least of it, we
+should have heard of these two persons as having been prominent
+members of the Church at Jerusalem; but here again the experience of
+the ordinary course of nature fails us, and we do not find another
+word or hint concerning them.  This may be the result of accident,
+but if so, it is a very unfortunate accident, and we have already had
+a great deal too much of unfortunate accidents, and of truths which
+MAY be truths, but which are uncommonly like exaggeration.  Stories
+are like people, whom we judge of in no small degree by the dress
+they wear, the company they keep, and that subtle indefinable
+something which we call their expression.
+
+"Nevertheless, there arise the questions how far the spear wound
+recorded by the writer of the fourth Gospel must be regarded,
+firstly, as an actual occurrence, and, secondly, as having been
+necessarily fatal, for unless these things are shewn to be
+indisputable we have seen that the balance of probability lies
+greatly in favour of Christ's having escaped with life.  If, however,
+it can be proved that it is a matter of certainty both that the wound
+was actually inflicted, and that death must have inevitably followed,
+then the death of Christ is proved.  The Resurrection becomes
+supernatural; the Ascension forthwith ceases to be marvellous; the
+Miraculous Conception, the Temptation in the Wilderness, all the
+other miracles of Christ and his Apostles, become believable at once
+upon so signal a failure of human experience; human experience ceases
+to be a guide at all, inasmuch as it is found to fail on the very
+point where it has been always considered to be most firmly
+established--the remorselessness of the grip of death.  But before we
+can consent to part with the firm ground on which we tread, in the
+confidence of which we live, move, and have our being--the trust in
+the established experience of countless ages--we must prove the
+infliction of the wound and its necessarily fatal character beyond
+all possibility of mistake.  We cannot be expected to reject a
+natural solution of an event however mysterious, and to adopt a
+supernatural in its place, so long as there is any element of doubt
+upon the supernatural side.
+
+"The natural solution of the origin of belief in the Resurrection
+lies very ready to our hands; once admit that Christ was crucified
+hurriedly, that there is no proof of the destruction of any organic
+function of the body, that the body itself was immediately delivered
+to friends, and that thirty-six hours afterwards Christ was seen
+alive, and it is impossible to understand how any human being can
+doubt what he ought to think.  We must own also that once let Joseph
+have kept his own counsel (and he had a great stake to lose if he did
+NOT keep it), once let the Apostles believe that Christ's restoration
+to life was miraculous (and under the circumstances they would be
+sure to think so), and their reason would be so unsettled that in a
+very short time all the recognised and all the apocryphal miracles of
+Christ would pass current with them without a shadow of difficulty."
+
+It will be observed that throughout both this and the preceding
+chapter I have been dealing with those of our opponents who, while
+admitting the reappearances of our Lord, ascribe them to natural
+causes only.  I consider this position to be only second in
+importance to the one taken by Strauss, and as perhaps in some
+respects capable of being supported with an even greater outward
+appearance of probability.  I therefore resolved to combat it, and as
+a preliminary to this, have taken care that it shall be stated in the
+clearest and most definite manner possible.  But it is plain that
+those who accept the fact that our Lord reappeared after the
+Crucifixion differ hardly less widely from Strauss than they do from
+ourselves; it will therefore be expedient to shew how they maintain
+their ground against so formidable an antagonist.  Let it be
+remembered that Strauss and his followers admit that THE DEATH of our
+Lord is proved, while those of our opponents who would deny this,
+nevertheless admit that we can establish THE REAPPEARANCES; it
+follows therefore that each of our most important propositions is
+admitted by one section or other of the enemy, and each section would
+probably be heartily glad to be able to deny what it admits.  Can
+there be any doubt about the significance of this fact?  Would not a
+little reflection be likely to suggest to the distracted host of our
+adversaries that each of its two halves is right, as FAR AS IT GOES,
+but that agreement will only be possible between them when each party
+has learnt that it is in possession of only half the truth, and has
+come to admit both the DEATH OF OUR LORD AND HIS RESURRECTION?
+
+Returning, however, to the manner in which the section of our
+opponents with whom I am now dealing meet Strauss, they may be
+supposed to speak as follows:-
+
+"Strauss believes that Christ died, and says (New Life of Jesus, Vol.
+I., p. 411) that 'the account of the Evangelists of the death of
+Jesus is clear, unanimous, and connected.'  If this means that the
+Evangelists would certainly know whether Christ died or not, we demur
+to it at once.  Strauss would himself admit that not one of the
+writers who have recorded the facts connected with the Crucifixion
+was an eyewitness of that event, and he must also be aware that the
+very utmost which any of these writers can have KNOWN, was THAT
+CHRIST WAS BELIEVED TO HAVE BEEN. DEAD.  It is strange to see Strauss
+so suddenly struck with the clearness, unanimity, and connectedness
+of the Evangelists.  In the very next sentence he goes on to say,
+'Equally fragmentary, full of contradiction and obscurity, is all
+that they tell us of the opportunities of observing him which his
+adherents are supposed to have had after his resurrection.'  Now,
+this seems very unfair, for, after all, the gospel writers are quite
+as unanimous in asserting the main fact that Christ reappeared, as
+they are in asserting that he died; they would seem to be just as
+'clear, unanimous, and connected,' about the former event as the
+latter (for the accounts of the Crucifixion vary not a little), and
+they must have had infinitely better means of knowing whether Christ
+reappeared than whether he had actually died.  There is not the same
+scope for variation in the bare assertion that a man died, as there
+is in the narration of his sayings and doings upon the several
+occasions of his reappearance.  Besides, in support of the
+reappearances, we have the evidence of Paul, who, though not an eye-
+witness, was well acquainted with those who were; whereas no man can
+make more out of the facts recorded concerning the death of Jesus,
+than that he was believed to be dead under circumstances in which
+mistake might easily arise, that there is no reason to think that any
+organic function of the body had been destroyed at the time that it
+was delivered over to friends, and that none of those who testified
+to Christ's death appear to have verified their statement by personal
+inspection of the body.  On these points the Evangelists do indeed
+appear to be 'clear, unanimous, and connected.'
+
+"Later on Strauss is even more unsatisfactory, for on the page which
+follows the one above quoted from, he writes:  'Besides which, it is
+quite evident that this (the natural) view of the resurrection of
+Jesus, apart from the difficulties in which it is involved, does not
+even solve the problem which is here under consideration:  the
+origin, that is, of the Christian Church by faith in the miraculous
+resurrection of the Messiah.  It is impossible that a being who had
+stolen half-dead out of a sepulchre, who crept about weak and ill,
+wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening, and
+indulgence, and who still, at last, yielded to his sufferings, could
+have given to the disciples the impression that he was a conqueror
+over death and the grave, the Prince of Life, an impression which lay
+at the bottom of their future ministry.  Such a resuscitation could
+only have weakened the impression which he had made upon them in life
+and in death; at the most could only have given it an elegiac voice,
+but could by no possibility have changed their sorrow into
+enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship.'
+
+"Now, the fallacy in the above is obvious; it assumes that CHRIST was
+in such a state as to be compelled to creep about, weak and ill, &c.,
+and ultimately to die from the effects of his sufferings; whereas
+there is not a word of evidence in support of all this.  He may have
+been weak and ill when he forbade Mary to touch him, on the first
+occasion of his being seen alive; but it would be hard to prove even
+this, and on no subsequent occasion does he shew any sign of
+weakness.  The supposition that he died of the effects of his
+sufferings is quite gratuitous; one would like to know where Strauss
+got it from.  He MAY have done so, or he may have been assassinated
+by some one commissioned by the Jewish Sanhedrim, or he may have felt
+that his work was done, and that any further interference upon his
+part would only mar it, and therefore resolved upon withdrawing
+himself from Palestine for ever, or Joseph of Arimathaea may have
+feared the revolution which he saw approaching--or twenty things
+besides might account for Christ's final disappearance.  The only
+thing, however, which we can say with any certainty is that he
+disappeared, and that there is no reason to believe that he died of
+his wounds.  All over and above this is guesswork.
+
+"Again, if Christ on reappearing had continued in daily intercourse
+with his disciples, it might have been impossible that they should
+not find out that he was in all respects like themselves.  But he
+seems to have been careful to avoid seeing them much.  Paul only
+mentions five reappearances, only one of which was to any
+considerable number of people.  According also to the gospel writers,
+the reappearances were few; they were without preparation, and
+nothing seems to have been known of where he resided between each
+visit; this rarity and mysteriousness of the reappearances of Christ
+(whether dictated by fear of his enemies or by policy) would heighten
+their effect, and prevent the Apostles from knowing much more about
+their master than the simple fact that he was indisputably alive.
+They saw enough to assure them of this, but they did not see enough
+to prevent their being able to regard their master as a conqueror
+over death and the grave, even though it could be shewn (which
+certainly cannot be done) that he continued in infirm health, and
+ultimately died of his wounds.
+
+"If the Apostles had been highly educated English or German
+Professors, it might be hard to believe them capable of making any
+mistake; but they were nothing of the kind; they were ignorant
+Eastern peasants, living in the very thick of every conceivable kind
+of delusive influence.  Strauss himself supposes their minds to have
+been so weak and unhinged that they became easy victims to
+hallucination.  But if this was the case, they would be liable to
+other kinds of credulity, and it seems strange that one who would
+bring them down so low, should be here so suddenly jealous for their
+intelligence.  There is no reason to suppose that Christ WAS weak and
+ill after the first day or two, any more than there is for believing
+that he died of his wounds.  This being so, is it not more simple and
+natural to believe that the Apostles were really misled by a solid
+substratum of strange events--a substratum which seems to be
+supported by all the evidence which we can get--than that the whole
+story of the appearances of Christ after the Crucifixion should be
+due to baseless dreams and fancies?  At any rate, if the Apostles
+could be misled by hallucination, much more might they be misled by a
+natural reappearance, which looked not unlike a supernatural one.
+
+"The belief in the miraculous character of the Resurrection is the
+central point of the whole Christian system.  Let this be once
+believed, and considering the times, which, it must always be
+remembered, were in respect of credulity widely different from our
+own, considering the previous hopes and expectations of the Apostles,
+considering their education, Oriental modes of thought and speech,
+familiarity with the ideas of miracle and demonology, and
+unfamiliarity with the ideas of accuracy and science, and considering
+also the unquestionable beauty and wisdom of much which is recorded
+as having been taught by Christ, and the really remarkable
+circumstances of the case--we say, once let the Resurrection be
+believed to be miraculous, and the rest is clear; there is no further
+mystery about the origin of the Christian religion.
+
+"So the matter has now come to this pass, that we are to jeopardise
+our faith in all human experience, if we are unable to see our way
+clearly out of a few words about a spear wound, recorded as having
+been inflicted in a distant country nearly two thousand years ago, by
+a writer concerning whom we are entirely ignorant, and whose
+connection with any eye-witness of the events which he records is a
+matter of pure conjecture.  We will see about this hereafter; all
+that is necessary now is to make sure that we do not jeopardise it,
+if we DO see a way of escape, and this assuredly exists."
+
+I will not pain either the reader or myself by a recapitulation of
+the arguments which have led our opponents as well as the Dean of
+Canterbury, and I may add, with due apology, myself, to conclude that
+nothing is known as to the severity or purpose of the spear wound.
+The case, therefore, of our adversaries will rest thus:- that there
+is not only no sufficient reason for believing that Christ died upon
+the cross, but that there are the strongest conceivable reasons for
+believing that He did not die; that the shortness of time during
+which He remained upon the cross, the immediate delivery of the body
+to friends, and, above all, the subsequent reappearance alive, are
+ample grounds for arriving at such a conclusion.  They add further
+that it would seem a monstrous supposition to believe that a good and
+merciful God should have designed to redeem the world by the
+infliction of such awful misery upon His own Son, and yet determined
+to condemn every one who did not believe in this design, in spite of
+such a deficiency of evidence that disbelief would appear to be a
+moral obligation.  No good God, they say, would have left a matter of
+such unutterable importance in a state of such miserable uncertainty,
+when the addition of a very small amount of testimony would have been
+sufficient to establish it.
+
+In the two following chapters I shall show the futility and
+irrelevancy of the above reasoning--if, indeed, that can be called
+reasoning which is from first to last essentially unreasonable.
+Plausible as, in parts, it may have appeared, I have little doubt
+that the reader will have already detected the greater number of the
+fallacies which underlie it.  But before I can allow myself to enter
+upon the welcome task of refutation, a few more words from our
+opponents will yet be necessary.  However strongly I disapprove of
+their views, I trust they will admit that I have throughout expressed
+them as one who thoroughly understands them.  I am convinced that the
+course I have taken is the only one which can lead to their being
+brought into the way of truth, and I mean to persevere in it until I
+have explained the views which they take concerning our Lord's
+Ascension, with no less clearness than I shewed forth their opinions
+concerning the Resurrection.
+
+"In St. Matthew's Gospel," they will say, "we find no trace whatever
+of any story concerning the Ascension.  The writer had either never
+heard anything about the matter at all, or did not consider it of
+sufficient importance to deserve notice.
+
+"Dean Alford, indeed, maintains otherwise.  In his notes on the
+words, 'And lo!  I am with you always unto the end of the world,' he
+says, 'These words imply and set forth the Ascension'; it is true
+that he adds, 'the manner of which is not related by the Evangelist':
+but how do the words quoted, 'imply and set forth' the Ascension?
+They imply a belief that Christ's spirit would be present with his
+disciples to the end of time; but how do they set forth the fact that
+his body was seen by a number of people to rise into the air and
+actually to mount up far into the region of the clouds?
+
+"The fact is simply this--and nobody can know it better than Dean
+Alford--that Matthew tells us nothing about the Ascension.
+
+"The last verses of Mark's Gospel are admitted by Dean Alford himself
+to be not genuine, but even in these the subject is dismissed in a
+single verse, and although it is stated that Christ was received into
+Heaven, there is not a single word to imply that any one was supposed
+to have seen him actually on his way thither.
+
+"The author of the fourth Gospel is also silent concerning the
+Ascension.  There is not a word, nor hint, nor faintest trace of any
+knowledge of the fact, unless an allusion be detected in the words,
+'What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where he was
+before?' (John vi., 62) in reference to which passage Dean Alford, in
+his note on Luke xxiv., 52, writes as follows:- 'And might not we
+have concluded from the wording of John vi., 62, that our Lord must
+have intended an ascension INSIGHT OF SOME OF THOSE TO WHOM HE SPOKE,
+and that the Evangelist GIVES THAT HINT, BY RECORDING THOSE WORDS
+WITHOUT COMMENT, THAT HE HAD SEEN IT?'  That is to say, we are to
+conclude that the writer of the fourth Gospel actually SAW the
+Ascension, because he tells us that Christ uttered the words, 'What
+and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascending where he was before?'
+
+"But who WAS the author of the fourth Gospel?  And what reason is
+there for thinking that that work is genuine?  Let us make another
+extract from Dean Alford.  In his prolegomena, chapter v., section 6,
+on the genuineness of the fourth Gospel, he writes:- 'Neither Papias,
+who carefully sought out all that Apostles and Apostolic men had
+related regarding the life of Christ; nor Polycarp, who was himself a
+disciple of the Apostle John; nor Barnabas, nor Clement of Rome, in
+their epistles; nor, lastly, Ignatius (in his genuine writings),
+makes any mention of, or allusion to, this gospel.  SO THAT IN THE
+MOST ANCIENT CIRCLE OF ECCLESIASTICAL TESTIMONY, IT APPEARS TO BE
+UNKNOWN. OR NOT RECOGNISED.'  We may add that there is no trace of
+its existence before the latter half of the second century, and that
+the internal evidence against its genuineness appears to be more and
+more conclusive the more it is examined.
+
+"St. Paul, when enumerating the last appearances of his master, in a
+passage where the absence of any allusion to the Ascension is almost
+conclusive as to his never having heard a word about it, is also
+silent.  In no part of his genuine writings does he give any sign of
+his having been aware that any story was in existence as to the
+manner in which Christ was received into Heaven.
+
+"Where, then, does the story come from, if neither Matthew, Mark,
+John, nor Paul appear to have heard of it?
+
+"It comes from a single verse in St. Luke's Gospel--written more than
+half a century after the supposed event, when few, or more probably
+none, of those who were supposed to have seen it were either living
+or within reach to contradict it.  Luke writes (xxiv., 51), 'And it
+came to pass that while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and
+carried up into Heaven.'  This is the only account of the Ascension
+given in any part of the Gospels which can be considered genuine.  It
+gives Bethany as the place of the miracle, whereas, if Dean Alford is
+right in saying that the words of Matthew 'set forth' the Ascension,
+they set it forth as having taken place on a mountain in Galilee.
+But here, as elsewhere, all is haze and contradiction.  Perhaps some
+Christian writers will maintain that it happened both at Bethany and
+in Galilee.
+
+"In his subsequent work, written some sixty or seventy years after
+the Ascension, St. Luke gives us that more detailed account which is
+commonly present to the imagination of all men (thanks to the Italian
+painters), when the Ascension is alluded to.  The details, it would
+seem, came to his knowledge after he had written his Gospel, and many
+a long year after Matthew and Mark and Paul had written.  How he came
+by the additional details we do not know.  Nobody seems to care to
+know.  He must have had them revealed to him, or been told them by
+some one, and that some one, whoever he was, doubtless knew what he
+was saying, and all Europe at one time believed the story, and this
+is sufficient proof that mistake was impossible.
+
+"It is indisputable that from the very earliest ages of the Church
+there existed a belief that Christ was at the right hand of God; but
+no one who professes to have seen him on his way thither has left a
+single word of record.  It is easy to believe that the facts may have
+been revealed in a night vision, or communicated in one or other of
+the many ways in which extraordinary circumstances ARE communicated,
+during the years of oral communication and enthusiasm which elapsed
+between the supposed Ascension of Christ and the writing of Luke's
+second work.  It is not surprising that a firm belief in Christ's
+having survived death should have arisen in consequence of the actual
+circumstances connected with the Crucifixion and entombment.  Was it
+then strange that this should develop itself into the belief that he
+was now in Heaven, sitting at the right hand of God the Father?  And
+finally was it strange that a circumstantial account of the manner in
+which he left this earth should be eagerly accepted?"
+
+[In an appendix at the end of the book I have given the extracts from
+the Gospels which are necessary for a full comprehension of the
+preceding chapters.--W. B. O.]
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--THE CHRIST-IDEAL
+
+
+
+I have completed a task painful to myself and the reader.  Painful to
+myself inasmuch as I am humiliated upon remembering the power which
+arguments, so shallow and so easily to be refuted, once had upon me;
+painful to the reader, as everything must be painful which even
+appears to throw doubt upon the most sublime event that has happened
+in human history.  How little does all that has been written above
+touch the real question at issue, yet, what self-discipline and
+mental training is required before we learn to distinguish the
+essential from the unessential.
+
+Before, however, we come to close quarters with our opponents
+concerning the views put forward in the preceding chapters, it will
+be well to consider two questions of the gravest and most interesting
+character, questions which will probably have already occurred to the
+reader with such force as to demand immediate answer.  They are
+these.
+
+Firstly, what will be the consequences of admitting any considerable
+deviation from historical accuracy on the part of the sacred writers?
+
+Secondly, how can it be conceivable that God should have permitted
+inaccuracy or obscurity in the evidence concerning the Divine
+commission of His Son?
+
+If God so loved the World that He sent His only begotten Son into it
+to rescue those who believed in Him from destruction, how is it
+credible that He should not have so arranged matters as that all
+should find it easy to believe?  If He wanted to save mankind and
+knew that the only way in which mankind could be saved was by
+believing certain facts, how can it be that the records of the facts
+should have been allowed to fall into confusion?
+
+To both these questions I trust that the following answers may appear
+conclusive.
+
+I.  As regards the consequences which may be supposed to follow upon
+giving up any part of the sacred writings, no matter how seemingly
+unimportant, it is undoubtedly true that to many minds they have
+appeared too dangerous to be even contemplated.  Thus through fear of
+some supposed unutterable consequences which would happen to the
+cause of truth if truth were spoken, people profess to believe in the
+genuineness of many passages in the Bible which are universally
+acknowledged by competent judges of every shade of theological
+opinion to be interpolations into the original text.  To say nothing
+of the Old Testament, where many whole books are of disputed
+genuineness or authenticity, there are portions of the New which none
+will seriously defend;--for example, the last verses of St. Mark's
+Gospel,--containing, as they do, the sentence of damnation against
+all who do not believe--the second half of the third, and the whole
+of the fourth verse of the fifth chapter of St. John's Gospel, the
+story of the woman taken in adultery, and probably the whole of the
+last chapter of St. John's Gospel, not to mention the Epistle to the
+Hebrews, the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and to the Ephesians, the
+Epistles of Peter and James, the famous verses as to the three
+witnesses in the First Epistle of St. John, and perhaps also the book
+of Revelation.  These are passages and works about which there is
+either no doubt at all as to their not being genuine, or over which
+there hangs so much uncertainty that no dependence can be placed upon
+them.
+
+But over and above these, there are not a few parts of each of the
+Gospels which, though of undisputed genuineness, cannot be accepted
+as historical; thus the account of the Resurrection given by St.
+Matthew, and parts of those by Luke and Mark, the cursing of the
+barren fig-tree, and the prophecies of His Resurrection ascribed to
+our Lord Himself, will not stand the tests of criticism which we are
+bound to apply to them if we are to exercise the right of private
+judgement; instead of handing ourselves over to a priesthood as the
+sole custodians and interpreters of the Bible.  It has been said by
+some that the miracle of the penny found in the fish's mouth should
+be included in the above category, but it should be remembered that
+we have only the injunction of our Lord to St. Peter that he should
+catch the fish and the promise that he should find the penny in its
+mouth, but that we have no account of the sequel, it is therefore
+possible that in the event of St. Peter's faith having failed him he
+may have procured the money from some other source, and that thus the
+miracle, though undoubtedly intended, was never actually performed.
+How unnecessary therefore as well as presumptuous are the
+Rationalistic interpretations which have been put upon the event by
+certain German writers!
+
+Now there are few, if any, who would be so illiberal as to wish for
+the exclusion from the sacred volume of all those books or passages
+which, though neither genuine nor perhaps edifying, have remained in
+the Canon of Scripture for many centuries.  Any serious attempt to
+reconstruct the Canon would raise a theological storm which would not
+subside in this century.  The work could never be done perfectly, and
+even if it could, it would have to be done at the expense of tearing
+all Christendom in pieces.  The passages do little or no harm where
+they are, and have received the sanction of time; let them therefore
+by all means remain in their present position.  But the question is
+still forced upon us whether the consequences of openly admitting the
+certain spuriousness of many passages, and the questionable nature of
+others as regards morality, genuineness and authenticity, should be
+feared as being likely to prejudice the main doctrines of
+Christianity.
+
+The answer is very plain.  He who has vouchsafed to us the Christian
+dispensation may be safely trusted to provide that no harm shall
+happen, either to it or to us, from an honest endeavour to attain the
+truth concerning it.  What have we to do with consequences?  These
+are in the hands of God.  Our duty is to seek out the truth in prayer
+and humility, and when we believe that we have found it, to cleave to
+it through evil and good report; TO FAIL IN THIS IS TO FAIL IN FAITH;
+to fail in faith is to be an infidel.  Those who suppose that it is
+wiser to gloss over this or that, and who consider it "injudicious"
+to announce the whole truth in connection with Christianity, should
+have learnt by this time that no admission which can by any
+possibility be required of them can be so perilous to the cause of
+Christ as the appearance of shirking investigation.  It has already
+been insisted upon that cowardice is at the root of the infidelity
+which we see around us; the want of faith in the power of truth which
+exists in certain pious but timid hearts has begotten utter unbelief
+in the minds of all superficial investigators into Christian
+evidences.  Such persons see that the defenders have something in the
+background, something which they would cling to although they are
+secretly aware that they cannot justly claim it.  This is enough for
+many, and hence more harm is done by fear than could ever have been
+done by boldness.  Boldness goes out into the fight, and if in the
+wrong gets slain, childless.  Fear stays at home and is prolific of a
+brood of falsehoods.
+
+It is immoral to regard consequences at all, where truth and justice
+are concerned; the being impregnated with this conviction to the
+inmost core of one's heart is an axiom of common honesty--one of the
+essential features which distinguish a good man from a bad one.
+Nevertheless, to make it plain that the consequences of outspoken
+truthfulness in connection with the scriptural writings would have no
+harmful effect whatever, but would, on the contrary, be of the utmost
+service as removing a stumbling-block from the way of many--let us
+for the moment suppose that very much more would have to be given up
+than can ever be demanded.
+
+Suppose we were driven to admit that nothing in the life of our Lord
+can be certainly depended upon beyond the facts that He was begotten
+by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary; that He worked many miracles
+upon earth, and delivered St. Matthew's version of the sermon on the
+mount and most of the parables as we now have them; finally, that He
+was crucified, dead, and buried, that He rose again from the dead
+upon the third day, and ascended unto Heaven.  Granting for the sake
+of argument that we could rely on no other facts, what would follow?
+Nothing which could in any way impair the living power of
+Christianity.
+
+The essentials of Christianity, i.e., a belief in the Divinity of the
+Saviour and in His Resurrection and Ascension, have stood, and will
+stand, for ever against any attacks that can be made upon them, and
+these are probably the only facts in which belief has ever been
+absolutely necessary for salvation; the answer, therefore, to the
+question what ill consequences would arise from the open avowal of
+things which every student must know to be the fact concerning the
+biblical writings is that there would be none at all.  The Christ-
+ideal which, after all, is the soul and spirit of Christianity would
+remain precisely where it was, while its recognition would be far
+more general, owing to the departure on the part of its apologists
+from certain lines of defence which are irreconcilable with the ideal
+itself.
+
+II.  Returning to the objection how it could be possible that God
+should have left the records of our Lord's history in such a vague
+and fragmentary condition, if it were really of such intense
+importance for the world to understand it and believe in it, we find
+ourselves face to face with a question of far greater importance and
+difficulty.
+
+The old theory that God desired to test our faith, and that there
+would be no merit in believing if the evidence were such as to
+commend itself at once to our understanding, is one which need only
+be stated to be set aside.  It is blasphemy against the goodness of
+God to suppose that He has thus laid as it were an ambuscade for man,
+and will only let him escape on condition of his consenting to
+violate one of the very most precious of God's own gifts.  There is
+an ingenious cruelty about such conduct which it is revolting even to
+imagine.  Indeed, the whole theory reduces our Heavenly Father to a
+level of wisdom and goodness far below our own; and this is
+sufficient answer to it.
+
+But when, turning aside from the above, we try to adopt some other
+and more reasonable view, we naturally set ourselves to consider why
+the Almighty should have required belief in the Divinity of His Son
+from man.  What is there in this belief on man's part which can be so
+grateful to God that He should make it a sine qua non for man's
+salvation?  As regards Himself, how can it matter to Him what man
+should think of Him?  Nay, it must be for man's own good that the
+belief is demanded.
+
+And why?  Surely we can see plainly that it is the beauty of the
+Christ-ideal which constitutes the working power of Christianity over
+the hearts and lives of men, leading them to that highest of all
+worships which consists in imitation.  Now the sanction which is
+given to this ideal by belief in the Divinity of our Lord, raises it
+at once above all possibility of criticism.  If it had not been so
+sanctioned it might have been considered open to improvement; one
+critic would have had this, and another that; comparison would have
+been made with ideals of purely human origin such as the Greek ideal,
+exemplified in the work of Phidias, and in later times with the
+mediaeval Italian ideal, as deducible from the best fifteenth and
+early sixteenth Italian painting and sculpture, the Madonnas of
+Bellini and Raphael, or the St. George of Donatello; or again with
+the ideal derivable from the works of our own Shakespeare, and there
+are some even now among those who deny the Divinity of Christ who
+will profess that each one of these ideals is more universal, more
+fitted for the spiritual food of a man, and indeed actually higher,
+than that presented by the life and death of our Saviour.  But once
+let the Divine origin of this last ideal be admitted, and there can
+be no further uncertainty; hence the absolute necessity for belief in
+Christ's Divinity as closing the most important of all questions,
+Whereunto should a man endeavour to liken both himself and his
+children?
+
+Seeing then that we have reasonable ground for thinking that belief
+in the Divinity of our Lord is mainly required of us in order to
+exalt our sense of the paramount importance of following and obeying
+the life and commands of Christ, it is natural also to suppose THAT
+WHATEVER MAY HAVE HAPPENED TO THE RECORDS OF THAT LIFE should have
+been ordained with a view to the enhancing of the preciousness of the
+ideal.
+
+Now, the fragmentary character, and the partial obscurity--I might
+have almost written, the incomparable chiaroscuro--of the
+Evangelistic writings have added to the value of our Lord's character
+as an ideal, not only in the case of Christians, but as bringing the
+Christ-ideal within the reach and comprehension of an infinitely
+greater number of minds than it could ever otherwise have appealed
+to.  It is true that those who are insensible to spiritual
+influences, and whose materialistic instinct leads them to deny
+everything which is not as clearly demonstrable by external evidence
+as a fact in chemistry, geography, or mathematics, will fail to find
+the hardness, definition, tightness, and, let me add, littleness of
+outline, in which their souls delight; they will find rather the
+gloom and gleam of Rembrandt, or the golden twilight of the
+Venetians, the losing and the finding, and the infinite liberty of
+shadow; and this they hate, inasmuch as it taxes their imagination,
+which is no less deficient than their power of sympathy; they would
+have all found, as in one of those laboured pictures wherein each
+form is as an inflated bladder and, has its own uncompromising
+outline remorselessly insisted upon.
+
+Looking to the ideals of purely human creation which have come down
+to us from old times, do we find that the Theseus suffers because we
+are unable to realise to ourselves the precise features of the
+original?  Or again do the works of John Bellini suffer because the
+hand of the painter was less dexterous than his intention pure?  It
+is not what a man has actually put upon his canvas, but what he makes
+us feel that he felt, which makes the difference between good and bad
+in painting.  Bellini's hand was cunning enough to make us feel what
+he intended, and did his utmost to realise; but he has not realised
+it, and the same hallowing effect which has been wrought upon the
+Theseus by decay (to the enlarging of its spiritual influence), has
+been wrought upon the work of Bellini by incapacity--the incapacity
+of the painter to utter perfectly the perfect thought which was
+within.  The early Italian paintings have that stamp of individuality
+upon them which assures us that they are not only portraits, but as
+faithful portraits as the painter could make them, more than this we
+know not, but more is unnecessary.
+
+Do we not detect an analogy to this in the records of the
+Evangelists?  Do we not see the child-like unself-seeking work of
+earnest and loving hearts, whose innocence and simplicity more than
+atone for their many shortcomings, their distorted renderings, and
+their omissions?  We can see THROUGH these things as through a glass
+darkly, or as one looking upon some ineffable masterpiece of Venetian
+portraiture by the fading light of an autumnal evening, when the
+beauty of the picture is enhanced a hundredfold by the gloom and
+mystery of dusk.  We may indeed see less of the actual lineaments
+themselves, but the echo is ever more spiritually tuneful than the
+sound, and the echo we find within us.  Our imagination is in closer
+communion with our longings than the hand of any painter.
+
+Those who relish definition, and definition only, are indeed kept
+away from Christianity by the present condition of the records, but
+even if the life of our Lord had been so definitely rendered as to
+find a place in their system, would it have greatly served their
+souls?  And would it not repel hundreds and thousands of others, who
+find in the suggestiveness of the sketch a completeness of
+satisfaction, which no photographic reproduction could have given?
+The above may be difficult to understand, but let me earnestly
+implore the reader to endeavour to master its import.
+
+People misunderstand the aim and scope of religion.  Religion is only
+intended to guide men in those matters upon which science is silent.
+God illumines us by science as with a mechanical draughtsman's plan;
+He illumines us in the Gospels as by the drawing of a great artist.
+We cannot build a "Great Eastern" from the drawings of the artist,
+but what poetical feeling, what true spiritual emotion was ever
+kindled by a mechanical drawing?  How cold and dead were science
+unless supplemented by art and by religion!  Not joined with them,
+for the merest touch of these things impairs scientific value--which
+depends essentially upon accuracy, and not upon any feeling for the
+beautiful and lovable.  In like manner the merest touch of science
+chills the warmth of sentiment--the spiritual life.  The mechanical
+drawing is spoiled by being made artistic, and the work of the artist
+by becoming mechanical.  The aim of the one is to teach men how to
+construct, of the other how to feel.
+
+For the due conservation therefore of both the essential requisites
+of human well-being--science, and religion--it is requisite that they
+be kept asunder and reserved for separate use at different times.
+Religion is the mistress of the arts, and every art which does not
+serve religion truly is doomed to perish as a lying and unprofitable
+servant.  Science is external to religion, being a separate
+dispensation, a distinct revelation to mankind, whereby we are put
+into full present possession of more and more of God's modes of
+dealing with material things, according as we become more fitted to
+receive them through the apprehension of those modes which have been
+already laid open to us.
+
+We ought not therefore to have expected scientific accuracy from the
+Gospel records--much less should we be required to believe that such
+accuracy exists.  Does any great artist ever dream of aiming directly
+at imitation?  He aims at representation--not at imitation.  In order
+to attain true mastery here, he must spend years in learning how to
+see; and then no less time in learning how NOT to see.  Finally, he
+learns how to translate.  Take Turner for example.  Who conveys so
+living an impression of the face of nature?  Yet go up to his canvas
+and what does one find thereon?  Imitation?  Nay--blotches and daubs
+of paint; the combination of these daubs, each one in itself when
+taken alone absolutely untrue, forms an impression which is quite
+truthful.  No combination of minute truths in a picture will give so
+faithful a representation of nature as a wisely arranged tissue of
+untruths.
+
+Absolute reproduction is impossible even to the photograph.  The work
+of a great artist is far more truthful than any photograph; but not
+even the greatest artist can convey to our minds the whole truth of
+nature; no human hand nor pigments can expound all that lies hidden
+in "Nature's infinite book of secrecy"; the utmost that can be done
+is to convey an impression, and if the impression is to be conveyed
+truthfully, the means must often be of the most unforeseen character.
+The old Pre-Raphaelites aimed at absolute reproduction.  They were
+succeeded by a race of men who saw all that their predecessors had
+seen, but also something higher.  The Van Eycks and Memling paved the
+way for painters who found their highest representatives in Rubens,
+Vandyke, and Rembrandt--the mightiest of them all.  Giovanni Bellini,
+Carpaccio and Mantegna were succeeded by Titian, Giorgione, and
+Tintoretto; Perugino was succeeded by Raphael.  It is everywhere the
+same story; a reverend but child-like worship of the letter, followed
+by a manful apprehension of the spirit, and, alas! in due time by an
+almost total disregard of the letter; then rant and cant and bombast,
+till the value of the letter is reasserted.  In theology the early
+men are represented by the Evangelicals, the times of utter decadence
+by infidelity--the middle race of giants is yet to come, and will be
+found in those who, while seeing something far beyond either minute
+accuracy or minute inaccuracy, are yet fully alive both to the letter
+and to the spirit of the Gospels.
+
+Again, do not the seeming wrongs which the greatest ideals of purely
+human origin have suffered at the hands of time, add to their value
+instead of detracting from it?  Is it not probable that if we were to
+see the glorious fragments from the Parthenon, the Theseus and the
+Ilyssus, or even the Venus of Milo, in their original and unmutilated
+condition, we should find that they appealed to us much less forcibly
+than they do at present?  All ideals gain by vagueness and lose by
+definition, inasmuch as more scope is left for the imagination of the
+beholder, who can thus fill in the missing detail according to his
+own spiritual needs.  This is how it comes that nothing which is
+recent, whether animate or inanimate, can serve as an ideal unless it
+is adorned by more than common mystery and uncertainty.  A new
+Cathedral is necessarily very ugly.  There is too much found and too
+little lost.  Much less could an absolutely perfect Being be of the
+highest value as an ideal, as long as He could be clearly seen, for
+it is impossible that He could be known as perfect by imperfect men,
+and His very perfections must perforce appear as blemishes to any but
+perfect critics.  To give therefore an impression of perfection, to
+create an absolutely unsurpassable ideal, it became essential that
+the actual image of the original should become blurred and lost,
+whereon the beholder now supplies from his own imagination that which
+is TO HIM more perfect than the original, though objectively it must
+be infinitely less so.
+
+It is probably to this cause that the incredulity of the Apostles
+during our Lord's life-time must be assigned.  The ideal was too near
+them, and too far above their comprehension; for it must be always
+remembered that the convincing power of miracles in the days of the
+Apostles must have been greatly weakened by the current belief in
+their being events of no very unusual occurrence, and in the
+existence both of good and evil spirits who could take possession of
+men and compel them to do their bidding.  A resurrection from the
+dead or a restoration of sight to the blind, must have seemed even
+less portentous to them, than an unusually skilful treatment of
+disease by a physician is to us.  We can therefore understand how it
+happened that the faith of the Apostles was so little to be depended
+upon even up to the Crucifixion, inasmuch as the convincing power of
+miracles had been already, so to speak, exhausted, a fact which may
+perhaps explain the early withdrawal of the power to work them; we
+cannot indeed believe that it could have been so far weakened as to
+make the Apostles disregard the prophecies of their Master that He
+should rise from the dead, if He had ever uttered them, and we have
+already seen reason to think that these prophecies are the ex post
+facto handiwork of time; but the incredulity of the disciples, when
+seen through the light now thrown upon it, loses that wholly
+inexplicable character which it would otherwise bear.
+
+But to return to the subject of the ideal presented by the life and
+death of our Lord.  In the earliest days of the Church there can have
+been no want of the most complete and irrefragable evidence for the
+objective reality of the miracles, and especially of the Resurrection
+and Ascension.  The character of Christ would also stand out revealed
+to all, with the most copious fulness of detail.  The limits within
+which so sharply defined an ideal could be acceptable were narrow,
+but as the radius of Christian influence increased, so also would the
+vagueness and elasticity of the ideal; and as the elasticity of the
+ideal, so also the range of its influence.
+
+A beneficent and truly marvellous provision for the greater
+complexity of man's spiritual needs was thus provided by a gradual
+loss of detail and gain of breadth.  Enough evidence was given in the
+first instance to secure authoritative sanction for the ideal.
+During the first thirty or forty years after the death of our Lord no
+one could be in want of evidence, and the guilt of unbelief is
+therefore brought prominently forward.  Then came the loss of detail
+which was necessary in order to secure the universal acceptability of
+the ideal; but the same causes which blurred the distinctness of the
+features, involved the inevitable blurring of no small portions of
+the external evidences whereby the Divine origin of the ideal was
+established.  The primary external evidence became less and less
+capable of compelling instantaneous assent, according as it was less
+wanted, owing to the greater mass of secondary evidence, and to the
+growth of appreciation of the internal evidences, a growth which
+would be fostered by the growing adaptability of the ideal.
+
+Some thirty or forty years, then, from the death of our Saviour the
+case would stand thus.  The Christ-ideal would have become infinitely
+more vague, and hence infinitely more universal:  but the causes
+which had thus added to its value would also have destroyed whatever
+primary evidence was superabundant, and the vagueness which had
+overspread the ideal would have extended itself in some measure over
+the evidences which had established its Divine origin.
+
+But there would of course be limits to the gain caused by decay.
+Time came when there would be danger of too much vagueness in the
+ideal, and too little distinctness in the evidences.  It became
+necessary therefore to provide against this danger.
+
+PRECISELY AT THAT EPOCH THE GOSPELS MADE THEIR APPEARANCE.  Not
+simultaneously, not in concert, and not in perfect harmony with each
+other, yet with the error distributed skilfully among them, as in a
+well-tuned instrument wherein each string is purposely something out
+of tune with every other.  Their divergence of aim, and different
+authorship, secured the necessary breadth of effect when the accounts
+were viewed together; their universal recognition afforded the
+necessary permanency, and arrested further decay.  If I may be
+pardoned for using another illustration, I would say that as the
+roundness of the stereoscopic image can only be attained by the
+combination of two distinct pictures, neither of them in perfect
+harmony with the other, so the highest possible conception of Christ,
+cannot otherwise be produced than through the discrepancies of the
+Gospels.
+
+From the moment of the appearing of the Gospels, and, I should add,
+of the Epistles of St. Paul, the external evidences of Christianity
+became secured from further change; as they were then, so are they
+now, they can neither be added to nor subtracted from; they have lain
+as it were sleeping, till the time should come to awaken them.  And
+the time is surely now, for there has arisen a very numerous and
+increasing class of persons, whose habits of mind unfit them for
+appreciating the value of vagueness, but who have each one of them a
+soul which may be lost or saved, and on whose behalf the evidences
+for the authority whereby the Christ-ideal is sanctioned, should be
+restored to something like their former sharpness.  Christianity
+contains provision for all needs upon their arising.  The work of
+restoration is easy.  It demands this much only--the recognition that
+time has made incrustations upon some parts of the evidences, and
+that it has destroyed others; when this is admitted, it becomes easy,
+after a little practice, to detect the parts that have been added,
+and to remove them, the parts that are wanting, and to supply them.
+Only let this be done outside the pages of the Bible itself, and not
+to the disturbance of their present form and arrangement.
+
+The above explanation of the causes for the obscurity which rests
+upon much of our Lord's life and teaching, may give us ground for
+hoping that some of those who have failed to feel the force of the
+external evidences hitherto, may yet be saved, provided they have
+fully recognised the Christ-ideal and endeavoured to imitate it,
+although irrespectively of any belief in its historical character.
+
+It is reasonable to suppose that the duty of belief was so
+imperatively insisted upon, in order that the ideal might thus be
+exalted above controversy, and made more sacred in the eyes of men
+than it could have been if referable to a purely human source.  May
+not, then, one who recognises the ideal as his summum bonum find
+grace although he knows not, or even cares not, how it should have
+come to be so?  For even a sceptic who regarded the whole New
+Testament as a work of art, a poem, a pure fiction from beginning to
+end, and who revered it for its intrinsic beauty only, as though it
+were a picture or statue, even such a person might well find that it
+engendered in him an ideal of goodness and power and love and human
+sympathy, which could be derived from no other source.  If, then, our
+blessed Lord so causes the sun of His righteousness to shine upon
+these men, shall we presume to say that He will not in another world
+restore them to that full communion with Himself which can only come
+from a belief in His Divinity?
+
+We can understand that it should have been impossible to proclaim
+this in the earliest ages of the Church, inasmuch as no weakening of
+the sanctions of the ideal could be tolerated, but are we bound to
+extend the operation of the many passages condemnatory of unbelief to
+a time so remote as our own, and to circumstances so widely different
+from those under which they were uttered?  Do we so extend the
+command not to eat things strangled or blood, or the assertion of St.
+Paul that the unmarried state is higher than the married?  May we not
+therefore hope that certain kinds of unbelief have become less
+hateful in the sight of God inasmuch as they are less dangerous to
+the universal acceptance of our Lord as the one model for the
+imitation of all men?  For, after all, it is not belief in the facts
+which constitutes the essence of Christianity, but rather the being
+so impregnated with love at the contemplation of Christ that
+imitation becomes almost instinctive; this it is which draws the
+hearts of men to God the Father, far more than any intellectual
+belief that God sent our Lord into the world, ordaining that he
+should be crucified and rise from the dead.  Christianity is
+addressed rather to the infinite spirit of man than to his finite
+intelligence, and the believing in Christ through love is more
+precious in the sight of God than any loving through belief.  May we
+not hope, then, that those whose love is great may in the end find
+acceptance, though their belief is small?  We dare not answer this
+positively; but we know that there are times of transition in the
+clearness of the Christian evidences as in all else, and the
+treatment of those whose lot is cast in such times will surely not
+escape the consideration of our Heavenly Father.
+
+But with reference to the many-sidedness of the Christ-ideal, as
+having been part of the design of God, and not attainable otherwise
+than as the creation of destruction--as coming out of the waste of
+time--it is clear that the perception of such a design could only be
+an offspring of modern thought; the conception of such an apparently
+self-frustrating scheme could only arise in minds which were familiar
+with the manner in which it is necessary "to hound nature in her
+wanderings" before her feints can be eluded, and her prevarications
+brought to book.  A deep distrust of the over-obvious is wanted,
+before men can be brought to turn aside from objections which at the
+first blush appear to be very serious, and to take refuge in
+solutions which seem harder than the problems which they are intended
+to solve.  What a shock must the discovery of the rotation of the
+earth have given to the moral sense of the age in which it was made.
+How it contradicted all human experience.  How it must have outraged
+common sense.  How it must have encouraged scepticism even about the
+most obvious truths of morality.  No question could henceforth be
+considered settled; everything seemed to require reopening; for if
+man had once been deceived by Nature so entirely, if he had been so
+utterly led astray and deluded by the plausibility of her pretence
+that the earth was immovably fixed, what else, that seemed no less
+incontrovertible, might not prove no less false?
+
+It is probable that the opposition to Galileo on the part of the
+Roman church was as much due to some such feelings as these, as to
+theological objections; the discovery was felt to unsettle not only
+the foundations of the earth, but those of every branch of human
+knowledge and polity, and hence to be an outrage upon morality
+itself.  A man has no right to be very much in advance of other
+people; he is as a sheep, which may lead the mob, but must not stray
+forward a quarter of a mile in front of it; if he does this, he must
+be rounded up again, no matter how right may have been his direction.
+He has no right to be right, unless he can get a certain following to
+keep him company; the shock to morality and the encouragement to
+lawlessness do more harm than his discovery can atone for.  Let him
+hold himself back till he can get one or two more to come with him.
+In like manner, had reflections as to the advantage gained by the
+Christ ideal in consequence of the inaccuracies and inconsistencies
+of the Gospels--reflections which must now occur to any one--been put
+forward a hundred years ago, they would have met justly with the
+severest condemnation.  But now, even those to whom they may not have
+occurred already will have little difficulty in admitting their
+force.
+
+But be this as it may, it is certain that the inability to understand
+how the sense of Christ in the souls of men could be strengthened by
+the loss of much knowledge of His character, and of the facts
+connected with His history, lies at the root of the error even of the
+Apostle St. Paul, who exclaims with his usual fervour, but with less
+than his usual wisdom, "Has Christ been divided?" (I. Cor. i., 13).
+"Yea," we may make answer, "He is divided and is yet divisible that
+all may share in Him."  St. Paul himself had realised that it was the
+spiritual value of the Christ-ideal which was the purifier and
+refresher of our souls, inasmuch as he elsewhere declares that even
+though he had known Christ Himself after the flesh, he knew Him no
+more; the spiritual Christ, that is to say the spirit of Christ as
+recognisable by the spirits of men, was to him all in all.  But he
+lived too near the days of our Lord for a full comprehension of the
+Christian scheme, and it is possible that had he known Christ after
+the flesh, his soul might have been less capable of recognising the
+spiritual essence, rather than more so.  Have we here a faint
+glimmering of the motive of the Almighty in not having allowed the
+Gentile Apostle to see Christ after the flesh?  We cannot say.  But
+we may say this much with certainty, that had he been living now, St.
+Paul would have rejoiced at the many-sidedness of Christ, which he
+appears to have hardly recognised in his own life-time.
+
+The apparently contradictory portraits of our Lord which we find in
+the Gospels--so long a stumbling-block to unbelievers--are now seen
+to be the very means which enable men of all ranks, and all shades of
+opinion, to accept Christ as their ideal; they are like the sea,
+which from having seemed the most impassable of all objects, turns
+out to be the greatest highway of communication.  To the artisan, for
+instance, who may have long been out of work, or who may have
+suffered from the greed and selfishness of his employers, or again,
+to the farm labourer who has been discharged perhaps at the approach
+of winter, the parable of "the Labourers in the Vineyard" offers
+itself as a divinely sanctioned picture of the dealings of God with
+man; few but those who have mixed much with the less educated
+classes, can have any idea of the priceless comfort which this
+parable affords daily to those whose lot it has been to remain
+unemployed when their more fortunate brethren have been in full work.
+How many of the poor, again, are drawn to Christianity by the parable
+of Dives and Lazarus.  How many a humble-minded Christian while
+reflecting upon the hardness of his lot, and tempted to cast a
+longing eye upon the luxuries which are at the command of his richer
+neighbours, is restrained from seriously coveting them, by
+remembering the awful fate of Dives, and the happy future which was
+in store for Lazarus.  "Dives," they exclaim, "in his life-time
+possessed good things and in like manner Lazarus evil things, but now
+the one is comforted in the bosom of Abraham, and the other tormented
+in a lake of fire."  They remember, also, that it is easier for a
+camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter
+into the kingdom of Heaven.
+
+It has been said by some that the poor are thus encouraged to gloat
+over the future misery of the rich, and that many of the sayings
+ascribed to our Lord have an unhealthy influence over their minds.  I
+remember to have thought so once myself, but I have seen reason to
+change my mind.  Hope is given by these sayings to many whose lives
+would be otherwise very nearly hopeless, and though I fully grant
+that the parable of Dives and Lazarus can only afford comfort to the
+very poor, yet it is most certain that it DOES afford comfort to this
+numerous class, and helps to keep them contented with many things
+which they would not otherwise endure.
+
+On the other hand, though the poor are first provided for, the rich
+are not left without their full share of consolation.  Joseph of
+Arimathaea was rich, and modern criticism forbids us to believe that
+the parable of Dives and Lazarus was ever actually spoken by our
+Lord--at any rate not in its present form.  Neither are the children
+of the rich forgotten; the son who repents at length of a course of
+extravagant or riotous living is encouraged to return to virtue, and
+to seek reconciliation with his father, by reflecting upon the
+parable of the Prodigal Son, wherein he will find an everlasting
+model for the conduct of all earthly fathers.  I will say nothing of
+the parable of the Unjust Steward, for it is one of which the
+interpretation is most uncertain; nevertheless I am sure that it
+affords comfort to a very large number of persons.
+
+Christ came not to the whole, but to those that were sick; he came
+not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.  Even our fallen
+sisters are remembered in the story of the woman taken in adultery,
+which reminds them that they can only be condemned justly by those
+who are without sin.  It is to the poor, the weak, the ignorant and
+the infirm that Christianity appeals most strongly, and to whose
+needs it is most especially adapted--but these form by far the
+greater portion of mankind.  "Blessed are they that mourn!"  Whose
+sorrow is not assuaged by the mere sound of these words?  Who again
+is not reassured by being reminded that our Heavenly Father feeds the
+sparrows and clothes the lilies of the field, and that if we will
+only seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness we need take no
+heed for the morrow what we shall eat, and what we shall drink, nor
+wherewithal we shall be clothed.  God will provide these things for
+us if we are true Christians, whether we take heed concerning them or
+not.  "I have been young and now am old," saith the Psalmist, "yet
+never saw I the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging their bread."
+
+How infinitely nobler and more soul-satisfying is the ideal of the
+Christian saint with wasted limbs, and clothed in the garb of
+poverty--his upturned eyes piercing the very heavens in the ecstasy
+of a divine despair--than any of the fleshly ideals of gross human
+conception such as have already been alluded to.  If a man does not
+feel this instinctively for himself, let him test it thus--whom does
+his heart of hearts tell him that his son will be most like God in
+resembling?  The Theseus?  The Discobolus? or the St. Peters and St.
+Pauls of Guido and Domenichino?  Who can hesitate for a moment as to
+which ideal presents the higher development of human nature?  And
+this I take it should suffice; the natural instinct which draws us to
+the Christ-ideal in preference to all others as soon as it has been
+once presented to us, is a sufficient guarantee of its being the one
+most tending to the general well-being of the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X--CONCLUSION
+
+
+
+It only remains to return to the seventh and eighth chapters, and to
+pass in review the reasons which will lead us to reject the
+conclusions therein expressed by our opponents.
+
+These conclusions have no real bearing upon the question at issue.
+Our opponents can make out a strong case, so long as they confine
+themselves to maintaining that exaggeration has to a certain extent
+impaired the historic value of some of the Gospel records of the
+Resurrection.  They have made out this much, but have they made out
+more?  They have mistaken the question--which is this--"Did Jesus
+Christ die and rise from the dead?"  And in the place of it they have
+raised another, namely, "Has there been any inaccuracy in the records
+of the time and manner of His reappearing?"
+
+Our error has been that instead of demurring to the relevancy of the
+issue raised by our opponents, we have accepted it.  We have thus
+placed ourselves in a false position, and have encouraged our
+opponents by doing so.  We have undertaken to fight them upon ground
+of their own choosing.  We have been discomfited; but instead of
+owning to our defeat, and beginning the battle anew from a fresh base
+of operations, we have declared that we have not been defeated; hence
+those lamentable and suicidal attempts at disingenuous reasoning
+which we have seen reason to condemn so strongly in the works of Dean
+Alford and others.  How deplorable, how unchristian they are!
+
+The moment that we take a truer ground, the conditions of the strife
+change.  The same spirit of candid criticism which led us to reject
+the account of Matthew in toto, will make it easy for us to admit
+that those of Mark, Luke, and John, may not be so accurate as we
+could have wished, and yet to feel that our cause has sustained no
+injury.  There are probably very few who would pin their faith to the
+fact that Julius Caesar fell exactly at the feet of Pompey's statue,
+or that he uttered the words "Et tu, Brute."  Yet there are still
+fewer who would dispute the fact that Julius Caesar was assassinated
+by conspirators of whom Brutus and Cassius were among the leaders.
+As long as we can be sure that our Lord DIED AND ROSE FROM THE DEAD,
+we may leave it to our opponents to contend about the details of the
+manner in which each event took place.
+
+We had thought that these details were known, and so thinking, we had
+a certain consolation in realising to ourselves the precise manner in
+which every incident occurred; yet on reflection we must feel that
+the desire to realise is of the essence of idolatry, which, not
+content with knowing that there is a God, will be satisfied with
+nothing if it has not an effigy of His face and figure.  If it has
+not this it falls straight-way to the denial of God's existence,
+being unable to conceive how a Being should exist and yet be
+incapable of representation.  We are as those who would fall down and
+worship the idol; our opponents, as those who upon the destruction of
+the idol would say that there was no God.
+
+We have met sceptics hitherto by adhering to the opinions as to the
+necessity of accuracy which prevailed among our forefathers, and
+instead of saying, "You are right--we do NOT know all that we thought
+we did--nevertheless we know enough--we know the fact, though the
+manner of the fact be hidden," we have preferred to say, "You are
+mistaken, our severe outline, our hard-and-fast lines are all
+perfectly accurate, there is not a detail of our theories which we
+are not prepared to stand by."  On this comes recrimination and
+mutual anger, and the strife grows hotter and hotter.
+
+Let us now rather say to the unbeliever, "We do not deny the truth of
+much which you assert.  We give up Matthew's account of the
+Resurrection; we may perhaps accept parts of those of Mark and Luke
+and John, but it is impossible to say which parts, unless those in
+which all three agree with one another; and this being so, it becomes
+wiser to regard all the accounts as early and precious memorials of
+the certainty felt by the Apostles that Christ died and rose again,
+but as having little historic value with regard to the time and
+manner of the Resurrection."
+
+Once take this ground, and instead of demurring to the truth of many
+of the assertions of our opponents, demur to their relevancy, and the
+unbeliever will find the ground cut away from under his feet
+independently of the fact that the reasonableness of the concession,
+and the discovery that we are not fighting merely to maintain a
+position, will incline him to calmness and to the reconsideration of
+his own opinions--which will in itself be a great gain--he will soon
+perceive that we are really standing upon firm ground, from which no
+enemy can dislodge us.  The discovery that we know less of the time
+and manner of our Lord's death and Resurrection than we thought we
+did, does not invalidate a single one of the irresistible arguments
+whereby we can establish the fact of His having died and risen again.
+The reader will now perhaps begin to perceive that the sad division
+between Christians and unbelievers has been one of those common cases
+in which both are right and both wrong; Christians being right in
+their chief assertion, and wrong in standing out for the accuracy of
+their details, while unbelievers are right in denying that our
+details are accurate, but wrong in drawing the inference that because
+certain facts have been inaccurately recorded, therefore certain
+others never happened at all.  Both the errors are natural; it is
+high time, however, that upon both sides they should be recognised
+and avoided.
+
+But as regards the demolition of the structure raised in the seventh
+and eighth chapters of this book, whereinsoever, that is to say, it
+seems to menace the more vital part of our faith, the ease with which
+this will effected may perhaps lead the reader to think that I have
+not fulfilled the promise made in the outset, and have failed to put
+the best possible case for our opponents.  This supposition would be
+unjust; I have done the very best for them that I could.  For it is
+plain that they can only take one of two positions, namely, EITHER
+that Christ really died upon the Cross but was never seen alive again
+afterwards at all, and that the stories of His having been so seen
+are purely mythical, OR, if they admit that He was seen alive after
+His Crucifixion, they must deny the completeness of the death; in
+other words, if they are to escape miracle, they must either deny the
+reappearances or the death.
+
+Now in the commencement of this work I dealt with those who deny that
+our Lord rose from the dead, and as the exponent of those who take
+this view I selected Strauss, who is undoubtedly the ablest writer
+they have.  Whether I shewed sufficient reason for thinking that his
+theory was unsound must remain for the decision of the reader, but I
+certainly believe that I succeeded in doing so.  Perhaps the ablest
+of all the writers who have treated the facts given us in the Gospels
+from the Rationalistic point of view, is the author of an anonymous
+work called The Jesus of History (Williams and Norgate, 1866); but
+this writer (and it is a characteristic feature of the Rationalistic
+school to become vague precisely at this very point) leaves us
+entirely in doubt as to whether he accepts the reappearances of
+Christ or not, and his treatment of the facts connected both with the
+Crucifixion and Resurrection is less definite than that of any other
+part of the life of our Lord.  He does not seem to see his own way
+clearly, and appears to consider that it must for ever remain a
+matter of doubt whether the Death of Christ or His reappearance is to
+be rejected.
+
+It is evident that it was most desirable to examine BOTH sets of
+arguments, i.e., those against the Resurrection, and those against
+the completeness of the Death; I have therefore mainly drawn the
+opinions of those who deny the Death from the same pamphlet as that
+from which I drew the criticisms on Dean Alford's notes.  I know of
+no other English work, indeed, in which whatever can be said against
+us upon this all-important head has been put forward, and was
+therefore compelled to draw from this source, or to invent the
+arguments for our opponents, which would have subjected me to the
+accusation of stating them in such way as should best suit my own
+purpose.  The reader, however, must now feel that since there can be
+no other position taken but one or other of the two alluded to above,
+and since the one taken by Strauss has been shewn to be untenable,
+there remains nothing but to shew that the other is untenable also,
+whereupon it will follow that our Saviour did actually die, and did
+actually shew Himself subsequently alive; and this amounts to a
+demonstration of the miraculous character of the Resurrection.  If,
+then, this one miracle be established, I think it unnecessary to
+defend the others, because I cannot think that any will attack them.
+
+But, as has been seen already, Strauss admits that our Lord died upon
+the Cross, and denies the reality of the reappearances.  It is not
+probable that Strauss would have taken refuge in the hallucination
+theory if he had felt that there was the remotest chance of
+successfully denying our Lord's death; for the difficulties of his
+present position are overwhelming, as was fully pointed out in the
+second, third, and fourth chapters of this work.  I regret, however,
+to say that I can nowhere find any detailed account of the reasons
+which have led him to feel so positively about our Lord's Death.
+Such reasons must undoubtedly be at his command, or he would
+indisputably have referred the Resurrection to natural causes.  Is it
+possible that he has thought it better to keep them to himself, as
+proving the Death of our Lord TOO convincingly?  If so, the course
+which he has adopted is a cruel one.
+
+We must endeavour, however, to dispense with Strauss's assistance,
+and will proceed to inquire what it is that those who deny the Death
+of our Lord, call upon us to reject.
+
+I regret to pass so quickly over one great field of evidence which in
+justice to myself I must allude to, though I cannot dwell upon it,
+for in the outset I declared that I would confine myself to the
+historical evidence, and to this only.  I refer to spiritual insight;
+to the testimony borne by the souls of living persons, who from
+personal experience KNOW that their Redeemer liveth, and that though
+worms destroy this body, yet in their flesh shall they see God.  How
+many thousands are there in the world at this moment, who have known
+Christ as a personal friend and comforter, and who can testify to the
+work which He has wrought upon them!  I cannot pass over such
+testimony as this in silence.  I must assign it a foremost place in
+reviewing the reasons for holding that our hope is not in vain, but I
+may not dwell upon it, inasmuch as it would carry no weight with
+those for whom this work is designed, I mean with those to whom this
+precious experience of Christ has not yet been vouchsafed.  Such
+persons require the external evidence to be made clear to
+demonstration before they will trust themselves to listen to the
+voices of hope or fear, and it is of no use appealing to the
+knowledge and hopes of others without making it clear upon what that
+knowledge and those hopes are grounded.  Nevertheless, I may be
+allowed to point out that those who deny the Death and Resurrection
+of our Lord, call upon us to believe that an immense multitude of
+most truthful and estimable people are no less deceivers of their own
+selves and others, than Mohammedans, Jews and Buddhists are.  How
+many do we not each of us know to whom Christ is the spiritual meat
+and drink of their whole lives.  Yet our opponents call upon us to
+ignore all this, and to refer the emotions and elation of soul, which
+the love of Christ kindles in his true followers, to an inheritance
+of delusion and blunder.  Truly a melancholy outlook.
+
+Again, let a man travel over England, North, South, East, and West,
+and in his whole journey he shall hardly find a single spot from
+which he cannot see one or several churches.  There is hardly a
+hamlet which is not also a centre for the celebration of our
+Redemption by the Death and Resurrection of Christ.  Not one of these
+churches, say the Rationalists, not one of the clergymen who minister
+therein, not one single village school in all England, but must be
+regarded as a fountain of error, if not of deliberate falsehood.
+Look where they may, they cannot escape from the signs of a vital
+belief in the Resurrection.  All these signs, they will tell us, are
+signs of superstition only; it is superstition which they celebrate
+and would confirm; they are founded upon fanaticism, or at the best
+upon sheer delusion; they poison the fountain heads of moral and
+intellectual well-being, by teaching men to set human experience on
+the one side, and to refer their conduct to the supposed will of a
+personal anthropomorphic God who was actually once a baby--who was
+born of one of his own creatures--and who is now locally and
+corporeally in Heaven, "of reasonable soul and HUMAN FLESH
+subsisting."
+
+Thus do our opponents taunt us, but when we think not only of the
+present day, but of the nearly two thousand years during which
+Christianity has flourished, not in England only, but over all
+Europe, that is to say, over the quarter of the globe which is most
+civilised, and whose civilisation is in itself proof both of capacity
+to judge and of having judged rightly--what an awful admission do
+unbelievers require us to make, when they bid us think that all these
+ages and countries have gone astray to the imagining of a vain thing.
+All the self-sacrifice of the holiest men for sixty generations, all
+the wars that have been waged for the sake of Christ and His truth,
+all the money spent upon churches, clergy, monasteries and religious
+education, all the blood of martyrs, all the celibacy of priests and
+nuns, all the self-denying lives of those who are now ministers of
+the Gospel--according to the Rationalist, no part of all this
+devotion to the cause of Christ has had any justifiable base on
+actual fact.  The bare contemplation of such a stupendous
+misapplication of self-sacrifice and energy, should be enough to
+prevent any one from ever smiling again to whose mind such a
+deplorable view was present:  we wonder that our opponents do not
+shrink back appalled from the contemplation of a picture which they
+must regard as containing so much of sin, impudence and folly; yet it
+is to the contemplation of such a picture, and to a belief in its
+truthfulness to nature, that they would invite us; they cannot even
+see a clergyman without saying to themselves, "There goes one whose
+trade is the promotion of error; whose whole life is devoted to the
+upholding of the untrue."  To them the sight of people flocking to a
+church must be as painful as it would be to us to see a congregation
+of Jews or Mohammedans:  they ought to have no happiness in life so
+long as they believe that the vast majority of their fellow-
+countrymen are so lamentably deluded; yet they would call on us to
+join them, and half despise us upon our refusing to do so.
+
+But upon this view also I may not dwell; it would have been easy and
+I think not unprofitable, had my aim been different, to have drawn an
+ampler picture of the heart-rending amount of falsehood, stupidity,
+cruelty and folly which must be referable to a belief in
+Christianity, if, as our opponents maintain, there is no solid ground
+for believing it; but my present purpose is to prove that there IS
+such ground, and having said enough to shew that I do not ignore the
+fields of evidence which lie beyond the purpose of my work, I will
+return to the Crucifixion and Resurrection.
+
+What, then, let me ask of freethinkers, BECAME OF CHRIST EVENTUALLY?
+Several answers may be made to this question, BUT THERE IS NONE BUT
+THE ONE GIVEN IN SCRIPTURE WHICH WILL SET IT AT REST.  Thus it has
+been said that Christ survived the Cross, lingered for a few weeks,
+and in the end succumbed to the injuries which He had sustained.  On
+this there arises the question, did the Apostles know of His death?
+And if so, were they likely to mistake the reappearance of a dying
+man, so shattered and weak as He must have been, for the glory of an
+immortal being?  We know that people can idealise a great deal, but
+they cannot idealise as much as this.  The Apostles cannot have known
+of any death of Christ except His Death upon the Cross, and it is not
+credible that if He had died from the effects of the Crucifixion the
+Apostles should not have been aware of it.  No one will pretend that
+they were, so it is needless to discuss this theory further.
+
+It has also been said that our Lord, having seen the effect of His
+reappearance on the Apostles, considered that further converse with
+them would only weaken it; and that He may have therefore thought it
+wiser to withdraw Himself finally from them, and to leave His
+teaching in their hands, with the certainty that it would never
+henceforth be lost sight of; but this view is inconsistent with the
+character which even our adversaries themselves assign to our
+Saviour.  The idea is one which might occur to a theorist sitting in
+his study, and enlightened by a knowledge of events, but it would not
+suggest itself to a leader in the heat of action.
+
+Another supposition has been that our Lord on recovering
+consciousness after He had been left alone in the tomb, or perhaps
+even before Joseph had gone, may have been unable to realise to
+Himself the nature of the events that had befallen Him, and may have
+actually believed that He had been dead, and been miraculously
+restored to life; that He may yet have felt a natural fear of again
+falling into the hands of His enemies; and partly from this cause,
+and partly through awe at the miracle that He supposed had been
+worked upon Him, have only shewn Himself to His disciples hurriedly,
+in secret, and on rare occasions, spending the greater part of His
+time in some one or other of the secret places of resort, in which He
+had been wont to live apart from the Apostles before the Crucifixion.
+
+I have known it urged that our Lord never said or even thought that
+He had risen from the dead, but shewed Himself alive secretly and
+fearfully, and bade His disciples follow Him to Galilee, where He
+might, and perhaps did, appear more openly, though still rarely and
+with caution; that the rarity and mystery of the reappearances would
+add to the impression of a miraculous resurrection which had
+instantly presented itself to the minds of the Apostles on seeing
+Christ alive; that this impression alone would prevent them from
+heeding facts which must have been obvious to any whose minds were
+not already unhinged by the knowledge that Christ was alive, and by
+the belief that He had been dead; and that they would be blinded by
+awe, which awe would be increased by the rarity of the reappearances-
+-a rarity that was in reality due, perhaps to fear, perhaps to self-
+delusion, perhaps to both, but which was none the less politic for
+not having been dictated by policy; finally that the report of
+Christ's having been seen alive reached the Chief Priests (or perhaps
+Joseph of Arimathaea), and that they determined at all hazards to nip
+the coming mischief in the bud; that they therefore watched their
+opportunity, and got rid of so probable a cause of disturbance by the
+knife of the assassin, or induced Him to depart by threats, which He
+did not venture to resist.
+
+But if our Lord was secretly assassinated how could it have happened
+that the body should never have been found, and produced, when the
+Apostles began declaring publicly that Christ had risen?  What could
+be easier than to bring it forward and settle the whole matter?  It
+cannot be doubted that the body must have been looked for when the
+Apostles began publishing their story; we saw reason for believing
+this when we considered the account of the Resurrection given by St.
+Matthew.  NOW THOSE THAT HIDE CAN FIND; and if the enemies of Christ
+had got rid of Him by foul play, they would know very well where to
+lay their hands upon that which would be the death blow to
+Christianity.  If then Christ did not go away of His own accord, as
+feeling that His teaching would be better preserved by His absence,
+and if He did not die from wounds received upon the Cross, and if He
+was not assassinated secretly, what remains as the most reasonable
+view to be taken concerning His disappearance?  Surely the one that
+WAS taken; the view which commended itself to those who were best
+able to judge--namely, THAT HE HAD ASCENDED BODILY INTO HEAVEN AND
+WAS SITTING AT THE RIGHT HAND OF GOD THE FATHER.
+
+Where else could He be?
+
+For that He disappeared, and disappeared finally, within six weeks of
+the Crucifixion must be considered certain; there is no one who will
+be bold enough even to hazard a conjecture that the appearance of
+Christ alluded to by St. Paul, as having been vouchsafed to him some
+years later, was that of the living Christ, who had chosen upon this
+one occasion to depart from the seclusion and secrecy which he had
+maintained hitherto.  But if Christ was still living on earth, how
+was it possible that no human being should have the smallest clue to
+His whereabouts?  If He was dead how is it that no one should have
+produced the body?  Such a mysterious and total disappearance, even
+in the face of great jeopardy, has never yet been known, and can only
+be satisfactorily explained by adopting the belief which has
+prevailed for nearly the last two thousand years, and which will
+prevail more and more triumphantly so long as the world shall last--
+the belief that Christ was restored to the glory which He had shared
+with the Father, as soon as ever He had given sufficient proofs of
+His being alive to ensure the devotion of His followers.
+
+Before we can reject the supernatural solution of a mystery otherwise
+inexplicable, we should have some natural explanation which will meet
+the requirements of the case.  A confession of ignorance is not
+enough here.  WE are NOT ignorant; we KNOW that Christ died, inasmuch
+as we have the testimony of all the four Evangelists to this effect,
+the testimony of the Apostle Paul, and through him that of all the
+other Apostles; we have also the certainty that the centurion in
+charge of the soldiers at the Crucifixion would not have committed so
+grave a breach of discipline as the delivery of the body to Joseph
+and Nicodemus, unless he had felt quite sure that life was extinct;
+and finally we have the testimony of the Church for sixty
+generations, and that of myriads now living, whose experience assures
+them that Christ died and rose from the dead; in addition to this
+tremendous body of evidence we have also the story of the spear wound
+recorded in a Gospel which even our opponents believe to be from a
+Johannean source in its later chapters; and though, as has been
+already stated, this wound cannot be insisted upon as in itself
+sufficient to prove our Lord's death, yet it must assuredly be
+allowed its due weight in reviewing the evidence.  The unbeliever
+cannot surely have considered how shallow are all the arguments which
+he can produce, in comparison with those that make against him.  He
+cannot say that I have not done him justice, and I feel confident
+that when he reconsiders the matter in that spirit of humility
+without which he cannot hope to be guided to a true conclusion, he
+will feel sure that Strauss is right in believing that the death of
+our Lord cannot be seriously called in question.
+
+But this being so, the reappearances, which we have seen to be
+established by the collapse of the hallucination theory, must be
+referred to supernatural or miraculous agency; that is to say, our
+Lord died and rose again on the third day, according to the
+Scriptures.  Whereon His disappearance some six weeks later must be
+looked upon very differently from that of any ordinary person.  If
+our Lord could have been shewn to have been a mere man, who had
+escaped death only by a hair's breadth, but still escaped it, perhaps
+some one of the theories for His disappearance, or some combination
+of them, or some other explanation which has not yet been thought of,
+might be held to be sufficient; but in the case of One who died and
+rose from the dead, there is no theory which will stand, except the
+one which it has been reserved for our own lawless and self-seeking
+times to question.  Through the light of the Resurrection the
+Ascension is clearly seen.
+
+
+My task is now completed.  In an age when Rationalism has become
+recognised as the only basis upon which faith can rest securely, I
+have established the Christian faith upon a Rationalistic basis.
+
+I have made no concession to Rationalism which did not place all the
+vital parts of Christianity in a far stronger position than they were
+in before, yet I have. conceded everything which a sincere
+Rationalist is likely to desire.  I have cleared the ground for
+reconciliation.  It only remains for the two contending parties to
+come forward and occupy it in peace jointly.  May it be mine to see
+the day when all traces of disagreement have been long obliterated!
+
+To the unbeliever I can say, "Never yet in any work upon the
+Christian side have your difficulties been so fully and fairly
+stated; never yet has orthodox disingenuousness been so unsparingly
+exposed."  To the Christian I can say with no less justice, "Never
+yet have the true reasons for the discrepancies in the Gospels been
+so put forward as to enable us to look these discrepancies boldly in
+the face, and to thank God for having graciously allowed them to
+exist."  I do not say this in any spirit of self-glorification.  We
+are children of the hour, and creatures of our surroundings.  As it
+has been given unto us, so will it be required at our hands, and we
+are at best unprofitable servants.  Nevertheless I cannot refrain
+from expressing my gratitude at having been born in an age when
+Christianity and Rationalism are not only ceasing to appear
+antagonistic to one another, BUT HAVE EACH BECOME ESSENTIAL TO THE
+VERY EXISTENCE OF THE OTHER.  May the reader feel this no less
+strongly than I do, and may he also feel that I have supplied the
+missing element which could alone cause them to combine.  If he asks
+me what element I allude to, I answer Candour.  This is the pilot
+that has taken us safely into the Fair Haven of universal brotherhood
+in Christ.
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+
+I--THE BURIAL
+
+
+(John xix. 38-42)
+
+And after this Joseph of Arimathaea, being a disciple of Jesus, but
+secretly for fear of the Jews, besought Pilate that he might take
+away the body of Jesus:  and Pilate gave him leave.  He came
+therefore, and took the body of Jesus.  And there came also
+Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a
+mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight.  Then took
+they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the
+spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury.  Now in the place where
+he was crucified there was a garden; and in the garden a new
+sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid.  There laid they Jesus
+therefore because of the Jews' preparation day; for the sepulchre was
+nigh at hand.
+
+(Luke xxiii. 50-56)
+
+And, behold, there was a man named Joseph, a counsellor; and he was a
+good man, and a just:  (the same had not consented to the counsel and
+deed of them;) he was of Arimathaea, a city of the Jews:  who also
+himself waited for the kingdom of God.  This man went unto Pilate,
+and begged the body of Jesus.  And he took it down, and wrapped it in
+linen, and laid it in a sepulchre that was hewn in stone, wherein
+never man before was laid.  And that day was the preparation, and the
+sabbath drew on.  And the women also, which came with him from
+Galilee, followed after, and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body
+was laid.  And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and
+rested the sabbath day according to the commandment.
+
+(Mark xv. 42-47)
+
+And now when the even was come, because it was the preparation, that
+is, the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathaea, an honourable
+counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went
+in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus.  And Pilate
+marvelled if he were already dead:  and calling unto him the
+centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead.  And when
+he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.  And he
+bought fine linen, and took him down, and wrapped him in the linen,
+and laid him in a sepulchre which was hewn out of a rock, and rolled
+a stone unto the door of the sepulchre.  And Mary Magdalene and Mary
+the mother of Joseph beheld where he was laid.
+
+(Matthew xxvii. 57-61)
+
+When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named
+Joseph, who also himself was Jesus' disciple.  He went to Pilate, and
+begged the body of Jesus.  Then Pilate commanded the body to be
+delivered.  And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a
+clean linen cloth.  And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had
+hewn out in the rock:  and he rolled a great stone to the door of the
+sepulchre, and departed.  And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other
+Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.
+
+
+II--THE GUARD SET UPON THE TOMB (Peculiar to Matthew)
+
+
+(Matthew xxvii. 62-66)
+
+Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief
+priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate.  Saying, Sir, we
+remember that that deceiver 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.  Pilate said unto them, Ye
+have a watch:  go your way, make it as sure as ye can.  So they went,
+and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.
+
+
+III--VISIT OF MARY MAGDALENE, AND OTHERS, TO THE TOMB
+
+
+(John xx. 1-13)
+
+The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when 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 ran both 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
+again from the dead.  Then the disciples went away again unto their
+own home.  But Mary stood without 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, and 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.
+
+(Luke xxiv. 1-12)
+
+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 pass, as they were much perplexed
+thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments:  and
+as they were afraid, and bowed down 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 to them as idle tales, and they believed them not.
+Then arose Peter, and ran 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 pass.
+
+(Mark xvi. 1-8)
+
+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 shall ye 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 anything to any
+man; for they were afraid.
+
+(Matthew xxviii. 1-8)
+
+In the end of the sabbath, as it began to draw toward the first day
+of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the
+sepulchre.  And, behold, there was a great earthquake:  for the angel
+of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone
+from the door, and sat upon it.  His countenance was like lightning,
+and his raiment white as snow, and for fear of him the keepers did
+shake, and became as dead men.  And the angel answered and said unto
+the women, Fear not ye:  for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was
+crucified.  He is not here:  for he is risen, as he said.  Come, see
+the place where the Lord lay.  And go quickly, and tell his disciples
+that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into
+Galilee; there shall ye see him:  lo, I have told you.  And they
+departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did
+run to bring his disciples word.
+
+
+IV--APPEARANCE OF CHRIST TO MARY MAGDALENE AND OTHERS
+
+
+(John xx. 14-18)
+
+And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus
+standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.  Jesus saith unto her,
+Woman, why weepest thou?  Whom seekest thou?  She, supposing him to
+be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence,
+tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.  Jesus
+saith unto her, Mary.  She turned herself, and saith unto him,
+Rabboni; which is to say, Master.  Jesus saith unto her, Touch me
+not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father:  but go to my brethren,
+and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to
+my God, and your God.  Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples
+that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto
+her.
+
+(Mark xvi. 9-11)
+
+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 had heard that he was alive, and had been
+seen of her, believed not.
+
+(Matthew xxvii. 9-10)
+
+And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them,
+saying, All hail.  And they came and held him by the feet, and
+worshipped him.  Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid:  go tell
+my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.
+
+
+V--THE BRIBING OF THE GUARD (Peculiar to Matthew)
+
+
+(Matthew xxviii. 11-15)
+
+Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the
+city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were
+done.  And when they were assembled 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.  So they took the money, and did as they were taught:  and this
+saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.
+
+
+VI--APPEARANCE TO CLEOPAS (AND JAMES?)
+
+
+(Luke xxiv. 13-35)
+
+And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called
+Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.  And they
+talked together of all these things which had happened.  And it came
+to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus
+himself drew near, and went with them.  But their eyes were holden
+that they should not know him.  And he said unto them, What manner of
+communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and
+are sad?  And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said
+unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known
+the things which are come to pass there in these days?  And he said
+unto them, What things?  And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of
+Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and
+all the people:  And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered
+him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.  But we trusted
+that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel:  and beside
+all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done.  Yea,
+and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were
+early at the sepulchre; and when they found not his body, they came,
+saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that
+he was alive, and certain of them which were with us went to the
+sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said:  but him they
+saw not.  Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to
+believe all that the prophets have spoken:  Ought not Christ to have
+suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?  And beginning at
+Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the
+scriptures the things concerning himself.  And they drew nigh unto
+the village, whither they went:  and he made as though he would have
+gone further.  But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us:  for
+it is toward evening, and the day is far spent.  And he went in to
+tarry with them.  And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them,
+he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.  And
+their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of
+their sight.  And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn
+within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to
+us the scriptures?  And they rose up the same hour, and returned to
+Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were
+with them, saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to
+Simon.  And they told what things were done in the way, and how he
+was known of them in breaking of bread.
+
+(Mark xvi. 12-13)
+
+After that 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.
+
+
+VII--APPEARANCE TO THE APOSTLES (Twice in John)
+
+
+(John xx. 19-29)
+
+Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when
+the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of
+the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them,
+Peace be unto you.  And when he had so said, he shewed them his hands
+and his side.  Then were the disciples glad, when they saw the Lord.
+Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you:  as my Father hath
+sent me, even, so send I you.  And when he had said this, he breathed
+on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.  Whose
+soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever
+sins ye retain, they are retained.  But Thomas, one of the twelve,
+called Didymus, was not with them when Jesus came.  The other
+disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord.  But he
+said unto them, Except I shall see in his hands the print of the
+nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my
+hand into his side, I will not believe.  And after eight days again
+his disciples were within, and Thomas with them:  then came Jesus,
+the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto
+you.  Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my
+hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side:  and be
+not faithless, but believing.  And Thomas answered and said unto him,
+My Lord and my God.  Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast
+seen me, thou hast believed:  blessed are they that have not seen,
+and yet have believed.
+
+[I have not quoted the twenty-first chapter of St. John's Gospel on
+account of its exceedingly doubtful genuineness.--W. B. O.]
+
+(Luke xxiv. 36-49)
+
+And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and
+saith unto them, Peace be unto you.  But they were terrified and
+affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.  And he said
+unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your
+hearts?  Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me,
+and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.
+And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.
+And while they yet believed not for joy, and wondered, he said unto
+them, Have ye here any meat?  And they gave him a piece of a broiled
+fish, and of an honeycomb.  And he took it, and did eat before them.
+And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you,
+while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which
+were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the
+psalms concerning me.  Then opened he their understanding, that they
+might understand the scriptures.  And said unto them, Thus it is
+written, and thus it behoved 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.
+And ye are witnesses of these things.  And, behold, I send the
+promise of my Father upon you:  but tarry ye in the city of
+Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.
+
+(Mark xvi. 14-18)
+
+Afterward he appeared unto the eleven as they sat at meat, and
+upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, because
+they believed not them which had seen him after he was risen.  And he
+saith unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
+every creature.  He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;
+but he that believeth not shall be damned.  And these signs shall
+follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they
+shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpents; and if
+they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay
+hands on the sick, and they shall recover.
+
+(Matthew xviii. 16-20)
+
+Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain
+where Jesus had appointed them.  And when they saw him, they
+worshipped him:  but some doubted.  And Jesus came and spake unto
+them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth, go
+ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of
+the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:  teaching them to
+observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you:  and, lo, I am
+with you alway, even unto the end of the world.  Amen.
+
+
+VIII--THE ASCENSION
+
+
+(Luke xxiv. 50-53)
+
+And he led them out as far as to Bethany, and he lifted up his hands,
+and blessed them.  And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was
+parted from them, and carried up into heaven.  And they worshipped
+him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.  And were continually
+in the temple, praising and blessing God.  Amen.
+
+(Mark xvi. 19-20)
+
+So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into
+heaven, and sat on the right hand of God.  And they went forth, and
+preached every where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the
+word with signs following.  Amen.
+
+(Acts i. 1-12)
+
+The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus
+began both to do and teach, Until the day in which he was taken up,
+after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the
+apostles whom he had chosen.  To whom also he shewed himself alive
+after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty
+days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:
+and, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they
+should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the
+Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.  For John truly
+baptized with water, but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not
+many days hence.  When they therefore were come together, they asked
+of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the
+kingdom to Israel?  And he said unto them, It is not for you to know
+the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.
+But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon
+you:  and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all
+Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
+And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken
+up; and a cloud received him out of their sight, And while they
+looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood
+by them in white apparel; Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why
+stand ye 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.  Then returned they unto Jerusalem from the mount
+called Olivet, which is from Jerusalem a sabbath day's journey.
+
+
+IX--ST. PAUL'S ACCOUNT OF OUR LORD'S REAPPEARANCES
+
+
+(I. Corinthians xv. 3-8)
+
+For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how
+that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that
+he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the
+scriptures:  and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve;
+after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of
+whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen
+asleep.  After that, he was seen of James:  then of all the apostles.
+And last of all he was seen of me also as of one born out of due
+time.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  It should be borne in mind that this passage was written five or
+six years ago, before the commencement of the Franco-Prussian war,
+What would my brother have said had he been able to comprehend the
+events of 1870 and 1871?--W. B. O.
+
+{2}  This pamphlet was by Butler himself.
+
+{3}  See Biog. Britann.
+
+{4}  Middleton's Reflections answered by Benson.  Hist. Christ, vol.
+iii., p. 50.
+
+{5}  Lardner, part I., vol. ii., p. 135 et seq.
+
+{6}  Ibid., part I., vol. ii., p. 742.
+
+
+
+
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