Chapter II (4)

Now, in theory, nothing is easier than to say that an excited woman saw Jesus with her mental eye, mistook it for a bodily reality, and communicated her enthusiasm to the rest of His followers. But in practice, such things are not quite so easy. Although it is no hard matter to persuade the credulous to believe in the appearance of ghosts and phantoms, yet I do not know that the whole history of man presents us with a single example of a great institution which owes its origin to such a belief. But even the credulous believers in such apparitions are very difficult to persuade that they have actually seen a man who once had died again restored to life. I doubt whether the entire mass of fictitious literature presents us with anything at all analogous to the supposed belief of the credulous followers of Jesus in the resurrection of their Master. Even persons who have a most imperfect knowledge that nature is governed by law, are quite aware that dead men do not revive. The followers of Jesus could have been hardly more credulous than modern spiritualists, yet these latter have not yet succeeded in erecting a great institution on the basis of an actual resurrection from the dead, or even on the presence of a spirit in a table. Supposing, therefore, that some fanatic follower of our Lord made the mistake in question, it could really have been no easy matter to have communicated this enthusiasm to the rest, damped as their spirits were by the crucifixion. Still more difficult would it have been for any considerable number to have made the mistake of converting a flight of the imagination into an objective fact. At any rate my opponents must concede that to have persuaded any number of men under such circumstances that the crucified Jesus was actually risen from the dead must have required a considerable interval of time.

It would be much more easy to create a belief in a resurrection after the lapse of a century, than within a few years of the event. When we survey a past event through the haze of time, it helps to confuse our ideas as to what is possible. But long intervals of time so convenient for the physical speculator are precisely the things which my opponents have not at their disposal. Seventy years is all which they themselves think it possible to ask for; and as all developments are slow, one or two entirely exhaust it, and they require a multitude to effect their purpose. But not only was it necessary to get some of the enthusiastic followers of our Lord to believe in His resurrection, but also to constitute a society founded on its basis. Until this was done, all development was impossible. But each step requires a considerable interval of time. But how could the Church be held together while the belief in the resurrection was forming?

But even supposing that Jesus by the power of the imagination had been rescued from the grave, it became a very serious question what to do with Him. No amount of credulity could have brought Him into daily communication with His followers. If He continued on earth, His not doing so was a very serious affair. The obvious expedient was that He should be taken up into heaven, from which at some future day he should come back again and take possession of his Messianic throne. Such is the idea adopted by these schools of thought, and they are never wearied with telling us that the chief if not the only article in the primitive belief of the followers of Jesus was His speedy return to realize their expectations of His Messianic glory.

Be it so; for the consequences are very serious to the position of those whose views I am combating. His followers then expected Him to return as the Jewish Messiah. Now nothing is more certain than as long as this expectation lasted there could have been no development in the direction of the Christ of the Gospels. How long, then, did this state of stagnation last in the bosom of the Church? When did it occur to the followers of Jesus that the expectation of the speedy return of their Master was a baseless one, and that they must set themselves to work to develop a different conception of a Christ? It is a fact that such beliefs do not speedily die out, and that they can survive many a disappointment. The modern prophetic School affords a striking proof of the tenacity of such hopes. They have repeatedly prophesied that the Advent will happen in our times; and notwithstanding the falsification of their predictions, I believe that they still cling to this belief. At any rate it has required a long interval of time to undeceive them; and as credulity was, according to the views which I am combating, the leading trait of the followers of Jesus, it must have been a considerable interval of time before they could have been persuaded to part company with their darling expectation. But as long as a Jewish Messiah satisfied their aspirations, the Church could have developed no new Messianic conceptions.

But to afford something like a basis for reasoning, I will suppose these obstacles to have been surmounted; that the work of development has commenced, and that the womb of the Church is at last become pregnant with its future Christ. Fresh and ever-increasing difficulties present themselves for solution.

Let it be observed that, after they have effected the resurrection, all which has been accomplished was to repair the damage inflicted on the Church by the crucifixion, and to restore to it, as a necessity of its existence, a living instead of a dead Messiah. That Messiah was still the Messiah of Judaism. They have scarcely advanced a stage in the creation of the Gospels, and of the Christ therein delineated,--not to say of the entire moral and spiritual teaching of the New Testament.

Let us observe the steps of the process by which the metamorphose must have been effected. It is, say my opponents, very uncertain whether the historic Jesus ever attempted to perform a miracle. But according to the conceptions of the times, His followers thought that the Messiah ought to have performed them. To supply the defect, they invented a mass of miraculous stories, and in their fond credulity thought that Jesus had actually performed them, and thus the delusion of His miraculous wonder-working was propagated in the Church. But all experience proves that mythic and legendary miracles are grotesque. Yet those in the Gospels are all sober ones, and stamped with a high moral tone. They must therefore have undergone a succession of developments before they could have assumed their present form. Still a Jewish Messiah has yet to be transformed into the Jesus of the Evangelists. After a while a happy thought occurs to these uninstructed Jews. They determine to invest the Teacher with whom they had habitually conversed with a character at once divine and human. The mythic faculty is again invoked, and the human Jesus, by the aid of development after development, gradually assumes the aspect of the divine Christ. In a similar manner they feel that the moral aspect of the Messiah of their fondest expectations must undergo a change, and in due time the triumphant King becomes the meek and the lowly Jesus, and the morality of Pharisaism becomes that of the New Testament.

Few persons are at all aware of the enormous difficulties which would have beset any persons who, whether consciously or unconsciously, set themselves to metamorphise a Jew of the year 30 into the Christ of the Gospels. Familiarity with the character induces numbers to think that poets or fabulists, inventors of myths and legends, might easily have created it. To form a correct estimate of the difficulty, it is necessary to transport ourselves out of the nineteenth century into the Jewish atmosphere of thought and feeling of the century which preceded the Advent. A starting-point it must have had. There could have been no other than it.

Let it be observed that before the elaboration of the Jesus of the Gospels, those who fabricated the conception were wholly without a model to guide them. All ancient fact or fable fails to furnish anything at all analogous to this great character. Such models as they had would have guided its inventors wrong. The only ones which they possessed were the popular Messianic conceptions of the period, and the prevailing Jewish ideas of religion and morality. Besides these, they might have fallen back on the general ideas contained in the Old Testament Scriptures and the apocryphal books. The ideal of a Jewish hero would certainly not have helped them in forming the conception of the Evangelical Jesus. One apocryphal book has been frequently referred to as affording considerable aid--the Book of Enoch. I have fully discussed this subject elsewhere,[109] and the conclusion to which I have arrived is, I think, incontrovertible, that even if we grant that its Messianic portions were composed prior to the Christian era (a concession which I am by no means prepared to make), the aid which it would have afforded the mythologists who invented the Christ of the Gospels would have been inconsiderable. To avoid a lengthened controversy as to its date, I am quite willing that these schools of thought should make all the use they can of them.

Let me point out a few of the difficulties which must have beset the path of the inventors of the great portraiture of the Gospels.

Every reader at once recognizes that the character who is there depicted is a superhuman one; or rather, to speak more accurately, it is exhibited as uniting the human and the divine. This is a plain matter of fact, and is quite independent of the question whether the Evangelists were right in so representing it. Nor is my argument at all affected by any supposed difficulty in defining, in the terms of an abstract creed, the precise measure of the divine which they have ascribed to it. All that I contend for is that the Jesus of the Evangelists is dramatized as uniting a divine and human consciousness, and that it is exhibited with a faultless propriety.

Now the moment the mythologists made a movement in this direction, a hundred problems of a most difficult character must have demanded their solution before they could advance a single step. I can only adduce one or two examples. How was the human to be represented as acting in union with the divine, and the divine with the human? In what proportions were they to be combined? How was the one to be prevented from swallowing up the other? Let it be observed that there was no model to guide them. The attempt to exhibit the divine and human in a single personality had never been attempted before.

The difficulty will be at once seen from a reference to the Old Testament. The nearest approach which it exhibits to uniting the human and the divine is in the act of prophetic inspiration. But in this the two factors are invariably distinct. The Old Testament prophet, when under the influence of the prophetical illapse, invariably prefaces his utterances with "Thus saith the Lord." These words are never once placed in the mouth of Jesus throughout the entire Gospels. Instead of them, His most solemn utterances are introduced with the words, "I say unto you." The prophet is generally vehemently excited. The Jesus of the Evangelists is invariably calm.

You must never forget that the position of those against whose theories I am reasoning compels them to assume that the contents of the Gospels have been elaborated by the action of a multitude of minds. Be it so. It follows that these problems must have received as many different solutions as there were minds engaged in the attempt. Instead of the character which resulted therefrom presenting a unity of aspect, it would have been a mass of hopeless confusion.

My limits will only allow me to draw your attention to one or two of these difficulties out of the vast multitude. The historical Jesus was unquestionably crucified. How was a crucified man to be represented as divine? He died in agony. How was an artist to dramatize the divine in suffering? If my hearers are not aware of the difficulties which would have attended the solution of these and kindred questions, I advise them to study the creation of the great Grecian dramatist, the Prometheus Vinctus of Æschylus, and compare it with the Jesus of the Gospels. I am sure that correct taste will pronounce that the creation of the fishermen of Galilee utterly transcends that of the genius of the great tragedian.

Nothing is more difficult, even in works of fiction, than to combine the attributes of holiness and benevolence as harmoniously acting in the same person. In living men they almost invariably jar. They possess them imperfectly, and one generally counteracts the action of the other. The difficulty of combining them is greatly increased if the being uniting them is to be represented as both human and divine. Holiness and benevolence are in fact opposite sides of character, and no more difficult problem can be presented to the imagination than to exhibit them as acting harmoniously in the same character. No question in theology is more embarrassing than the mode in which they coexist in God.

It follows that if the contents of the Gospels were due to a multitude of minds, they must have exhibited as many aspects of the character of a Christ as there were fabulists engaged in its creation. But the character of the Jesus of the Gospels, in its combination of holiness with benevolence, presents us with a complete unity. Not only is the unity complete, but the perfection of the picture is inimitable. Where can we find, either in fact or fiction, anything like the perfection of the holiness and benevolence of the Jesus of the Evangelists? Yet we are asked to believe that it has been a gradual growth created by successions of credulous mythologists.

The moral and religious teaching of the Gospels forms a subject by itself of large dimensions, and it is impossible for me within the limits of a lecture to do more than glance at it.[110] It consists of two perfectly distinct portions: first, the subject of morality and religion as it is exhibited in the person of Jesus Christ; secondly, as He taught them for the use of ordinary men. Most unbelievers will admit that the portraiture of Jesus Christ, as it is exhibited in the Gospels, is one of the most spotless moral beauty, and the greatest elevation. I am quite aware that a few exceptions have been made to it; but some of them are obviously founded on misapprehension, and others are evidently incorrect. At any rate it cannot be denied that the entire moral aspect of the person of Christ is unique in human literature.

No less remarkable is His moral teaching for the use of ordinary men. It is pure, elevated, beneficent, grand. It bears the unquestionable marks of having been the elaboration of a single mind. The parts are adapted to each other and to the whole.

But our Lord's moral character, and His moral teaching as they are exhibited in the Gospels, consist of a number of detached portions, which together make up a complicated whole. Their solution involves such a multiplicity of questions, as to render it difficult to count them. They are questions which the profoundest thinkers have solved in the most varied manner. Yet in the Gospels the mode of their solution is a complete unity. They coalesce with an inimitable beauty. Let unbelievers cavil as they may, an overwhelming majority of the holiest and the best of men have bowed before the character of the Jesus of the Evangelists in humble adoration, and felt that it was immeasurably above them. Numbers of these subjects were inquired into by ancient philosophers with the keenest interest, but they found no adequate solution. My opponents assert that this great character, around which the entire morality of Christianity centres, is not an historical one. How did it then originate? The answer is, that it is founded on the traditional reminiscences of the teaching of a Jewish peasant who died in early manhood; and that the numerous parts of which the character and His teaching consist were unconsciously elaborated in the course of many years by a multitude of credulous, enthusiastic mythologists.

I must now advance to another stage of my argument. As my opponents assert that the development of the Gospels, and of the portraiture of the Christ which they contain, were entirely due to natural causes, it is evident that they must have been effected in conformity with the laws which regulate the developments of the human mind. Let us test this principle.

Taking the atmosphere of Jewish thought and feeling as it existed in the year 30 as the starting-point, it is evident to every one at all acquainted with the subject, that the interval which separates its conceptions from those of the Gospels is far greater than that which separates any two types of human thought. To take a single example. The interval between the free spirit of morality as it is exhibited in the New Testament, and the casuistic and ritualistic tendencies of moral thought which ultimately developed themselves into Rabbinism, is profound. If, therefore, Christianity grew out of Judaism by a succession of natural causes, the interval between them must have been bridged over by a succession of developments. So, again, with respect to Messianic conceptions. A profound interval separates that of Christ from that of Barchocebas, to which Jewish Messianism was then tending. That of Barchocebas was a natural growth out of the popular Messianic conceptions of the year 30, and separated from them by no great interval. But their development occupied no less than a century. But if the Jesus of the Evangelists grew out of the popular idea of the year 30, it is evident that the succession of developments must have been very numerous, and have required long intervals of time, before it was possible to create the portraiture of Christ.

Let me take another example, which those against whom I am reasoning cannot refuse to accept. The interval which separates the state of religious and moral thought involved in the primitive Mosaic institutions from that of the year 30 is considerable, though far less than that which separates the latter from that contained in the Gospels. In adducing this example, I use one most favourable to my opponents. Christians maintain that this development was accelerated by supernatural causes. The proper subject of comparison would have been one which both sides are agreed to have been effected by causes purely natural. I need not however fear making the concession, for it will more than bear the weight of my argument. We will suppose that the entire history of Judaism, as those with whom I am reasoning say, contained in it nothing supernatural. I ask you therefore to observe that the development in question was completed only after an interval of more than a thousand years from its commencement. Yet we are invited to believe that the Christianity of the Synoptics, and of the larger portion of the Epistles, was evolved in a period of seventy years, and the Christian Church erected on them, as its foundation, and that of the fourth Gospel in 130 years.

Let us take another mode of measurement of my opponents' own choosing. The Synoptic Gospels, as they say, are separated from that of St. John by an interval of sixty years. Is it possible to bridge over the interval which separates the Synoptics from the Jewish atmosphere of thought and feeling of the year 30, in seventy years, if it required sixty years to effect the development in question?

Against one convenient assumption I must present a most respectful protest. Whenever it suits their purpose, the human Jesus is represented as a very great man, who towered high above the ordinary conditions of humanity. Again, when it is convenient He is represented to have been a very little man, the prey of all the superstitions of His age. I am prepared to reason on either side of this alternative, but not on both. These Schools postulate greatness whenever they want to make a prodigious leap in religion and morality; littleness when they want to account for the miraculous element in Christianity. But while I am ready to assume as the basis of the argument that the human Jesus was a great man, let it be understood that He could have been great only in the sense in which all other great men have been great. Those who deny the possibility of physical miracles must not, when it suits their purpose, assume the existence of moral ones. His greatness must have been limited by the conditions imposed on it by the environment of a Jew of the year 30 who was born a peasant, and perished at thirty-five years of age.

Observe again, the miracles of the Gospels have to be invented somehow. I am ready to concede that miraculous stories of a certain type have been invented in rich abundance. But the whole class of fictitious miracles invented in credulous ages are stamped with a peculiar trait from which those of the Gospels are free. The one are monstrous, undignified, and grotesque. The others are sober, dignified, and I think that my opponents will allow, if miracles are possible, worthy of God. The preservation of the apocryphal Gospels enables us to know what sort of miracles the mythic spirit commencing with the next century attributed to Jesus Christ. I have examined the subject elsewhere. The following passage sums up the result:--

"The case stands thus: our Gospels present us with the picture of a glorious Christ; the mythic Gospels with that of a contemptible one. Our Gospels have invested Him with the highest conceivable form of moral greatness; the mythic ones have not ascribed to Him one action which is elevated. In our Gospels He exhibits a superhuman wisdom; in the mythic ones a nearly equal superhuman absurdity. In our Gospels He is arrayed in all the beauty of holiness; in the mythic ones, this aspect is entirely wanting. In our Gospels, not one stain of selfishness defiles His character; in the mythic ones, the Lord Jesus is both pettish and malicious. Our Gospels exhibit to us a sublime morality; not a ray of it shines in those of the mythologists. The miracles of the one and the other are contrasted in every point. A similar opposition of character runs through the whole current of thought, feeling, morality, and religion."[111]

I ask my opponents to account for this difference, and specially to say why in the second century the mythic spirit began to create a ridiculous Christ, and in the first it produced a glorious one; and through how many stages of development the creation passed until it culminated in what we read in the Gospels, and the interval of time to be assigned to each.

But according to the theories I am combating, the Messianic aspects of the character of the Jesus of the Evangelists must have passed through a succession of developments before they could have attained their present form. Different parties had to invent different aspects of it. Next, these had to procure acceptance in the various Churches. Each party would cling to its own views. The formation of hostile sects in the Church was a certain consequence. If they gradually wore themselves out, all experience of sectarian warfare proves that the interval must have been long. We know as fact that nothing is more difficult than to effect compromises between contending religious factions; and that they are only, if at all, possible after long and bitter experience. I ask you to compute for yourselves how many developments and compromises must have been required, and the interval of time each must have occupied?

Far more difficult and more numerous must have been the developments by which the moral aspects of the Gospels and of their divine Christ must have been elaborated out of the Judaism of the year 30, and the popular conceptions of its Messiah. I shall select for illustration only two examples out of a vast multitude. One of the most marked distinctions between Gospel and ancient moral teaching is this: the whole aspect of ancient moral teaching assigned the highest place to the heroic and political virtues, and a subordinate one to the mild, meek, benevolent, and humbler ones. This is precisely reversed in the morality of the New Testament. Again: the aspect of a Jewish saint and hero, as it is depicted in the Old Testament, forms a singular contrast to that which the New Testament has assigned to Jesus Christ. I have proved that moral developments in the direction of improvement are very slow. I propose, therefore, the following problem for my opponents to solve. Through how many stages must these have passed before the creation of the Gospels became a possibility, and how many years must they have occupied?

But all the while that the Christian Church was creating a mythology, and struggling with developments and contentions and external opposition, it is an historical fact that it succeeded in extending itself over a wide geographical area. This greatly aggravates the difficulty of developing an improved Christ out of her pregnant womb. The wider the geographical area over which she gradually extended herself, the more difficult would have become the interchange of ideas necessary for developments and compromises. It by no means follows that one little society would immediately swallow the mythic creation of another.

I must observe that this portion of the argument is cumulative, and admits of being pressed to an indefinite extent.

It now remains for those against whose theories I have been reasoning to count the number of these developments, and to assign a reasonable interval for each. If they will do so, they will then find that these theories are hopelessly untenable.

I have hitherto argued, on the chosen position of my opponents, that the Synoptic Gospels were written about the year 100, and the fourth about 160. Such dates are entirely fallacious, and against all evidence. But as far as my reasoning is concerned, it matters little when the Gospels were composed. If I can prove that the portraiture of Christ and the general aspect of the Gospels were familiarly known in the Church at a much earlier period, it is not the smallest difference for my argument whether they existed in an oral or a written form. The concession of seventy years for the creation of the Synoptic Gospels, and one hundred and thirty for that of St. John, has now to be entirely revoked.

The most extreme of the School that I am opposing concede that the four most important epistles of St. Paul are unquestionably genuine, and written by him within less than thirty years after the resurrection. The genuineness of at least four others is conceded by the most eminent unbelievers. We have, then, before us genuine historical documents of Christianity, composed by its most active missionary at about the same distance of time from the resurrection as that which separates us from the repeal of the Corn Law Act.

Now by the aid of these epistles it is possible to prove by a multitude of incidental allusions that all the great features of the portraiture of Jesus Christ were fully developed when St. Paul wrote them. Nay, what is more, the manner in which the allusions are made prove that this portraiture was not a new one, but that it had been long known in the Christian Society. To exhibit this proof would require a lecture of equal length to the present. As I have given it already elsewhere,[112] and it has not been assailed, I shall assume that my position is incontestable.

The period of time during which the human Jesus must have been developed into the divine Christ of the Gospels, if the portraiture be a fictitious creation, must be reduced to one of less than ten years. But whether it be ten, seventy, or one hundred and thirty, it contradicts the laws by which all human developments are regulated. Its creation involves a moral miracle of the most stupendous character.

My opponents postulate a number of conditions which history and philosophy refuse to concede. They require a long interval of time; history will only grant them a short one. They require that developments should be rapid; they are always slow, especially moral ones. They require the creation of elevated moral sentiment; their only instruments with which to work are credulous mythologists. They require that developments should be always progressive towards higher perfection; history declares that they are frequently retrograde ones. They postulate party spirit, but it produces endless division. They require compromises, but they must be made by credulous enthusiasts. They require unity of result; they postulate a multitude of agents. They ask for credulity, and are confronted by sobriety. They ask for seventy years; historical fact will concede them less than ten. They deny physical miracles, and ask us to believe in moral ones.

Such is the position of the school of thought against whom I have been reasoning. They are called by a sad misnomer rationalistic. I ask, are these theories rational, probable, or possible? Defenders of revelation have no grounds for dreading an appeal to reason. If the Gospels, and the glorious Christ therein delineated, have been evolved in accordance with the various theories against which I have been contending, it involves a greater miracle than all the miracles of the New Testament united together.[181]

THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF ST. PAUL'S
EPISTLES.

BY THE

REV. STANLEY LEATHES, M.A.,

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW, KING'S COLLEGE.

THE EVIDENTIAL VALUE OF ST. PAUL'S EPISTLES.

The attacks upon that body of traditional belief and received thought which is conveniently expressed and commonly understood by the term Christianity have turned very much of late years upon the authenticity of the several books composing the New Testament. Inquiries of this nature have commended themselves to an age which we need not shrink from characterising as critical and discriminating. There is a manifest and a very intelligible pleasure to be derived from reopening questions which many have been accustomed to regard as settled, from proving former conclusions erroneous, or showing that considerable doubt still remains where certainty was believed to exist; and in the natural enthusiasm attending investigations of this kind, it is by no means a matter of surprise if the actual importance of the results has been somewhat overrated. The inferences following from the conclusions arrived at, have been estimated in proportion to the supposed certainty of the conclusions. If a particular Gospel can be shown to be falsely, or at any rate with doubtful truth, ascribed to its traditional author, the inference drawn, or at least suggested, is the comparative depreciation, if not worthlessness, of that Gospel. We know not why, but it is frequently assumed that if everything is not in exact accordance with the popular belief in any matter, nothing which is popularly associated with that belief can reasonably be maintained. The whole edifice will fall, or must even be destroyed, because a stone here or there is faulty, or out of place. Because investigation shows that the foundation does not lie as it was thought to lie, therefore there is no foundation at all. The rashness and precipitancy of any such inference will be at once apparent to every thoughtful mind. Because the reasons usually assigned are inconclusive, it by no means follows that no reasons can be given. The central questions really involved, may be altogether unaffected by the technical and subordinate question, who was actually the writer of some particular book. The critical investigation of authorship may have positively no bearing at all on the opinions expressed, or the facts recorded in the book. Whether or not this be so in any given instance, it is at any rate conceivably possible in the abstract.

In the case now before us, however, we have to deal with a converse position. There are four Epistles in the New Testament which have been admitted on all hands to be the veritable productions of the Apostle Paul. These are the two Epistles to Corinth, the Epistle to the Church at Rome, and the Epistle to the Galatians. The writers, if any, who have ventured to call in question the authenticity of these Epistles are so few, and so insignificant, as to be unworthy of mention. We may safely pass them by without fear of challenge or dispute. There is absolutely no room for any reasonable doubt that we have in our hands in these four letters the true and genuine compositions of Saul of Tarsus, after he had become a Christian.

It will be my business, then, on the present occasion, to examine and weigh the precise value of this admission of authenticity, which can only be spoken of as universally made. What is the evidence in support of Christianity which can be fairly adduced from it? In endeavouring to estimate the nature and amount of this evidence, I shall not assume these Epistles to be what we commonly understand by inspired. I shall regard them only as the natural human productions of a certain man whose personal history, to a considerable extent, can be discovered from them. If, on internal or other grounds, there is cause to believe they have any higher authority, that will be another matter. But we shall not assume it in dealing with them. Our aim in the first place must simply be to inquire what the acceptance of these four Epistles as the work of St. Paul legitimately demands of us; what are the inferences fairly deducible from their statements; what insight they give us into the character and motives of the writer, and what information they convey as to the nature and constitution of the early Christian society to which they were addressed.

And first, as to their date. We cannot place the death of the Apostle Paul later than the year of our Lord 68. It may have been the year before; but as he is said by Jerome and Eusebius to have suffered under Nero, and Galba succeeded Nero in A.D. 68, it cannot have been afterwards. Again, we are safe in saying that, on the supposition of the latter date, these four Epistles had been written ten years before the Apostle Paul died; that is to say, they were all written before the end of A.D. 58. Festus probably succeeded Felix in the year of our Lord 60. But Paul had been two years a prisoner at Cæsarea, when Festus came into the province;[113] and these letters were written while he was still at liberty. We have, then, in St. Paul's Epistles, by which we mean always and exclusively these particular Epistles, undoubted genuine productions of about five-and-twenty years, or not much more, after the death of Jesus Christ. Making all due allowance for possible variation in the requisite dates, we are warranted in saying that the interval between the Crucifixion and the sending of these letters to their several destinations, did not exceed by more than two or three years the quarter of a century. It was certainly less than thirty years.

The best way of appreciating such an interval as this is to take a corresponding period in our own lives. We have most of us a very clear recollection, probably, of events which happened in the year 1844 or 1845. The war in the Punjaub, and the Irish famine, which happened shortly afterwards, in 1846, and the great European events of 1848, some two years later, are fresh and vivid in the memory of every person who has arrived at middle age. To others yet more advanced, an interval of five-and-twenty or thirty years can effect but little in effacing events or circumstances which at the time produced a deep and powerful impression. They remember them as yesterday. So it must have been with many who were living at Corinth when the first Epistle to the Church there was written, and who read it on its arrival. But from this Epistle we know[114] that more than 250 persons who had seen the risen Jesus at one time were still alive and able to give their testimony to that effect. These persons, therefore, must have had as vivid a recollection of the circumstance referred to, as we ourselves have of the battles on the Sutlej. The Queen's coronation is to us an event farther in the background of the past than the vision of the crucified Jesus was to the 250 brethren who still survived.

And the way in which their experience is mentioned is one which is the more striking because it is so casual. St. Paul alludes to it incidentally as a thing of which he had often spoken to the Corinthians. He could not have done so had this not been the case. They knew perfectly well that he had mentioned it to them. They had not forgotten that it formed a part of his oral communications. He could not have referred to it in this way had it not been so. But so neither is it possible that he could have spoken of the fact had the 250 witnesses been the mere invention of his own brain. Were there no shrewd men of common sense in the Church of Corinth who could have detected an imposition so gross as this, if it had been one? Had there been even a small minority of such men, we should have had no second Epistle to the Corinthians, or the second Epistle would surely have been very different from what it is. We are obliged, in accepting the first Epistle to Corinth as the veritable work of St. Paul, to conclude that during his stay in that city he had habitually spoken of the fact, which none could call in question or deny, that there were living at that time more than 250 persons who had a distinct recollection of having seen Jesus Christ at some period less than six weeks after He had been crucified, _but who never saw Him again_. St. Paul not only said this, but the whole Corinthian Church knew that what he said was true, for otherwise he would not in this way have dared to say it.

There is no occasion now to discuss the question what it was these people saw, because that would carry us far astray. All we need for the present insist upon is the fact that we have contemporary evidence of the very best kind, in the form, namely, of a genuine letter, that a large number of persons were still alive, say in the year of our Lord 58, who believed that they had seen a person, not merely as a spectre or vision, but as a living and substantial man, whom they knew to have been crucified and buried but a short time before, and who likewise knew that there were many more who could have corroborated their evidence on this point if they had not been dead.

We fully admit, then, that this is a circumstance which is open to explanation in various ways, the true explanation being determinable upon other and additional considerations; but what we do maintain is that upon the premises conceded to us by the most rigid criticism, it is not possible to set aside the evidence on which it rests, be its explanation what it may.

And here it is worth while asking, before we pass on, how we should feel ourselves justified in regarding the testimony of 500 persons now, not more credulous or weak-minded than ourselves, to an event which had passed under the cognisance of their own senses, even though that event were the posthumous appearance of a man who had been put to death as a malefactor? Is it not certain that any such supposed appearance would be calculated to make an impression on the beholders which might well last for five-and-twenty or thirty years, and should we not regard their uniform agreement in the matter as a very remarkable circumstance imperatively demanding some solution?

The first point, then, which the existence of this Epistle establishes, is the fact that at the time it was written there were living many competent eye-witnesses of what was believed by them to have been the reanimation of a body which had been dead and buried, and that their testimony was accepted by a very large number of persons who implicitly believed it. Here, then, we have written evidence to the effect that a particular event was amply testified and very generally believed upon the testimony.

But, again, the same Epistle shows that this belief was by no means unquestioning. The very same chapter proves that there were those at Corinth who said there was no resurrection of the dead.[115] They did not believe, that is, in the doctrine that the dead will ultimately rise. They held no doubt in common with others that the resurrection was "past already;" that the change which had passed upon the Christian upon belief in Christ was so radical and so complete, that he might literally, without any violent figure of speech, be said to have risen again from the dead. They acquiesced so fully in the truth expressed by St. Paul in the second Epistle, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature,"[116] that the felt newness of that spiritual creation seemed to satisfy all their longings after life, and they relegated to the insignificance of a non-essential and a dreamy unreality the thought of a resurrection of the body yet to come. The way, then, in which the Apostle meets this form of unbelief is in the highest degree noteworthy. He argues from the known to the unknown, from what was believed to what was not believed, from what these early doubters implicitly accepted to that which they sceptically rejected. "Now, if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, _and ye believe it_, how say some among you that there is no _future_ resurrection of the dead? For if there be no _future_ resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen? _but ye know and believe Him to be risen, otherwise ye would not be what ye are_."

This, and nothing else than this, is the drift of the Apostle's argument. It shows us plainly, therefore, that there was a discriminating exercise of reason at work in men's minds at Corinth. The struggle between reason and faith had landed them in a logical inconsistency. They rejected the future resurrection on what seemed to be rational grounds, because it appeared to them contrary to reason and experience, but they forgot that they had already submitted their reason to a belief no less absolute and imperious, which, if logically held, would stultify their scepticism.

And there is no setting aside the inference from this argument, that the tendency of the mind which rejected the future resurrection was to reject likewise the personal resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and the testimony of the greater part of the 500 brethren yet surviving who had seen Him after He was risen. That is to say, the character of the faith in the one case is enhanced by the scepticism in the other. Just as the belief of Thomas after his doubt, accepting for the sake of illustration the narrative in St. John,[117] was the stronger and more convincing because he had only adopted it upon conclusive evidence, so is the belief of the Corinthians in the resurrection of Jesus of the greater value evidentially, because we know it to have been their habit of mind not unquestioningly to believe.

We arrive, then, at this further position that we may not lightly regard the belief of the Corinthian Church in the validity of the evidence for Christ's resurrection as the belief of persons who were credulous enough to believe anything. Upon fairly estimating all the circumstances, there is abundant and conclusive proof, which we may call contemporary, that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was believed in as a fact by a vast number of persons who were convinced they had received that fact upon ample or sufficient testimony.

We must not forget, also, the nature of the fact that was believed. The resurrection of a dead body is so contrary to all reason and experience, that the difficulties in the way of believing it may be estimated as practically equal in all cases. No one can profess to believe it without being fully conscious of the absurdity of that which he professes to believe. It is a point in which the imagination can scarcely hope to take the reason at a disadvantage, or at unawares. In only two ways is deception possible. First, on the supposition of the unreality of the previous death; and secondly, that the subsequent appearance was unreal. Now in the first case the notion of unreality is precluded, because it was firmly and universally believed, and not by Christians only, that Christ had died; and there is no vestige of any evidence to show that He died in any other way than on the cross. This death was as needful an element in the creed of the Corinthian Church as His resurrection, not to say that any true belief in His resurrection involved the belief in His death. It will not do to explain His supposed resurrection on the ground that His death was unreal. Where would have been the foolishness of the cross, if Christ had not died? To secure the resurrection of Christ at the expense of His death would have been simply absurd, for two reasons: first, because that would have made the resurrection after all no resurrection--an unreality; and secondly, because the death of Christ alone and by itself was a fact that was implicitly believed, and without which the faith of the Church cannot be conceived or comprehended. We are reduced, therefore, to the necessity of explaining the resurrection of Christ on the alternative supposition that the subsequent appearance was unreal. And here we are met by the transcendent difficulty, that it is antecedently in the highest degree improbable that any sane man should be found to believe that the appearance of a person after death, who had been crucified and buried, could be other than imaginary and delusive. And we become, in fact, bound to determine whether in the abstract it is more improbable that multitudes of competent persons should believe in what was contradicted by universal experience, and especially by their own, or that something may have occurred which, in spite of themselves and their experience, had compelled them to this belief.

For we must not fail to remember that the two suppositions are mutually destructive. If Christ died, then the belief in His resurrection can only be explained on the theory that His subsequent appearance was unreal. If His subsequent appearance was unreal, then, to say the least, it is entirely gratuitous to deny the fact of His having died, because if He did not truly die, there is no discoverable reason why His supposed appearance after death should not have been real. We may choose which explanation we deem preferable. We cannot alternately or simultaneously adopt both.

I am not now called upon to prove more than what is clearly proved, that the existence of this one Epistle as the genuine work of St. Paul affords abundant evidence that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead was accepted as a fact by large numbers of men, some of whom, at least, can only have accepted it on evidence which seemed to them sufficient to counteract the adverse testimony of their experience, their reason, and their senses. And it is almost needless to observe that the belief in the resurrection as here depicted, involved also a belief in the burial[118] of Jesus Christ, in the main and essential features of His death,[119] that it was on the third day that He arose,[120] that His appearances after His resurrection were distinct and manifold,[121] and that the Apostle who depicted it had himself been among the most vehement opponents of this very belief in the person of the Lord, whose resurrection he proclaimed.[122] All this is established by the admission of this letter as genuine, and by the admission which cannot be denied, that the writer was giving a natural and plain statement of the truth, and not a fabricated or ideal narrative of fictitious occurrences.

That is to say, so far the testimony of this Epistle is in conformity with the framework of the Gospel history. If the four Gospels were lost to us, the life, and death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ would still remain firmly and distinctly imbedded in the original faith of the Corinthian Church. We know from this letter that less than thirty years after the death of Christ, there was a very large body of men at Corinth who believed implicitly that He had risen from the dead, and that they knew that many persons were still alive who were eye-witnesses of the fact.

I ask you, then, very carefully to observe that this does not prove the fact. It only shows us conclusively that less than thirty years after the fact there were many persons who believed in it as such.

And let us put a parallel case. Suppose a person coming to London in the present day, and declaring that less than thirty years ago a certain man in a distant country who had been put to death as a malefactor, had risen from the dead the third day, and was still alive. What success think you would he meet with? Most assuredly there would not be half-a-dozen people who would believe him. But if, on the contrary, a new society should be formed, consisting exclusively of persons professing to believe all this, would not the circumstance be so remarkable as to lead us to infer that there must be some adequate cause for it? If the persons professing this belief were of all stations and classes, and many of them, as is proved by this Epistle, men of intelligence and discernment, should we not be constrained to confess that the only reasonable supposition was that there was something in the evidence which could not be lightly set aside? However strange and mysterious the tale might be, it could not be altogether a cunningly devised fable. There must be something at the bottom of it. No effect can exist without an adequate cause. Here is clear evidence of a very considerable effect existing. What was the cause of it? The cause alleged would doubtless be a sufficient cause, for truth is not only stranger, but mightier than fiction. And it may be fairly questioned whether, under all the circumstances, any other cause can be discovered which would be sufficient. There is so far, therefore, an antecedent probability that the cause alleged was the true cause.

Again, it is to be observed throughout all these Epistles of St. Paul that the resurrection of Christ was to him not a past influence, but a present power. If the evidence of the first Epistle to Corinth is less than thirty years after the death of Christ, the evidence of the second carries us back to nearly half that time. The writer speaks of himself as being in Christ more than fourteen years before.[123] This brings us virtually to not more than a dozen or fifteen years from the actual occurrence of the resurrection; and in all probability the Epistle to the Galatians carries us back even further still. Critics are divided as to the computation of the time mentioned in it. But if the "fourteen years after" of chap. ii. are to be added to the "three years" after which Paul "went up to Jerusalem to see Peter," then the whole period can be little less than twenty, and the extreme limit referred to scarcely more than ten years after the resurrection.[124] At that time, then, St. Paul himself fully and implicitly believed in it. At that time he had made great sacrifices for his belief in it. At that time, or shortly after, he had not improbably suffered privation and persecution because of it. But the faith which he held then he is found holding as tenaciously as ever fourteen or twenty years afterwards, holding it, in fact, so tenaciously that he is able to bring many others to share it with him. A man must be something more than an enthusiast who for fourteen years could retain a conviction so monstrous as this, if false, and at the end of that time could make more converts than before. Surely this is not the ordinary experience of mankind, that it is so easy to get men to believe as a fact, contradicting their own experience, what after all is no fact at all. It is one thing to win converts to our _opinions_ or our _principles_, and quite another to gain credence for a _fact_ that it is every one's interest to disprove.