Chapter III: The Evidence of Paul (3)

women, brought to the disciples the assurance that they had seen the Lord, we cannot doubt that, in the unparalleled position in which they were then placed, under all the circumstances of intense feeling and religious excitement at the moment, such emotions would be suddenly called into action as would give to these men the impression that they had seen the Master whom they had lost. These subjective impressions would be strengthened daily and unconsciously into ever more objective consistency, and being confirmed by supposed prophecy would be affirmed with a confidence insensibly inspired by dogmatic considerations.1 That the news would fly from believer to believer, meeting everywhere excited attention and satisfying eager expectancy, is certain; and that these devout souls, swayed by every emotion of glad and exultant enthusiasm, would constantly mistake the suggestions of their own thoughts for objective realities is probable. Jesus died, was buried, and rose again "according to the Scriptures." This would harden every timid supposition into assurance; and as time went on, what was doubtful would become certain, what was mysterious, clear; and those who had seen nothing would take up and strengthen the tradition of those who had seen the Lord.

It is argued that there was not time for the preparation of the disciples to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus between his crucifixion and "the third day," when that event is alleged to have occurred, and, consequently, no probability of subjective impressions of so unexpected a nature being received. To those

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apologists who adopt this argument we might point to many passages in the Gospels, which affirm that the resurrection on the third day was predicted. These, however, we assign of course to a later date. The argument assumes that there was no preparation in the teaching of Jesus, which, as we have endeavoured to suggest, is not the case. If there had been no other, the mere assurance that he was the Messiah must have led to reflections, which demanded some other sequel to his career than the death of a slave. The mere suggestion of such a problem as must have proposed itself to the minds of the disciples: If all is to end here, Jesus was not the Messiah: if he was the Messiah, what will now happen?--must have led to expectant attention. But there was much more than this. In such moments as those of the Passion, thought works feverishly and fast. It is not to be supposed that Peter and the rest did not foresee the end, when Jesus was led away prisoner in the hands of his enemies. It is still less to be imagined that their minds were not ceaselessly revolving that problem, on the solution of which depended their fondest hopes and highest aspirations.1 It is most probable, indeed, that no time could have found the disciples in a state so ripe for strong impressions as that immediately succeeding the death of their Master. There are, however, other aspects in which this point may be placed. What evidence is there that Jesus was seen, or supposed to have been seen, on the third day? Absolutely none worthy of the name. Paul does not say that he was, and as for the Gospels their

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statement is of no value, and the tradition which they record may be set down as a foregone dogmatic con-elusion. Paul very distinctly shows this. He says: "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he has been raised the third day, according to the Scriptures."(1) The repetition of the phrase "according to the Scriptures" is very marked, and points to the fact that the purpose for which Jesus died--"for our sins"--and the date of his resurrection--"the third day"--are statements directly based upon Scripture. We have mentioned that the Scriptures supposed to indicate the third day, do not really apply to the Messiah at all, but this does not affect the question before us. Now believing this epoch to be defined in prophecy, this is precisely one of those points upon which memory would, in the lapse of time, be most likely to adjust itself to the prophecy. We will assume that Jesus was not "seen" before the third day. It is obvious that if he was seen forty days after, it might be affirmed that he had been actually raised long before, on the third day. The vision occurring on the third day itself, even, could not prove that he had not "risen" before. There is, in fact, no way that we can see of fixing the third day except the statement ol "Scripture," and, the moment we accept that, we must recognize the force of dogmatic influence.(2) The fact that the third day has from early

2 We do not go into any argument based on the order given in
the first two Synoptics to go into Galilee--a three
days' journey at least--where the disciples were to see
Jesus. Nor need we touch upon other similar points which
arise out of the narratives of the Gospels.

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times been set apart as the Christian Sabbath, does not prove anything. If the third day was believed to be the day indicated by "Scripture" for the Resurrection, of course that day would be selected as the time at which it must have occurred, and on which it should be commemorated. So far as the vision hypothesis is concerned, the day is of no consequence whatever, and the objection upon this point has no force.

There is another consideration which we must mention, which is not only important in connection with an estimate of the evidence for the Resurrection, but the inferences from which clearly support the explanation we are proposing. Before stating it we may, in passing, again refer to the fact that it is nowhere affirmed that anyone was an eye-witness of the actual Resurrection. It is supposed to be proved by the circumstance that Jesus was subsequently "seen." Observe, however, that the part of this miracle which could not well have been ascribed to subjective impressions--the actual resurrection--is, naturally enough, not seen by anyone, but that which comes precisely within the scope of such subjective action is said to have been seen by many. To come at once to our point, however, neither Paul, nor the Gospels, nor Christian tradition in any form, pretends that Jesus was seen by any one but his disciples and those who believed in him. In fact, Jesus only appeared to those who were prepared by faith and expectant attention to see him in the manner we assert. We are at present merely speaking of the earlier appearances, and reserving Paul for separate discussion. Why, we may inquire, did Jesus not appear to his

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enemies as well as to his friends?(1) Nothing of course could have been more intelligible than his desire to comfort and reassure those who believed in and mourned for him, but to do this by no means excluded a wider manifestation of himself, supposing him to have actually risen from the dead. On the hypothesis that he only rose again and was seen through the yearning and enthusiastic faith of his followers, the reason why he was not seen by others is not hard to find. Yet it might be thought that the object of at once establishing beyond doubt his supernatural mission, and convincing his enemies of their crime, and the Jews of their blindness and folly, was important enough. Had he shown himself to the Chief Priests and elders, and confounded the Pharisees with the vision of him whom they had so cruelly nailed to the accursed tree, how might not the future of his followers have been smoothed, and the faith of many made strong! Or if he had stood again in the Courts of the Roman Procurator, no longer a prisoner buffeted and spat upon, but the glorious Messiah, beyond the reach of Jewish malignity or Roman injustice. But no, he was seen by none but those devoted to him. We shall of course be told by apologists that this also was "for the trial of our faith;" though to anyone who earnestly reflects, it must seem childish to ask men to believe what is beyond their reason, yet conceal the evidence by which reason is supposed to be guided. The reply, however, is clear: for the trial of our faith or for any other reason, it is nevertheless certain that this evidence does not exist.

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When the argument which we are now discussing was first advanced long ago by Celsus, Origen had no better refutation than, after admitting the fact that Jesus was not after his resurrection seen as before publicly and by all men, to take refuge in the belief that the passage of Paul regarding his appearances contains wonderful mysteries which, if understood, would explain why Jesus did not show himself after that event as he had done before it.(1)

We must now proceed to show that the vision of Paul is satisfactorily explained by the same hypothesis.(2) We have already proved that there is no evidence of any value that Paul's conversion was due to his having seen Jesus in a manner which he believed to be objective and supernatural. To represent the arch persecutor Paul transformed in a moment, by a miraculous vision of Jesus, into the Apostle of the Gentiles was highly characteristic of the author of

1 Contra Cels., ii. 63. It is curious that, in an earlier
chapter, Origen, discussing the question of Celsus,--whether
any one who had been actually dead had ever risen with a
real body, says that if Celsus had been a Jew who believed
that Elijah and Elisha had raised little children he could
not have advanced this objection. Origen adds that he thinks
the reason why Jesus appeared to no other nation but the
Jews was, that they had become accustomed to miracles, and
could, by comparing the works of Jesus and what was told of
him with what had been done before, recognize that he was
greater than all who had preceded him. ii. 57.

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Acts, who further represents Paul as immediately preaching publicly in Damascus and confounding the Jews. Widely different is the statement of Paul. He distinctly affirms that he did not communicate with flesh and blood, nor went he up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before him, but that he immediately went away into Arabia. The Fathers delighted in representing this journey to Arabia as an instance of Paul's fervour and eagerness to preach the Gospel in lands over which its sound had not yet gone forth. There can be no doubt, however, we think, that Paul's journey to Arabia and his sojourn there were for the purpose of reflection.(1) It is only in legends that instantaneous spiritual revolutions take place. In sober history the process is more slow and progressive. We repeat that there is no evidence which can at all be accepted that Paul's conversion was effected by a vision, and that it is infinitely more probable that it was, so to say, merely completed and crowned by seeing Jesus; but, at the same time, even if the view be held that this vision was the decisive circumstance which induced Paul at once to resign his course of persecution and embrace Christianity, our argument is not materially affected. In any case, much silent, deep, and almost unconscious preparation for the change must long before have proceeded in the mind of Paul, which was finally matured in the Arabian waste. Upon no view that is taken can this be excluded; upon every ground of common sense, experience, and necessary inference, it must be admitted.

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Indifference is the only great gulf which separates opinions. There was no stolid barrier of apathy between Saul of Tarsus and belief in the Messiah-ship of Jesus. In persecuting Christianity, Paul proved two things: the earnestness and energy of his convictions, and the fact that his attention was keenly directed to the new sect. Both points contributed to the result we are discussing. Paul's Judaism was no mere formalism. It was the adoption, heart and soul, of the religion of his people; which was to him no dead principle, but a living faith stimulating that eager impetuous character to defend its integrity with "fire and sword." He did not, like so many of his countrymen, turn away with scorn from the followers of the despised Nazarene and leave them to their delusion; but turned to them, on the contrary, with the fierce attraction of the zealot whose own belief is outraged by the misbelief of others. The earnest Jew came into sharp collision with the earnest Christian. The earnestness of each was an element of mutual respect. The endurance and firmness of the one might not melt the bigoted resolution of the other, but it arrested his attention and commanded his unconscious sympathy. Just so would the persecutor have endured and resisted persecution; so, subsequently, he actually did meet it. And what was the main difference between the persecutor and the persecuted? It consisted in that which constituted the burden of the apostolic preaching: the belief that "this was the Christ." The creed of the new sect at least was not complicated. It was little more at that time than a question of identity, until Paul himself developed it into an elaborate system of theology.

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In this question of identity, however, there was comprised a vast change of national ideas. To the devout Jew,--looking for the hope of Israel, yearning and praying for the advent of that Son of David who was to sit upon the throne of his fathers, restore the fortunes of the people, drive out the heathen and subdue the nations again to the yoke of Israel, establishing the worship of Jehovah in its purity and turning the Gentiles to the service of the God of Gods,--it was an abhorrent thought that the lowly peasant who had died a shameful death on Golgotha should be represented as the Messiah, the promised King of the Jews. Still there was something sufficiently startling in the idea to excite reflection. A political aspirant, who pretended to play the part, and after some feeble attempt at armed insurrection had been crushed by the heel of the Roman, could not have attracted attention. In that, there would have been no originality to astonish, and no singularity to require explanation. This man, on the contrary, who was said to be the Messiah, assumed no earthly dignity; claimed no kingdom in this world; had not even a place to lay his head; but ended a short and unambitious career as the teacher of a simple but profound system of morality by death on a cross. There was no vulgar imitation here. This was the reverse of the Messiah of the Jews. In spite of so much dissimilarity, however, there was in the two parties a fundamental agreement of belief. The Jew expected the Messiah; the Christian believed he had now come. The Messiah expected by the Jew was certainly a very different Saviour from the despised and rejected Jesus of Nazareth, but at the root of the

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Christian faith lay belief in a Messiah. It was a thoroughly Jewish belief, springing out of the covenant with the fathers, and based upon the Law and the Prophets. The difference was not one of principle but one of details. Their interpretation of the promises was strangely dissimilar, but the trust of both was in the God of Israel. To pass from one to the other did not involve the adoption of a new religion, but merely a modification of the views of the old. Once convinced that the Messiah was not a political ruler but a spiritual guide, not a victorious leader, but a suffering servant of Jehovah, the transition from judaic hopes to recognition of Jesus was almost accomplished.

It is clear that Paul in his capacity of Persecutor must have become well acquainted with the views of the Christians, and probably must have heard them repeatedly expounded by his captives before the Jewish Sanhedrin.1 He must have heard the victims of his blind religious zeal affirming their faith with all that ecstatic assurance which springs out of persecution. The vision of Peter contributed to the vision of Paul. There can be no doubt that Paul must have become aware of the application to Jesus of Old Testament prophecies, and of the new conception thence derived of a suffering Messiah. The political horizon was certainly not suggestive of the coming of the Lord's Anointed. Never had the fortunes of Israel been at a lower ebb. The hope of a Prince of the house of David to restore dominion to the fallen race was hard to entertain. The suggestion of an alternative theory based upon a new interpretation of the prophets, if startling, was not untimely, when the old confidence

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was becoming faint in many minds, and the hope of his coming seemed so distant and unsure. If we do not misjudge the character of Paul, however shocked he may have been at first by the substitution of a crucified Nazarene for the triumphant Messiah of his earlier visions, there must have been something profoundly pleasing to his mind in the conception of a spiritual Messiah. As he became familiar with the idea, it is probable that flashes of doubt must have crossed his mind as to the correctness of his more material views. If the belief were true, which Christians professed, that this Jesus, despised and rejected of men, was actually the suffering servant of Jehovah, and this servant of Jehovah the Messiah! If the claim of this Jesus who had been esteemed smitten of God and afflicted, had been verified by his rising again from the dead and ascending to the right hand of God! This aspect of the Messianic idea had a mystery and significance congenial to the soul of Paul. The supernatural elements could have presented no difficulties to him. Belief in the Resurrection was part of his creed as a Pharisee. That the risen Messiah should have been seen by many, the fundamental idea once admitted, could not surprise the visionary Jew. We can well imagine the conflict which went on in the ardent mind of Paul when doubts first entered it; his resistance and struggle for the faith of his youth; the pursuance as duty of the course he had begun, whilst the former conviction no longer strengthened the feverish energy; the excitement of religious zeal in the mad course of persecution, not to be arrested in a moment, but become, by growing doubt, bitterness and pain to him; the suffering

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inflicted sending its pang into his own flesh. There was ample preparation in such a situation for the vision of Paul.

The constitution and temperament of the Apostle were eminently calculated to receive impressions of the strongest description.(1) We have mentioned the conjecture of many able men that his "stake in the flesh" was a form of epilepsy. It is, of course, but a conjecture, though one which has great probability,(2) and we must not treat it otherwise; but, if it could be proved correct, much light would be thrown upon Paul's visions. We have discussed the Apostle's statements regarding the supernatural Charismata in the Church, and have seen his extreme readiness to believe in the lavish bestowal of miraculous gifts where others could recognise but ordinary qualities. That Paul should be able to claim the power of speaking with tongues more than all the Corinthians, whose exercise of that spiritual gift he so unceremoniously restrains, is in perfect keeping with all that we elsewhere learn about him. Everywhere we find the keenly impressionable nature so apt to fall into the ecstatic state when brought under the influence of active religious emotion. "I must glory," he exclaims with irresistible impulse on coming to a theme so congenial to him, "I must glory; it is not indeed expedient, but I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord."(3) Even when he speaks of the stake in his flesh, which he does in such suggestive connection with his visions, he describes it as sent lest he should "be exalted above measure by the

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excess of the revelations."(1) We have so repeatedly had to refer to Paul's claim to have received his Gospel by special revelation that we need not again speak of it here. If we could quote Acts as a genuine representation of Christian tradition regarding Paul, we might point out the visions and revelations therein so freely ascribed to him, but his own writings are amply sufficient for our purpose. Even his second journey to Jerusalem is attributed to the direction of revelation.(2)

The only vision regarding which the Apostle gives any particulars is that referred to, 2 Cor. xii. 2: "I know a man in Christ above fourteen years ago (whether in the body I know not, whether out of the body I know not, God knoweth), such an one caught up even unto the third heaven. 3. And I know such a man (whether in the body or out of the body I know not, God knoweth), 4. that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. 5. For such an one will I boast," etc.(3) It has been argued from this passage and the repetition of the expression "whether in the body or out of the body I know not," that Paul himself could clearly distinguish objective facts from subjective impressions.(4) No interpretation could well be more erroneous. It is evident that Paul has no doubt whatever of his having been in the third heaven and in Paradise, and as little of

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his having heard the unspeakable words. That is quite objectively real to him. His only doubt is whether the body was caught up with his soul upon this occasion.(1) No one who has carefully considered such phenomena and examined the statements here made can have any doubt as to the nature of this vision. The conception of being caught up into "the third heaven," "into Paradise," and there hearing these "unspeakable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter," betrays in no doubtful manner the source of the subjective impressions. Of course, divines who are prepared to see in this passage the account of an actual objective event will not consider it evidence that Paul had subjective visions which he believed to have been objective facts; but to those who, more rightly and reasonably, we think, recognize the subjective character of the vision, it must at once definitely settle the point that Paul could mistake subjective impressions for objective realities, and consequently the argument for the similar subjectivity of the vision of Jesus becomes complete. The possibility of such a mistake is precisely what apologists question. Here is an instance in which the mistake has clearly been made by Paul.

The Apostle's own statements show him to have been superlatively visionary and impressionable, with restless nervous energy it is true, but, at the same time, with keen physical and mental susceptibility. Liable to be uplifted by "the excess of revelations," glorying in "visions and revelations of the Lord," possessing ecstatic

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powers more than all others, subjecting his very movements, his visits to Jerusalem, to the direction of impulses which he supposed to be revelations: there has never been a case in which both temperament and religious belief more thoroughly combined to ascribe, with perfect conviction, objective reality to subjective impressions connected with divine things then occupying his mind.

Paul moreover lived in a time when the Messianic longing of the Jews led them to be profoundly interested students of the later apocalyptic writings, which certainly made a deep impression upon the Apostle, and in which he must have been struck by the image of the promised Messiah, like the Son of Man, coming on the clouds of heaven (Dan. vii. 13, cf. 1 Cor. xv. 47).(1) At no time was such a vision more likely to present itself to him, than when his mind was fixed upon the Messianic idea with all the intensity of one who had been persecuting those who asserted that the Messiah had already come. Here was reason for all that concentration of thought upon the subject which produces such visions: and when doubt and hesitation entered into that eager intense spirit, the conflict must have been sharp and the nerves highly strung. The Jesus whom he saw with his mind's eye was the climax of conviction in such a nature; and the vision vividly brought to him his own self-reproachful thoughts for cruelly mistaken zeal, and the remorse of noble souls which bounds to reparation. He devoted himself as eagerly to Christianity, as he had previously done to Judaism. He changed the contents but not the form of his mind.(2) Paul the

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Christian was the same man as Paul the Jew; and in abandoning the conception of a Messiah "according to the flesh," and placing his whole faith in one "according to the spirit," he displayed the same characteristics as before. The revolution in his mind, of which so much is said, was merely one affecting the Messianic idea. He did not at a bound become the complete Apostle of the Gentiles, but accepting at first nothing more than belief in a Messiah according to the spirit, his comprehensive and peculiar system of theology was, "of course, only the result of subsequent reflection. That his conviction should have been completed by a subjective vision is no more strange than that he should believe in supernatural Charismata, miraculous speaking with tongues, and being actually caught up into the third heaven, into Paradise, and hearing there unutterable words which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Paul evidently never questioned the source of his visions. They were simply accepted as divine revelations, and they excited all the less of misgiving in his soul from the fact that, without doubt, they expressed the expected solution of problems which intensely occupied his mind, and reflected conclusions already practically formed by his own thoughts.(1)

There remain two points to be briefly considered.

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The first of these is the assertion, constantly made in various shapes, that the cardinal miracles of the Resurrection and Ascension were proclaimed as unquestionable facts, without contradiction, at a time when such an assertion might have been easily refuted. The production of the body, the still occupied sepulchre, it is said, would have set such pretensions at rest It is unnecessary to say that the proclamation of the Resurrection and Ascension as facts proved nothing beyond the belief, perhaps, of those who asserted them. So far as Paul is concerned, we may seek in vain for any assertion of a bodily Ascension. But there is not the slightest evidence to show when the Resurrection and Ascension were first publicly proclaimed as unquestionable facts. Even the Gospels do not state that they were mentioned beyond the circle of disciples. The second Synoptist, who does not state that Jesus himself was seen by any one, makes the curious affirmation at the close of his Gospel as we have it, that the women, on receiving the announcement of the Resurrection from the angels, and the command for the disciples and Peter to go into Galilee, "went out and fled from the sepulchre; for trembling and astonishment seized them, and they said nothing to any one; for they were afraid."(1) In the fourth Gospel, although the "beloved disciple" went into the sepulchre, "and he saw and believed," it is related of him and Peter: "So the disciples went away again unto their own home."(2) The Eleven, in fact, who all forsook their Master and fled--who are represented as meeting with closed doors "for fear of the Jews"--with closed doors after eight days, it is again said, although, a week before, ten of them are said to have seen Jesus--were not likely to expose

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themselves to the fate of Jesus by rushing into the highways and asserting the Resurrection. Beyond the statement of the Gospels, the value of which we have seen, and a statement accompanied by so many confused circumstances, there is no evidence whatever that the sepulchre was found empty. There is no evidence that the sepulchre was really known to the disciples, none of whom, probably, was present at the crucifixion; and it might well be inferred that the women, who are represented as ignorant that the body had already been embalmed, yet who are the chief supposed witnesses for the empty sepulchre and the informants of the disciples, were equally ignorant of the sepulchre in which the body was laid. We might ask whether the 500 brethren who are said to have seen Jesus at the same time came from Galilee, or wherever they were, and examined the state of the sepulchre? We have already said, however, that if the sepulchre had been shown to be empty, the very last thing which could be proved by that circumstance would be the correctness of the assertion that it had become so in consequence of a stupendous miracle. On the other hand, if it had been shown that it was occupied by a body, it is exceedingly doubtful whether the fact would have convinced any one not previously sure that Jesus could not have risen from the dead, and he would not have required such evidence. When the Resurrection was publicly proclaimed as a fact, the body could no longer have been recognizable, and the idea that any of those in authority could have thought such demonstration necessary to refute a story whispered about amongst an obscure sect in Jerusalem, or even more courageously asserted, is a product of later times. When Jesus of Nazareth, the head of the nascent sect, was suppressed

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by a shameful death, his humble and timid followers were obviously for a time despised; and there is little reason to suppose that the chief priests and rulers of the Jews would have condescended to any public contradiction of their affirmations, if they had even felt indifference to the defilement of exposing for such a purpose a decaying body to the gaze of Jerusalem. This kind of refutation is possible only in the imagination of divines. Besides, what evidence is there that even a single indifferent person found the sepulchre empty? There is not an iota of proof.

On the contrary, there is the very strongest evidence that when the assertion of the Resurrection and Ascension as "unquestionable facts" was made, it was contradicted in the only practical and practicable way conceivable: (1.) by all but universal disbelief in Jerusalem; (2.) by actual persecution of those who asserted it. It is a perfectly undeniable fact that the great mass of the Jews totally denied the truth of the statement by disbelieving it, and that the converts to Christianity who soon swelled the numbers of the Church and spread its influence amongst the nations were not the citizens of Jerusalem, who were capable of refuting such assertions, but strangers and Gentiles. The number of the community of Jerusalem after the forty days seems to be stated by the author of Acts as "about 120," and although the numbers added to the Church, according to this document, are evidently fabulous, the converts at Pentecost are apparently chiefly from amongst the devout men of every nation upon earth congregated at Jerusalem. To this hour the Jews have retained as their inheritance the denial by their forefathers of the asserted facts. The assertion, secondly, was emphatically denied by the persecution, as soon as it

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became worth any one's while to persecute, of those who made it. It was in this way denied by Paul himself, at a time when verification was infinitely more possible than when he came to join in the assertion. Are we to suppose that the Apostle took no trouble to convince himself of the facts before he began to persecute? He was in the confidence of the high priests it seems, can he ever have heard the slightest doubt from them on the subject? Is it not palpable that Paul and his party, by their very pursuit of those who maintained such allegations, stigmatized them as falsehoods, and perhaps as imposture? If it be said that Paul became convinced of his mistake, it is perfectly obvious that his conversion was not due to local and circumstantial evidence, but to dogmatic considerations and his supposed vision of Jesus. He disbelieved when the alleged occurrences were recent and, as it is said, capable of refutation; he believed when the time for such refutation had passed.

The second point to which we have referred is the vague and final objection of apologists that, if the vision of Jesus was merely subjective, the fabric of the Church and even of Christianity is based upon unreality and self-deception. Is this possible? they ask. Is it possible that for eighteen centuries the Resurrection and Ascension have been proclaimed and believed by millions, with no other original foundation than self-delusion? The vagueness and apparent vastness of this objection, perhaps, make it a formidable _argumentum ad hominem_, but it vanishes into very small proportions as we approach it. Must we then understand that the dogmas of all religions which have been established must have been objective truths? and that this is a necessary inference from their wide adoption? If so, then all

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historical religions before Christianity, and after it, must take rank as substantially true. In that case the religion of the Veda, of Buddha, of Zoroaster, of Mahomet, for instance, can as little be based on unreality and self-deception as Christianity. They have secured wide acceptance from mankind. Millions have for centuries devoutly held their tenets, and to this day the followers of Sakya Muni are as numerous as the believers in the religion of Paul. If not, the objection at once falls to the ground as an argument, and the problem becomes a simple matter of evidence, which has been fully discussed and disposed of.

When we analyse the fact, it becomes apparent that, ultimately, belief in the Resurrection and Ascension resolves itself into the belief of a few or of one. It requires very little reflection to perceive that the Christian Church is founded much more upon belief in the Resurrection than on the fact itself.(1) Nothing is more undeniable than the circumstance that not more than a very small number of men are even alleged to have seen the risen Jesus. The mass of those who have believed in the Resurrection have done so because of the assurance of these few men, and perhaps because they may have been led to think that the event was predicted in Scripture. Up to this day, converts to the dogma are made, if made at all, upon the assurance of Paul and the Gospels. The vast question at last dwindles down to the inquiry: Can a few men, can one man, draw erroneous inferences and be honestly deceived by something supposed to have been seen? We presume that there can be no hesitation in giving an affirmative reply. The rest follows as a matter of

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course. Others simply believe the report of those who have believed before them. In course of time, so many believe that it is considered almost outrageous to disbelieve or demand evidence. The number of those who have believed is viewed at last as an overwhelming proof of the truth of the creed.

It is a most striking and extraordinary fact that the life and teaching of Jesus have scarcely a place in the system of Paul. Had we been dependent upon him we should have had no idea of the Great Master who preached the Sermon on the Mount, and embodied pure truths in parables of such luminous simplicity. His noble morality would have remained unknown, and his lessons of rare spiritual excellence have been lost to the world. Paul sees no significance in that life, but concentrates all interest in the death and resurrection of his Messiah. In the sepulchre hewn out of the rock are deposited the teaching and example of Jesus, and from it there rises a mystic Christ lost in a halo of theology. The ecclesiastical Christianity which was mainly Paul's work has almost effaced the true work of Jesus. Too little can now be traced of that teaching, and few are the genuine records of his work which have survived the pious enthusiasm evoked by his character. Theology has done its worst with the life; and that death, which will ever be the darkest blot upon history, has been represented as the climax of divine beneficence. The Resurrection and Ascension have deified Jesus of Nazareth; but they have done so at the expense of all that was most truly sublime in his work.

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The world will gain when it recognises the real character and source of such dogmas, and resigns this inheritance from the Age of Miracles. For, although we lose a faith which has long been our guide in the past, we need not now fear to walk boldly with Truth in the future, and turning away from fancied benefits to be derived from the virtue of his death, we may find real help and guidance from more earnest contemplation of the life and teaching of Jesus.

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CONCLUSIONS.

We have seen that Divine Revelation could only be necessary or conceivable for the purpose of communicating to us something which we could not otherwise discover, and that the truth of communications which are essentially beyond and undiscoverable by reason cannot be attested in any other way than by miraculous signs distinguishing them as divine. It is admitted that no other testimony could justify our believing the specific Revelation which we are considering, the very substance of which is supernatural and beyond the criticism of reason, and that its doctrines, if not proved to be miraculous truths, must inevitably be pronounced "the wildest delusions." "By no rational being could a just and benevolent life be accepted as proof of such astonishing announcements."

On examining the alleged miraculous evidence for Christianity as Divine Revelation, however, we find that even if the actual occurrence of the supposed miracles could be substantiated, their value as evidence would be destroyed by the necessary admission that miracles are not limited to one source and are not exclusively associated with truth, but are performed by various spiritual Beings, Satanic as well as Divine, and are not always evidential, but are sometimes to be regarded as delusive and for the trial of faith. As the doctrines supposed to be revealed

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are beyond Reason, and cannot in any sense be intelligently approved by the human intellect, no evidence which is of so doubtful and inconclusive a nature could sufficiently attest them. This alone would disqualify the Christian miracles for the duty which miracles alone are capable of performing.

The supposed miraculous evidence for the Divine Revelation, moreover, is not only without any special divine character, being avowedly common also to Satanic agency, but it is not original either in conception or details. Similar miracles are reported long antecedently to the first promulgation of Christianity, and continued to be performed for centuries after it. A stream of miraculous pretension, in fact, has flowed through all human history, deep and broad as it has passed through the darker ages, but dwindling down to a thread as it has entered days of enlightenment. The evidence was too hackneyed and commonplace to make any impression upon those before whom the Christian miracles are said to have been performed, and it altogether failed to convince the people to whom the Revelation was primarily addressed. The selection of such evidence for such a purpose is much more characteristic of human weakness than of divine power.

The true character of miracles is at once betrayed by the fact that their supposed occurrence has thus been confined to ages of ignorance and superstition, and that they are absolutely unknown in any time or place where science has provided witnesses fitted to appreciate and ascertain the nature of such exhibitions of supernatural power. There is not the slightest evidence that any attempt was made to investigate the supposed miraculous occurrences, or to justify the inferences so freely drawn from them, nor is there any reason to

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believe that the witnesses possessed, in any considerable degree, the fulness of knowledge and sobriety of judgment requisite for the purpose. No miracle has yet established its claim to the rank even of apparent reality, and all such phenomena must remain in the dim region of imagination. The test applied to the largest class of miracles, connected with demoniacal possession, discloses the falsity of all miraculous pretension.

There is no uncertainty as to the origin of belief in supernatural interference with nature. The assertion that spurious miracles have sprung up round a few instances of genuine miraculous power has not a single valid argument to support it. History clearly demonstrates that, wherever ignorance and superstition have prevailed, every obscure occurrence has been attributed to supernatural agency, and it is freely acknowledged that, under their influence, inexplicable and miraculous are convertible terms. On the other hand, in proportion as knowledge of natural laws has increased, the theory of supernatural interference with the order of nature has been dispelled, and miracles have ceased. The effect of science, however, is not limited to the present and future, but its action is equally retrospective, and phenomena which were once ignorantly isolated from the sequence of natural cause and effect, are now restored to their place in the unbroken order. Ignorance and superstition created miracles; knowledge has for ever annihilated them.

To justify miracles, two assumptions are made: first, an Infinite Personal God; and second, a Divine design of Revelation, the execution of which necessarily involves supernatural action. Miracles, it is argued, are not contrary to nature, or effects produced without adequate

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causes, but on the contrary are caused by the intervention of this Infinite Personal God for the purpose of attesting and carrying out the Divine design. Neither of the assumptions, however, can be reasonably maintained. The assumption of an Infinite Personal God: a Being at once limited and unlimited, is a use of language to which no mode of human thought can possibly attach itself. Moreover, the assumption of a God working miracles is emphatically excluded by universal experience of the order of nature. The allegation of a specific Divine cause of miracles is further inadequate from the fact that the power of working miracles is avowedly not limited to a Personal God, but is also ascribed to other spiritual Beings, and it must, consequently, always be impossible to prove that the supposed miraculous phenomena originate with one and not with another. On the other hand, the assumption of a Divine design of Revelation is not suggested by antecedent probability, but is derived from the very Revelation which it is intended to justify, as is likewise the assumption of a Personal God, and both are equally vicious as arguments. The circumstances which are supposed to require this Divine design, and the details of the scheme, are absolutely incredible, and opposed to all the results of science. Nature does not countenance any theory of the original perfection and subsequent degradation of the human race, and the supposition of a frustrated original plan of creation, and of later impotent endeavours to correct it, is as inconsistent with Divine omnipotence and wisdom as the proposed punishment of the human race and the mode devised to save some of them are opposed to justice and morality. Such assumptions are essentially inadmissible, and totally fail to explain and justify miracles.

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Whatever definition be given of miracles, such exceptional phenomena must at least be antecedently incredible. In the absence of absolute knowledge, human belief must be guided by the balance of evidence, and it is obvious that the evidence for the uniformity of the order of nature, which is derived from universal experience, must be enormously greater than can be the testimony for my alleged exception to it. On the other hand, universal experience prepares us to consider mistakes of the senses, imperfect observation and erroneous inference as not only possible, but eminently probable on the part of the witnesses of phenomena, even when they are perfectly honest and truthful, and more especially so when such disturbing causes as religious excitement and superstition are present. When the report of the original witnesses only reaches us indirectly and through the medium of tradition, the probability of error is further increased. Thus the allegation of miracles is discredited, both positively by the invariability of the order of nature, and negatively by the fallibility of human observation and testimony. The history of miraculous pretension in the world, and the circumstances attending the special exhibition of it which we are examining, suggest natural explanations of the reported facts which wholly remove them from the region of the supernatural.

When we proceed to examine the direct witnesses for the Christian miracles, we do not discover any exceptional circumstances neutralizing the preceding considerations. On the contrary, we find that the case turns not upon miracles substantially before us, but upon the mere narratives of miracles said to have occurred over eighteen hundred years ago. It is obvious that, for such narratives to possess any real force and validity, it is essential that

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their character and authorship should be placed beyond all doubt. They must proceed from eye-witnesses capable of estimating aright the nature of the phenomena. Our four Gospels, however, are strictly anonymous works. The superscriptions which now distinguish them are undeniably of later origin than the works themselves, and do not proceed from the composers of the Gospels. Of the writers to whom these narratives are traditionally ascribed only two are even said to have been apostles, the alleged authors of the second and third Synoptics neither having been personal followers of Jesus, nor eyewitnesses of the events they describe. Under these circumstances, we are wholly dependent upon external evidence for information regarding the authorship and trustworthiness of the four canonical Gospels.

In examining this evidence, we proceeded upon clear and definite principles. Without forming or adopting any theory whatever as to the date or origin of our Gospels, we simply searched the writings of the Fathers, during a century and a half after the events in question, for information regarding the composition and character of these works, and even for any certain traces of their use, although, if discovered, these could prove little beyond the mere existence of the Gospels used at the date of the writer. In the latter and minor investigation, we were guided by canons of criticism previously laid down, and which are based upon the simplest laws of evidence. We found that the writings of the Fathers, during a century and a half after the death of Jesus, are a complete blank so far as any evidence regarding the composition and character of our Gospels is concerned, unless we except the tradition preserved by Papias, after the middle of the second century, the details of which fully justify

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the conclusion that our first and second Synoptics, in their present form, cannot be the works said to have been composed by Matthew and Mark. There is thus no evidence whatever directly connecting any of the canonical Gospels with the writers to whom they are popularly attributed, and later tradition, of little or no value in itself, is separated by a long interval of profound silence from the epoch at which they are supposed to have been composed. With one exception, moreover, we found that, during the same century and a half, there is no certain and unmistakable trace even of the anonymous use of any of our Gospels in the early Church. This fact, of course, does not justify the conclusion that none of these Gospels was actually in existence during any part of that time, nor have we anywhere suggested such an inference, but strict examination of the evidence shows that there is no positive proof that they were. The exception to which we refer is Marcion's Gospel, which was, we think, based upon our third Synoptic, and consequently must be accepted as evidence of the existence of that work. Marcion, however, does not give the slightest information as to the authorship of the Gospel, and his charges against it of adulteration cannot be considered very favourable testimony as to its infallible character. The canonical Gospels continue to the end anonymous documents of no evidential value for miracles. They do not themselves pretend to be inspired histories, and they cannot escape from the ordinary rules of criticism. Internal evidence does not modify the inferences from external testimony. Apart from continual minor contradictions throughout the first three Gospels, it is impossible to reconcile the representations of the Synoptics with those of the fourth Gospel. They mutually destroy each other as evidence. They must

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be pronounced mere narratives compiled long after the events recorded, by unknown persons who were neither eye-witnesses of the alleged miraculous occurrences, nor hearers of the statements they profess to report. They cannot be accepted as adequate testimony for miracles and the reality of Divine Revelation.

Applying similar tests to the Acts of the Apostles, we arrived at similar results. Acknowledged to be composed by the same author who produced the third Synoptic, that author's identity is not thereby made more clear. There is no evidence of the slightest value regarding its character, but, on the other hand, the work itself teems to such an extent with miraculous incidents and supernatural agency, that the credibility of the narrative requires an extraordinary amount of attestation to secure for it any serious consideration. When the statements of the author are compared with the emphatic declarations of the Apostle Paul, and with authentic accounts of the development of the early Christian Church, it becomes evident that the Acts of the Apostles, as might have been supposed, is a legendary composition of a later day, which cannot be regarded as sober and credible history, and rather discredits than tends to establish the reality of the miracles with which its pages so suspiciously abound.

The remaining books of the New Testament Canon required no separate examination, because, even if genuine, they contain no additional testimony to the reality of Divine Revelation, beyond the implied belief in such doctrines as the Incarnation and Resurrection. It is unquestionable, we suppose, that in some form or other the Apostles believed in these miracles, and the assumption that they did so, supersedes the necessity for

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examining the authenticity of the Catholic Epistles and Apocalypse. In like manner, the recognition as genuine of four Epistles of Paul, which contain his testimony to miracles, renders it superfluous to discuss the authenticity of the other letters attributed to him.

The general belief in miraculous power and its possession by the Church is brought to a practical test in the case of the Apostle Paul. After elaborate consideration of his letters, we came to the unhesitating conclusion that, instead of establishing the reality of miracles, the unconscious testimony of Paul clearly demonstrates the facility with which erroneous inferences convert the most natural phenomena into supernatural occurrences.

As a final test, we carefully examined the whole of the evidence for the cardinal dogmas of Christianity, the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. First taking the four Gospels, we found that their accounts of these events are not only full of legendary matter, but that they even contradict and exclude each other, and so far from establishing the reality of such stupendous miracles, they show that no reliance is to be placed on the statements of the unknown authors. Taking next the testimony of Paul, which is more important as at least authentic and proceeding from an Apostle of whom we know more than of any other of the early missionaries of Christianity, we saw that it was indefinite and utterly insufficient. His so-called "circumstantial account of the testimony upon which the belief in the Resurrection rested" consists merely of vague and undetailed hearsay, differing, so far as it can be compared, from the statements in the Gospels, and without other attestation than the bare fact that it is repeated by Paul, who doubtless believed it, although he had not himself been a witness

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