Chapter VII: Resurrection of Christ (1)

OF all the single events that ever were supposed to have occurred in the world, perhaps the most august in its moral associations and the most stupendous in its lineal effects, both on the outward fortunes and on the inward experience of mankind, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. If, therefore, there is one theme in all the range of thought worthy of candid consideration, it is this. There are two ways of examining it. We may, as unquestioning Christians, inquire how the New Testament writers represent it, what premises they assume, what statements they make, and what inferences they draw. Thus, without perversion, without mixture of our own notions, we should construct the Scripture doctrine of the resurrection of the Savior. Again as critical scholars and philosophical thinkers, we may study that doctrine in all its parts, scrutinize it in all its bearings, trace, as far as possible, the steps and processes of its formation, discriminate as well as we can, by all fair tests, whether it be entirely correct, or wholly erroneous, or partly true and partly false. Both of these methods of investigation are necessary to a full understanding of the subject. Both are obligatory upon the earnest inquirer. Whoso would bravely face his beliefs and intelligently comprehend them, with their grounds and their issues, with a devout desire for the pure truth, whatsoever it may be, putting his trust in the God who made him, will never shrink from either of these courses of examination. Whoso does shrink from these inquiries is either a moral coward, afraid of the results of an honest search after that truth of things which expresses the will of the Creator, or a spiritual sluggard, frightened by a call to mental effort and torpidly clinging to ease of mind. And whoso, accepting the personal challenge of criticism, carries on the investigation with prejudice and passion, holding errors because he thinks them safe and useful, and rejecting realities because he fancies them dangerous and evil, is an intellectual traitor, disloyal to the sacred laws by which God hedges the holy fields and rules the responsible subjects of the realm of truth. We shall combine the two modes of inquiry, first singly asking what the Scriptures declare, then critically seeking what the facts will warrant, it being unimportant to us whether these lines exactly coincide or diverge somewhat, the truth itself being all. We now pass to an examination of Christ's resurrection from five points of view: first, as a fact; second, as a fulfilment of prophecy; third, as a pledge; fourth, as a symbol; and fifth, as a theory.

The writers of the New Testament speak of the resurrection of Christ, in the first place, as a fact. "Jesus whom ye slew and hanged on a tree, him hath God raised up." It could not have been viewed by them in the light of a theory or a legend, nor, indeed, as any thing else than a marvellous but literal fact. This appears from their minute accounts of the scenes at the sepulchre and of the disappearance of his body. Their declarations of this are most unequivocal, emphatic, iterated, "The Lord is risen indeed." All that was most important in their faith they based upon it, all that was most precious to them in this life they staked upon it. "Else why stand we in jeopardy every hour?" They held it before their inner vision as a guiding star through the night of their sufferings and dangers, and freely poured out their blood upon the cruel shrines of martyrdom in testimony that it was a fact. That they believed he literally rose from the grave in visible form also appears, and still more forcibly, from their descriptions of his frequent manifestations to them. These show that in their faith he assumed at his resurrection the same body in which he had lived before, which was crucified and buried. All attempts, whether by Swedenborgians or others, to explain this Scripture language as signifying that he rose in an immaterial body, are futile.1 He appeared to their senses and was recognised by his identical bodily form. He partook of physical food with them. "They gave him a piece of broiled fish and of an honey comb; and he ate before them." The marks in his hands and side were felt by the incredulous Thomas, and convinced him. He said to them, "Handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have." To a candid mind there can hardly be a question that the gospel records describe the resurrection of Christ as a literal fact, that his soul reanimated the deceased body, and that in it he showed himself to his disciples. Yet that there are a few texts implying the immateriality of his resurrection body that there are two accounts of it in the gospels we cannot deny.

We advance to see what is the historical evidence for the fact of the resurrection of Christ. This argument, of course, turns chiefly on one point, namely, the competency of the witnesses, and the validity of their testimony.2 We will present the usually exhibited scheme of proof as strongly as we can.3 In the first place, those who testified to the resurrection were numerous enough, so far as mere numbers go, to establish the fact beyond question. Paul declares there were above five hundred who from their personal knowledge could affirm of the Lord's resurrection. But particularly there were the eleven apostles, the two Marys, Cleopas, and the disciples from whom Joseph and Matthias the candidates for Judas Iscariot's apostleship were selected, consisting probably of most of the seventy. If the evidence of any number of men ought to convince us of the alleged event, then, under the existing circumstances, that of twelve ought. Important matters of history are often unhesitatingly received on the authority of a single historian. If the occurrences at the time were sufficient to demonstrate to a reasonable mind the reality of the resurrection, then the unanimous testimony of twelve men to those occurrences should convince us. The oaths of a thousand would be no stronger.

These men possessed sufficient abilities to be trusted, good powers of judgment, and varied experience. The selection of them by Him who "knew what was in man," the boldness and efficiency of their lives, the fruits of their labors everywhere, amply prove their

1 The opposite view is ably argued by Bush in his valuable treatise on the Resurrection.

2 Sherlock, Trial of the Witnesses.

3 Ditton, Demonstration of the Resurrection of Christ. For a sternly faithful estimate of the cogency of this argument, it must be remembered that all the data, every fact and postulate in each step of the reasoning, rest on the historical authority of the four Gospels, documents whose authorship and date are lost in obscurity. Even of "orthodox" theologians few, with any claims to scholarship, now hold that these Gospels, as they stand, were written by the persons whose names they bear. They wander and waver in a thick fog. See Milman's "History of Christianity," vol. i. ch. ii. appendix ii.

general intelligence and energy. And they had, too, the most abundant opportunities of knowledge in regard to the facts to which they bore witness. They were present in the places, at the times, when and where the events occurred. Every motive would conspire to make them scrutinize the subject and the attendant circumstances. And it seems they did examine; for at first some doubted, but afterwards believed. They had been close companions of Jesus for more than a year at the least. They had studied his every feature, look, gesture. They must have been able to recognise him, or to detect an impostor, if the absurd idea of an attempted imposition can be entertained. They saw him many times, near at hand, in the broad light. Not only did they see him, but they handled his wounded limbs and listened to his wondrous voice. If these means of knowing the truth were not enough to make their evidence valid, then no opportunities could be sufficient.

Whoso allows its full force to the argument thus far will admit that the testimony of the witnesses to the resurrection is conclusive, unless he suspects that by some cause they were either incapacitated to weigh evidence fairly, or were led wilfully to stifle the truth and publish a falsehood. Very few persons have ever been inclined to make this charge, that the apostles were either wild enthusiasts of fancy, or crafty calculators of fraud; and no one has ever been able to support the position even with moderate plausibility. Granting, in the first place, hypothetically, that the disciples were ever so great enthusiasts in their general character and conduct, still, they could not have been at all so in relation to the resurrection, because, before it occurred, they had no belief, expectations, nor thoughts about it. By their own frank confessions, they did not understand Christ's predictions, nor the ancient supposed prophecies of that event. And without a strong faith, a burning hopeful desire, or something of the kind, for it to spring from, and rest on, and be nourished by, evidently no enthusiasm could exist. Accordingly, we find that previous to the third day after Christ's death they said nothing, thought nothing, about a resurrection; but from that time, as by an inspiration from heaven, they were roused to both words and deeds. The sudden astonishing change here alluded to is to be accounted for only by supposing that in the mean time they had been brought to a belief that the resurrection had occurred. But, secondly, it is to be noticed that these witnesses were not enthusiasts on other subjects. No one could be the subject of such an overweening enthusiasm as the hypothesis supposes, without betraying it in his conduct, without being overmastered and led by it as an insane man is by his mania. The very opposite of all this was actually the case with the apostles. The Gospels are unpretending, dispassionate narratives, without rhapsody, adulation, or vanity. Their whole conduct disproves the charge of fanaticism. Their appeals were addressed more to reason than to feeling; their deeds were more courageous than rash. They avoided tumult, insult, and danger whenever they could honorably do so; but, when duty called, their noble intrepidity shrank not. They were firm as the trunks of oaks to meet the agony and horror of a violent death when it came; yet they rather shunned than sought to wear the glorious crown from beneath whose crimson circlet drops of bloody sweat must drip from a martyr's brows. The number of the witnesses for the resurrection, the abilities they possessed, their opportunities for knowing the facts, prove the impossibility of their being duped, unless we suppose them to have been blind fanatics. This we have just shown they were not. Would it not, moreover, be most marvellous if they were such heated fanatics, all of them, so many men?

But there is one further foothold for the disbeliever in the historic resurrection of Christ. He may say, "I confess the witnesses were capable of knowing, and undoubtedly did know, the truth; but, for some reason, they suppressed it, and proclaimed a deception." As to this charge, we not only deny the actuality, but even the possibility, of its truth. The narratives of the evangelists contain the strongest evidences of their honesty. The many little unaccountable circumstances they recount, which are so many difficulties in the way of critical belief, the real and the apparent inconsistencies, none of these would have been permitted by fraudulent authors. They are the most natural things in the world, supposing their writers unsuspiciously honest. They also frankly confess their own and each others' errors, ignorance, prejudices, and faults. Would they have done this save from simple hearted truthfulness? Would a designing knave voluntarily reveal to a suspicious scrutiny actions and traits naturally subversive of confidence in him? The conduct of the disciples under the circumstances, through all the scenes of their after lives, proves their undivided and earnest honesty. The cause they had espoused was, if we deny its truth, to the last degree repulsive in itself and in its concomitants, and they were surrounded with allurements to desert it. Yet how unyielding, wonderful, was their disinterested devotedness to it, without exception! Not one, overcome by terror or bowed by strong anguish, shrank from his self imposed task and cried out, "I confess!" No; but when they, and their first followers who knew what they knew, were laid upon racks and torn, when they were mangled and devoured alive by wild beasts, when they were manacled fast amidst the flames till their souls rode forth into heaven in chariots of fire, amidst all this, not one of them ever acknowledged fraud or renounced his belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Were they not honest? Others have died in support of theories and opinions with which their convictions and passions had become interwoven: they died rather than deny facts which were within the cognizance of their senses. Could any man, however firm and dauntless, under the circumstances, go through the trials they bore, without a feeling of truth and of God to support him?

These remarks are particularly forcible in connection with the career of Paul. Endowed with brilliant talents, learned, living at the time and place, he must have been able to form a reliable opinion. And yet, while all the motives that commonly actuate men loudmouthed consistency, fame, wealth, pride, pleasure, the rooted force of inveterate prejudices all were beckoning to him from the temples and palaces of the Pharisaic establishment, he spurned the glowing visions of his ambition and dashed to earth the bright dreams of his youth. He ranged himself among the Christians, the feeble, despised, persecuted Christians; and, after having suffered every thing humanity could bear, having preached the resurrection everywhere with unflinching power, he was at last crucified, or beheaded, by Nero; and there, expiring among the seven hills of Rome, he gave the resistless testimony of his death to the resurrection of Jesus, gasping, as it were, with his last breath, "It is true." Granting the honesty of these men, we could not have any greater proof of it than we have now.

But dishonesty in this matter was not merely untrue; it was also impossible. If fraud is admitted, a conspiracy must have been formed among the witnesses. But that a conspiracy of such a character should have been entered into by such men is in itself incredible, in the outset. And then, if it had been entered into, it must infallibly have broken through, been found out, or been betrayed, in the course of the disasters, perils, terrible trials, to which it and its fabricators were afterwards exposed. Prove that a body of from twelve to five hundred men could form a plan to palm off a gross falsehood upon the world, and could then adhere to it unfalteringly through the severest disappointments, dangers, sufferings, differences of opinion, dissension of feeling and action, without retiring from the undertaking, letting out the secret, or betraying each other in a single instance in the course of years, prove this, and you prove that men may do and dare, deny and suffer, not only without motives, but in direct opposition to their duty, interest, desire, prejudice, and passion. The disciples could not have pretended the resurrection from sensitiveness to the probable charge that they had been miserably deceived; for they did not understand their Master to predict any such event, nor had they the slightest expectation of it. They could not have pretended it for the sake of establishing and giving authority to the good precepts and doctrines Jesus taught; because such a course would have been in the plainest antagonism to all those principles themselves, and because, too, they must have known both the utter wickedness and the desperate hazards and forlornness of such an attempt to give a fictitious sanction to moral truths. In such an enterprise there was before them not the faintest probability of even the slightest success. Every selfish motive would tend to deter them; for poverty, hatred, disgrace, stripes, imprisonment, contempt, and death stared in their faces from the first step that way. Dishonesty, deliberate fraud, then, in this matter, was not merely untrue, but was impossible. The conclusion from the whole view is, therefore, the conviction that the evidence of the witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus is worthy of credence.

There are three considerations, further, worthy of notice in estimating the strength of the historic argument for the resurrection. First, the conduct of the Savior himself in relation to the subject. The charge of unbalanced enthusiasm is inconsistent with the whole character and life of Jesus; but suppose on this point he was an enthusiast, and really believed that three days after his death he would rise again. In that case, would not his mind have dwelt upon the wonderful anticipated phenomenon? Would not his whole soul have been wrapped up in it, and his speech have been almost incessantly about it? Yet he spoke of it only three or four times, and then with obscurity. Again: suppose he was an impostor. An impostor would hardly have risked his reputation voluntarily on what he knew could never take place. Had he done so, his only reliance must have been upon the credulous enthusiasm of his followers. He would then have made it the chief topic, would have striven strenuously to make it a living and intense hope, an immovable, all controlling faith, concentrating on it their desires and expectations, heart and soul. But he really did not do this at all. He did not even make them understand what his vaticinations of the resurrection meant. And when they saw his untenanted body hanging on the cross, they slunk away in confusion and despair. Admit, again, that Christ was enthusiast, or impostor, or both: these qualities exist not in the grave. Here was their end. They could neither raise him from the dead nor move him from the tomb. No considerations in any way connected with Christ himself, therefore, can account for the occurrences that succeeded his death.

Secondly, if the resurrection did not take place, what became of the Savior's body? We have already given reasons why the disciples could not have falsely pretended the resurrection. It is also impossible that they obtained, or surreptitiously disposed of, the dead and interred body; because it was in a tomb of rock securely sealed against them, and watched by a guard which they could neither bribe nor overpower; because they were too much disheartened and alarmed to try to get it; because they could not possibly want it, since they expected a temporal Messiah, and had no hope of a resurrection like that which they soon began proclaiming to the world. And as for the story told by the watch, or rather by the chief priests and Pharisees, it has not consistency enough to hold together. Its foolish unlikelihood has always been transparent. It is unreasonable to suppose that fresh guards would slumber at a post where the penalty of slumbering was death. And, if one or two did sleep, it is absurd to think all would do so. Besides, if they slept, how knew they what transpired in the mean time? Could they have dreamed it? Dreams are not taken in legal depositions; and, furthermore, it would be an astounding, gratuitous miracle if they all dreamed the same thing at the same time.

Finally, a powerful collateral argument in proof of the resurrection of Christ is furnished by the conduct of the Jews. It might seem that if the guards told the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, of the miracles which occurred at the sepulchre, they must immediately have believed and proclaimed their belief in the Messiahship and resurrection of the crucified Savior. But they had previously remained invulnerable to as cogent proof as this would afford. They had acknowledged the miracles wrought by him when he was alive, but attributed them even his works of beneficence to demoniacal power. They said, "He casteth out devils by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils." So they acted in the present case, and, notwithstanding the peerless miracle related by the sentinels, still persisted in their alienation from the Christian faith. Their intensely cherished preconceptions respecting the Messiah, their persecution and crucifixion of Jesus, the glaring inconsistency of his teachings and experience with most that they expected, these things compelled their incredulity to every proof of the Messiahship of the contemned and murdered Nazarene. For, if they admitted the facts on which such proof was based, they would misinterpret them and deny the inferences justly drawn from them. This was plainly the case. It may be affirmed that the Jews believed the resurrection, because they took no fair measures to disprove it, but threatened those who declared it. Since they had every inducement to demonstrate its falsity, and might, it seems, have done so had it been false, and yet never made the feeblest effort to unmask the alleged fraud, we must suspect that they were themselves secretly convinced of its truth, but dared not let it be known, for fear it would prevail, become mighty in the earth, and push them from their seats. In the rage and blindness of their prejudices, they cried, "His blood be on us and on our children!" And from that generation to our own, their history has afforded a living proof of the historic truth of the gospel, and of the stability of its chief corner stone, the resurrection of Christ. The triumphal progress of Christianity from conquering to conquering, together with the baffled plans and complete subjection of the Jews, show that their providential preparatory mission has been fulfilled. If God is in history, guiding the moral drift of human affairs, then the dazzling success of the proclamation of the risen Redeemer is the Divine seal upon the truth of his mission and the reality of his apotheosis. Planting himself on this ground, surrounding himself with these evidences, the reverential Christian will at least for a long time to come cling firmly to the accepted fact of the resurrection of Christ, regardless of whatever misgivings and perplexities may trouble the mind of the iconoclastic and critical truth seeker.

The Christian Scriptures, assuming the resurrection of Christ as a fact, describe it as a fulfilment of prophecy. Luke reports from the risen Savior the words, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day." Peter declares that the patriarch David before "spake of the resurrection of Christ." And Paul also affirms, "That the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again." One can scarcely hesitate in deciding the meaning of these words as they were used by the apostles. The unanimous opinion and interpretation of the Christians of the first centuries, and of all the Church Fathers, leave no shadow of a doubt that it was believed that the resurrection of Jesus was repeatedly foretold in the Old Testament, expected by the prophets, and fulfilled in the event as a seal of the inspired prophecy. Furthermore, Jesus himself repeatedly prophesied his own resurrection from the dead, though his disciples did not understand his meaning until the event put a clear comment on the words. He charged those who saw his transfiguration on the mount, "Tell it to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead." The chief priests told Pilate that they remembered that Jesus said, while he was yet alive, "After three days I will rise again." Standing in the temple at Jerusalem, Jesus said once, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "When, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them;" and then they understood that "he had spoken of the temple of his body." It is perfectly plain that the New Testament represents the resurrection of Christ as the fulfilment of prophecies, those prophecies having been so expounded by him.

There are few problems presented to the candid Christian scholar of to day more perplexing than the one involved in the subject of these prophecies. Paul declares to King Agrippa, "I say none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead and should show light unto the Gentiles." It is vain to attempt to disguise the fact that the ingenuous student cannot find these prophecies in the Old Testament as we now have it. He will search it through in vain, unless his eyes create what they see. Let any man endeavor to discover a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which, taken with its context, can fairly bear such a sense. There is not a shadow of valid evidence of any kind to support the merely traditional notions on this subject. The only way of discerning predictions of a death, descent, and ascent, of the Messiah, in the law and the prophets, is by the application of Cabalistic methods of interpretation, theories of occult types, double senses, methods which now are not tolerable to intelligent men. That Rabbinical interpretation which made the story of Ishmael and Isaac, the two children borne to Abraham by Hagar and Sarah, an allegory referring to the two covenants of Judaism and Christianity, could easily extract any desired meaning from any given text. Bearing in mind the prevalence of this kind of exegesis among the Jews, and remembering also that they possessed in the times of Jesus a vast body of oral law, to which they attributed as great authority as to the written, there are two possible ways of honestly meeting the difficulty before us.

First: in God's counsels it was determined that a Messiah should afterwards arise among the Jews. The revealed hope of this stirred the prophets and the popular heart. It became variously and vaguely hinted in their writings, still more variously and copiously unfolded in their traditions. The conception of him gradually took form; and they began to look for a warrior prophet, a national deliverer, a theocratic king. Jesus, being the true Messiah, though a very different personage from the one meant by the writers and understood by the people, yet being the Messiah foreordained by God, applied these Messianic passages to himself, and explained them according to his experience and fate. This will satisfactorily clear up the application of some texts. And others may be truly explained as poetical illustrations, rhetorical accommodations, as when he applies to Judas, at the Last Supper, the words of the Psalm, "He that eateth with me lifteth up his heel against me;" and when he refers to Jonah's tarry in the whale's belly as a symbol of his own destined stay beneath the grave for a similar length of time. Or, secondly, we may conclude that the prophecies under consideration, referred to in the New Testament, were not derived from any sacred documents now in our possession, but either from perished writings, or from oral sources, which we know were abundant then. Justin Martyr says there was formerly a passage in Jeremiah to this effect: "The Lord remembered the dead who were sleeping in the earth, and went down to them to preach salvation to them." 4 There were floating in the Jewish mind, at the time of Christ, at least some fragmentary traditions, vague expectations, that the Messiah was to die, descend to Sheol, rescue some of the captives, and triumphantly ascend. It is true, this statement is denied by some; but the weight of critical authorities seems to us to preponderate in its favor, and the intrinsic historical probabilities leave hardly a doubt of it in our own minds.5 Now, three alternatives are offered us. Either Jesus interpreted Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, on the Rabbinical ground of a double sense, with mystic applications; or he accepted the prophecies referred to, from oral traditions held by his countrymen; or the apostles misunderstood, and in consequence partially misreported, him. All we can positively say is that these precise predictions are plainly not in the Jewish Scriptures, undoubtedly were in the oral law, and were certainly received by the apostles as authoritative.

Continuing our inquiry into the apostolic view of the resurrection of Christ, we shall perceive that it is most prominently set forth as the certificate of our redemption from the

4 Dial. cum Tryph. sect. lxxii.

5 Discussed, with full list of references, in Strauss's Life of Jesus, part iii. cap. i. sect. 112.

kingdom of death to the same glorious destiny which awaited him upon his ascension into heaven. The apostles regarded his resurrection as a supernatural seal set on his mission, warranting his claims as an inspired deliverer and teacher. Thereby, they thought, God openly sanctioned and confirmed his promises. Thereby, they considered, was shown to men God's blessed grace, freely forgiving their sins, and securing to them, by this pledge, a deliverance from the doom of sin as he had risen from it, and an acceptance to a heavenly immortality as he had ascended to it. The resurrection of Christ, then, and not his death, was to them the point of vital interest, the hinge on which all hung. Does not the record plainly show this to an impartial reader? Wherever the apostles preach, whenever they write, they appeal not to the death of a veiled Deity, but to the resurrection of an appointed messenger; not to a vicarious atonement or purchase effected by the mortal sufferings of Jesus, but to the confirmation of the good tidings he brought, afforded by the Father's raising him from the dead. "Whereof he hath given assurance unto all, in that he hath raised him from the dead," Paul proclaimed on Mars Hill. In the discourses of the apostles recorded in the Book of Acts, we find that, when they preached the new religion to new audiences, the great doctrine in all cases set forth as fundamental and absorbing is the resurrection; not an atoning death, but a justifying resurrection. "He died for our sins, and rose for our justification." Some of the Athenians thought Paul "a setter forth of two strange gods, Jesus and Resurrection." And when they desire to characterize Christ, the distinguishing culminating phrase which they invariably select shows on what their minds rested as of chief import: they describe him as the one "whom God hath raised from the dead." "If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him." "That ye may know what is the exceeding greatness of God's power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heaven." It is plain here that the dying of Christ is regarded merely as preliminary to his rising, and that his resurrection and entrance into heaven are received as an assurance that faithful disciples, too, shall obtain admission into the heavenly kingdom.

The Calvinistic doctrine is that the unutterable vicarious agonies of the death of Christ placated the wrath of God, satisfied his justice, and ransomed the souls of the elect from the tortures of hell, and that his resurrection was simply his victorious return from a penal conflict with the powers of Satan. The Unitarian doctrine is that the violent death of Christ was an expression of self sacrificing love, to exert a moral power on the hearts of men, and that his resurrection was a miraculous proof of the authority and truth of his teachings, a demonstration of human immortality. We maintain that neither of these views fully contains the true representation of the New Testament. The artificial horrors of the former cannot be forced into nor wrung out of the written words; while the natural simplicity and meagerness of the latter cannot be made to fill up the written words with adequate significance. There is a medium doctrine, based on the conceptions prevalent at the time the Christian system was constructed and written; a doctrine which equally avoids the credulous excess of the Calvinistic interpretation and the skeptical poverty of the Unitarian; a doctrine which fully explains all the relevant language of the New Testament without violence; a doctrine which, for our own part, we feel sure accurately represents the ideas meant to be conveyed by the Scripture authors. We will state it, and then quote, for its illustration and for their own explanation, the principal texts relating to the resurrection of Jesus.

On account of sin, which had alienated man from God and unfitted him for heaven, he was condemned after death to descend as a disembodied soul into the dark kingdom of the grave, the under world. In that cheerless realm of helpless shades and stillness all departed human spirits were prisoners, and must be, until the advent of the Messiah, when they, or a part of them, should rise. This was the Jewish belief. Now, the apostles were Jews, who had the ideas of their countrymen, to which, upon becoming Christians, they added the new conceptions formed in their minds by the teachings, character, deeds, death, resurrection, of Christ, mixed with their own meditations and experience. Accepting, with these previous notions, the resurrection of Christ as a fact and a fulfilment of prophecy, they immediately supposed that his triumphant exit from the prison of the dead and return to heaven were the prefiguration of the similar deliverance of others and their entrance into heaven. They considered him as "the first born from the dead," "the first fruits of the dead." They emphatically characterize his return to life as a "resurrection out from among the dead," "[non-ASCII characters], plainly implying that the rest of the dead still remained below.6 They received his experience in this respect as the revealing type of that which was awaiting his followers. So far as relates to the separate existence of the soul, the restoration of the widow's son by Elijah, or the resurrection of Lazarus, logically implies all that is implied in the mere resurrection of Christ. But certain notions of localities, of a redemptive ascent, and an opening of heaven for the redeemed spirits of men to ascend thither, were associated exclusively with the last. When, through the will of God, Christ rose, "then first humanity triumphant passed the crystal ports of light, and seized eternal youth!" Their view was not that Christ effected all this by means of his own; but that the free grace of God decreed it, and that Christ came to carry the plan into execution. "God, for his great love to us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ." This was effected as in dramatic show: Christ died, which was suffering the fate of a sinner; he went in spirit to the subterranean abode of spirits, which was bearing the penalty of sin; he rose again, which was showing the penalty of sin removed by Divine forgiveness; he ascended into heaven, which was revealing the way for our ascent thrown open. Such is the general scope of thought in close and vital connection with which the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ stands. We shall spare enlarging on those parts of it which have been sufficiently proved and illustrated in preceding chapters, and confine our attention as much as may be to those portions which have direct relations with the resurrection of Christ. It is our object, then, to show what we think will plainly appear in the light of the above general statement that, to the New Testament writers, the resurrection, and not the death, of Christ is the fact of central moment, is the assuring seal of our forgiveness, reconciliation, and heavenly adoption.

6 Wood, The Last Things, pp. 31-44.

They saw two antithetical starting points in the history of mankind: a career of ruin, beginning with condemned Adam in the garden of Eden at the foot of the forbidden tree, dragging a fleshly race down into Sheol; a career of remedy, beginning with victorious Christ in the garden of Joseph at the mouth of the rent sepulchre, guiding a spiritual race up into heaven.

The Savior himself is reported as saying, "I lay down my life that I may take it again:" the dying was not for the sake of substitutional suffering, but for the sake of a resurrection. "Except a corn of wheat die, it abideth alone; but, if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." "A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow; but as soon as she is delivered of the child she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world." The context here shows the Savior's meaning to be that the woe of his death would soon be lost in the weal of his resurrection. The death was merely the necessary antecedent to the significant resurrection. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, according to his abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead unto an inheritance, incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed." "Him hath God raised on high by his right hand, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins." How clear it is here that not the vicarious death of Christ buys off sinners, but his resurrection shows sins to be freely forgiven, the penalty remitted! "Remember that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, according to my gospel: therefore I endure all things for the elect's sake, that they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory." "Be it known unto you, therefore, men, brethren, that through Him whom God raised again is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins." The passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ninth chapter, from the twenty third verse to the twenty seventh, most emphatically connects the annulling of sin through the sacrifice of Christ with his ascended appearance in heaven. "Jesus who was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our justification:" that is, Jesus died because he had entered the condition of sinful humanity, the penalty of which was death; he was raised to show that God had forgiven us our sins and would receive us to heaven instead of banishing us to the under world. "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Belief in the resurrection of Christ is here undeniably made the great condition of salvation. No text can be found in which belief in the death, or blood, or atoning merits, of Christ is made that condition. And yet nine tenths of Christendom by their creeds are to day proclaiming, "Believe in the vicarious sufferings of Christ, and thou shalt be saved; believe not in them, and thou shalt be damned!" "God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise up us." "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain: ye are yet in your sins." This text cannot be explained upon the common Calvinistic or Unitarian theories. Whether Christ was risen or not made no difference in their justification before God if his death had atoned for them, made no difference in their moral condition, which was as it was; but if Christ had not risen, then they were mistaken in supposing that heaven had been opened for them: they were yet held in the necessity of descending to the under world, the penalty of their sins. The careful reader will observe that, in many places in the Scriptures where a burden and stress of importance seem laid upon the death of Christ, there immediately follows a reference to his resurrection, showing that the dying is only referred to as the preparatory step to the rising, the resurrection being the essential thing. "The Apostle Paul scarcely speaks of the death of the Savior except in connection with his resurrection," Bleek says, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. "It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again and is now at the right hand of God."

"If we believe that Jesus died and rose again." "To this end Christ both died, and rose and lived again." "He died for them and rose again." We confidently avow, therefore, that the Christian Scriptures concentrate the most essential significance and value of the mission of Jesus in his resurrection, describing it as the Divine seal of his claims, the visible proof and pledge of our redemption, by God's freely forgiving grace, from the fatal bondage of death's sepulchral domain to the blessed splendors of heaven's immortal life.

There remain a class of passages to be particularly noticed, in which an extraordinary emphasis seems to be laid on Christ's sufferings, Christ's blood, Christ's death, three phrases that mean virtually the same thing and are used interchangeably. The peculiar prominence given to the idea of the sacrifice of Christ in the instances now referred to is such as might lead one to suppose that some mysterious efficacy was meant to be attributed to it. But we think an accurate examination of the subject will show that these texts are really in full harmony with the view we have been maintaining. Admitting that the resurrection of Christ was the sole circumstance of ultimate meaning and importance, still, his violent and painful death would naturally be spoken of as often and strongly as it is, for two reasons. First, the chief ground of wonder and claim for gratitude to him was that he should have left his pre existent state of undisturbed bliss and glory, and submitted to such humiliation and anguish for others, for sinners. Secondly, it was the prerequisite to his resurrection, the same, in effect, with it, since the former must lead to the latter; for, as the foremost apostle said, "It was not possible that he should be holden in death."

The apostolical writers do not speak of salvation by the blood of Christ any more plainly than they do of salvation by the name of Christ, salvation by grace, and salvation by faith. If at one time they identify him with the sacrificial "lamb," at another time they as distinctively identify him with the "high priest offering himself," and again with "the great Shepherd of the sheep," and again with "the mediator of the new covenant," and again with "the second Adam." These are all figures of speech, and, taken superficially, they determine nothing as to doctrine. The propriety and the genuine character and force of the metaphor are in each case to be carefully sought with the lights of learning and under the guidance of a docile candor. The thoughts that, in consequence of transmitted sin, all departed souls of men were confined in the under world that Christ, to carry out and revealingly exemplify the free grace of the Father, came into the world, died a cruel death, descended to the prison world of the dead, declared there the glad tidings, rose thence and ascended into heaven, the forerunner of the ransomed hosts to follow, these thoughts enable us to explain, in a natural, forcible, and satisfactory manner, the peculiar phraseology of the New Testament in regard to the death of Christ, without having recourse to the arbitrary conceptions and mystical horror usually associated with it now.

For instance, consider the passage in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians, from the eleventh verse to the nineteenth. The writer here says that "the Gentiles, who formerly were far off, strangers from the covenants of promise, are now made nigh by the blood of Christ." This language he clearly explains as meaning that through the death and resurrection of Christ "the middle wall of partition between Jews and Gentiles was broken down" and a universal religion inaugurated, free from all invidious distinctions and carnal ordinances. In his bodily death and spiritual ascension the Jewish ritual law was abolished and the world wide moral law alone installed. From his spirit, rising into heaven, all national peculiarities fell away, and through him Jews and Gentiles both had access, by communion with his ascended and cosmopolitan soul, unto the Father. A careful study of all the passages in the New Testament which speak of Christ as delivering men from the wrath of God will lead, it seems to us, almost every unprejudiced person to agree with one of the ablest German critics, who says that "the technical phrase 'wrath of God' here means, historically, banishment of souls into the under world, and that the fact of Christ's triumph and ascent was a precious pledge showing to the Christians that they too should ascend to eternal life in heaven."7 The doctrine of the descent of Christ among the dead and of his redemptive mission there has of late wellnigh faded from notice; but if any one wishes to see the evidence of its universal reception and unparalleled importance in the Christian Church for fifteen hundred years, presented in overwhelming quantity and irresistible array, let him read the learned work devoted to this subject recently published in Germany.8 He can hardly peruse this work and follow up its references without seeing that, almost without an exception, from the days of Peter and Paul to those of Martin Luther, it has been held that "the death and resurrection of Christ are the two poles between which," as Guder says, "his descent into the under world lies." The phrase "blood of Christ" is often used in Scripture in a pregnant sense, including the force of meaning that would be expressed by his death, descent, resurrection, and ascension, with all their concomitants. As a specimen of innumerable passages of like import which might be cited, we will quote a single expression from Epiphanius, showing that the orthodox teachers in the fourth century attributed redeeming efficacy to Christ's resurrection rather than to his death." As the pelican restores its dead offspring by dropping its own blood upon their wounds, so our Lord Jesus Christ dropped his blood upon Adam, Eve, and all the dead, and gave them life by his burial and resurrection." 9

It was a part of the Mosaic ritual, laid down in the sixteenth chapter of Leviticus, that on the great annual day of expiation there should be two goats chosen by lot, one for the Lord and one for Azazel. The former the high priest was to slay, and with his blood sprinkle

7 Bretschneider, Religiose Glaubenslehre, sect. 59: Christus der Erloser vom Tode.

8 Guder, Die Lehre von der Erscheinung Jesu Christi unter den Todten: In ihrem Zusammenhange mit der Lehre von den Letzten Dingen.

9 Physiol., cap. 8: De Pelecano.

the mercy seat. The latter, when the high priest's hands had been laid on his head and all the iniquities of the children of Israel confessed over him, was to be sent into the wilderness and loosed. The former goat is called "a sin offering for the people." The latter is called "a scape goat to make an atonement with the Lord." The blood of the sin offering could not have been supposed to be a substitute purchasing the pardon of men's offences, because there is no hint of any such idea in the record, and because it was offered to reconcile "houses," "tabernacles," "altars," as well as to reconcile men. It had simply a ceremonial significance. Such rites were common in many of the early religions. They were not the efficient cause of pardon, but were the formal condition of reconciliation. And then, in regard to the scapegoat, it was not sacrificed as an expiation for sinners; it merely symbolically carried off the sins already freely forgiven. All these forms and phrases were inwrought with the whole national life and religious language of the Jews. Now, when Jesus appeared, a messenger from God, to redeem men from their sins and to promise them pardon and heaven, and when he died a martyr's death in the fulfilment of his mission, how perfectly natural that this sacrificial imagery these figures of blood, propitiation, sprinkling the mercy seat should be applied to him, and to his work and fate! The burden of sins forgiven by God's grace in the old covenant the scape goat emblematically bore away, and the people went free. So if the words must be supposed to have an objective and not merely a moral sense when the Baptist cried, "Behold the Lamb of God, that beareth off the sin of the world," his meaning was that Jesus was to bear off the penalty of sin that is, the Hadean doom which God's free grace had annulled and open heaven to the ranks of reconciled souls. There is not the least shadow of proof that the sacrifices in the Mosaic ritual were Divinely ordained as types pre figuring the great sacrifice of Christ. There is no such pretence in the record, no such tradition among the people, not the slightest foundation whatever of any sort to warrant that arbitrary presumption. All such applications of them are rhetorical; and their historical force and moral meaning are clearly explicable on the views which we have presented in the foregoing pages, but are most violently strained and twisted by the Calvinistic theory to meet the severe exigencies of a theoretical dogma.

If any one, granting that the central efficacy of the mission of Christ, dogmatically and objectively considered, lay in his descent into Hades and in his resurrection, maintains that still certain passages in the New Testament do ascribe an expiatory effect directly to his death as such, we reply that this interpretation is quite likely to be correct. And we can easily trace the conception to its origin beyond the pale of revelation. It was an idea prevalent among the Jews in the time of the apostles, and before, that death was an atonement for all sins, and that the death of the righteous atoned for the sins of others.10 Now, the apostles might adopt this view and apply it pre eminently to the case of Christ. This is the very explanation given by Origen.11 De Wette quotes the following sentence, and many others of the same purport,

10 Gfrorer, Gesehichte des Urchristenthums, abth. ii. pp. 187 190.

11 Mosheim, Commentaries on Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Eng. trans., vol. ii. pp. 162-163.

from the Talmud: "The death of the just is the redemption of sinners."12 The blood of any righteous man was a little atonement; that of Christ was a vast one. The former all Protestants call a heathen error. So they should the latter, because it sprung from the same source and is the same in principle. If, then, there are any scriptural texts which imply that the mere death of Christ had a vicarious, expiatory efficacy, they are, so far forth, the reflection of heathen and Jewish errors yet lingering in the minds of the writers, and not the inspired revelation of an isolated, arbitrary after expedient contrived in the secret counsels of God and wonderfully interpolated into the providential history of the world. But, if there are any such passages, they are few and unimportant. The great mass of the scriptural language on this subject is fairly and fully explained by the historical theory whose outlines we have sketched. The root of the matter is the resurrection of Christ out from among the dead and his ascent into heaven.

It has not been our purpose in this chapter, or in the preceding chapters, to present the history of the Christian doctrine of the atonement, either in its intrinsic significance or in its relations to subjective religious experience. We have only sought to explain it, according to the original understanding of it, in its objective relations to the fate of men in the future life. The importance of the subject, its difficulty, and the profound prejudices connected with it, are so great as not only to excuse, but even to require, much explanatory repetition to make the truth clear and to recommend it, in many lights, with various methods, and by accumulated authorities. Those who wish to see the whole subject of the atonement treated with consummate fulness and ability, leaving nothing to be desired from the historical point of view, have only to read the masterly work of Baur.13