The Methodist Quarterly Review March, 1895

ART. 1.-THE CREDIBILITY OF THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. IT is obvious that our Lord's resurrection stands in a very different relation to Christian faith from any of his other miracles. Other miracles are divine authentications of the revelation which lie gave. The resurrection is itself an integral part of that revelation. There might have been more or less of those other miracles, and our general conception of the character and work of Jesus would have been still the same. If he had fed the multitudes with a few loaves once instead of twice, if lie had raised a dead person to life once or twice instead of thrice, if any one or if some considerable number of the miracles recorded in the gospels had been left unrecorded, or if the record of some of them should be discredited as unauthentic, it would make no essential difference in our conception of the character and work of Jesus or in the general system of Christian doctrine. But if the record of the resurrection were lost or discredited our whole conception of Christ and of Christianity would be radically changed. Something, indeed, of the work of Jesus would be left if the world should lose its faith in his resurrection.

In the wreck of noble lives,

Something immortal still survives.

Whatever changes there may be in men's opinions of Christ and Christianity, human life will always be better for the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount; human character will always be nobler for the example of sublime self-sacrifice on (12-FIFTH SERIES, VOL. XI.) Calvary. But the residue which would be left if thc world should lose its faith in the resurrection would not be historic Christianity. It was "Jesus and the resurrection" that Paul preached at Athens. The resurrection was the corner stone on which the faith of the primitive Church was built. Whatever might remain if the resurrection should cease to be believed, it would not be Christianity. It would not be the faith that has made martyrs and missionaries-the faith that has transformed the world's history.

There is a profound contrast between the habits of thought, the intellectual atmosphere, of the first century and the nineteenth. Then, the science of nature was in a rudimentary state of development and had produced very little effect upon the general habits of thought. The doctrines of the unity of nature and the universality of natural law had scarcely been formulated by philosophers, and had not entered at all into popular thinking. Faith in the preternatural was universal, and ready credence was given everywhere to any alleged or imagined prodigy. Then, Herod could believe that John, whom lie had beheaded, had risen from the dead, and the Roman populace could expect that Nero would return from the realm of shades and once more curse the earth with his presence. It was in that environment that the faith in the resurrection of Jesus was born. Can that faith survive in the very different intellectual atmosphere of the present age The question is one of profoundest moment. It is the belief of many earnest and thoughtful minds that the faith in the resurrection must go with other beautiful myths and legends belonging to a stage of intellectual development which the world has outgrown. That is the teaching, for instance, of Robert Elsmere -a work which kindles our sympathetic admiration, not more by its vividness of delineation of character and its intense pathos, than by the profound sincerity and religious earnestness with which it is inspired. In that truly great and noble book the idea is continually presented, sometimes by direct assertion, sometimes by implication or insinuation, that the conception of the resurrection survives now only in the realm of emotion -that it can have no place in the intellectual life of this age.

Apparently in utter unconsciousness of the difficulties which the spirit of this age finds in the way of belief in a miraculous event, many of the teachers of Christian evidences simply point to the apparently honest contemporary testimony to the fact of the resurrection, and confidently declare that no fact in ancient history is so well attested. It is doubtless true that the weight of testimony which can be marshaled in behalf of the resurrection is greater than that on the strength of which most facts of ancient history are believed; but the truth of that proposition is by no means sufficient to establish the credibility of the resurrection itself. We can no more judge of the adequacy of testimony to establish belief in any particular allegation, without regard to the character of the allegation, than we can decide whether a bridge is sufficiently strong without considering whether it is to bear foot passengers or railway trains.

It is, indeed, unnecessary to spend much time in proving that a miracle is possible. Nothing short of absolutely complete knowledge of the system of nature could entitle us to pronounce any allegation impossible a priori which is not self-contradictory.* That nature is governed by a system of law, that all the events of nature are linked together in a determinate and formulable order of coexistence or succession-this is the postulate with which science begins, and the belief which impresses itself upon the mind with deepening intensity of conviction as science advances. But, while it may be taken for granted that there are laws of nature, it is a very different question whether we have yet discovered those laws. Any formula which we call provisionally a law of nature is only a generalization of such facts bearing upon the class of phenomena in question as may be within the scope of our present knowledge. As that knowledge must always be incomplete, the supposed law can never attain the standard of certainty, but only that of a higher or lower degree of probability. In regard, even, to those laws which are based on the most extensive experience and the most thorough analysis of that experience, the possibility must always remain that some new fact may come to our knowledge which will contradict the supposed law. That the sun will rise to-morrow at the time predicted by the astronomers is extremely probable, but not certain. It is possible that the sun

* "Whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies no contradiction, and can

never be proved false by any demonstration, argument, or abstract reasoning a priori."-Hume.

may fail to rise. A new fact contradicting one of our supposed laws of nature would show, not that nature is lawless, but rather that our supposed law was only true approximately or within limits, that it was not exactly true, and that the real law is more complex than our provisional formula. So long, then, as human knowledge falls short of omniscience we cannot be warranted in pronouncing impossible a priori any allegation which involves no self-contradiction.*

But the possibility of miracle is one thing; the probability of miracle is a very different thing. While no one of those generalizations of our experience which we call provisionally natural laws can reach the standard of certainty, there are many of them which attain all extremely high degree of probability. Some of these generalizations rest on a collection of observations so immense and so thoroughly analyzed that the occurrence of a new fact which will contradict the generalization, though not absolutely impossible, is enormously improbable. Here we reach the ground of Hume's famous argument against the credibility-of miracles. Hume's position is substantially that a miracle is a priori so enormously improbable that the falsity of any supposable amount of human testimony is more probable than the truth of the alleged miracle. The sophistical form in which Hume stated his argument has been justly criticised, and criticised by the agnostic Huxley, as well as by Christian writers; but the force of the argument depends, not on the sophistical form, but on the truth which it contains. That truth is that the amount and quality of testimony necessary to establish belief in any allegation varies with the a priori probability or improbability of the allegation, and that accordingly there may be allegations so enormously improbable that no supposable array of testimony would render them credible. Suppose all Roman historians of the century commencing with the death of Nero whose works are extant agreed in the assertion that Nero rose from the dead. Would such agreement establish in our minds a belief in the truth of the allegation . We answer, without hesitation, "No." We

* A more complete analysis of the conception of natural law, showing the impossibility of certainty in any such generalizations, we have given in an article, entitled "The Degree of Probability of Scientific Belief," published In the New Englander and Yale Review January, 1891; republished as chapter iii in Twenty-five Years of Scientific Progress. and other Essays New York and Boston, 1894.

believe that most of us would not even be brought to the point of seriously questioning whether the allegation might not be true. The supposition of error in all the historians of the period, arising from tome mistake or fraud on the part of those who first gave currency to the story, would seem to us immensely more probable than the supposition of the truth of the allegation.

Why should we believe ill the resurrection of Jesus on the evidence of testimony, when we can hardly conceive of any array of testimony which would convince us of the resurrection of Nero The answer to this question may be given in two different forms.

I. In so far as the character of Jesus is unique and apparently superhuman, the a priori probability against the resurrection is diminished. If it is conceded 'that in various respects Jesus differs from all other men, it is thereby rendered more or less probable that he may differ from all other men in other respects. It is certainly true that the character of Jesus is unique. He seems to stand apart from mere men, like some mysterious visitor from a higher sphere. " Never man spake like this man." He bids the world, " Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls." What other lips could thus have put into a single sentence the profession of humility and the claim to supremacy over mankind without producing an impression of grotesque incongruity On the lips of Jesus the two utterances blend in sweet and solemn harmony. Behold him in the days of the passion week and in the threefold trial in the morning of the crucifixion. How, with each accession of humiliation, he reveals more fully a serene and superhuman majesty ! The low he stoops the higher lie rises.

With whom among the sons of men shall we compare him Shall it be with the saints of the Christian Church The holiest of them loves best to confess that be only reflects some portion of the glory of Jesus, is the planets reflect the splendor of the sun. Shall we compare him with other founders of religions Read the story of Buddha, as told so lovingly-too lovingly, perhaps, for strict and critical fidelity to truth-in Sir Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia." Read the beautiful story with loving sympathy, and thank God that "he left not himself without witness" among the teeming millions of the Orient, but raised up for them a teacher of righteousness. But "the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another." The light of Asia pales before the Light of the world. Try to patch into one of the gospels the story of Buddha stealing out from his sumptuous palace, past the lovely sleeping forms of his troop of nautch girls, when the wail of human sorrow calls him forth to his great mission- try to patch into one of the gospels that story, as told so sweetly in Arnold's poem or, still worse, as told more repulsively in the Indian original-and how wildly incongruous it would be! The seamless robe would be changed for the piebald garment of a harlequin. Among earth's saints and sages there is no peer for the Man of Nazareth. it is not incredible that he who was superhuman in life should have been superhuman in death.

II. For the atheist, convinced that there is no moral purpose in the government of the world, there can be no meaning in a miracle, and such an extraordinary event is as improbable at one time as at another. But to him who believes, or even hopes, that the world is ruled by a God of moral attributes, it must appear more or less probable that such a God may choose to reveal himself to his children and may make the system of nature' itself emphasize and attest that revelation. In proportion to the importance of the revelation which is to be made is the probability of some miraculous sigh for its attestation. When we consider that but for the faith in the resurrection Christianity would have been buried forever in the rock-hewn tomb in which the Master lay, and when we try to measure what Christianity, with its revelation of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood and redemption from silt and life immortal, has been to mankind in these centuries of Christendom and Christian civilization and what it promises to be in the glories of a millennial future, we cannot deem it "a thing incredible " that, in that transcendent crisis of mail's moral history, "God should raise the dead."

By such considerations as these the a priori improbability of a resurrection is so far neutralized that we are in a posture of mind to consider the testimony which can be cited in favor of the resurrection of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus is not, as, the resurrection of Nero would be, all event so enormously improbable that scarcely any supposable testimony would suffice to render it credible. The historic record of the resurrection is contained in six of the books of the New Testament--the four gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The last of these has a peculiar importance, as being both the earliest in date and the most unquestionable in authenticity. Skepticism itself does not doubt that the First Epistle to the Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul, and a date not more than about a quarter of a century after the death of Christ-at a time, therefore, when the greater part of the more than five hundred brethren who claimed to have beheld the risen Lord were still living. The summary of the appearances of the risen Christ to the apostles, as contained in that epistle, is therefore conclusive evidence that the faith in the resurrection was the faith of the first generation of Christians. It was not a myth that grew up slowly, when the original witnessed of the events of the life of Jesus had passed away and the simple tradition which they left had come to be embellished by the imaginative additions of later generations. It was the faith of the disciples who were contemporary with Jesus. It must be freely conceded that there is not the same degree of certainty in regard to the date and authorship of the gospels and the Acts as in regard to those of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. Yet we believe that the result of the most searching criticism is the conclusion that the three synoptical gospels probably existed in substantially their present shape before the year 70 of the Christian era, and that the fourth gospel is probably the authentic work of John, written in his old age, toward the close of the first century.

We have, then, probably six contemporary documents, written by five different writers, all belonging to the circle of the apostles and their immediate associates. The evidence of these records is in no wise weakened by the discrepancies between them. They are just such discrepancies as always exist between a number of honest but incomplete narratives of a series of transactions. To cavil at them is as malicious as it is foolish to attempt to harmonize them. The substantially historic character of the narratives and their trustworthiness as regards the main facts may be reasonably maintained, even if it be conceded that there is ground for the suspicion that some details of the story (as, for instance, the angelic apparitions) * may be unhistoric-the result either of some mistake or confusion on the part of the original witnesses or of some early corruption of the tradition.

It is unnecessary to comment on the air of perfect simplicity and guilelessness pervading the gospels. A candid reader is continually impressed with the conviction that the writers of those books fully believed what they wrote. The fourth gospel is probably the only record of the events connected with the resurrection by an eyewitness, since the first gospel, in its present form, is probably not the work of an apostle, thou it doubtless contains much material of which Matthew was actually the writer. In John's narrative we meet in richest abundance those little particulars which impress themselves upon the memory of an eyewitness, but which tend to lose their distinctness as a story is repeated by other persons. In the narrative of the visit of Peter and John to the tomb, we have such particulars as John's outrunning Peter, looking first into the open sepulcher, and seeing the linen clothes ; his timid or reverent hesitation to enter; Peter's impetuous rush into the sepulcher, followed by John; the napkin that had covered the head of. Jesus, "not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." There is an air of photographic fidelity rather than of artistic selection of details. The very form of the narrative makes an almost irresistible impression that John is describing that which he has actually seen and experienced.

The obvious honesty of all the narratives and the circumstantial detail which marks John's gospel as the work of an eye-witness scarcely leave room for doubt that the sepulcher of Jesus was found untenanted on the morning of the first day of the week. In some way the body of Jesus had been removed. That fact, of itself, is of no miraculous character; and there is no reason, therefore, why, so far as that fact goes, the gospel narratives should not be recognized as having the same degree of trustworthiness as belongs to other apparently honest narratives of unexpected, but not miraculous, events. The absence

* Furness has suggested, not without plausibility, that the "young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment" (Mark xvi, 5) may have been no other than Jesus himself, indistinctly seen in the dimly lighted sepulcher by the n-omen, who as yet had no thought of the possibility of a resurrection.

of a human body from the place in which it had been laid was a phenomenon which the disciples were certainly competent to oh serve. Assuming it to be substantially certain that the sepulcher was found empty on the Easter morning, we may remark that the faith in the resurrection derives some incidental confirmation from the impossibility of constructing any plausible hypothesis of the abduction of the body. It is difficult to imagine any motive which could have induced either friends or enemies of Jesus to attempt the removal and concealment of the body, even had there been no serious difficulties in the way of the accomplishment of such a design. This consideration derives some additional importance from the fact that, within a few weeks after the alleged event, the resurrection of Jesus was publicly proclaimed, and believed by multitudes, in Jerusalem-the very place where, if anywhere, evidence of the fact might have been forthcoming, if the body had been stolen from the grave.

We have referred to the unquestionably early date of the First Epistle to the Corinthians as being important in proving that the faith in the resurrection was not slowly developed after the contemporaries of Jesus had passed away. That date is, however, by no means the earliest period to which we can trace back the belief in the resurrection. There are indications that, by an apparently spontaneous and instinctive movement, the celebration of the first day of the week, or the Lord's Day, as a distinctively Christian festival, was established at a very early period in the apostolic age. It is evident that the Lord's Day was not regarded as a modification of the Jewish Sabbath, but as an altogether new institution. It was a joyous commemoration of that day which the Christian consciousness recognized as the birthday of the Church. The institution of the Lord's Day is, therefore, a most eloquent witness to the faith of the first generation of Christians in the resurrection.

But we need not depend on any document or institution to show that the belief in the resurrection goes back to the begin-lung of the history of the Church. The very existence of the Church is an unimpeachable testimony to the same effect. But for the faith in the resurrection the Church would have died with its Master and been. buried in his tomb. "We trusted," said the disciples on the way to Emmaus, " that it had been lie which should have redeemed Israel." But that trust was in the past tense. The death and burial of Jesus utterly destroyed the crude and unintelligent faith in the Messiahship of Jesus which the disciples had cherished, and they had nothing to take its place. They were utterly disheartened ;and, in the loss of their Master, the bond was broken which bound them to each other. What was it that transformed these heart broken, aimless men, with no common interest but the memory of a dead hope, into a firmly united, courageous band, ready to attempt at once the conquest of the world It was the faith in the resurrection that wrought it that transformation. The Church itself is the monument of the epoch-making event which produced that faith and, thereby, gave the initiative to the course of Christian history. But what was that event If Jesus did actually rise from the dead and appear unto Cephas and the twelve and the five hundred brethren, then all else is clear. The one great mystery of the resurrection explains all other mysteries. We have a sufficient cause for the transformation of character ill the disciples and for all the subsequent course of history. But, if he did not rise from the dead, what was the event which happened on that Easter Day and which created the faith in the resurrection

The answer which perhaps at present is most commonly given to this question, by those who deny the reality of the resurrection, is that the origin of the faith was iii a vision or hallucination, which was experienced, at first, by a few of the more imaginative of the disciples, by whom, gradually, a sympathetic delusion was induced in others. As this theory has been developed by Renan, the credit of originating the notion of the resurrection is given to Mary Magdalene. The mental malady of which she had been healed had left her imagination in a peculiarly excitable condition. The faith which has regenerated humanity accordingly had its origin as a pathological symptom in the brain of a half-crazy woman. Instead of being shocked at this conclusion, Renan seems to find in it something peculiarly sweet to his aesthetic sensibilities ; and, with that curious sentimentalism which gives to all his writings an air of indifference to truth and essential unmorality, he exclaims, "Divine power of love! sacred moments in which the passion of a hallucinated woman gives to the world a risen God!" The first suggestion of the resurrection came from Mary Magdalene; but others were destined soon to share the same delusion. So contagious, indeed, was Mary's faith and enthusiasm that some of the disciples imagined they saw the risen Lord that same day in Jerusalem. But the visions became more frequent when, a few days later, the apostles returned to Galilee. They lingered around the beautiful lake, where every village and every hillside was linked by fond association in their minds with the memory of Jesus, where the blue waters seemed still to mirror his serene face, and the very air seemed still pulsating with the music of his voice. As they lingered amid those scenes, their minds fell more and more under the spell of those fond memories, till one and another seemed to himself to see the loved form of the Master and to hear his voice. And the hallucination of some became the faith of all the disciples.

But, if the appearance of the risen Lord was a delusion or hallucination, it was certainly a most peculiar one. The natural history of hallucinations has been extensively studied, and then' laws are pretty well understood. Somewhat of the history of this particular delusion, if it was one, we can gather from the biblical narratives. The honesty of those narratives is unimpeachable. Even on the theory of hallucination we may assume that we have a substantially veracious, though uncritical, narrative of the subjective experiences of the disciples. So far as we can thus trace the history of this delusion, it seems to have been of a very exceptional sort. A delusion is usually preceded by a state of strongly excited expectancy. The person sees what he has been made to believe he will see. But in this ease there was no such expectation. The death of Jesus plunged the disciples into utter despair. Whatever lie had said about his death and resurrection had been so completely at variance with all their prepossessions that it had made no impression oh their stolid unbelief. When Mary found the sepulcher empty she could only think that some one had taken away the body and laid it she knew not where. The reports of the women to the apostles "seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not." The mental attitude of the disciples was the very opposite of that state of expectant attention in which hallucinations most frequently originate.

A delusion most commonly affects only a single individual. Shakespeare is psychologically correct in making Banquo's ghost invisible to the rest of the company, though profoundly real to the guilty fears of Macbeth. But in this case the delusion affected simultaneously considerable numbers of persons-in one instance over five hundred-including, doubtless, men of all varieties of temperament, hopeful and despondent, imaginative and prosaic. All saw the same blessed vision. In the cases in which delusions have become epidemic and affected considerable numbers of persons, they have generally had a history extending over some months or years, in which they have gradually become prevalent and as gradually declined. In this case there was no such gradual development. The faith of the apostles, excepting Thomas, in the reality of the resurrection was established before the close of the Easter Day. The appearances reported are few in number, and all were comprised within the space of forty days. After that short period the risen Jesus vanishes forever. Whatever fantastic visions appeared to the imagination of more or less fanatical Christians, the risen Jesus walked the earth no more. The delusion vanished as suddenly as it came. The dream was dreamed out in forty days.

A delusion generally affects a single sense-most commonly sight or hearing; and the delusion of sight is shown to be such by the failure of the tactual sensations which would be experienced if the supposed objective cause of the visual sensations were real. When the hand cannot clutch the air-drawn dagger the dagger is only " a dagger of the mind." * In this case, apparently, the tactual sensations corresponded with the visual. The writers of the transparently artless narratives have unconsciously reported the results of the very experiment which a physiological psychologist would have wished to try. The women, says Matthew, "took hold of his feet." + Had the visual sensation been a delusion, the hands would have grasped only air. To the terrified apostles, who " supposed that they bad seen a spirit," Jesus said, according to Luke's report, "Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see;

* An interesting illustration of this principle is seen in the case of Mrs. A., reported in Huxley's Human Physiology, Appendix B.

+ Revised version-here, as usually, more accurate than the Authorized version.

for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." And John's faithful memory 'has preserved the story bow the doubting Thomas had his doubts set at rest when Jesus gave him the evidence which he demanded-" Reach hither thy finger, and behold my bands; and reach hither' thy band, and thrust it into my side."

We realize fully the difficulties which the thought of the present age must find in accepting the faith in the resurrection. We see the solemn procession of the generations marching into

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

No traveler returns.

We realize the enormous improbability of an exception to a law sustained by so immense a mass of accordant experience. But, when we think of the alternatives to belief in the resurrection, they all seem so much more improbable that we find it easier to accept the one mystery which explains all mysteries. To believe that the faith in the resurrection was a delusion so contradicting all psychological laws, or a myth which was fully developed in a single day, or a falsehood perpetrated by the disciples to bring upon themselves imprisonment and death-to believe that the system of religious faith which has created a new and nobler civilization bad its origin in fraud or self-deception-taxes our credulity more than to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

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