character, what weight is to be attached to their testimony, what is their standing in the court of public opinion.

The truth of Christ's Resurrection must be tested by the ordinary evidence brought to bear in the examination of any historical fact. For most of our information we depend on the statements of others. The vast majority of the people of the United States know only from hearsay that such cities as Pekin and Paris exist. The whole human race rely on the pages of history for their belief that Cæsar lived and that Tyre once flourished.

We accept the veracity of a narrative when confirmed by a host of witnesses whose calm temperament gives no room to suspect the existence of a fervid imagination, or a credulous disposition; witnesses who are disinterested, who have nothing to gain, but everything to lose by deception. Now, such are the characteristics of the witnesses of the Resurrection.

The Apostles cannot be charged with an overwrought imagination, blind fanaticism, or imbecility. They were plain, blunt men, slow of belief, cautious and calculating. They were, indeed, rude and illiterate, but they were possessed of strong common sense, and were endowed with a temper of mind which best qualified them to judge of a matter of fact like the Resurrection. We are not accustomed to select our juries chiefly or exclusively from the learned professions, but from men of sound judgment, without regard to their literary attainments.

We cannot,

therefore, suppose that the Apostles were the victims of hallucination or deception in proclaiming the reality of our Saviour's Resurrection.

Nor can they be suspected of imposing on the credulity of their hearers. They had nothing to gain by deceiving the public, and everything to lose; for, their earthly lot was a hard one. They could truly say: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." "For, God hath set forth us Apostles, the last, as it were men appointed to death. . . . . Even unto this hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no fixed abode. And we labor working with our own hands: we are reviled and we bless: we are persecuted and we suffer it: we are blasphemed and we entreat: we are made as the refuse of this world."2

Now these same men had as strong a belief in the Resurrection of Christ as they had in their own existence. They regarded this event as the crowning miracle and the foundation stone of Christian faith. In their sermons they lay special stress on this fact as an all-sufficient and decisive evidence of the divinity of the Christian religion. They are willing to submit this truth as a crucial test-case, to determine whether Christianity should stand or fall, and whether they are to be pronounced imposters or heaven-sent messengers. "If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and vain also is your faith. Yea,

11. Cor. XV., 19.

2 Ibid. IV.

and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have given testimony against God that He hath raised up Christ."1

They wrought miracles for the express purpose of vindicating the truth of the Resurrection and, consequently, of putting beyond all doubt the claims of Christianity to the acceptance of mankind. Peter and John on entering the beautiful gate of the temple, restore to health a man who had been lame from his birth; and they profess to perform that miracle by the power and in the name of their risen Lord."

If civilized nations accept the verdict of twelve jurymen as the most approved and equitable mode of deciding questions of the greatest moment, how can we dispute the unanimous testimony of twelve Apostolic witnesses who saw with their eyes, heard with their ears, and touched with their hands, the risen Lord; who devoted their life to the promulgation of this miracle; who preached it not in obscure corners, but in Jerusalem itself less than two months after the event had occurred; who converted thousands of hearers that had ample opportunities of testing the correctness of their declaration; who suffered stripes and imprisonment rather than deny it, and, finally, sealed their testimony with their blood!

The two great modern antagonists of the dogma of the Resurrection are Renan and Strauss. Renan, while reluctantly conceding that Jesus actually died on the cross, asserts that Magdalen was the dupe of a

1 I. Cor. XV.

2 Acts III.

fervid imagination in declaring that she saw the Lord. He seems to forget that she was but one witness among hundreds of others who had beheld Him under a variety of circumstances. The faith of Renan's youth and early manhood and the skepticism of his latter years, seem to keep up an unequal struggle in his breast. Hence, his statements and theories are a jumble of contradictions. He blows hot and cold in the same breath. On the same page he elevates and depresses our Saviour. He blasphemes while praising Him; and, like Judas, he betrays his once acknowledged Lord with a kiss of profuse panegyric. While we are admiring the delicious flowers of rhetoric which he lays at the feet of the Messiah, we find them suddenly withered by the breath of his malevolent cynicism.

Strauss, unable to controvert the cumulative evidence of our Saviour's manifestation after His crucifixion, has recourse to the desperate expedient of denying His death on the cross. He pretends that our Lord when taken down from the cross, was in a state of syncope from which He afterward rallied. But this objection is scarcely worthy of serious consideration. The death of Christ is minutely described by the four Evangelists including John, who was an eye-witness of the scene.

No one in his senses has ever disputed the fact that Cæsar was slain in Rome nineteen centuries ago. Now, the death of our Saviour is corroborated by human evidence as strong as that which records Cæsar's assassination. It was a public and notorious

execution occurring in Jerusalem, which then contained a population of over two hundred thousand inhabitants. It was superintended by Roman officials, and witnessed by an immense concourse of by-standers, Jews and Gentiles, sympathizers and enemies. His death was openly and exultingly acknowledged by His adversaries;1 it was disputed by none of them. The tomb in which He lay, was guarded by Roman 'soldiers, as well as by the emissaries of the high-priests.

And, surely, those zealots whose minds were sharpened by malice, and who displayed so much ingenuity and vigilant zeal in compassing our Redeemer's arrest and death-warrant, would not allow their friendless Victim to escape their hands, till they were assured that life was extinct.

Thus we see the Resurrection of Christ attested by two incontrovertible facts; namely, the certainty of His death, followed by His living, visible manifestation in the flesh.

1 Matt. XXVII.