That there was such a person as Jesus Christ living in the land of Judea
at the time allowed by all Christians is no longer disputed by
unbelievers. That he lived a life far superior to the lives of all other
men is also conceded. If the powers of life and death were under his
control he was more than human. If he rose from the dead he was the Son of
God. Did he rise? This is a question upon which the whole Christian scheme
hinges. What was the nature of the fact? Was it one about which men could
be mistaken? Was it a fact which, occurring, addressed itself to the
senses? If it was the witnesses could not be mistaken. There is not a
court in the universe that would allow it.
There are things about which wise men may be mistaken, but they are not
things which address themselves to the senses. Those are things in which
fools may not, can not, be mistaken. It is impossible for my wife to be
mistaken about my presence at this moment, but it is just as possible as
it was for any of the first witnesses of Christ’s resurrection to be
mistaken. They were not, they could not be mistaken. Then what becomes of
Strauss’s mythical idea. What folly it is to allow that those witnesses
were perfectly honest, enthusiastically and proverbially honest in all
they said, and yet mistaken.
This moral honesty and enthusiasm which Strauss and others allow to the
credit of the witnesses is undoubtedly designed as a feeler—a mere
catering to the views of Christians upon the character of the first
Christians. Very good fellows (?) after all. How is that? If one of my
neighbors would go into a court room to-morrow and testify under oath that
he was with me yesterday, and the court was in possession of the fact that
I was not with him, or near him at all, would it allow honesty to the
witness? Would not every sensible man say, in his heart, he is a perjured
witness? If he was with Walker he knew it; and if he was not with him he
knew it.
Gentlemen, exercise all your shrewdness, adopt Strauss’s idea of a
mythical origin of the gospel of Christ, both as respects his miracles,
which were either seen or not seen, and as respects his resurrection, then
spread the blanket of honesty and warm-hearted enthusiasm over those men
who sacrificed everything, life not excepted, for the testimony which they
bore, and the next day any well-instructed judge of our courts would say,
it is nonsense; they could not be mistaken about any fact which addressed
itself to their eyes and ears. Christ rose from the dead if the witnesses
told the truth; and the witnesses told the truth if they were honest men;
and if they were not honest, labor, toil, suffering and martyrdom are no
evidences of sincerity.
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Can you believe in harmony without believing in a harmonist?
Can you believe that all things in nature adjusted themselves to each
other?
Can you believe that life, and mind, and moral nature, each and all came
from where neither existed?