profession of a faith which was universally despised, and which exposed
its more prominent votaries to imminent peril, as the eleventh chapter
of the second letter to Corinth abundantly shows. It is obvious that at
fifteen years after the death of Christ many of the 500 brethren who
were afterwards dead were still alive, and it is not too much to infer
that St. Paul, from the position he held in the Church, was personally
acquainted with many or most of them. He therefore personally must
have had numerous opportunities of amply satisfying himself as to the
truth of the fact which he proclaimed so persistently. But still it
is evident that it possessed for him a power and an influence totally
different from that of any ordinary occurrence or event. It was not the
Christ who once rose, but the Christ who was risen that he proclaimed.
His first rising from the grave was the work of a distinct moment of
time. The influence of which He thereby revealed Himself as the centre
and source was continuous and inexhaustible. It was this influence
which the Apostle felt in his life. He could tell the Galatians in
language it would be impossible to counterfeit, "I am crucified with
Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son
of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."[125] A declaration
such as this is worth volumes of evidence; it is its own evidence; it
bubbles up clear and sparkling from the very fountain and well-head of
truth. No man could have said it who did not feel it, and no man could
have felt it, and not known that what he felt was an intense reality,
defying all explanation except on the hypothesis that the central core
of it was truth, and not falsehood. If an influence thus operating
on the life was derived from the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, there must have been something very unusual in that death, and
something more than a mistake or an illusion in that rising again to
set such a force in operation. No other man's death would produce the
same effect, (who cares for the death of Socrates?) and no other man's
resurrection, whether alleged or proved, could do so; but if this man's
death and resurrection did produce it, as it plainly did, then the
result speaks for itself. The Epistle to the Galatians, though written
more than eighteen centuries ago, is a standing witness to it. There
is no wonder that such an influence was felt then in every part of the
known world, and especially in the centres of its life, such as Rome
and Corinth, because we cannot but feel it now; and a principle so
instinct with life cannot but be superior to and independent of the
power of death. Here is the present power of the resurrection acting
concurrently with the mass of cumulative evidence converging in the
point when it was an event of actual history, and combining therewith
to show the truth of it. Nothing can prove more conspicuously the
strength of this influence in the personal life of St. Paul than his
great Epistle to the Romans. Everywhere Christ is present with him
as an energising power, which is vastly more than a mere memory of
the past, and is a vital and potent agency still in operation. He did
indeed die unto sin once, but evermore He liveth unto God.[126] The
gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who was
declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of
holiness by the resurrection from the dead.[127]
But what is not the least remarkable feature about the Epistle to the
Romans is the fact that it was written to a Church of which St. Paul
was personally ignorant. He had never been at Rome. It is evident,
however, that there were many Christians there. These Christians were
not his converts. He says he had had a great desire for many years
to come unto them.[128] Then there had been Christians at Rome for
many years. The many can be scarcely less than ten or a dozen; but
if so, this brings us again to little more than fifteen years after
the death of Christ. We find, however, these Christians professing
identically the same belief in the same person and the same facts as
St. Paul himself. They also believed in a Jesus Christ who had been
crucified, and who had been raised from the dead. How they came to
believe in Him we cannot tell. It is plain they did believe in Him.
It is also probable in the highest degree, nay, it is impossible but
that many of them from whom they received their faith, had either been
eye-witnesses, or companions of eye-witnesses of the life of Jesus
Christ. At any rate, it is obvious that the substantial framework of
belief was identical with that which was current among the Churches of
Galatia, and in the Church at Corinth. A man who had been crucified
and risen again, was the centre of their hope, their affection, their
joy, their confidence. In Him they all felt they were supernaturally
united in a supernatural life; and as their knowledge of Christ was
altogether independent of St. Paul's preaching, it possesses the
value of independent testimony, and presents an additional amount of
difficulty in the face of any attempt to account for the belief in
Christ's resurrection on the hypothesis of some error or deception.
However unreasonable it was to attempt to account for it in that
way at Corinth, the difficulty becomes greater when the case of
Rome is added to that of Corinth. Here the personal influence of
the enthusiastic Paul is removed, and yet the results produced are
manifestly undistinguishable. Their faith had been spoken of throughout
the whole world,[129] and it was faith in a crucified and risen
Jesus; a faith which they as Gentiles were not ashamed to profess
in the Jew Christ Jesus, and to be confirmed in by the Jew Saul of
Tarsus. There is something very remarkable in these results. How many
national and personal prejudices must have been overcome; how many
rooted and inherent animosities must have been eradicated; how much
stubborn pride must have been bent and mortified; and how many acute
sensibilities deadened, before results such as these could have been
obtained. And what was it all for? No earthly advantage had been or was
likely to be secured. No hope of visible reward was offered. Simply
the loss of self-respect, in having believed what was only a gross
absurdity if it was not the truth, was incurred. The knowledge that
under any circumstances their temporal condition would have been far
better if they had never heard of Christ Jesus; that the belief in
His name could give them neither lands nor houses, but only lay upon
them additional hindrances in the way of gratifying their natural
inclinations, only expose them more and more to the hatred and contempt
of men. If in this life only they had hope in Christ, they were of
all men most miserable; there was no one redeeming point, no one
compensating advantage. They had believed a lie, and they were all the
worse for it. These two points at least are clear: that they thought it
no lie, and that under the circumstances they must have been strangely
constituted, if, being a lie, it had the power to sustain them as it
did.
For observe, connected with the faith of Christ there was not even the
gratification of flattered vanity in the case of these first believers.
There is an intelligible pleasure that a man can find nowadays in
constituting himself the apostle of unbelief. There is the promise of a
certain intellectual glory in the effort to overthrow an ancient faith
like that of Christianity. The hope of possible triumph is dazzling.
There is a pleasure in seeming to be so much wiser than so many others,
in having outstripped the accumulated wisdom of ages, in being the
pioneer of intellectual emancipation, the harbinger of light that has
emerged from every trace of religious darkness, the forerunner of the
downfall of superstitious prejudices, the demolition of the last and
oldest of the creeds. There is something to attract the imagination
in all this, something to foster a self-complacent estimate of self,
together with a kind of malevolent joy in indulging the passion of
destructiveness. But what was there to flatter the vanity in the belief
of a proclamation which was foolishness to the Greeks? What was there
to exalt the intellect, or to magnify the self, in the doctrine of
Christ crucified? We do not deny that it was possible for the self to
enter in and mix even with the doctrine of the cross; but it could only
do so as a principle that was fatally antagonistic to it. The two could
not co-exist; one must destroy the other. The belief that a crucified
malefactor had risen in triumph from the grave, was subversive of
everything calculated to honour the intellect, or to please the natural
desire of man to worship and admire himself. There was no harvest to be
reaped from belief in the Crucified on this score. We are at a loss to
discover in any one point what secondary motive can, with any show of
probability, be attributed to the first believers, as predisposing them
to their belief, if the motive was not a simple and sincere conviction
of its truth. And yet if so, the difficulty becomes still greater in
_assuming_ that what they believed was not the truth, but a flagrant
lie. For it must ever be remembered that it _is_ an assumption after
all. It is certainly not less difficult to _prove_ in the face of all
the evidence that Christ did not rise, than it is to _prove_ upon that
evidence that He did. If the result of the whole argument in the one
case is a _presumption_, it most assuredly is not less so in the other.
Once more, it cannot for one moment be asserted that the Epistle to the
Romans originated in any way the faith which it assumes. It is absurd
to suppose that an unknown man merely on the credit of his reputation
could have substantially modified the belief of a particular Church
by simply inditing a letter to it. The state of things assumed at
Rome, and the faith depicted in the Epistle to the Romans, are only
intelligible on the supposition that they are true. It is obvious that
the body of the writer's faith was substantially identical with that
of those to whom he was writing. Both were attached to a particular
person whom they believed to be the Son of God, who had been crucified,
dead, and buried, had risen again, and was then sitting at the right
hand of God as an intercessor.[130] And more than that, both believed
that this person was the giver of a new Spirit which influenced both,
and animated all believers, and made them all one, and was not only
the evidence to them of the actual truth and resurrection of Christ,
but was also the pledge that they themselves were accepted in a new
relation to God by Christ.[131] This gift of the new Spirit was the
invisible bond between them and Christ, between them and one another,
between them and the Macedonian Christians, between them and the
brethren of Corinth, between them and St. Paul himself.
Nothing the least like this Spirit had been known before in their own
experience or in that of the ages past. It was a new phenomenon which
they felt, and saw, and acknowledged, and could not deny. Now the
eighth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans contains incontrovertible
proof of the operation of this Spirit. No letters from Paul could have
made the Christians at Rome imagine they were influenced by it. We can
see for ourselves that it was not less familiar to them than it was to
him. No message of his had made it familiar to them. Years before they
had known it, although from whom they had received it none can tell,
but it is perfectly certain that a condition of belief like that at
Rome could not have been the work of a day. It must have taken time
to grow. And yet at the same time it is no less clear that it was a
product of the existing generation. There was not one of those to whom
the Apostle wrote who had not in his own being the consciousness of a
prior condition of unbelief. Many of them had probably been defiled
with some of the dark catalogue of crimes enumerated in the first
chapter, but they had been justified by faith, and had found peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ.[132] They knew this; they were
conscious of the double experience; they could compare the one with the
other. The Apostle's letter had not originated these experiences of
their consciousness: it had reflected and expressed them. The notion
of the Epistle to the Romans being an imaginary letter written under
imaginary circumstances to imaginary persons, describing imaginary
incidents and imaginary feelings, is too monstrously preposterous to be
for one moment entertained. It has preserved the real and irresistible
evidence of a vast spiritual influence at work among a large body
of men which was precisely contemporaneous with one event--their
belief, namely, in the resurrection of a man who had been crucified in
Palestine.
Now it must be admitted that in this alone and by itself, if it was not
true, there is nothing that can be discovered which is adequate to the
production of results so remarkable. When it is asserted that the death
of Jesus Christ is surpassed in excellence and sublimity by any other
death, the one question that suggests itself is, If this be so, how is
it that the results which followed that death were not more remarkable
than or so remarkable as those which followed the death of Jesus? This
is a simple fact that no criticism or scepticism can destroy, that the
preaching of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in the first
thirty years afterwards did produce results, as testified by these
Epistles, which are simply unparalleled in the history of the world.
If the death was not a real death, or the resurrection not a true
resurrection, then the responsibility must rest upon us of discovering
some other explanation sufficient to account for effects which are too
palpable to be ignored, and can assuredly be accounted for on this
supposition, but have not yet been adequately accounted for on any
other.
It is no part of my present design, and time would fail me, to enlarge
upon all the points in which the history of the Gospels is confirmed by
these Epistles. I am not now concerned to establish the credibility of
the Gospels, but only the general credibility of the Gospel history;
and therefore it may suffice to say that we find St. Paul and the
Romans believing that Jesus Christ "was made of the seed of David
according to the flesh,"[133] an admission which, coming from the pupil
of Gamaliel, who must have had the requisite technical information, is
very remarkable; but "separated as the Son of God with power," which
is at least consistent with our Gospel narrative, that makes Him the
Son of God, but born of a virgin, and especially characterised during
His ministry by miraculous powers; that in each of these Epistles the
custom of baptism is expressly mentioned or implied;[134] that if the
origin of this rite is not directly to be referred to the institution
of Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, we are altogether ignorant of
its origin; that the practice of it was clearly universal, which is so
far consistent with the belief that it was derived from the express
command of Christ; that in the first Epistle to the Corinthians[135]
the writer speaks of Jesus Christ taking bread the same night that
He was _betrayed_, and blessing it, and speaks of it in terms almost
identical with those of the Gospels, thus showing not only that the
death of Christ, but that the main circumstances of His death were
commonly known, and the record of them so far unvarying, and that
consequently the supposition of any great or substantial divergence
is precluded; that the portrait of Jesus which all recognised was, in
all its principal and important features, identical with that which we
recognise now; and that, therefore, as the existence of some Gospels
is, under the circumstances, a matter of necessity, the question is not
so much whether _our_ Gospels are true, as whether there are any others
which can be regarded as truer and more trustworthy.
And when we bear in mind that at this time the interval of thirty years
had not yet elapsed since the death of Christ, we can partly estimate
the possibility of dim or uncertain recollection in the case of events
so clearly defined, and so simple, and so important, by the freshness
with which we ourselves remember other events more complicated that
have happened within a similar period of time. There is, moreover,
clear evidence that at the date of these Epistles two practices were
universal in the Church--those, namely, of baptising converts, and
of commemorating what was called the Lord's Supper. These practices
must have had a commencement, and have had an origin. The period of
thirty years, before which there is no trace of the second, even if
the first existed in other forms, is too short a time for their origin
to have been forgotten, or for the practice of them to have become
materially modified. But the commemoration of the Lord's Supper is
unmeaning, except in connection with the death of Christ, and St.
Paul declared, "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye
do show the Lord's death till He come;"[136] and whatever relation
there may have been between baptism as practised by the Jews or by
John the Baptist, and Christian baptism, it is certain that baptism
in the name of Jesus is unintelligible, except on the supposition of
His having risen from the dead, or having in some way established His
claim to be the Son of God, or the founder of a new society. St. Paul,
however, distinctly says that Christ sent him "not to baptise, but to
preach the Gospel,"[137] as though He had sent others to do both; or
at any rate, had sent others to baptise. The prevalence, therefore,
of these significant practices, which is clearly traceable less than
thirty years after the death of Christ, is well-nigh equivalent to
contemporary evidence, both as to their origin and to the reality of
the events they signified. If Christ had been a shadow, or a myth, or a
mere crystallised idea, it is absolutely impossible that we should have
the kind of evidence we have as to the universality of these practices.
We can account for them on no theory but the express command of Christ,
which must have been substantially identical with that recorded in the
Gospels.
It is perfectly clear, therefore, that the known writings of St. Paul
contain incontrovertible evidence of the whole framework of the life
of Christ, which was the basis of the Christian faith less than thirty
years after His death. They show us the existence of a large and
organised society, which was held together solely by the attachment of
its members to His person; and which, but for faith in Him, would have
had no existence at all. This society was notorious for the profession
and the practice of a very high morality, such as had never before been
seen, and can never be surpassed,--at least, it is such a morality
these Epistles inculcate. The occurrence of one or two flagrant
breaches of this morality in the Church at Corinth, only serves as a
foil to what was, beyond all question, its general standard; but,
in addition to this, there were other features in it of a wholly
exceptional and unprecedented character. One of these was what we may
call, for want of a better name, its unworldliness. Every one must feel
that there is that in the writings of St. Paul which is distasteful
to the common humanity of the world. It is as if a new sense had been
suddenly created, and the writer was bent upon satisfying it. The
whole range of sympathies and requirements and tastes is new. It is
not a natural thing for men to care about communion with Jesus, or
prayer to God, or participation in the Holy Spirit, to have hearts
overflowing with gratitude to the Divine Being for having redeemed
them, for adopting them into His family, and making them partakers of
the holiness of His own nature. However this is to be accounted for--if
it can be accounted for--it was not then, and is not now, a condition
of mind natural to man. Now, take away the expression of these
feelings, and the letters of St. Paul come to an end, and the occasion
for writing them comes to an end, and the existence of the society for
which they were written comes to an end. But as the letters exist, the
occasion for writing them must have existed, and the society for which
they were written must have existed; and none of these things can have
existed without a sufficient and analogous cause. They are inseparably
connected with the preaching of Jesus and the belief in His name. Take
away these two things, and they would not have existed at all. But
their very existence is a proof at the same time that they can only
have made their way in opposition to the prevailing tendencies of human
nature, because they cherished and exhibited a condition of mind which
is foreign to the natural tastes and inclinations of mankind. There
is internal evidence, therefore, in the writings of St. Paul that the
faith which he preached had only succeeded, wherever it was successful,
by triumphing over much that was naturally and fatally opposed to it;
thus showing that we cannot refer to any natural causes the success of
a scheme of religious belief which was itself contrary to nature, and
is still felt to be contrary to nature.
But there is another feature, wholly exceptional and unprecedented,
which characterised the new society; the evidence for which is too
distinct to be set aside or explained away--the first Epistle to
Corinth affords conclusive proof of the existence of miraculous gifts
in the Church there. These gifts were of various kinds; the most
mysterious of them being the gift of tongues. Whatever this was, it
is sufficiently clear that it was over-estimated, and that it was
abused. The possessors of it were puffed up on account of it. They
were disposed to prefer it before charity, and the less obtrusive
gifts of the Spirit. We can only conclude, therefore, that this gift
was a reality which was acknowledged and envied by others, but a
reality likewise which was peculiar to the Church, and which was
limited to the area of belief in Christ. Now we must not assume that
the possession of this gift was miraculous; all we may insist upon
is the validity of the evidence that it was real, and of this the
fourteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians presents
incontestable proof, and consequently the existence of this gift is
a distinguishing characteristic of the effects which followed the
original profession of the faith of Jesus. Not only was the standard
of morality raised by it, not only were new dispositions awakened by
it, and new capacities and tastes created, and new desires and hopes
implanted, not only were the original propensities, inclinations, and
antipathies of nature resisted, thwarted, and overcome; but in addition
to this, there is a plain evidence of new powers and endowments being
conferred upon the first believers concurrently with their belief in
Christ. Now it is obviously impossible that delusion can have operated
in all these cases; but unless it did, the multiplicity and combination
of them supply no inconsiderable confirmation of the reality of that
event, the belief in which was the very basis of their existence.
Multitudes believed in the fact that Christ had risen from the dead,
and the profession of that belief was followed by one or other of these
results. A great change was wrought in numerous instances which was
unprecedented in the experience of the individual, and which could
find no counterpart in the experience of the heathen world; and if the
results which followed the proclamation of a fact were conspicuously
so real, is it possible that the fact itself was less so? For there
is only one alternative--if the cause producing these results was not
a fact--namely, that _belief_ in a particular event which was not a
fact, produced them. In other words, not only was the faith of the
early Church self-originated, but moreover, all the phenomena of its
existence were the product of that which itself had no existence.
We need not fear to admit that a very strong conviction may suffice to
produce considerable results, even though the conviction may be based
upon a falsehood; but we may well question whether all the results here
manifested, combined, could have been produced by mere belief in the
resurrection of a man whose resurrection was not a fact. What was there
in this belief, supposing it to have been based upon a lie, which could
have wrought so powerfully and so generally on the minds of men as it
did? Could such a belief have made them morally new, have made them
willing to encounter shame and contempt, and endowed them with powers
which rendered them the objects of envy to their fellow-believers?
If we think it could, we must still confess that a combination of
circumstances like these, taken all together, is so exceptional as to
be virtually without a parallel in the history of the world.