Peter regards (as does the whole New Testament, and as did Peter's
Master, when He appointed these men) the witness which he and his
fellows bore as enough to lay firm and deep the historical fact of the
Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The first point that I would suggest here is this: if we think of
Christianity as being mainly a set of truths--spiritual, moral,
intellectual--then, of course, the way to prove Christianity is to show
the consistency of that body of truths with one another, their
consistency with other truths, their derivation from admitted
principles, their reasonableness, their adaptation to men's nature, the
refining and elevating effects of their adoption, and so on. If we
think of Christianity, on the other hand, as being first a set of
historical facts which carry the doctrines, then the way to prove
Christianity is not to show how reasonable it is, not to show how it
has been anticipated and expected and desired, not to show how it
corresponds with men's needs and men's longings, not to show what large
and blessed results follow from its acceptance. All these are
legitimate ways of establishing principles; but the way to establish a
fact is only one--that is, to find somebody that can say, 'I know it,
for I saw it.'
And my belief is that the course of modern 'apologetics,' as they are
called--methods of defending Christianity--has followed too slavishly
the devious course of modern antagonism, and has departed from its real
stronghold when it has consented to argue the question on these (as I
take them to be) lower and less sufficing grounds. I am thankful to
adopt all that wise Christian apologists may have said in regard to the
reasonableness of Christianity; its correspondence with men's wants,
the blessings that follow from it, and so forth; but the Gospel is
first and foremost a history, and you cannot prove that a thing has
happened by showing how very desirable it is that it should happen, how
reasonable it is to expect that it should happen, what good results
would follow from believing that it has happened--all that is
irrelevant. Think of it as first a history, and then you are shut up to
the old-fashioned line of evidence, irrefragable as I take it to be, to
which all these others may afterwards be appended as confirmatory. It
is true, because sufficient eye-witnesses assert it. It did happen,
because it is commended to us by the ordinary canons of evidence which
we accept in regard to all other matters of fact.
With regard to the sufficiency of the specific evidence here, I wish to
make only one or two observations.
Suppose you yield up everything that the most craving and unreasonable
modern scepticism can demand as to the date and authorship of these
tracts that make the New Testament, we have still left four letters of
the Apostle Paul, which no one has ever denied, which the very
extremest professors of the 'higher criticism' themselves accept. These
four are the Epistles to the Romans, the first and second to the
Corinthians, and that to the Galatians. The dates which are assigned to
these four letters by any one, believer or unbeliever, bring them
within five-and-twenty years of the alleged date of Christ's
resurrection.
Then what do we find in these undeniably and admittedly genuine
letters, written a quarter of a century after the supposed fact? We
find in all of them reference to it--the distinct allegation of it. We
find in one of them that the Apostle states it as being the substance
of his preaching and of his brethren's preaching, that 'Christ died and
rose again according to the Scriptures,' and that He was seen by
individuals, by multitudes, by a whole five hundred, the greater
portion of whom were living and available as witnesses when he wrote.
And we find that side by side with this statement, there is the
reference to his own vision of the risen Saviour, which carries us up
within ten years of the alleged fact. So, then, by the evidence of
admittedly genuine documents, which are dealing with a state of things
ten years after the supposed resurrection, there was a unanimous
concurrence of belief on the part of the whole primitive Church, so
that even the heretics who said that there was no resurrection of the
dead could be argued with on the ground of their belief in Christ's
Resurrection. The whole Church with one voice asserted it. And there
were hundreds of living men ready to attest it. It was not a handful of
women who fancied they had seen Him once, very early in the dim
twilight of a spring morning--but it was half a thousand that had
beheld Him. He had been seen by them not once, but often; not far off,
but close at hand; not in one place, but in Galilee and Jerusalem; not
under one set of circumstances, but at all hours of the day, abroad and
in the house, walking and sitting, speaking and eating, by them singly
and in numbers. He had not been seen only by excited expectants of His
appearance, but by incredulous eyes and surprised hearts, who doubted
ere they worshipped, and paused before they said, 'My Lord and my God!'
They neither hoped that He would rise, nor believed that He had risen;
and the world may be thankful that they were 'slow of heart to believe.'
Would not the testimony which can be alleged for Christ's Resurrection
be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so, why is it not
enough to guarantee this too? If, as nobody denies, the Early Church,
within ten years of Christ's Resurrection, believed in His
Resurrection, and were ready to go, and did, many of them, go to the
death in assertion of their veracity in declaring it, then one of two
things--Either they were right or they were wrong; and if the latter,
one of two things--If the Resurrection be not a fact, then that belief
was either a delusion or a deceit.
It was not a delusion, for such an illusion is altogether unexampled;
and it is absurd to think of it as being shared by a multitude like the
Early Church. Nations have said, 'Our King is not dead--he is gone away
and he will come back.' Loving disciples have said, 'Our Teacher lives
in solitude and will return to us.' But this is no parallel to these.
This is not a fond imagination giving an apparent substance to its own
creation, but sense recognising first the fact, 'He _is_ dead,' and
then, in opposition to expectation, and when hope had sickened to
despair, recognising the astounding fact, 'He liveth that was dead';
and to suppose that that should have been the rooted conviction of
hundreds of men who were not idiots, finds no parallel in the history
of human illusions, and no analogy in such legends as those to which I
have referred.
It was not a myth, for a myth does not grow in ten years. And there was
no motive to frame one, if Christ was dead and all was over. It was not
a deceit, for the character of the men, and the character of the
associated morality, and the obvious absence of all self-interest, and
the persecutions and sorrows which they endured, make it inconceivable
that the fairest building that ever hath been reared in the world, and
which is cemented by men's blood, should be built upon the mud and
slime of a conscious deceit!
And all this we are asked to put aside at the bidding of a glaring
begging of the whole question, and an outrageous assertion which no man
that believes in a God at all can logically maintain, viz. that no
testimony can reach to the miraculous, or that miracles are impossible.
No testimony reach to the miraculous! Well, put it into a concrete
form. Can testimony not reach to this: 'I know, because I saw, that a
man was dead; I know, because I saw, a dead man live again'? If
testimony can do that, I think we may safely leave the verbal sophism
that it cannot reach to the miraculous to take care of itself.
And, then, with regard to the other assumption--miracle is impossible.
That is an illogical begging of the whole question in dispute. It
cannot avail to brush aside testimony. You cannot smother facts by
theories in that fashion. Again, one would like to know how it comes
that our modern men of science, who protest so much against science
being corrupted by metaphysics, should commit themselves to an
assertion like that? Surely that is stark, staring metaphysics. It
seems as if they thought that the 'metaphysics' which said that there
was anything behind the physical universe was unscientific; but that
the metaphysics which said that there was nothing behind physics was
quite legitimate, and ought to be allowed to pass muster. What have the
votaries of pure physical science, who hold the barren word-contests of
theology and the proud pretensions of philosophy in such contempt, to
do out-Heroding Herod in that fashion, and venturing on metaphysical
assertions of such a sort? Let them keep to their own line, and tell us
all that crucibles and scalpels can reveal, and we will listen as
becomes us. But when they contradict their own principles in order to
deny the possibility of miracle, we need only give them back their own
words, and ask that the investigation of facts shall not be hampered
and clogged with metaphysical prejudices. No! no! Christ made no
mistake when He built His Church upon that rock--the historical
evidence of a resurrection from the dead, though all the wise men of
Areopagus hill may make its cliffs ring with mocking laughter when we
say, upon Easter morning, 'The Lord is risen indeed!'
III. There is a final consideration connected with these words, which I
must deal with very briefly--the importance of the fact which is thus
borne witness to.
I have already pointed out that the Resurrection of Christ is viewed in
Scripture in three aspects: in its bearing upon His nature and work, as
a pattern for our future, and as a symbol of our present newness of
life. The importance to which I refer now applies only to that first
aspect.
With the Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands or falls the Divinity of
Christ. As Paul said, in that letter to which I have referred,
'Declared to be the Son of God, with power by the resurrection from the
dead.' As Peter said in the sermon that follows this one of our text,
'God hath made this same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and
Christ.' As Paul said, on Mars Hill, 'He will judge the world in
righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given
assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.'
The case is this. Jesus lived as we know, and in the course of that
life claimed to be the Son of God. He made such broad and strange
assertions as these--'I and My Father are One.' 'I am the Way, and the
Truth, and the Life.' 'I am the Resurrection and the Life.' 'He that
believeth on Me shall never die.' 'The Son of Man must suffer many
things, and the third day He shall rise again.' Thus speaking He dies,
and rises again and passes into the heavens. That is the last mightiest
utterance of the same testimony, which spake from heaven at His
baptism, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!' If He be
risen from the dead, then His loftiest claims are confirmed from the
throne, and we can see in Him, the Son of God. But if death holds Him
still, and 'the Syrian stars look down upon His grave,' as a modern
poet tells us in his dainty English that they do, then what becomes of
these words of His, and of our estimate of the character of Him, the
speaker? Let us hear no more about the pure morality of Jesus Christ,
and the beauty of His calm and lofty teaching, and the rest of it. Take
away His resurrection from the dead, and we have left beautiful
precepts, and fair wisdom, deformed with a monstrous self-assertion and
the constant reiteration of claims which the event proves to have been
baseless. Either He has risen from the dead or His words were
blasphemy. Men nowadays talk very lightly of throwing aside the
supernatural portions of the Gospel history, and retaining reverence
for the great Teacher, the pure moralist of Nazareth. The Pharisees put
the issue more coarsely and truly when they said, 'That deceiver said,
while He was yet alive, after three days I will rise again.' Yes! one
or the other. 'Declared to be the Son of God with power by the
resurrection from the dead,' or--that which our lips refuse to say even
as a hypothesis!
Still further, with the Resurrection stands or falls Christ's whole
work for our redemption. If He died, like other men--if that awful bony
hand has got its grip upon Him too, then we have no proof that the
cross was anything but a martyr's cross. His Resurrection is the proof
of His completed work of redemption. It is the proof--followed as it is
by His Ascension--that His death was not the tribute which for Himself
He had to pay, but the ransom for us. His Resurrection is the condition
of His present activity. If He has not risen, He has not put away sin;
and if He has not put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, none has,
and it remains. We come back to the old dreary alternative: 'if Christ
be not risen, your faith is vain, and our preaching is vain. Ye are yet
in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ' with
unfulfilled hopes fixed upon a baseless vision--they of whom we hoped,
through our tears, that they live with Him--they 'are perished.' For,
if He be not risen, there is no resurrection; and, if He be not risen,
there is no forgiveness; and, if He be not risen, there is no Son of
God; and the world is desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave
is dark, and sin abides, and death is eternal. If Christ be dead, then
that awful vision is true, 'As I looked up into the immeasurable
heavens for the Divine Eye, it froze me with an empty, bottomless
eye-socket.'
There is nothing between us and darkness, despair, death, but that
ancient message, 'I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by
which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He
was raised the third day according to the Scriptures.'
Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, 'The Lord is
risen!' and, turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair
that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon sober
certainty, and with the Apostle break forth in triumph, 'Now is Christ
risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept'!