SUFFICIENCY OF THE PROOFS (AFFIRMATIVE EVIDENCE).
Holding, then, the objectors to the historical record, and keeping in
mind that the question is narrowed down to the hypothesis of visions on
the one hand, or to a true resurrection on the other, _what evidence had
the Apostles and immediate disciples that they were not deceived_?
First and foremost, they had the empty tomb. They knew[1] that the body
was neither left on the cross, in violation of the Jewish law, nor
thrown to the “dust-heap,” in violation of the Roman law which required
a delivery to the friends as soon as claimed, but was placed in the
sepulchre, as attested by all the Evangelists, as also by Paul. They knew
that _they_ had not taken it away, and that if the Jews had, they would
have been but too ready to produce it when, only a few days after, it
was boldly proclaimed, that that Jesus whom they had crucified, God had
raised from the dead. It was the absence of the body that first arrested
the attention of the women, and also of Peter and John, and which, with
the orderly arrangement of the grave clothes, induced a conviction of
the truth in the mind of John, before Jesus appeared to any, and sent
Peter to his home “wondering.” And these same facts (the good faith of
the disciples themselves being undoubted), can never be explained, in any
rational way, otherwise than by the fact of the Resurrection. There is a
great truth in Professor Keim’s expression[2] that: “It is upon an empty
tomb that the Christian Church is founded.”
They had _further_ proof, in subsequent appearances to individuals
singly, to the collective body of Apostles, and to the multitude of
believers, under circumstances that satisfied them, and should convince
us, that they were not deceived.
There are several things to be considered, in determining whether they
were deceived. First, in respect to time. There were no appearances
till after the fact that the tomb was empty was fully understood, _nor
till some hours after_. This lapse of time has been overlooked by most
writers; and, from want of attention to it, inconsistencies as to
occurrences at the sepulchre, as to the number and appearance of angels,
the companies of women, the persons composing them, the messages received
and carried, and the appearances to them, of our risen Lord, have been
imagined, that are easily explained, upon the very natural hypothesis of
several transactions of like character during the six hours or more[3]
which elapsed before the journey to Emmaus. At that time no one had seen
the Lord; for it cannot be doubted that his appearance would be reported
as soon as possible after its occurrence. When Jesus joined the two
disciples, their eyes were “holden,” until in a long discourse he had
prepared them for a revelation of himself. Peter must have meditated some
hours upon the absence of the body, before Jesus showed himself to him.
It was not till after this, and after the return of the disciples from
Emmaus, that he said to the others, “Peace be unto you.” Then a whole
week, before he returns. Then, probably after a longer interval (for they
returned to Galilee), he shows himself at the Sea of Tiberias. Then,
after some days, to above five hundred brethren, at a place to which they
had been directed to go by the angels, and by Jesus both before and after
his resurrection. Then to James. And then at Jerusalem to the Apostles,
whom he led out over against Bethany; and while he blessed them, he
parted from them and was carried up into heaven.
In all this, we see how they were prepared to exercise a sober and
intelligent judgment, so that neither they, nor we, should be in doubt
whether what they beheld was their risen Lord, or a phantom of their own
imagination.
And will any one tell us, right here, what better proof Jesus _could_
have given his disciples, of his Resurrection? If the evidence was
sufficient for them, it may be sufficient for us, unless we are prepared
to say that the miracle shall _be repeated whenever it is challenged_!
Was it essential to a reasonable conviction on their part that the
Scribes and Pharisees should also be convinced? (Nicodemus, and Joseph of
Arimathea, _were_ convinced.) It must be admitted that the disciples, of
all others, were qualified to judge, if any persons could be qualified.
What force could the belief of the Sanhedrim have added to the testimony
of their own senses?
Assume, as a hypothesis, the reality of Christ’s resurrection, we again
ask, What proof of it _should_ have been given his disciples that was
not given? They had the same kind of proof, during forty days, that
they had before his crucifixion. He walked with them, talked with them,
instructed them, ate before them, and with them (Acts. x. 41), called
things to their remembrance, opened to them the Scriptures, and gave them
their great commission to disciple all nations; and, to preclude all
questioning, said, “See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle
me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye behold me have.
And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.” And to
Thomas, eight days after, he said, “Reach hither thy finger and see my
hands; and reach thy hand and put it into my side: and be not faithless
but believing.”
We do not accept Origen’s[4] view that Jesus after his resurrection
and before his ascension “existed in a body intermediate, as it were,
between the grossness of that which he had before his suffering and the
appearance of a soul uncovered by such a body,” although it now has the
support of able writers. The general[5] sentiment of the Church from the
beginning has been against it. It is not warranted by the record, and
it involves more mysteries and difficulties than it escapes. We fully
agree with Judge Waite[6] that, according to the Canonical Gospels, “The
very body in which Jesus was crucified, and which was buried by Joseph
of Arimathea, is raised from the dead, appears to the disciples, is not
only seen but felt, and Jesus himself, in the flesh, as he was before he
was crucified, calls for fish to eat to satisfy his disciples that he
was not a spirit; that his body was not spiritual, but material and human
like theirs;” and also with a very different man (Mr. Barnes), who, with
his usual good sense, says: “It was necessary _first_ to establish the
proof of his resurrection, and that could be done _only_ by his appearing
_as he was_ when he died;” and also with Drs. McClintock and Strong in
their invaluable Cyclopedia, that: “According to the Scriptures the
disciples were assured by the testimony of their own senses that the body
of Christ after his resurrection was the same identical body of human
flesh and bones which had been crucified and laid in the sepulchre.”
(Vol. VIII., A.D. 1879.) Peter’s testimony (as recorded in Acts x. 41)
that Jesus after he was raised up was made manifest, not to all the
people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us
“who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead,” seems just
as decisive as the Canonical Gospels. And so of John’s testimony (1 John
i. 1), “that which we beheld, and our hands handled.”
Our Lord was in the tomb less than thirty-six hours, and his flesh “did
not see corruption.” His body, apparently, was as human as that of
Lazarus after he was raised. The criticism that it is not said that there
was _blood_ seems frivolous, for there could be no living flesh or bones
without blood-vessels and blood. Although for the time he forbade Mary
Magdalene to touch, or rather to detain him, he permitted the other women
to take hold of his feet, and directed the Apostles to handle him. Mary
Magdalene saw him as a man, and supposed him to be the gardener, until he
called her by name. The two disciples conversed with him as a man; and
that they did not know him was only because their eyes were “holden.” His
sudden disappearance after the repast, and equally sudden appearance in
the midst of the Apostles, at most present no greater difficulties than
his transfiguration, his walking upon the sea, his passing through his
enemies when they were about to throw him down the cliff (all before his
crucifixion), or the opening of the prison doors to two of the Apostles.
The doors, even if bolted and barred, may have opened as to Peter, or
those present may have been so preoccupied that a perfectly natural but
silent withdrawal in the one case, and entrance in the other, were simply
unnoticed.
As the man Christ Jesus, he rose from the dead, and angels, as porters,
having rolled away the stone, he came forth in visible human form, and
with the same body that was crucified. He would have been seen by his
disciples, if they had been “watching and waiting” for him, and by the
guard, if they had not become “as dead men;” perhaps in order that they
might not behold him, for he had said, “Yet a little while and the world
beholdeth me no more.” (John xiv. 19.)
As the man Christ Jesus, he showed himself to his disciples forty days;
and then, with a body, until then, of flesh and blood, as human as that
of Elijah, before _he_ was taken up, ascended into the heavens.
Thus, in his rising from the dead, and in the change _at his ascension_,
he typified both the dead who shall be raised, and the living who shall
be “changed.”
And any conception of him as less corporeal from his resurrection to his
ascension than before, does not conform to the record, and, by so much
as it makes him less corporeal and tangible, it impairs the force of the
evidence.
Each one of the Apostles had as much evidence that Jesus was alive after
his crucifixion, as he had that Peter or John or Thomas was alive, and
evidence of just as high a character. And this proof by facts addressed
to their own intelligence and bodily senses of sight, and hearing, and
feeling, was continued forty days. There is no conflict in the evidence
on this point.
Every lawyer knows that omission is not contradiction. Even when
witnesses profess to give the whole, it rarely or never happens that
some will not state something which others omit, and not unfrequently a
witness is called to testify to a part only, and does not undertake to
give the whole.
This is the precise truth in respect to the Evangelists. Not one of
them professes to state all that occurred after the crucifixion, or all
the instances of our Lord’s appearing to his disciples. Each writes for
the particular object he has in view. And there is a great liability
to mistake, if one forgets that it is true in narratives in respect to
transactions subsequent to the crucifixion, as well as before, that there
is often a passing from one event to another with nothing to indicate but
that they were immediately connected in point of time, when, in fact,
there was a considerable interval between them.[A]
Of the ten specified instances of his appearing, Matthew speaks of
two, Mark of three, Luke of three, John of four, and Paul of five, or
seven;[7] but neither contradicts the other, nor Luke’s statement in his
subsequent “treatise,” that Jesus showed himself alive after his passion
“forty days, and speaking the things concerning the kingdom of God.”
The instances were sufficiently numerous, the time long enough, and the
acts tangible enough, to afford as undoubted proof as that which they had
of the existence and bodily presence of each other. Peter might as well
have doubted the denial of which he had so bitterly repented, as to have
doubted that it was his Master who said unto him the third time, “Simon,
son of John, lovest thou me?” and all of them might as well have doubted
that they had ever listened to his teaching, as to have doubted the
commission which they received from him.
The evidence that was personal to themselves we cannot have. We know they
had it, and were capable of judging concerning it, and we can see that
it was of a character that might be justly deemed conclusive.
There is, besides, much that is common to us with them. The judgment was
not of one but of many, and not from a single appearance to one of their
number, but from many appearances to different persons, at various times,
and under circumstances most favorable to a true apprehension, usually in
open day; and it would be passing strange if each and all were deceived
by their own senses.
These appearances were never repeated after the ascension. None of the
disciples under any excitement ever again saw their Lord as the man
Christ Jesus walking the earth as before; or saw him coming to the earth,
although they all believed that he would speedily return in like manner
as they beheld him going into heaven. Stephen saw him not upon the earth,
but “standing on the right hand of God.” Paul saw him, and “was not
disobedient unto the heavenly vision” (Acts xxvi. 19). John saw him, in
vision, not only as “the Son of Man” in glorious array, but as “the Lion
of the tribe of Judah,” and also as a “Lamb standing as though it had
been slain,” in the “midst of the throne” (Revelation i. 12-20, and v.
5-8).
Their subsequent experience is consistent, if they had been dealing with
realities. But if all their interviews during those forty days were a
delusion, and the ascension a delusion, it is wholly inexplicable that
their imagination or senses never played them false afterward. They
believed that he would soon return, just as strongly as they believed
that he had ascended, and yet they never saw him returning, or as having
returned.
If delusions created the faith, how much more should the faith multiply
the delusions, and such appearances (as Godet[8] has well put it) “go
on increasing as the square of the belief itself.” Yet at the very time
when they should have multiplied, if they were _not_ real, they ceased
altogether!
We have, as the disciples had, our Lord’s predictions[9] of his death
_and_ resurrection (for the two events were generally referred to in the
same discourse), and the prophecies concerning him.
The greatest obstacle to their acceptance of his resurrection was their
inability to comprehend his death if he were indeed the true Messiah. And
hence we find that Jesus in the walk to Emmaus, opens to the disciples
the Scriptures concerning himself, and says, “Behoved it not the Christ
to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory?” We may well suppose
that with other prophecies, he interpreted to them what Daniel had
said (c. ix. 26) that “after three score and two weeks, shall Messiah
be cut off, but not for himself;” and that wonderful chapter in Isaiah
(the fifty-third) so descriptive of his passion, that it seems “as if
written at the foot of the cross;” and all the sacrifices for fifteen
hundred years; and that it was not possible “that the blood of bulls
and goats should take away sins;” and as Moses lifted up the serpent
in the wilderness, even so was the Son of Man “lifted up.” And so to
the Apostles he explained the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it
is written that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead
the third day.” (Luke xxiv. 45, 46). He reminds them what he had said,
that all things must needs be fulfilled which were written in the law
of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning himself (Luke
xxiv. 44). The angels say to the women, “Tell his disciples and Peter
he goeth before you into Galilee, and there shall ye see him as he said
unto you” (Mark xvi. 7); and also, “Remember how he spake unto you when
he was yet in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up
into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise
again” (Luke xxiv. 6, 7). And we find that when the disciples understood
the mystery of his death, they joyfully accepted the proofs of his
resurrection; and Peter, who had said, “Be it far from thee, Lord, this
shall never be unto thee” (Matthew xvi. 23), on the day of Pentecost
could explain that Jesus (whom God had “raised up, having loosed the
pangs of death”), was delivered up to be crucified and slain “by the
determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”; and that David spake of
his resurrection. (Acts ii. 22-31.)
Not only do the prophecies point to his resurrection, but as already[9]
shown, Jesus himself foretold it as well as the manner and circumstances
of his death; and it is more rational to accept it, than to believe
that such an One as is portrayed in the Gospels was either false or
mistaken. “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” has found none to accept
the challenge in eighteen hundred years! On the contrary, as Dr. Taylor
has said,[10] “Before the portraiture which the Evangelists have painted,
men of every age have stood in rooted admiration.” And as J. S. Mill
concedes,[11] “It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the
Gospels, is not historical: for none of his disciples or their proselytes
were capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to him, or imagining the
life and character revealed in the Gospels.”
His resurrection was a moral necessity from his own character as
delineated in the Gospels, even our enemies themselves being judges.
His could not have been “the richest of human lives,” as declared by
Hooykaas,[12] nor his utterances “the most beautiful moral teaching that
humanity has received,” as avowed by Renan, if his power to lay down his
life and “to take it again” were at the best a mere delusion.
His predictions of his death and resurrection, as we have before shown,
are so interwoven with the entire narrative, that it is impossible to set
them aside and leave anything to which we can assent as true, of all his
recorded acts and words; and there is no alternative except to believe
that he uttered them, or else to arbitrarily set aside the testimony of
the four Evangelists, as well as that of Paul.
_That the Christ of the Gospels_ should rise from the dead, as he said,
_is in the highest degree probable_. Only by his resurrection could he
vindicate himself from the charge of blasphemy. Without it, the cross was
a gibbet, a monument of folly if not of crime. Without it, the sacrament
which he instituted on the eve of his crucifixion, keeps in perpetual
remembrance the falsity of his pretensions, his impotency to save himself
from his enemies. Without it, the taunt of those who mocked him, “He
saved others, himself he cannot save,” was merited. Without it, while one
might pity him for his sufferings, we should the more sympathize with the
Sanhedrim in protecting the people from a visionary enthusiast, if not
a wilful impostor, and inflicting (although by irregular methods) the
penalty for blasphemy expressly commanded by the Mosaic Law.
It cannot be too strongly stated that there is no middle ground. If he
was what he claimed, his resurrection was already assured. If he was not
what he claimed, he could not have been the exalted character eulogized
by those who deny his resurrection, and before which the world bows in
reverence.
If he was what he claimed, we can see a grand and all-sufficient reason
_why_ God (if there _be_ a God) should by miracle give the highest
possible authentication to his mission.
He said, “I am the light of the world;” and the world was in darkness. He
said that he came forth from God, and he ought to show his credentials.
He said he was the Son of God, and that he always did those things that
pleased Him; which he could not do, if he set up claims destitute of
foundation. He said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth, may
have in him eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but
have eternal life.”
The great central truths which he declared in all his teachings, were the
_fact_ of sin, the need of a Saviour, and that he is a Saviour.
If sin, as all experience testifies, is universal, always downward,
and its end when finished death, the redemption of multitudes[B] of the
human race from its power to holiness, and bliss, and endless progress,
as “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ,” was an object _worthy_ of
divine interposition, and only an atheist should look upon such a miracle
of redemption as impossible or improbable.
“’Twas great to speak a world from naught,
’Twas greater to redeem.”
Christ’s resurrection being established, the darkness over the land, the
rending of the veil, the coming[13] out of the tombs, the ministry of
the angels in the garden before his betrayal, and at the sepulchre, the
earthquake, the rolling away of the stone, and the fear that came upon
the watchers, were fitting accompaniments of the transactions which they
surrounded.
Nor, if some of them are not mentioned by other historians, are they
overthrown, for omission is not contradiction, in history any more than
in courts. Why should Josephus, who was not born till some years after
the crucifixion, and not a Christian, be expected to mention them? And
as to Greek and Roman writers, even Renan[14] says that “it is not
surprising that they paid little attention to a movement which was going
on within a narrow space foreign to them. Christianity was lost to their
vision upon the dark background of Judaism.”
And so his being seen by Stephen the first martyr, by John in the
Apocalypse, and by Paul on the way to Damascus, are in harmony with the
record of his resurrection and ascension, and may be said to confirm them.
Yet it may be questioned if Paul would have been so absolutely certain
that Jesus (against whose followers he was breathing out threatening
and slaughter) said to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” but
for the previous appearances. If he would, he does not rest the case
upon the one to himself. He gives the others first, and then adds, “And
last of all ... to me also.” While there is a mutual support, the most
solid basis for _our_ belief is, in the incontrovertible and tangible
appearances which preceded Paul’s conversion; and when John would declare
the _certainty_ of their faith, he says, “That which we have heard, that
which we have seen with our eyes, that which we have beheld, and our
hands handled.” (1 John i. 1).
And viewing the indubitable proofs of his resurrection, in their relation
to the prophecies concerning him, the necessity for his advent, his
predictions concerning himself, his character and works and teachings
from his incarnation to his ascension, the lives and deaths of his
Apostles, the wonderful enlargement of his little church, when the
Apostles “with great power gave their witness of the resurrection of the
Lord Jesus,” and its equally wonderful continuance, extension, moral
influence, inspirations and hopes, they rise to the sublimity of moral
certainty.
These things cannot rationally be accounted for unless there is a God,
and if there is a God, as all courts of justice everywhere assume, and
universal conscience declares, to refuse assent to the conclusion to
which they necessarily lead,—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the
dead,—cannot be the exercise of right reason.
Least of all should lawyers, accustomed to weigh evidence, refuse to
believe upon the testimony of others. As Gibson, the great chief justice
of Pennsylvania, said: “Give Christianity a common law trial; submit the
evidence _pro_ and _con_ to an impartial jury under the direction of a
competent court, and the verdict will assuredly be in its favor.”
We have not the witnesses before us; but it is every day’s practice to
prove historical facts by any approved and general history, and such
are our Gospels and Epistles; and they are confirmed by sacraments and
institutions that continue to our times, and will continue to the end of
the world.
Nor does the sufficiency of the proofs depend upon any question of the
_precise_ extent of the genuineness of the Gospels, or their _exact_
agreement. Men accustomed to weigh evidence know that it is enough if
the substance of the issue is proved, and that a literal agreement is
never to be expected in honest witnesses. In all the great facts of
the Resurrection, the Gospels and the Epistles concur. This has been
found satisfactory to such standard authors in the legal profession as
Blackstone and Kent and Story, such masters of the rules of evidence as
Starkie and Greenleaf, and such giants as Lord Brougham, John Marshall,
Theophilus Parsons, Jeremiah Mason and Daniel Webster, and many others
both of the dead and the living, and no historical event rests on a
firmer basis.
Some of its logical results will be suggested in the concluding chapter.
[1] See _ante_, c. 17, p. 101, and Godet’s Defence, etc., 1881, p. 106.
[2] As quoted by Godet, p. 49.
[3] See _ante_, c. 17, p. 101.
[4] Origen against Celsus, Book II., c. 42.
[5] See editor’s note to Lange’s Life of Christ; McClintock and Strong,
Vol. VIII., p. 1055; Abbott’s Dictionary of Religious Knowledge, p. 804;
Barnes on John xx. 21; Scott on John xx. 19.
An able article by Professor Robinson of the Union Theological Seminary,
N. Y., on the Nature of Our Lord’s Resurrection-body will be found in the
_Bibliotheca Sacra_ for 1845, p. 292. He thus distributes the opinions
on the subject: “On this subject three different opinions have prevailed
more or less at various times in the church. Some have held that the
body of Christ was changed at the resurrection as to its _substance_, so
that it was in its substance a different and spiritual body. Others have
regarded the Lord as having had after the resurrection the _same_ body as
before, but glorified; or, as the earliest writers express it, changed as
to its qualities and attributes. The third and larger class have supposed
that the body with which Christ rose from the dead was the same natural
body of flesh and blood which had been taken down from the cross and laid
in the sepulchre.”
This article we had not read until after writing chapter 19, but our
convictions are confirmed by his thorough discussion of the subject. He
concludes that the evidence of the reality of our Lord’s human body,
from the Resurrection to the Ascension, is even stronger than that for
any other forty days, since Jesus was specially careful to assure his
disciples of the fact.
[6] History, etc., p. 335.
[A] For example, it is an entire misconception of Luke’s Gospel to
conclude from it that the ascension was the same day as the resurrection;
and his account in Acts makes this certain, it being conceded that both
works were by the same writer.
[7] Paul seems to have grouped appearances. We may paraphrase thus: “And
that he was seen of Cephas; then of the twelve _on three occasions_.”
[8] Defence, etc., p. 105.
[9] See _ante_, c. 16, p. 89.
[10] The Gospel Miracles, etc., p. 48.
[11] As quoted by Dr. Taylor, p. 41.
[12] The Bible, etc., p. 51; Renan, p. 135.
[B] See Rev. vii. 9-17.
[13] Those who came out of the tombs “after his resurrection,” it may be
presumed, had recently deceased (for they were recognized, as it would
seem), and they appeared only to those who, like Simeon and Anna the
Prophetess, had been looking “for the consolation of Israel;” and not
to those who had rejected him. Their coming was so overshadowed by the
principal events to which it was merely an incident, that it is mentioned
only by Matthew, and even he gives no information of who they were, or
anything of their subsequent history.
[14] The Apostles, by Ernest Renan, p. 227.