THERE may be nothing in the following considerations on the Evidence of the Resurrection, which has not been already and better stated by others; but they have at least the merit of being a faithful transcript of the firm convictions of a mind that has reflected with much earnestness on the subject. In the humble hope that the language of deep and sincere belief may prove efficacious in some few instances to excite the attention and confirm the faith of the serious inquirer after truth, I submit them to the candid judgment of your readers.

PHILALETHES MANCUNIENSIS.

What constitutes a Christian believer, in the strictest sense? Simply reverencing the moral character and adopting the moral principles of Christ? Or is the acknowledgment of his supernatural powers and divine authority indispensable to our properly assuming the appellation? Christianity, in its indirect influences, has so generally improved and elevated the moral sentiments of mankind, that numbers partake of its spirit, and so far, we hope and believe, fulfil its intentions, who have not examined, or who do not admit the evidences of its miraculous origin: and this diffusion of its moral power, even amongst those who are unconscious of the obligation, is a fact in which every friend to the well-being and happiness of man must heartily rejoice. It cannot, however, be denied, that something more than this general sympathy with the moral tendencies of the gospel is distinctly required by the language of the New Testament, as the test of a proper belief in Christ. The apostles propagated by their preaching the religion which their Master had planted; and their whole testimony bore directly on this one fact, that Christ, in the fulfilment of his divine mission, had risen from the dead. Whoever admits their testimony in this essential point, is converted by their preaching and becomes a Christian. Whoever disputes or denies the fact, thus strongly and unanimously asserted by them, must

conceive their whole preaching to be founded on a delusion, and that they have transmitted to us a false impression of the character and office of Christ.

It behoves every one, therefore, to examine the apostolic testimony to this fact with the closest attention and the strictest impartiality; since on the credibility of that testimony rests the solution of the important question, whether Christianity is to be considered of divine, or of merely human, origin. The admission of the resurrection, with all the inferences deducible from it, constitutes the faith of a Christian in the strict and proper sense. When the evidence of that event has once been rendered conclusive to the mind, less difficulty will be felt in admitting the other miracles of the Scripture history. If we can only bring ourselves to believe that Christ actually rose from the dead, we may claim our part in the blessings and privileges of the gospel covenant.

Before entering on the examination of the evidence of this fact, let us premise a few words on the value of human testimony, and on the limits by which some have contended it must be circumscribed.

A reliance on the uniformity of causation-in other words, the assumption, that like causes will always produce like effects-is the criterion of all evidence, and the foundation of all belief, in regard both to moral and to physical events. We confidently expect a certain result under given circumstances, because we have always found it occur; and if the result varies from what we anticipated, we conclude at once, that some change has taken place in the foregoing circumstances, of which we were not aware. Under given circumstances, we place the most implicit trust in the testimony of individuals, because, in those circumstances, we have never known them deceive or be deceived.

This fundamental principle, implied in all our reasonings and expectations, has been recently illustrated with great force and beauty by the author of Essays on the Pursuit of Truth, &c.; and it is indeed impossible to contest it, as soon as ever the terms in which it is stated are clearly understood. To one of the illustrations, however, adopted by this ingenious writer, in weighing the force of human testimony against an assumed contrariety to the uniformity of physical causation, we feel ourselves compelled to demur. In reference to the disposition of mankind, on particular occasions, to place a disproportionate trust in human testimony, he observes, and justly, that the force of that testimony rests on the very same principle on which the evidence of physical facts is admitted, viz. that like causes will always produce like effects; and he adds, " it not unfrequently happens that, while external circumstances tend to confirm the testimony, the nature and circumstances of the facts attested render it highly improbable that any such facts should have taken place, and these two sets of circumstances may be so exactly equivalent as to leave the mind in irremediable doubt." He supposes a case,† in which "a great number of people-people too of reputation, science, and perspicacity," with "no motive for falsehood," with "discernment to perceive, and honesty to tell the real truth," "whose interests would essentially suffer from any departure from veracity," bear their "concurrent testimony" to the fact of having seen "a cubic inch of ice exposed to a temperature of 200 degrees of Fahrenheit," and of having found" at the expiration of an hour that it retained its solidity." In this case, he contends that the unexceptionable character of the testimony could

* Essay III. pp. 255, 256.

+ Ibid. pp. 257, 258.

not overcome the alleged repugnance of the fact to the laws of nature, and render it credible. Is he justified in that opinion? With deference to the judgment of so able a writer, we humbly conceive not. Under the circumstances supposed, it seems impossible that testimony should be false. Are we then to admit a suspension of the uniformity of causation-in other words, an effect without a cause? Most assuredly not: but we submit that, in this case, our knowledge of the laws of the human mind lies more within our compass, and must be more complete, than our knowledge of the laws and agencies of nature; and that if an effect, like the one supposed, were actually attested in the way supposed, it must have arisen from some unknown cause having been called into operation, some new element or principle having been introduced into the foregoing circumstances, which had changed their character, but which had escaped the attention of the observers. To adopt any other conclusion, would seem to imply that there could be no laws of nature, no modes of divine agency, but what had fallen under our own notice, to bind the Deity by rules that we had deduced from a narrow survey of his works, and to measure the possibilities of creation by the limited results of our own experience. It is true, that the fixed and constant uniformity of causation is what first leads us to the acknowledgment of a Supreme Intelligence; but, when we have thus arrived at the knowledge of that First Cause, when the regularity and harmony of creation have compelled us to have recourse to a Creator, we can reason downwards from God to his works and his laws, and instead of supposing them to subsist in their present order and connexion from any inherent necessity, can view them as the spontaneous effects and voluntary combinations of his comprehensive wisdom and universal providence. That there is in some minds, and in certain periods of society, an unthinking and incautious proneness to rely on human testimony, is at once admitted; but there has also existed, and there still exists, in the world-perhaps the result of a resiliency against the former state of mind, and one of the collateral effects of a too exclusive cultivation of the exact sciences and the inductive philosophy-as unreasonable an incredulity in the best attested facts that have not chanced to coincide with the actual tenor of recorded experience. Testimony does not spring up of its own accord; it results from determinate causes, and is governed by determinate laws; nor are we at liberty to dispute the facts, to the existence of which it clearly and steadily points, though we may be unable to account satisfactorily for their origin.

Let us now consider the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. We assume, without hesitation, the authenticity and general credibility of the books of the New Testament. Whatever view be taken of the miraculous in their narratives, no rational doubt can any longer be entertained by persons of competent information, that those books have come down from the first age of Christianity, and that they contain a faithful representation of the cha racter and teachings of Christ, and of the testimony borne to him by the apostles. The genuineness of the writings of John and of most of the Epistles of Paul, is universally admitted. The Acts of the Apostles is unanimously ascribed to Luke, and may be traced back to the apostolic age. Should we even admit that the three first gospels are not independent authorities, but have drawn their materials from a common source, yet that common source is referred by Eichhorn, the most fearless and sagacious of inquirers, to the very commencement of the Christian dispensation, and is supposed by him to have contained all the leading incidents of the public ministry of Jesus, including his resurrection, and our Lord's prophetic an

nouncement of that wonderful event.* We appeal, then, with confidence to these books, as authentic witnesses of what Christ and his apostles did and taught and we assume, on the present occasion, not the miraculous, but only the common historical incidents of the gospel narrative, and we are prepared to shew that, if these common incidents be admitted, the fact of the resurrection cannot be consistently denied.

The fact of the resurrection forms, if we may so express it, the boundary line between the ministry of Christ and that of his apostles, between the periods of apostolic darkness and of apostolic illumination: and there are circumstances connected with this distinction, which appear to be irreconcilable with any other supposition than that of the truth of the fact. What occurred before the fact, and the language of Christ during his ministry, have not perhaps been duly considered as affording a most powerful indirect evidence, when combined with the subsequent testimony of the apostles, of the fact's having actually taken place. Christ repeatedly and solemnly foretold his crucifixion and resurrection; and these predictions became more solemn and more distinct, as the termination of his ministry approached.

Now, let us consider what this implies. The natural tendency of events might doubtless have led a mind, less reflecting and sagacious than that of Jesus, considered merely as a human reformer, to anticipate the fate which he experienced from his unrelenting persecutors. But why couple with this anticipation the prophecy of an ensuing event, the non-fulfilment of which must necessarily have exposed his pretensions to ridicule, and blasted every prospect of perpetuating the influence of his principles after his death? How inconsistent these fanatical assurances of a resurrection from the dead on the third day, with the calm and practical wisdom by which Christ's ordinary conduct and the general strain of his teachings were distinguished! Besides, these assurances produced no present effect; and their intention can only be explained with reference to a future time, when events should have declared their meaning and pointed out their application. They created no present feeling in favour of Christ. The disciples, whose minds were engrossed by the splendid visions of a temporal Messiah, hardly perceived the tendency of his allusions, and, so far as they did perceive them, were rather revolted than encouraged by them. Such declarations, when they reached the ears of his enemies, were treated with the utmost scorn. Sir," said the Chief Priests and Pharisees to Pilate, when they were soliciting a guard for the sepulchre, "we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again."

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Such was the feeling of the unbelieving portion of the Jewish public: and, when we consider the inability of the disciples to realize to themselves the possibility of their Master's death and resurrection, and their slowness to comprehend the spiritual nature of his kingdom, we can only account for the fact of Christ's thus gratuitously exposing himself to contempt, misconception, and unpopularity, by adinitting that his mind was divinely possessed with the assurance that for such a fate he actually was destined, that he should die and should rise again, and that, in declaring this, he felt himself the organ of the Holy Spirit, whose presages coming events, he was convinced, would verify.

Let us now pass over the mysterious, and as yet inexplicable, circumstances which followed the crucifixion; and consider the views and feelings, the constant and concurring declarations, of the very same men, who, prior

• Einleitung, &c, § 37. Umfang des Urevang. 28—44.

to those circumstances, seemed unable to comprehend the meaning of a resurrection, and believed that it was the sole office of the Messiah to restore a temporal kingdom to Israel. Their minds, from some cause or other, have evidently undergone a remarkable change. From being highly carnal, they have become eminently spiritual. Instead of shuddering at the idea of their Master's death and its attendant circumstances, they expatiate on it with enthusiasm, and make it the basis of their teachings, and the central point of their testimony. Instead of sinking, disheartened and despairing, beneath the total failure of their hopes of a temporal kingdom, they seem inspired with a new courage and confidence, entertaining the firmest conviction of their Lord's having passed into some invisible state, and anticipating his return at no very distant period to raise the dead and to judge the world. With the precise correctness of this last opinion, we have, at present, no concern; it does not compromise the truth of Christianity; we have only to examine the evidence of the facts from which it flowed, as a natural consequence in the then existing state of the public mind,

If we turn to the apostles' own account of this extraordinary change, we find them ascribing it distinctly to the resurrection. Peter, and James, and John, who had been witnesses of this great event, were the first to announce it, in all their preachings, recorded in the earlier chapters of the Acts of the Apostles. And let us here recollect the previous incredulity of the eleven, when the women reported what they had seen at the sepulchre; an incredulity which Peter overcame (Luke xxiv. 12) only by running, with his characteristic eagerness, to the sepulchre, where, "stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and" then "departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass." Let us remember the still more solemn, direct, and explicit testimony of John, who was with Jesus through the whole of the transactions preceding and attending the crucifixion; who saw him pierced on the cross; who accompanied Simon Peter to the sepulchre, on the report of the women; and who has described this whole occurrence in language bearing the strongest impress of truth and reality (John xx. 4—9): "So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre. And he stooping down, and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie, and the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed. For as yet," i. e. up to that time," they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.” We must further keep in mind, that John adds to the striking declaration contained in the foregoing words, that, on several occasions subsequent to this, he had actually seen the risen Jesus,* and been the subject of a conversation between Jesus and Simon Peter, at which he himself was present. "This," says he emphatically, "is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things and we know that his testimony is true."

Lastly, there is the remarkable testimony of Paul-of Paul, the bigot and

May not the singular language at the opening of John's First Epistle," that which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life," be most naturally interpreted as an animated reference on the part of the Apostle to the sensible evidence which he had enjoyed of the actual, bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus?