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 character 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

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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."

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 admitting 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 ou 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 lite," be most naturally interpreted as an animated reference on the part of the Apostie to the sensible evidence which he had enjoyed of the actual, bodily resurrection of the Lord Jesus?

the persecutor; whose conversion was not the slow result of inquiry and progressive conviction, but complete and instantaneous; inexplicable, with all its attendant circumstances, on any other supposition than that of his having been favoured with a manifestation of the personal presence of the risen Jesus, to which he himself continually referred as the cause of his conversion, and as the circumstance which qualified him for exercising the apostolic office.

Now, let us reflect, for one moment, on the peculiar nature of this testimony: from whom does it proceed? From men of the most widely-different temperaments, and of views, in some points, almost conflicting-from men, taking the most opposite direction in the labour of propagating the new religion-from Peter and James, who were connected with the Jewish party, and the latter of whom presided in the infant church at Jerusalem— from Paul, the eloquent and enlightened opponent of the invidious distinction of Jew and Gentile-from John, the rapt and contemplative seer, whose enthusiastic spirit loved to range amongst the sublime, but vague, abstractions of the oriental school-from men, who, however much they disagreed on minor points, were unanimous in their testimony to the resurrection of Christ-a fact, of which their senses had been the judge, and which was made by each of them the basis of reasonings, illustrations, and inferences, shaped and modified by the peculiar bias and tendency of their respective minds.

It is impossible to resist the acute and learned arguments with which Dr. Middleton has shewn that the same reasoning and the same testimony by which the Christian miracles of the second and third centuries are attempted to be proved, might equally well be alleged on behalf of the numberless miracles asserted by the Catholic Church down to the present day; and it may, perhaps, be thought that his arguments are capable of being extended to the miracles of the New Testament, notwithstanding the line which he has himself clearly drawn between the apostolic age and that which ensued. The sole fact, be it remembered, with which we are now concerned, is the fact of the resurrection; and we may fearlessly assert, that this fact stands on ground peculiar to itself, and is entrenched within a pile of evidence, with which that of no other miraculous incident, not only of the times subsequent to the apostles, but we may even add of the apostolic age itself, will admit of being compared.

When the fashion of miracles, so to speak, had been once introduced, and when the system, on behalf of which they were alleged to be wrought, was previously believed to be true, there was a general readiness among believers to admit them on very insufficient evidence; and even men of learning and character, partly perhaps deceived, and partly perhaps in accordance with the mistaken morality of those times, inclined to stretch a point in support of influences which they thought might be useful too easily lent the sanction of their names to marvellous narratives, the correctness of which they had not taken sufficient pains to examine, and which possibly they might not be over-anxious to find untrue. But we may appeal to the candour of every reader of the New Testament, whether these circumstances are at all applicable to the great miracle of Christ's resurrection. When Christ appeared, there had been a long cessation of miraculous interpositions. John the Baptist wrought no miracles. From the days of the last of the prophets up to the advent of Christ himself, no religious teacher had

Free Inquiry, &c., Works, 8vo., Vol. I.

appeared, claiming divine authority and attesting that claim by the evidence of miracles. With Christ, therefore, commenced, as it were, a new series of miraculous agency: and the very attempt, subsequently to the apostolic age, to perpetuate that series by fictitious miracles, seems almost to imply that it must have had its origin, after so long a suspension, in those which were true. The miracles of Christ, moreover, were all performed for purposes, and in support of views, directly contrary to the received opinions and strongest prepossessions of his countrymen. The miracle of the resurrection, in particular, had the singular fate of being most strongly opposed to the views, and most revolting to the feelings, that were generally entertained by the disciples during the life-time of Jesus, and of producing, after his death, precisely that change in their minds which fitted them to be the preachers of his religion. There was no predominant prejudice in the public mind which could have encouraged Jesus to excite the expectation of such an event taking place, or which could have induced his disciples to hope for ready belief and general favour from spreading the rumour that it had actually occurred.

Besides, how unique, how unaccountable, is the whole language and conduct of Christ in regard to this event! A man foretells his own death and resurrection; grounds his whole claim to divine authority on the fulfilment of this prediction; and constitutes it the basis on which the whole superstructure of his future religion is to be reared. Surely nothing parallel to this can be found in any one of the miracles that are recorded in the succeeding ages of the church. All the apostles, wherever they preached, and whatever might be their other views, had but one story respecting their Master's resurrection from the dead. Their testimony was borne, not to what they believed to be the correctness of opinions, but to what they knew to be the truth of facts and in consequence of this conviction, so contrary to their previous expectation, they renounced their former opinions, changed their mode of life, and conceived the extraordinary project of going forth to proselytize the world.

Here, then, is a most extraordinary chain of events, a most unaccountable accumulation of testimony. On what does that chain hang? What can be the nucleus of that accumulation? Those who reject the resurrection are bound to assign some probable, at least some possible, cause of events, so sudden in their origin, so peculiar in their character, and so lasting in their consequences. Till that be done, we may rest, without any great presumption, in the fact of the resurrection, as affording the most satisfactory solution of all the phenomena of the case.

It never can be sufficiently repeated, that what we require from the apostles is their testimony to this fact. Incalculable difficulties are entailed on Christianity by expecting from it more than it is intended to furnish. The essential truths of Christ's religion are to be gathered from the spirit of his teachings, combined with all the inferences deducible from the fact of his resurrection. With their steadfast testimony to this fact, the apostles join, in the further exercise of their divine commission, the most solemn announcements of a judgment to come, and the most affectionate exhortations to repentance towards God, and the cultivation of vital holiness and spirituality of mind: but they reason upon, apply, and illustrate the facts and doctrines included in their commission, in their own way: the actual exhibition of them to the world passes through the medium of their peculiar views, and is adapted to the existing opinions of their age. Their minds were the earliest vehicles through which the spirit of Christianity was trans