DIFFERENT VIEWS.

T is obvious that this question not only directly affects the credibility of the Gospel narrative, but it involves the very existence of Christianity. It is plainly taught in the Old Testament that the Messiah would rise from among the dead; Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be that promised Messiah, and distinctly and repeatedly declared that He would rise; each of His four biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John affirms that He did rise on the third day after His death; and from that time the doctrine of His resurrection became interwoven in all of the preaching and writing of His apostles, who laid it at the foundation of the church, and linked it with every hope of the human race!

It is sometimes thoughtlessly said that the religion He established by His sublime life and by His more than heroic death would survive, even if His resurrection could be disproved. But surely a religion that has no better support than a silly delusion or deliberate falsehood is worthy of universal contempt and rejection. Hence it is frankly admitted at once, that if the sincere inquirer after truth is convinced by any kind of evidence which may be brought to his attention, or by any process of reasoning, of the continuance of Jesus one hour in the grave beyond the close of the third day subsequent to the crucifixion, he is bound to disregard and despise every word of the Bible, and every argument by which its friends would seek to win his faith and obedience.

On the other hand, if it can be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that Jesus actually rose from the dead, it is respectfully submitted that no honest man can withhold from Him his reverence, his confidence, and his submission. No other proof of His divine mission to earth can be asked; no other evidence of The truth and infinite importance of His doctrines can be demanded. Let the report be fully confirmed, which has descended to us through many centuries, that He actually came forth from the grave after real death, and confessedly there is no further ground for controversy, no further room for hesitation. All other miracles sink into insignificance in the presence of this stupendous display of God's presence and power, and it carries along with it across the ages without the possibility of successful or sincere denial the supernatural origin and supreme authority of the Sacred Scriptures.

Intelligent infidels are quick to see that this is the battle-field on which victory is to be won for the divine or merely human conception and character of the whole New Testament. Strauss, the ablest of them all, well speaks of it as "the burning question," and as he approaches its discussion truly says, ''Here then we stand on that decisive point where, in the presence of the accounts of the miraculous resurrection of Jesus, we either acknowledge the inadmissibility of the natural and historical view of the life of Jesus, and must consequently retract all that precedes, and so give up our whole undertaking, or pledge ourselves to make out the possibility of the result of those accounts, i. e. the origin of the belief in the resurrection of Jesus without any corresponding miraculous fact. The more immediately this question touches ail Christianity to the quick, the more regard we must pay to the sensibility with which every unprejudiced word that is uttered about it is received, and even to the sensible effect which such words may have upon him who pronounces them; but the more important the point is, and the more decisive on the other side, for the whole view of Christianity, the more pressing is the demand upon the investigator to set aside all these considerations, and pronounce upon it in a perfectly unprejudiced, perfectly decided spirit, without ambiguity and without reserve."

Up to the time of Strauss, infidelity generally had a summary way of dealing with the resurrection of Jesus. It assumed that the story from first to last was a fraud, artfully planned and perpetrated by a number of scoundrels for their own ignoble purposes, without having even a shadow of foundation in fact. Or if there were those who recoiled from the position to which such a view forced them, they adopted what is known as the naturalistic theory of the resurrection. They claimed that Jesus did not really die upon the cross, but only fell into a swoon, from which He recovered by the cool air of the cave that received His body, that being thus restored He came forth from the grave and, after living for awhile, died a natural death, all of which led His disciples to look upon His revival as an actual resurrection.

It is not surprising that even Strauss set aside with undisguised disdain such a method of meeting ''the burning question." It does not in the least relieve the apostles and early Christians from the charge of wilful deception and falsehood, but detracts immensely from their common sense as well as their honesty, by supposing that they regarded a mere recovery from a swoon as a literal resurrection from the dead, and that after the natural death of Jesus some time later, they continued to believe and teach that He was still alive. Practically it comes to the same thing as the wretched view against which it was designed to form a kind of protest, for it fastens upon all the first disciples of Christ the dark stain of deliberate imposture.

But no one really believes that such an accusation is true. That a number of men could resolve to go forth among the nations in order to establish a religion which teaches the purest morality, even its enemies themselves being the judges, a religion that strenuously insists upon truth and uprightness, and threatens to cast all liars into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone forever and ever, a religion of which sincerity and righteousness are essential principles, while hypocrisy is uniformly denounced with fiercest invective — that in order to carry out their nefarious plan these men agreed to act in the name of One who had been publicly put to death, but whom they falsely represented as risen from the dead, thus uttering a wilful lie in the very act of forbidding falsehood — that in the prosecution of their purpose, marked by this self-contradictory and absurd mode of procedure, they endured the loss of home and country and kindred and friends, submitting to all manner of privation and suffering and death itself, for no possible gain in this world, and for no possible good in the world to come, seeing they pronounced against themselves the sentence of everlasting condemnation — is indeed to suppose a state of things which is morally impossible. Some men are greatly troubled about miracles, because they violate the laws of nature, as many ignorantly affirm, but there is no miracle in the Bible that so violates the laws of nature, as the fact, if it be a fact, that the conduct of the apostles in regard to the resurrection originated in a fraud.

Strauss perceived this with a single glance of his quick eye, and therefore invented a theory of his own, which saves the sincerity of the apostles at the expense of their judgment. He knew that no man who had an intellect above that of a brute, or a heart above that of a demon, could be induced to believe that the men who wrote the four gospels and the other twenty-three books of the New Testament were unprincipled knaves and unscrupulous liars, and hence he suggested the mythical view of the resurrection. That is, he utterly discards the idea of wilful deception on the part of those who promulgated the story; but he takes it for granted that a considerable time elapsed before the story was published, and that exaggerated statements, and unintentional misrepresentations of the fact had meanwhile gained currency. He thinks, contrary to the truth in the case, that the disciples of Jesus expected His resurrection, and owing to a certain elevation of their mental and moral life, they imagined it to have taken place. He tries to satisfy himself and his readers with the view that the resurrection has nothing more of a true and historical basis than the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans that gradually assumed shape and beauty, or the legends associated with some of the world's heroes, that are so often mercilessly exposed by the keen knife of modern criticism.

But that he did not satisfy even the skeptics is shown by the fact that during his life-time his mythical theory gave place to another suggested by Renan, which may be best described in his own Frenchy and flashy style. Referring to the reported interview between Christ and Mary Magdalene on the morning of the resurrection he exclaims, "Divine power of love! sacred moments in which the passion of a hallucinated woman gives to the world a resurrected God." Again speaking of the alleged appearance of Jesus to the disciples on the night following he says, " The doors were closed, for they were afraid of the Jews. Oriental towns are hushed after sunset. The silence accordingly within the house was frequently profound; all the little noises which were accidentally made were interpreted in the sense of the universal expectation. Ordinarily, expectation is the father of its object. During a moment of silence, some slight breath passed over the face of the assembly. At these decisive periods of time, a current of air, a creaking window, or a chance murmur, are sufficient to fix the belief of people for ages. At the same time that the breath was perceived they fancied that they heard sounds. Some of them said that they discovered the word schalom, 'happiness' or 'peace.' This was the ordinary salutation of Jesus and the word by which He signified His presence. No possibility of doubt; Jesus is present; He is in the assembly. That is His cherished voice; each one recognizes it. This idea was all the more easily entertained, because Jesus had said that whenever they were assembled in His name, He would be in the midst of them. It was, then, an acknowledged fact that Jesus had appeared before His assembled disciples, on the night of Sunday. Some pretended to have observed on His hands and His feet the mark of the nails, and on His side the mark of the spear which pierced Him. According to a widely spread tradition, it was the same night as that on which He breathed upon His disciples the Holy Spirit."

Such is Renan's treatment of the greatest event that has ever occurred, or the greatest lie that has ever been told, in the history of the world. The weak imagination of an excited, nervous woman, the childish, or rather, insane state of mind on the part of a few men, which mistook the murmur of the evening breeze through an open casement for the articulate words, thrice repeated, "Peace be unto you," and for a visible and tangible form which they handled, is according to this amusing romance writer the only foundation for the Church and Christianity and the Bible, and all that these terms imply, during the last eighteen hundred years. It is a curious comment upon the good sense of the people in Europe and America, and an apt illustration of the readiness with which the sinful heart takes up with any trash which is aimed at Christ and His gospel, that the silly books of this gaudy French novelist had at first an immense sale.

Renan is not yet an old man, but he has lived long enough to see his ludicrous account of the resurrection utterly rejected by infidelity, and forced to give place to the latest theory of unbelievers, which is advanced by Keim. According to this new light Jesus did not rise in bodily form, but His spirit actually appeared to the disciples, assuring them that He was living forever more and imparting such instructions as were needed to direct them in spreading His doctrines over the face of the earth. It seems strange that one who cannot believe in the resurrection of the body, however clearly established by unimpeachable testimony, can yet easily believe in ghosts, and accept without hesitation supernatural visitations from the unseen world. But so it is very often, for as a class infidels are of all men the most credulous and superstitious, justifying the remark of Charles the Second to a skeptic of his day, when the king said to him, ''you are a queer fellow; you believe everything but the Bible."

Thus have been sketched the different views, and, it may be added, all the views that are possible of the resurrection of Jesus, as advanced by those who reject as untrue the narratives contained in the four gospels. First, it is said by "certain lewd fellows of the baser sort" that the story, which has gained implicit and universal credence among the best and most intelligent people for eighteen centuries, has no foundation whatever in fact, but was a deliberate fraud perpetrated for sinister ends. Second, it is asserted by others that the body of Jesus, having been buried during a swoon, was really seen by His disciples after his restoration to consciousness, but subsequently returned to the grave under the consuming stroke of actual death. Third, it is claimed by Strauss and his followers, that a belief in His literal resurrection gradually grew, like the myths that gathered about the lives of William Tell, John Smith and Pochahantas, and various celebrities, to be scattered by a scholarly and impartial criticism as the mists disappear before the rising sun. Fourth, it is affirmed by Renan and his jejune school that the entire history is only a beautiful romance, fit to be brought out amid suitable scenery on the boards of a French theatre. Finally, modern spiritualism is invoked to explain the mystery; and the reality of the resurrection, with all its immortal hopes and tremendous issues, is resolved into a mere apparition, a ghostly visitant from hades.''

Comparing, or rather, contrasting these theories with the artless and straightforward narratives found in the four gospels, we at least know that we are not dealing with shifting and conflicting conjectures, but with solid and consistent statements, whether true or false. Nor is it necessary to insist that the writers of the four gospels were witnesses of the resurrection, for it was not seen by any mortal eye. Apart from the four narratives, therefore, in which two of the writers claim to have beheld the risen Lord, they are to be treated at this point of the argument not as witnesses, but as historians, nor is it even urged, just now, that they were inspired. Even granting, then, the truth of the utterly unfounded assertion that they did not live until one hundred, or one hundred and fifty years had passed after the death of Christ, the credibility of the testimony of two of them is in nowise affected. It often occurs, that historians of a period subsequent to the times they describe are more accurate than those who wrote as the transactions they relate actually transpired. Excitement, personal prejudice, party passion, insufficient data, and other defects and difficulties inseparable from human organization and infirmity may interfere with that calm, judicial state of mind that is so essential to a well-balanced judgment and an impartial account, however sincere the purpose of the narrator to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. For example it is frequently said that the time has not yet come to write a history of our civil war, because it is taken for granted that those who were actors in that deplorable scene of fratricidal strife cannot furnish a dispassionate record of its rise, progress, and end, nor do justice to the character and motives of the leaders on both sides.

Hence it does not make a particle of difference whether Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, or the writers who are called by their names, lived during the days of Jesus, except as two of them intimate that they saw Him subsequent to the resurrection, or whether they lived two centuries later, A vast amount of needless controversy has arisen over this question, infidels foolishly thinking that they have destroyed all evidence of the resurrection, when they boldly assert that the four writers did not exist until a hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the time assigned for the event, and many Christians foolishly thinking that the whole battle is lost unless it can be shown that these writers were on the earth previous to the crucifixion. That they wrote during the first century will in due time be established beyond the possibility of doubt, and to the entire satisfaction of every candid mind, but it is not at all essential to the point now under consideration. The proof of the resurrection rests only to the smallest degree upon their personal testimony, for, as already stated, they do not assert that they were eye witnesses of the fact, and therefore apart from what they subsequently saw they are to be treated as historians, whose credibility must be determined like the credibility of other historians by their opportunity for obtaining correct information, by the impression they make of fairness, intelligence, and truthfulness, and by their agreement with one another.