HISTORICAL MONUMENTS.

ESLIE in his celebrated little treatise, "A Short and Easy Method with the Deists," lays down four rules to determine the credibility of a narrative relating an ancient event of importance. "The rules are these: 1. That the matters of fact be such, as that men's outward senses — their eyes and ears — may be judges of it. 2. That it be done publicly in the face of the world. 3. That not only public monuments be kept up in memory of it, but some outward actions be performed. 4. That such monuments, and such actions or observances, be instituted, and do commence from the time that the matter of fact was done." The first two rules, he- proceeds to argue, render it impossible to impose a false story of marvellous occurrences, at the time of the alledged date, upon the acceptance of a people among whom the transactions are said to have taken place, because it would be at once contradicted by every man's senses. The last two rules render it impossible to impose such a story upon the credulity of succeeding generations, because if monuments of the extraordinary events are said to exist, and public institutions and observances, intended to perpetuate them, are declared to be contemporaneous with the events them-selves, it is the easiest task possible to prove that there were no institutions and observances of the kind mentioned, at the period to which they are assigned. Hence he adds, "You may challenge all the Deists in the world to show any action that is fabulous, which has all the four rules or marks before mentioned. No, it is impossible." Again, "I do not say, that everything which wants these four marks is false; but, that nothing can be false which has them all."

Perhaps it is well to illustrate these rules, so that a child may understand their meaning. Suppose it were now asserted by one or more persons that during the year 1885, while President Cleveland was the head of the American government, and Queen Victoria the head of the British government, a man appeared who went about everywhere doing good, uttering words of matchless truth and grace, and in attestation of his teaching performing the most wonderful deeds of power and mercy, healing all manner of disease with a touch or command, giving sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, feeding multitudes with a few loaves, and raising the dead, that thousands and myriads in various places and over a considerable extent of country attended his ministry, heard him preach, witnessed his benevolent and omnipotent works, and received the benefit of his kindness and might, that all this was done publicly in the face of the world, in cities, towns, villages, and the open country — would it be possible to get such a tale credited during the life time of those among whom these marvels were said to be performed? The evidence of their senses would contradict it, and its origin would soon be properly traced to a wretched attempt at imposture, or more probably to lunacy.

But suppose the same tale, instead of being published at present, is withheld for one hundred and fifty or two hundred years, in order to give time for the gradual growth of myths, and that then it appears with the added statements that this remarkable personage at last met a violent death as a criminal, which at first greatly discouraged and distressed his followers, but very soon their courage revived as they began to proclaim that he rose from the dead, and that there were certain institutions and public observances established at the very time of his death and resurrection, intended to commemorate them, which had been celebrated every week and almost every day in many parts of the world ever since the period of his death — would it be possible to convince the people one hundred and fifty or two hundred years hence that such institutions and observances had been handed down to them, when they had never even existed? No wonder Leslie says he does not pronounce every thing which wants his four rules false, but certainly nothing can be false which has them all.

Probably there is not a man, woman, or child of ordinary intelligence on the face of the earth who doubts the reality of certain ancient historical events, for example, as the invasion and conquest of Persia by Alexander the Great, or the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Senate chamber of Rome, leading on to the accession of Augustus to the throne and all that followed, and yet this universal and unhesitating belief rests upon the evidence of a few writers, evidence far less conclusive than that which lies at the foundation of Christianity and the Christian Church. There was no monument of Alexander's victories, nor yet of Caesar's death, erected at the time of their occurrence in the form of public institutions and ordinances, which have been carefully and continuously observed ever since in the most enlightened nations of the world, and by the best people of these nations. With singular unanimity writers of at least equal opportunities for knowing the truth, and far surpassing in number all the writers combined who narrate all the leading historical occurrences of antiquity, proclaim the authenticity and genuineness of the four gospels which contain an account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Gaussen says, "Such is the voice of all preceding ages, the voice of the whole Christian people, from the days of the apostles — a voice invariably precise, clear, and unhesitating. We have listened to all the traditions of ancient times to ascertain whether even one discordant sound might reach us from within the compass of the ancient Church, and we have been able to perceive none. We have looked across the expanse of ages to descry aught that might warrant even the slightest doubt, and the eye has not discovered, from the one extremity of the vast horizon to the other, even the most minute speck of contradiction, much less any cloud, even of the size of a man's hand."

Let us remember, then, that the narratives in these four authentic writings bring the life and death and resurrection of Jesus under the observation of the outward senses. Moreover everything was done publicly in the face of the world. There is no attempt at concealment. His alledged miracles were wrought upon vast crowds of people, in every condition of need, in the presence of thousands, before the watchful eyes of foes as well as friends, in the court of the temple, in the streets, under all circumstances. His death was so public it would be an insult to the understanding of any one but an idiot to undertake to prove its reality, But His resurrection also was made public, so public indeed that if those who testify to it are not to be believed, neither would a thousand more witnesses be believed. It is true that He did not appear promiscuously to the multitude, for apart from the utter incongruity of such a procedure, and its entire unsuitableness to the purpose of God in the redemptive work of His Son, whom He offered to the whole world, and raised for the justification only of believers, facts show that such an unseemly manifestation of Himself to scoffers could have accomplished no real good. But to His friends, as already stated, "He showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God," or as Peter expressed it to Cornelius and other Romans gathered in Caesarea, "Him God raised up the third day, and showed him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead."

It has been conclusively proved that these witnesses, whose honesty even the infidels admit, lived at the time He was on the earth, and that their belief in His resurrection can not possibly be attributed to hallucination. Let it be remembered? as already said, that not one of them was expecting His resurrection, and therefore not one of them was in a state of mind to yield to the power of imagination and nervous excitement. Let it be remembered, as already said, that even if one had been credulous and weak enough to be deluded by an apparition, or to be carried away from a sound judgment and from common sense by an optical illusion, it is inconceivable that one after another, on several occasions, when two were together, when seven were together, when ten were together, when eleven were together, when one hundred and twenty were together, when more than five hundred were together, were under the spell of so strange an hallucination as to imagine that they saw Him in the broad day light, that they walked with Him, that they talked with Him, that they ate with Him, that they touched Him, that they heard His words at considerable length, which were just like His words of matchless wisdom and divine love spoken before His death, and far beyond their comprehension at the time they were uttered, and that they beheld Him ascend bodily into heaven.

But the fraud theory, the hallucination theory, the myth theory, and every other theory but the theory of fact entirely vanish before the permanent institutions which were founded as enduring monuments, seen daily and seen all over the world, of the victory which Jesus achieved over death and the grave. First, we have the Lord's Day, which can be traced by an unbroken line of witnesses and writers back to the period of the crucifixion, and it is altogether impossible from the nature of the case to trace it a step beyond that. The heathen did not recognize the day, nor do they recognize it now. The Jews did not recognize it, nor do they recognize it now. But it is admitted that all of the apostles and early Christians were Jews. How did it come to pass, then, that without precedent, without command, without example even, in the face of all their childhood's associations and religious instructions and established habits, they began to observe the first day of the week instead of the seventh, as the time specially appropriate for public and united worship? That they did so observe it does not admit of a shadow of doubt. It is fully proved by the testimony of heathen and Christian writers. Pliny in his letter to the emperor Trajan, already quoted, says, "The Christians affirm the whole of their guilt or error to be that they were accustomed to meet together on a stated day, and to sing hymns to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by a sacramentum, not for any wicked purpose, but never to commit fraud, theft, or adultery; never to break their word, or to refuse, when called upon, to deliver up any trust; after which it was their custom to separate, and to assemble again to partake of a harmless meal."

What is meant by the " stated day " is clearly shown by Justin Martyr who wrote not long afterwards as follows: "On the day called Sunday is an assembly of all who live either in the cities or in the rural districts^ and the memoirs of the apostles and the writings of the prophets are read." Among other reasons he assigns for its observance he says, it was " because Jesus Christ our Saviour rose from the dead upon it." Barsedanes, a heretical writer of the same period, in his letter to the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus says, "Lo! wherever we be, all of us are called by the one name of the Messiah, Christians; and upon one day, which is the first of the week, we assemble ourselves together." Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth, A. D. 170, Melito, Bishop of Sardis who was his contemporary, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, A. D. 178, and other writers speak to the same effect, confirming the truth of the remark "that while, even towards the end of the second century, tradition varied as to the yearly celebration of Christ's resurrection, the weekly celebration of it was one upon which no diversity existed, or was even hinted at."

But it is useless to refer further to early writers when the infidels themselves admit the observance of the Lord's day, or the first day, or Sunday during the life time of the apostles. Renan who claims that Luke's authorship of the book known as the "Acts of the Apostles "is too plain to be disputed, or to need argument, fixed the date of the book at A. D. 80, or less than 40 years after the crucifixion. He selects this date arbitrarily, because he says it is evident that the book was written after the gospel of Luke, and that the Gospel must have been written after the year 70, because it contains a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, which he assumes is sufficient evidence that the work must have been composed and published after that event. Of course he is entirely mistaken; but let it stand as he wishes, and still we have the most distinct testimony to the fact that the first day of the week was observed at that early period as the time when Christians assembled for public worship. We read that "Upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached unto them," (Acts XX. 7). So in the epistle which Renan, Strauss, and the most captious of the skeptics acknowledge to be the genuine production of Paul, written within twenty-five years after the death of Jesus, we find him saying, " Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him," (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2). Again, in the book of Revelation which the skeptics recognize as the work of the apostle John, the writer says, "I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day," (Rev. i. 10).

The question arises, and must be met by every inquirer after truth, how did this peculiar institution of the Lord's day originate, and originate in close connection with the crucifixion of Christ? Before that time it could not have occurred to the minds of His disciples, for He did not direct them to observe it, and as Jews they had always been accustomed to keep the seventh day with scrupulous care. But each of the four gospels informs us that He rose from the dead on the first day, and not long after we find that those who believed in Him formed the habit of meeting together to break bread on the first day of the week, and to hear the gospels read and expounded. There was no law for it, either in the Old or the New Testament, but without law, and under grace, they assembled of their own accord, drawn to the day by common consent, as if they felt that it was the most appropriate, the only appropriate, thing to do. Thus by the desire of loving hearts, by the instinct of the new nature they had received through faith in the crucified One, they established an institution which has been observed ever since wherever the gospel is preached and accepted. For eighteen centuries and a half there has not only been a yearly celebration oi the resurrection of Jesus, but each year fifty-two commemorations of it in all lands upon which light from His empty grave has shone.

How could this be? How could the Americans be led to celebrate the twenty-second of February, if George Washington was not born on that day, or the English be led to celebrate the escape of the house of Parliament from the gunpowder plot, if there was no Guy Fawkes, or the French to celebrate the destruction of the Bastile, if its walls were not thrown down to make way for the bloody revolution that followed? If any one were to assert gravely that there is no historical foundation whatever for various national festivities or observances, that are kept up year after year to perpetuate the memory of grand exploits or heroic achievements or striking events that were fruitful in important results, he would only be laughed at for his absurd skepticism. The reply would be, if it were thought worth while to make a reply, that these festivities or observances started sometime or other, and somehow or other; and if they did not start in connection with the facts which it is supposed they were intended to commemorate, then the generation that was first persuaded to receive them as mementoes of facts that never occurred, was made up entirely of fools, and each generation of the fathers that succeeded is also composed wholly of fools, until happily the able skeptic was discovered who exploded the faith of many centuries by the force of a simple denial.

Let us suppose that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Nevertheless the skeptics themselves say that soon after his death an institution was established which was designed to commemorate His resurrection, not to be observed only by a yearly celebration like nearly all national holidays, but to be observed every week, as if to keep it fresh and vivid in the memory and heart. If it was not the commemoration of a fact, how did the observance of the day originate? Was it in an agreement among the disciples to impose a gigantic fraud upon the world? But apart from all that has been previously said to expose the nonsense of such a supposition, they would not have dared to throw the gauntlet down in defiance at the feet of Jew and Gentile every week, challenging investigation every week, defying contradiction every week, instituting a memorial of an alleged fact in the very face of their enemies, when it could be so easily disproved, if it was not a fact. Nor will it account for the Lord's day to suggest that the disciples cherished a sincere but mistaken belief that He rose, for the supposed hallucination will not explain why, without the slightest command from the Old Testament, and without the least direction from Jesus Himself, they changed the observance of the Sabbath, proclaimed amid the thunders of Sinai, from the seventh to the first day of the week. It must have been a most extraordinary power of imagination which not only fancied that they saw him, and talked with Him, and walked with Him, and handled Him, and heard Him speak at length, and this on many occasions, and this in groups of two, and three, and seven, and ten, and eleven, and one hundred and twenty, and above five hundred persons, but which travelled back fifteen hundred years to lift a law of God out of its immutable surroundings, and to bring it forward as a new ordinance to be observed by all nations in fifty-two memorials every year of a mere apparition, and this without any fact on which to rest!

But let us suppose that the four gospels were not written for a hundred and fifty or two hundred years after the death of Jesus, so as to afford time for the myths of Strauss to be gradually formed — still the question remains, how did the observance of the Lord's day originate? According to the supposition it had no existence until, by the admission of all infidels Christianity was diffused all through the Roman empire, all over the known world; and to imagine that the thousands and tens of thousands of Christian assemblies, with their countless teachers and writers, could be induced to accept without hesitation or even question an ordinance of which they had never heard before, and which commemorated nothing, is preposterous to the last degree. It would be far easier to imagine that the people of various countries have been led to observe their national festivals in celebration of events of which they had never heard, and that too after generations had passed, during which no allusion was made to the occurrence thus intended to be perpetuated. Could the people of the United States be led to observe the Fourth of July if they had not previously known something of the Declaration of Independence? He who answers this question in the affirmative, or who thinks that the Lord's day was instituted a hundred years after the death of Jesus, and with no other foundation than a badly distempered mind, exhibits a credulity which should make him slow to speak of the credulousness of Christians in believing the most astonishing miracles of the Bible.

But it must not be forgotten that the Lord's day is not the only institution established to attest the resurrection of Jesus. We have also baptism, never mentioned by Him previous to His resurrection. According to the trustworthy gospel of Matthew it was after His resurrection He said to His disciples, "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," (Matt. xxviii. 19). According to the epistle to the Romans, allowed by the skeptics to be the writing of Paul, the meaning of this command is expressed in the words, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection," (Rom. vi. 3-5). Thus standing side by side with the Lord's day, another notable monument is reared to the resurrection of Jesus in an ordinance that is administered not only fifty-two times, but doubtless three hundred and sixty-five times every year. It would be utterly meaningless, but for the fact of the resurrection, and this 'great fact it was designed to proclaim to every baptized person until the end of the age.

There is still another monument reared near the empty grave of Jesus, which must not be entirely overlooked. The record in the trustworthy gospel of Matthew informs us that just before His death, He gathered His disciples about Him to observe the Jewish feast of the Passover, and that in connection with it He gave them bread to eat, and wine to drink, in remembrance of Himself. The apostle Paul in the trustworthy epistle to the Corinthians writes, "I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you, That the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread: and when he had given thanks, he brake it, and said. Take, eat; this is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup when he had supped, saying. This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come." We find, therefore, that the ordinance was instituted, not only in commemoration of His death, but as a pledge of His coming again; and hence it necessarily appears as a witness of His resurrection, for if He did not rise, He can never come again; our faith is vain; we are yet in our sins. How often the Lord's Supper has been celebrated during the last eighteen hundred years it is impossible to say, but every time it has been observed, it has been as one of the three monuments reared at the time He rose from the dead, and reared to testify silently but continuously and powerfully that He who was crucified and buried is risen again. Thus we have all the proofs of a credible narrative. The resurrection was such that men's outward senses — their eyes and ears — were judges of it. He was seen by a large number of competent witnesses for forty days. Public monuments have been kept up, and visible actions performed, in memory of it; and these monuments and actions were instituted, and commence, from the time of His resurrection.