p. 215Sir Noble Acceptorof Alltruth: My Lord, and Gentlemen of the Jury, I yesterday had the honour of submitting, on behalf of the defendants, a general view of the historical evidence which satisfies their minds of the fact that Christ rose from the dead. To-day, I desire to advert to several collateral matters which powerfully sustain that evidence, and in the absence of which I might have to admit the historical evidence to be liable to a feeling, at all events, of insufficiency. First, my Lord, I would ask you to consider the surroundings of the event—this event of the resurrection. By this I do not mean its dramatic surroundings, but its surroundings in a much larger sense—the surroundings in the sense of what came after—the surroundings as regards the system of teaching of which the resurrection was put forward as but the central point or pivot.
It will help the Court to rightly estimate the importance of this aspect of the matter if we imagine, for a moment, that the attested resurrection of Christ had no such surroundings—I mean, my Lord, if that resurrection were an isolated prodigy—a marvel believed in by his friends and admirers, and, perhaps, having a powerful array of evidence on its side, but having no relation to anything going before or after, standing alone as an individual marvel that in no way bore upon the world in general. I say that, in such a case, the fact, or reputed fact, would lack many claims to the attention of succeeding ages. And I will say, my Lord, that, according p. 216 to my conception of the matter, such must have been the position of the case if the contention of the plaintiffs were correct. According to their contention, the resurrection of Christ did not occur in reality, but was a mere afterthought, or imagination, on the part of his disciples; though with what conceivable object they imagined, and still less agitated such a notion, they do not explain.
Sir F. C. Partialfact Unbelief: Leave the plaintiffs to state their own case.
Sir Noble Acceptorof Alltruth: It is sufficient for me that the plaintiffs deny the resurrection of Christ. Certainly, according to their hypothesis, it did not occur; and, therefore, according to their theory, the idea of his resurrection was all a mistake, in which case, I contend, the doctrine of his resurrection must needs have stood alone in the hands of its preachers as an isolated, meaningless fact. Instead of that, what do we find? That the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ stands firmly embedded in a system of teaching, going back thousands of years before Christ, to the very beginning of things, as recorded in the Hebrew archives, and expanded to a great and consistent amplitude in the writings of the apostles, who give it a place and a bearing as wide as human hope and human destiny. Let me explain myself, my Lord.
Sir F. C. Partialfact Unbelief: Much need, I think.
Sir Noble Acceptorof Alltruth: Do not interrupt. His Lordship will understand me, if you don’t. I was saying my Lord, that this doctrine of the resurrection of Christ, besides being a matter of historical attestation, stands logically related to a body of teaching existing long before the days of Christ, and is made in the hands of the apostles to have a world-wide application as regards the hopes of men, and consequently is not an isolated marvel, as it must have been if the theory of the plaintiffs is correct, namely, that it did not happen, but was merely imagined to happen, by some superstitious persons. You may understand what I mean, if I draw your Lordship’s attention to Christ’s own allusions to the connection that existed between himself and those Scriptures, which had been in the hands of the Jewish nation for ages before p. 217 he appeared. Jesus said briefly concerning those Scriptures, that they “could not be broken” (John x. 35). He spoke of them as “the word of God” on the same occasion, and declared frequently that “they must be fulfilled” (Matt. v. 17; xxvi. 54; Luke xxi. 22; xxiv. 44; John xiii. 18; and many other places). Now, he says concerning those Scriptures “they TESTIFY OF ME” (John v. 46). After his resurrection, he said to his disciples, “These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms CONCERNING ME” (Luke xxiv. 44).
Now, my Lord, I could easily occupy the whole day in exhibiting these “things,” which Christ here said were written in these ancient Scriptures concerning him. But I feel I should trespass unduly on the patience of the Court in taking such a course. I must therefore content myself with having pointed to the fact that a connection exists in Christ’s own teaching between his appearance upon earth, and what had been written beforehand in the Scriptures, treasured in the hands of the Jewish nation for ages, from the time of Moses downwards. Those things written beforehand required the various incidents and experiences which were realized in his life. They required that he should be born of a virgin (Isa. vii. 14), at Bethlehem (Micah v. 2); that he should be a preacher (Isa. lxi. 1); that he should be unpopular and rejected (Isa. liii. 3) though the subject of a temporary ovation (Zech. ix. 9); that he should be arrested by the authorities and condemned (Isa. liii. 7-9); that he should be crucified (Psa. xxii. 16; Zech. xii. 10); and that he should rise from the dead (Psa xvi. 10, 11; xlix. 15; xxi. 1-6; Isa. liii. 9-12). That these things were all realized in him is what the authentic history of his life most plainly attests—a most weighty circumstance in confirmation of the historical evidence to which I have already adverted.
But, my Lord, there is a deeper and wider matter involved in these Scriptural antecedents, which must be taken into account, in order to see clearly the logical relation of the resurrection of Christ to the ages before and p. 218 after. The prophetic features to which I have just referred, are mere details, in a general scheme of a far-reaching character. To this general scheme I would now desire to draw your Lordship’s attention. It is in the New Testament it appears most clearly, but the foundations of it exist in the Old, and it is from the Old that the New Testament writers derive it. I shall blend the teachings of both, in seeking to present to the Court that view of the surroundings of Christ’s resurrection, which so powerfully strengthen the historical testimony for that resurrection.
The scheme I refer to is presented in its simplest form, perhaps, in a saying of the apostle Paul, to be found in his 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. xv. verses 20, 21. These words are, “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” In this statement, my Lord, we have the Old and New Testaments blended together. We are indebted to the Old Testament—and in the very earliest chapter of it—for the information concerning Adam to which Paul here alludes. On that information, my Lord, I now desire to rivet particular attention. It is not fashionable to rely on it, but I have shown reasons, and will show further reasons, why we should rely upon it. The information is that death began its reign among men through the disobedience of the first man—Adam—to whom it had been exactly laid down—(Gen. ii. 17)—that if he disobeyed in the particular matter concerned, death should be the result; death, my Lord, in a sense which is placed beyond misconception by the terms in which the sentence was afterwards passed (Gen. iii. 19): “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till THOU RETURN unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”
It is not my purpose, my Lord, to enter upon any metaphysical disquisition on the nature of human existence, or to enter upon any discussion on its relation to immortality. I believe that, as a philosophic or scientific problem, it is impossible to reach any decisive conclusion p. 219 in such a controversy. Ancient philosophy plausibly argued the possession of a native immortality by man: modern science points to death as the natural portion. My aim is to fix attention on the fact that the Bible teaches that man has come under the dominion of death by sin. No one can deny that fact, in the face of the 2nd and 3rd chapters of Genesis, even if they had not been supplemented by Paul’s express declaration that, “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin” (Rom. v. 12).
My reason for adverting to it, as I have already hinted, is to show the logical relation of the appearance, death, and resurrection of Christ to the system of teaching that had been in the earth for thousands of years before those events. His appearance, death, and resurrection are exhibited in the New Testament as the divine remedy for the state of things inaugurated by Adam’s disobedience. Thus Paul, in 2 Tim. i. refers (ver. 9) to the divine purpose having existed from the beginning to introduce this remedy, and adds that this purpose had been “now (in the apostolic age) made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, WHO HATH ABOLISHED DEATH AND BROUGHT LIFE AND IMMORTALITY TO LIGHT THROUGH THE GOSPEL.” Writing to the Romans he refers to the matter thus: “As by one man’s (Adam’s) disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one (Christ) shall many be made righteous” (chap. v. 19). And again, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, OUR LORD” (vi. 23).
My Lord, I might quote very extensively from the New Testament in illustration of this feature; but I do not desire to needlessly burden the argument with quotations. I will but refer further, in support of this argument, to Christ’s own allusions to this scheme, which links Adam and himself (and, therefore, the whole human race) together in a common plan. As you are aware, my Lord, we have his discourses abundantly reported to us in the authentic histories written by the apostles and their companions. I do not propose to quote extensively from them, but just to cite a sentence or two illustrative of the p. 220 fact that he regarded himself as the pivot of an immense scheme, involving the highest ultimate well-being of the human race, and requiring his resurrection, to which he frequently referred. He was much addicted to parabolic forms of speech. In harmony with this style of speech, but with a perfectly evident meaning, in the sense I have indicated, he says, “I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world” (John vi. 51). A little more plainly, he says: “I am come that they (my sheep) might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly . . . I lay down my life for the sheep . . . No man taketh it from me. I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again. This commandment I have received of my Father” (John x. 10, 15, 18). Still more plainly, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John xi. 25). “For the Father loveth the Son, and showeth him all things that Himself doeth: and He will show him greater works than these, that ye may marvel. For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will. For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: that all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him. Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on Him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself; and hath given him authority to execute judgment also, because he is the Son of man. Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; p. 221 and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John v. 20-29).
I might also, my Lord, refer to Christ’s plain intimation of his then approaching death and resurrection (Luke xviii. 31-34); but these will suffice to establish my contention, that there is a logical harmony between the fact of Christ’s resurrection and the teaching that he delivered before his crucifixion, that, in fact, that teaching required his resurrection if true, and that it is impossible to contemplate his resurrection as an isolated fact or idea, such as it must have been, if the theory of the plaintiffs is true.
The appearance, death, and resurrection of Christ are connected with what went before him in another way. What went before him, my Lord, I must presume you are well acquainted with. I refer particularly to the law of Moses under which he was born (Gal. iv. 4), and which had been in force nearly 1,500 years. This was a system of ritual based upon sacrifice. It was a system divinely appointed in the beginning of the Hebrew nationality, and delivered through the mediation of Moses. Paul, the apostle, has given us an explanation of the object of that ritual. If we had not been favoured with that explanation, we should, I admit, have been somewhat in the fog in this part of the argument. We should have plainly perceived—that since the breach made between God and man by sin, man had only been allowed to approach God at a distance, with a token of the most abject submission in his hand in the form of a bleeding lamb: but we should not have understood the divine intentions in the establishment of such a system. By the light of the apostolic explanations, we are able to form a conception of the divine aim in the case, and to see Christ more distinctly still as the culmination of a divine plan in operation ages before his appearance. Paul, then, informs us that “the law was a schoolmaster (leading) unto Christ” (Gal. iii. 24). He further tells us that Christ was the “end of the law” (Rom. x. 4), the subject of all its typical significance (Col. ii. 17; Heb. x. 1) the reality contemplated in all its shadows, and that in Christ has been p. 222 accomplished that removal of sin, which never could be taken away by the blood of bulls and goats (Heb. x. 4); that in him, reconciliation and peace and life everlasting are established for man’s acceptance, if he will, on the conditions imposed (Rom. v. 6-11; 2 Cor. v. 18-21; Acts xiii. 38, 39).
And now, my Lord, let me point to the practical application of the work of Christ to the times coming after his resurrection—the application, I mean, made to those times in the teaching both of the apostles and of Christ himself. If the contention of the plaintiffs were correct, there could have been no provision of a cosmopolitan character in the use made of the resurrection of Christ. Because, according to their contention, his resurrection did not happen; it was the mistaken notion of superstitious men, and consequently, must have been allied with all the narrowness and short-sighted limitations which belong to such a state of mind. Instead of that, what do we find? That the apostles preached it with objects of world-wide benefit. Christ’s last words to them were that they were to give testimony to his resurrection to the uttermost parts of the earth (Acts i. 8). The object is defined in his words to Paul, when he appeared to him: “To turn the Gentiles from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and INHERITANCE AMONG ALL THEM THAT ARE SANCTIFIED THROUGH THE FAITH THAT IS IN ME” (Acts xxvi. 18). He instructed the apostles to command those who should receive their testimony “to observe all things whatsoever he had commanded” (Matt. xxviii. 20), and, among others, to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of him, until he should return again to the earth (Matt. xxvi. 26-29; Mark xiv. 22-25; Luke xxii. 19). The apostles carried out these instructions. Paul “delivered to” the Corinthians “that which he had received of the Lord” (1 Cor. xi. 23-26), viz., the ordinance of the breaking of bread, concerning which he said, “Do this until he come.” Christ’s words were, “Occupy till I come.” Peter told one of the earliest crowds to which the resurrection of Christ was proclaimed, that Jesus p. 223 would remain away a certain time, indicated in the prophetic writings (Acts iii. 21), and the hope he held out to them all, as the result of their acceptance of the testimony, and submission to all the present disadvantageous results to which that would lead, was, that when Jesus should re-appear, they would receive life everlasting, and an entrance into the Kingdom he should establish (1 Peter i. 7. 8, 13; 2 Peter i. 10, 11).
My Lord, this branch of the argument is susceptible of indefinite enlargement; but I must be content with this brief indication of a very important consideration, as going to show that the resurrection of Christ cannot have been the illusory after-thought of mistaken men, as my learned friend contends, but must have been a very real and serious fact, before it could have come to have such a sober and such a serious practical application in the most real and serious movement by which, under circumstances of great difficulty and affliction, the apostles succeeded in establishing the doctrine of the resurrection in the principal parts of the Roman Empire, in spite of the formidable opposition of Jew and Pagan.
My Lord, I now take the liberty of introducing another argument which I conceive to be of great pertinence and force. It may not at first sight appear to have much to do with the fact, or otherwise, of Christ’s resurrection; but I shall hope, my Lord, to show that it is a powerful buttress to the affirmative contention. I refer, my Lord, to the relation of this matter to the Jewish nation and the Jewish history. It is impossible to separate Christ from the Jews: for he was born a Jew (though the Son of God) in the very last days of the Jewish national existence. Now, my Lord, it is the phenomenon of Jewish history to which I refer. I refer to the nature of that history as exhibited in the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets, which were in circulation in the days of Jesus, and which are proved authentic by his endorsement of them, even if we had not the uncontradicted voice of the Jewish nation. This history, like the history of Christianity, is only intelligible with God in it. This will be seen by anyone fairly looking into it. With such a view p. 224 only can we understand the entire absence of any endeavour in any part of it, to ascribe the law to Moses or any credit of any part of the transactions to him, or to the Jewish nation. So far from taking credit, Moses expressly said to the people, “I have not done these things of mine own mind” (Num. xvi. 8). It is a popular habit to ascribe the Jewish law to the wisdom of Moses as if he were the author of it. This habit is totally at variance with the Scriptural representation. God is always kept in the foreground, and Moses appears as His servant only. This peculiarity is not confined to the language of Moses, but belongs to the events connected with the organization of the nation. It is particularly manifest in the incident on which Moses based his claim to Israel’s submission to the law. He did not, like an impostor, merely report that so-and-so had happened to him privately, and that the result was this law which they had to obey. He based his claim to their submission on an open and public event of which they were all witnesses. “He brought forth the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the nether part of the mount. And Mount Sinai was altogether in a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof went up as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly” (Exo. xix. 17). The people were afraid at the manifestation. “And all the people saw the thunderings and the lightnings and the noise of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, and when the people saw it, they removed and stood afar off. And they said unto Moses, Speak thou with us and we wil! will hear, but let not God speak with us lest we die” (Exo. xx. 18, 19). Afterwards referring to this, Moses asks them to remember it: “Specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together and I will make them HEAR my word that they may learn to fear ME all the days that they shall live upon the earth . . . and the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire. Ye heard the voice of the Lord, but saw no similitude: only ye heard a voice . . . Did ever people hear the voice of God as thou hast heard and p. 225 live?. . . . Out of heaven, He made thee to hear His voice that He might instruct thee: and upon earth He showed thee His great fire and thou heardest His voice out of the midst of the fire” (Deut. iv. 10-12, 33, 36). It was this public demonstration that laid the foundation of the authority over a rebellious nation, like Israel, of Moses, whom they several times sought to destroy. This was the object of it. It is so stated: “The Lord said unto Moses, Lo, I come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with thee AND BELIEVE THEE FOR EVER” (Exo. xix. 9). When the event was over, “The Lord said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Ye have seen that I have talked with you from heaven” (Exo. xx. 22).
The great fact connected with these transactions lies here: they base the authority of the law on the command of God and never on the wisdom of Moses. And the argument arising from this fact is that such a thing is inexplicable on the hypothesis of the Mosaic proceedings being proceedings of a merely human origin. The Mosaic writings written with a human origin would have been written with a human aim like all other human writings; and the aim would have been to show that the law was due to the superior sagacity of Moses, and to set forth the constant loyalty of the Israelites to it.
The nature of the sentiment pervading the law, is inconsistent with the idea of a human origin. We know what human nature is in the thousand instances of experience, history, and political institutions. To glorify the leader, or the nation, is the tendency of all men in every country and age; and the Jews, as we know them in their speeches and literature, are no exception. But the Mosaic institutions offer a complete contrast to this tendency. Instead of boasting in ancestry and the exploits of their armies, they were taught, for instance, to speak depreciatingly of their origin on the presentation of the first-fruits; and to refer their deliverance to God. They were taught to say, “A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation great, mighty, and p. 226 populous. And the Egyptians evilly entreated us and afflicted us, and laid upon us hard bondage. And when we cried unto the Lord God of our fathers, the Lord heard our voice, and looked on our affliction, and our labour, and our oppression. And the Lord brought us forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and with an outstretched arm, and with great terribleness, and with signs and wonders, and he hath brought us into this place” (Deut. xxvi. 5). The deliverance of Israel is never ascribed to Israelitish prowess. The style of allusion is well illustrated in Psalm xliv. 1-3: “We have heard with our ears, O God: our fathers have told us what work Thou didst in their days, in the times of old, how Thou didst drive out the heathen with Thy hand, and plantedst them: how Thou didst afflict the people and cast them out. For they got not the land in possession by their own sword, neither did their own arm save them; but THY RIGHT HAND AND THINE ARM and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou hadst a favour unto them.”
This peculiarity is intelligible enough if God spake to Moses and did all the mighty works by which Israel was delivered from Egyptian thraldom. On any other principle, it is unintelligible. Particularly is this the case with certain matters of detail. There are features in the law which could not have originated with men legislating out of their own heads. For instance, Israel was commanded to let the land lies untended and unsown every seventh year; and we read this in connection with it: “And if ye shall say, What shall we eat the seventh year? Behold, we shall not sow nor gather in our increase. Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for THREE YEARS” (Lev. xxv. 2). What man or men would have been mad enough to append to a public law a provision beyond all human control (affecting the weather and the crops), and subject to the test of experience once in every seven years? For inventors to have enacted such a law would have been to make the detection of their imposture inevitable; and that in a short time, for once in every seven years it would be found whether, as a matter of fact, the enhanced p. 227 production took place. Take God out of this law, and its enactment is inexplicable; but if God spake by Moses, it is perfectly intelligible.
So with the attendance at the periodical feasts exacted of all Israel. Three times a year were they all to assemble at the chosen centre. In the natural order, obedience to this would expose their country to the danger of invasion, while they were absent, but this assurance was associated with the law. “Neither shall any man desire thy land when thou shalt go up thrice in the year to appear before the Lord thy God” (Exo. xxxiv. 24). If God gave the law, this is intelligible, because, as with the weather and the crops, so with the matter of human desires, it is in His power to regulate their operation; but if this law was a human invention, it is impossible to conceive how a promise came to be introduced as to affairs beyond human control, and the truthfulness of which was open to test every year.
There is a variety of incidents and other matters of detail to which the same general remarks apply, viz., that their record is inexplicable on any theory short of the narrative being a true one. Prominent among them is the reason given for Moses not being allowed take the children of Israel over Jordan into the Land of Promise and not being allowed to enter there himself. Moses alluding to this reason in his rehearsal on the plains of Moab, says: “The Lord was angry with me for your sakes, saying, Thou also shalt not go in thither. But Joshua, the son of Nun, which standeth before thee, he shall go in thither; encourage him, for he shall cause Israel to inherit it” (Deut. i. 37). The incident to which Moses alludes is described in detail in Num. xx. 7-13; and expressly referred to in Num. xxvii. 12-14. On the reading of these parts, it will be found that the incident in brief was this: under the irritation caused by the continual discontent and insubordination of the people, Moses, when directed by God to bring water for them out of the rock, struck the rock twice with his rod, and took the credit of bringing out the water. “Hear now, ye rebels,” he exclaimed, “must WE fetch you water out p. 228 of this rock?” This was an offence to God in standing between Him and Israel, and is thus condemned by God: “Because ye believed Me not, to sanctify Me in the eyes of the children of Israel, therefore ye shall not bring this congregation into the land which I have given them” (Num. xx. 12). Let there be read in connection with this matter the account of the death of Moses in Deut. xxxii. 48-52 and xxxiv. 1-6: such a story is intelligible if true: but if not true, for what purpose could it have been invented? We must judge of the theory of invention in such a case by the history of invention universally. Invention is resorted to always with an object: and in a case like this (the leader of a nation), the object is to establish the credit and reputation of the man concerned. But here is an incident having the opposite effect. Here is an account of the death of Moses, showing his career cut short in punishment for the unfaithful use of divine power in a certain matter. The man who can believe such a story to have been invented must either have a very poor acquaintance with mankind, or a poor capacity for judging of the simplest facts. Invention, in such a case, if required to account for the death of Moses before the completion of his work, would be likely to have taken the form of representing that God had told him he (Moses) was too good and great a man to be allowed to enter upon the hard and bloody work of conquering the Canaanitish nations; and that, therefore, he would let him go to rest. The “patriotic” inventor would never have represented Moses an offender against the majesty of God, and still less, that he became so through the inveterate stubbornness of the people he was leading from Egypt. Such a story is self-evidently a true one; and is evidence that God wrought with Israel, and that, therefore, the resurrection of Christ, as part of that work is a solemn truth, and not a cunningly devised fable.
Other incidents of a like nature are the death of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, by fire, for non-compliance with a divine command (Lev. x. 3); and the discouraging report of the spies sent to search the land; the people’s endorsement of it; their proposal to stone Moses, and appoint p. 229 another captain, under whom they might return to Egypt; the sentence that they must, as a punishment, wander forty years in the wilderness, till the whole of the adults should be worn out by death (Num. xiii. and xiv., the whole of the chapters); the murmuring of the people for flesh, and the distress of Moses at the burden of his position over them (Num. xi. 1-15); the insurrection of Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and the people’s sympathy with them, even after their destruction (Num. xvi.)—all of these, and others which will occur to the reflective reader of the Scriptures, are passages in the history of Israel that are inexplicable as to how they came to be recorded, except on the one simple principle that they happened; for the tendency of them is to blacken the national character of Israel, and to take away all ground of even the commonest human satisfaction in the contemplation of their history. The invention of records having such a tendency is inconsistent with the universally known character of man, Jew and Gentile. Where invention is resorted to, it is to heighten the credit of nation or its leaders. These things cannot have been invented. They are recorded because they happened; and, in that case, God wrought with Israel in all their generations, from Moses to Christ, and, therefore, the resurrection of Christ is established on a foundation which would be sufficient, even without the unanswerable evidences which it has been my duty to bring forward.
This argument, my Lord, touches upon another, which I trust you will pardon me for adverting to a little. I have had occasion to call your attention to Christ’s references to the Scriptures as an authority. My Lord, the divinity of these records established would of itself establish the resurrection. I am not afraid to contend for that view, notwithstanding that it has gone so much out of fashion, through the combined influence of the class represented by Professor Bioplasm, and men high in ecclesiastical dignity, who have brought to bear the refinement of a subtle, but by no means unanswerable, criticism, to undermine the credit of the book upon which they professedly stand. The divinity of the Bible, my Lord, I p. 230 hold to be established by its internal constitution. The Bible itself is the strongest evidence of its own divinity. This argument is the least capable of being made palpable, especially to those unacquainted with the Bible, and unaccustomed to the line of thought which it involves. The proposition falls at first with little weight upon the ear; but its weight will increase with increasing experience of human nature and human literature, until at last the thinking mind can dispense with all other evidence of the Bible’s divinity. Its contents are found sufficient. Its revelations concerning God are first in rank. This is distinguished from all human conceptions of deity, as reflected in the polytheisms of confessedly unenlightened men. The gods imagined by men were limited like men. The God revealed in the Bible is declared unsearchable. The different powers of Nature were, by the ignorant, attributed to different gods, which superficially seemed probable. The Bible attributes all to ONE GOD. Science has confirmed the Bible revelation of God, to this extent, that it has shown all power to be ONE at the root, and that root “unknowable,” which is only another word for the Bible term “unsearchable.” Then as to man: the philosophers taught that man was constitutionally an immaterial immortal being, underlying and distinct from the body, and capable of existence apart from it, a fallacy from which came their doctrine of post-mortem rewards and punishments in the Elysian fields and tartarus, and a consequent rejection of the doctrine of the resurrection. This notion, succinctly defined as “the immortality of the soul,” was, like their polytheism, a plausible deduction from appearances—universal among the ancients, beginning with the Egyptians, notwithstanding his association with whom Moses, by the admission of Gibbon, is untainted with the notion. The prophets and apostles are likewise free of this philosophic speculation, and, on the contrary, teach human mortality as expounded by Tyndall and other scientists of the modern era. The doctrine of immortality which they teach is the hope of resurrection to a future existence on the earth. Science does not teach this, because science only deals with what is, and can p. 231 throw no light or what is to be. With the doctrine of human mortality all Scripture agrees, consequently, the Bible is in harmony with science on the subject of man as well as God: that is, as regards his present constitution. That the Bible should teach a doctrine in harmony with science in an age when all the world was dreaming about natural immortality of speculative induction, in another proof of the Bible’s divinity. This argument has been obscured by orthodox religion, which accepts the Pagan view, and, by consequence, teaches the eternal torment of the unrighteous—a doctrine which gives the argument for unbelief an advantage that does not belong to it.
The Bible’s depreciation of human nature, and exaltation of God, stamp it as of divine origin. The sentiments are foreign to human nature. Their prominence in the mouths of the prophets explain the Jewish treatment of the prophets; and that treatment reacts in confirmation of the divine origin of the sayings of the prophets. Jesus refers to it thus; “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets and stonest them that are sent unto thee,” etc. (Luke xiii. 34). There was a class of prophets that received different treatment, to which Jesus also refers: “Woe unto you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to THE FALSE PROPHETS” (Luke vi. 26). The false prophets spoke smooth or pleasant things, which ensured popularity: the true prophets spoke things that were disagreeable to human nature, and brought destruction on themselves. Yet the Scriptures of the disagreeable prophets, which testify against the wickedness of Israel, are preserved, while the scriptures of the false prophets have perished: in which, also, there is evidence of God at work.
The aversion of Israel to the teaching of the true prophets, and their relish for those who led them to idolatry, is very effectually illustrated in the case of Elijah, who, on Mount Carmel, single-handed, confronted four hundred prophets of Baal. This case may be taken as the history of the subject condensed into a single incident. The Jews have always been on the side of those who drew p. 232 them aside from the One God, and against the few faithful men who in different ages have striven, under divine command, to bring them back to the paths of Moses. This is in harmony with the work of the prophets being a divine work, and inconsistent with the notion that they acted on their own uninspired volition; for a human volition merely would have led them in a human and popular direction. Why did the Jews prefer idolatry to the divine institutions? This brings us to another argument. The Mosaic worship was contrary to human inclinations. It called on them to serve an invisible God; it required faith at their hands. Other nations had gods their could see, and whose worship they made the occasion of licence and delight. To these foreign gods, Israel turned aside from the beginning of their history, as soon as Joshua and his contemporaries were dead (Judges ii. 11-13), which is proof that their God was no invention of their own—no outcome of a national idiosyncrasy. Other nations have always been faithful to their invented gods, because they continued subject to the taste and fancy that led to the invention. Such a thing as a nation changing its gods is unknown. This very fact is made the basis of expostulation by God with Israel, through the prophet Jeremiah: “Pass over to the Isles of Chittim and see, and send unto Kedar, and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing: hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? But my people hath changed their glory for that which doth not profit” (Jer. ii. 10). This fact of itself—that the Jews as a nation continually departed from the God of their fathers, while no other nation deviated from their traditional idolatries—goes a long way, in a logical process of treatment, to prove that the religion of the Jews was not a religion of Jewish origin, in the sense of its being the invention of the Jews; but was higher than they, namely, what it professes to be: a system divinely communicated to them by the hand of Moses.
There is next the agreement of one part of the Bible with another throughout, notwithstanding the long intervals during which its different parts were produced. If p. 233 it were a human production, each successive contributor would have imparted his own sentiments to it, and we should have that diversity of character which belongs to every human work in which many actors have been engaged during a series of ages. Instead of this, the book is absolutely one. Whether you take Moses, Malachi, or Christ, there is the same depreciation of human nature; the same supreme exaltation of God; the same stern enunciation of duty; the same uncompromising rebuke of departure from the way of right. The spirit of the book in this respect, is identical throughout, and this cannot be said of any literature under the sun, in which a variety of writers of different ages have been employed, nor is there any book under the sun characterized by the sentiments just enumerated. The Bible stands absolutely alone in this respect, like a majestic mountain among hillocks of rubbish.
Then there is the same hope, in all the books of the Bible, of a coming age in which Christ, as King of Israel, shall rule on earth universally, and mankind be blessed. A few illustrations of this must suffice. Genesis speaks of a promise to Abraham, that in him and his seed (a great personage who should possess the gate of his enemies), at a future time, should all the families of the earth be blessed (Gen. xxii. 17, 18). Moses speaks of a prophet like unto himself, whom God should raise up to Israel whom they should hear (Deut. xviii. 15-18). Isaiah speaks of a king who should rise in the line of David, and reign over all nations, with the result of abolishing the art of war from the studies of mankind (Isa. xi. 1-9; ii. 4; xxxii. 1-8). Daniel speaks of one like the Son of Man who should appear, and whom all peoples, nations, and languages should serve and obey (Dan. vii. 14). Paul speaks of a day in which God should judge the world in righteousness by Christ (Acts xvii. 31), and when the people of Christ would reign and judge the world with him (1 Cor. vi. 2; 2 Tim. ii. 12). Revelations speaks of the kingdoms of this world becoming the kingdoms of God and His Christ, who shall reign for ever and ever (Rev. ii. 26; xi. 15). If the Bible were a merely human p. 234 production, there would not be this absolute identity of hope among writers, extending over three thousand years. The existence of this identity is a proof of the controlling presence of a common guidance in all the writers, even the guidance professed in the book itself: “Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. i. 21). The force of this argument will be appreciated by those who realize the endless and contradictory diversities of human authorship of different ages. Its force is somewhat hidden by the corruptions of orthodox Christendom, which has long ago abandoned the one apostolic “hope of Israel,” common to the whole Scriptures, and embraced the miserable substitute of an imagined post mortem beatification of an imaginary personal invisibility, in regions above the stars.
Then there is evidence of divinity in the Bible scheme of future life. This scheme defers all reward till an appointed era, to be inaugurated by the personal reappearance of Christ in the earth, when many generations shall have yielded—first, to the grave and then to the resurrection—their quota of tried men—tried in necessary times of evil. The vastness and splendour of this scheme stamps it as divine. Man would never have invented such a scheme.
Next there is the perfect candour of the Bible narratives, which is never characteristic of human histories. David’s crime is chronicled in sober and merciless truth, although he was king when the record was written. So with the fathers before him. The naked truth is told. The very things which Mr. Bad Laugh makes use of against the Bible, are in this respect one of the highest evidences of its genuine character; for had the Bible been written by king-flatterers and sycophants, as his senseless tirades imply, there would have been a suppression of things that do not stand to the credit of those for whom they are supposed by him to have been written. Then the writers say things that never would have been said by men writing to prop up a pretended revelation. Matthew, for instance (as Professor Bioplasm reminded the Court), records that at an interview with Christ after his p. 235 resurrection, some of his disciples “doubted” (Matt. xxviii. 17). A bolsterer up of a pretended revelation would never have written this. It is written because it. is true; and the fact that some doubted is an element in the self-evident truthfulness of the narrative, for it is just what would happen with real living men who, not expecting Christ to die, had seen Christ crucified and now saw him alive. In their partly-enlightened state, his death was a puzzle and his resurrection a puzzle also, and “doubt” the natural consequence. And had there been no farther evidence, the doubt of the “some” might have continued. But their doubt did not continue; all doubt vanished with the outpouring of the Spirit and display of miraculous gifts. The fact that they previously “doubted” made their subsequent confidence all the more reliable, because it showed the reason of their doubt had disappeared. Certainly, a forger, writing a fictitious narrative to obtain credit for Christ’s resurrection, would never have represented any of the disciples in the act of doubting but rather in an ecstacy of adoring confidence, after the style of Roman Catholic fables.
Similar remarks apply to the statement of John that, at a certain time, “many of his disciples went back and walked no more with him.” This is a candid record of a fact which there could be no object in publishing, but rather in suppressing, as the fact itself was capable of yielding a damaging effect to some who might argue like Mr. Bad Laugh: “If men who saw his miracles deserted him, how can you expect me to believe,” etc. Its record is an evidence of truth; and the occurrence of the fact recorded is in harmony with our acquaintance with human nature. Men get accustomed to anything. Marvels cease to be marvels when they are of common occurrence. It is easy to understand that men, drawn after Christ in the first instance by the sensational attraction of his miracles, would easily become disaffected when doctrines unpleasant to human nature were propounded for their acceptance. It is human nature to the life. A fictitious writer would never have imagined it possible for any human being to desert the Christ of his narrative: he p. 236 would be certain to represent every one as awe-struck and spell-bound for ever. And even if he could have imagined another possibility, he would have been careful to conceal it from a narrative intended to create confidence in a Christ that never existed. The record that many ceased to be his disciples is one among many strong proofs of the genuineness of the narrative. There is a number of such candid statements. In fact, they abound throughout the Scriptures, and constitute an evidence in the very opposite direction to that to which such as Mr. Bad Laugh make them point. We must be content with the two examples cited.
Then the literary character of the Bible is evidence of a more than human authorship. Its diction is chaste, dignified, vigorous, free of redundancy, or irrelevant details. It is unlike all other books in the nature of its historical narratives. It never puts on record the kind of occurrences that come under the category of story and adventure. It never shows any regard for the curiosity of the reader. It never ministers to the taste that finds pleasure in the mere knowledge of what happens. It confines itself to matters having relation to the main purpose in hand. If it ever diverges from its condensed historical style, and enters into personal particulars, it is because those personal particulars have a bearing on some subsequent event of public importance, or to illustrate the operation of some truth important to be known. The story of Amon and Tamar is an example: it led up to the rebellion of Absalom. The story of David and Uriah is another: it led to a public revolution in the punishment of David. The story of the Ephraimite and his concubine is another: it led to the near extirpation of a tribe, and the slaughter of multitudes in Israel in punishment of their sins. In no case is a story told for its own sake. In this the Bible differs from all human books: and the difference is inexplicable if the Bible be a human book; because, if a human book, it would show the universal taste for mere incident, in the liking for which Jew and Gentile are alike, as shown by the writings of Josephus. The following is a good specimen of the p. 237 Bible’s historical conciseness: “Then were the people of Israel divided into two parts; half of the people followed Tibni, the son of Ginath, to make him king; and half followed Omri But the people that followed Omri prevailed against the people that followed Tibni, the son of Ginath; so Tibni died, and Omri reigned” (1 Kings xvi. 21). A human account of this matter would have entered upon the intrigues and the fightings, and the adventures incident to the triumph of Omri, with a due admixture of trumpet blowings over this one’s intrepidity, and that one’s wonderful generalship, etc. This argument in its full force will only be appreciated by those who possess a thorough acquaintance with human writings of all ages. With such it is of great weight, to others, it may be evident by a comparison between the Bible itself and all imitations that that have been attempted, such as the Apocrypha and Apocryphal New Testament.
Finally, the character and precepts of Christ, as displayed in the New Testament, are themselves conclusive evidence of his divinity. No man could have imagined such a character; no man could have invented such precepts, least of all such men as those who wrote the gospel narrative—poor fishermen, “unlearned and ignorant men.” The only way such a narrative could come to be written (even if men who are called “learned” had been the writers)—is by the appearance of such a man as Christ, and the presence with the writers of such a guidance in the writers as Christ promised he would send them after his departure—the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which should “bring all things to their remembrance, whatsoever he had said unto them.”
The very circumstance which Mr. Bad Laugh cited in opposition to their testimony is a proof of its reliability. He says: “I will show you that when Jesus was in danger, his disciples ran away, and his most trusty disciple denied him over and over again.” It is true that the disciples fled when the officers came to apprehend Jesus, and that Peter denied him three times. Yet all the disciples (and Peter in particular) afterwards bore witness to his resurrection, and suffered for their testimony, p. 238 as the same account tells us. This leads to two questions, which cannot be reasonably answered without affording proof of the truth of Christ’s resurrection. How came men who deserted Christ in the presence of danger, to afterwards brave death by their testimony to his resurrection? Such men must have had a good reason for taking a course which amounted to walking into the jaws of death itself. If Christ rose and appeared to them, there is a reason which explains all. If Christ did not rise, we have the inconceivable phenomenon of proved cowards acting the part of heroes on behalf of a lie, and succeeding, without the use of force, in establishing the Christian faith, in the face of armed opposition on the part of the two great religious organizations of the age—Judaism and Paganism. The other question is, How comes the New Testament to record that “the disciples ran away, and his most trusty disciple denied him over and over again”? If the apostolic work was not divine, it was a human work conceived with human objects, and established by human means. In that case, the New Testament was written for the purpose of establishing the credit of the apostles and the prestige of their work, from a human point of view. On such a supposition, it is impossible to understand the chronicling of the desertion of the disciples and the unfaithfulness of Peter. It is an unknown thing in the history of imposture or fanaticism, that pretenders, labouring to establish the credit of an imposture, should publish facts tending to throw discredit on it; least of all, that the leader of the movement should be held up, at one time, as a traitor to the cause, in the very documents intended to establish its reputation! But if Christ rose from the dead, all is explained. We then see that these things are placed on record: first, because they happened, and, secondly, because their occurrence was wholesome to be known, both as regarded the apostles themselves, who were liable, in their privileged position, to be exalted above measure; and believers in general who might be tempted to regard the apostles as free from human frailty.
My Lord, if Christ did not rise from the dead, why p. 239 was his dead body not produced at the very incipiency of the apostolic testimony? The Jews, to this day, say the disciples of Christ stole the body of Christ, and then raised the report that he had risen. What is this but an admission that the body could not be found? If the body of Christ could have been found, would this story, which dates away back to the very beginning of the “Christian Era,” have been invented? On the contrary, would not the body have been produced, to the utter confutation of the apostolic testimony in that and all subsequent times? This question acquires increased force, in view of the fact that the apostles were apprehended and imprisoned by the very council of priests that obtained the crucifixion of Jesus. When the apostles were brought before them as prisoners at the bar, what did the apostles say? “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom YE SLEW AND HANGED ON A TREE. Him hath God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel and remission of sins. And we are witnesses of these things, and so is also the Holy Spirit, whom God hath given to them that obey Him.” The apostles accused their judges of being the slayers of Jesus. Their judges, it is added, “were cut to the heart, and took counsel to slay them” (Acts v. 33). Now, in such a state of mind, would not their judges have obtained possession of the body of Jesus had it been obtainable, and, by its production, have silenced for ever the intolerable testimony of the disciples, who fled from Christ in the hour of darkness, but were now so bold? The fact that they did not do so, is in itself proof that the body of Christ could not be found.
It is made an objection to Christ that John the Baptist sent disciples to Jesus to know whether he were the Christ or no, and it is customary to ask how this is consistent with John having heard a voice from heaven at the Jordan, declaring, at Christ’s baptism, that he was the Son of God. No better proof than this very circumstance could be given that the New Testament narrative is an unconcocted and true narrative. A concocter of such a story would have imagined and represented p. 240 John the Baptist as, of course, animated by a sublime and indomitable confidence that no circumstances could affect. But the narrative being true, we find John subject to the weakness of human nature. Shut up in prison at a time when, in common with all the disciples, he “thought the kingdom of God would immediately appear” (Luke xix. 11), the overpowering effect of confinement and hope inexplicably deferred, is seen in an embassage to Christ to re-assure himself. And Christ’s answer, instead of being inconsistent with truth, must appear in the opposite light to every reflecting mind. Mr. Bad Laugh asks why he did not remind John of the heavenly voice at his baptism. Jesus did better than that. He did not appeal to faltering human memory of an event already doubted; he appealed to what was actually transpiring. “Go and tell John WHAT YE SEE: how that the dead are raised,” etc. If the story had been concocted, no doubt the narrative which, in the first place, would never have represented John in doubt, would, in the case of that supposition, have made Christ appeal triumphantly to the events of the Jordan.
The same train of confirmatory thought is suggested by the most painful scene in the history of Christ, viz., the agony of his expiring moments, when he exclaimed: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” The unbeliever asks how such an exclamation could come from the lips of a man who knew that his death was to be the salvation of the world; and whether the words are not a confutation of his professed character. The question derives its piquancy from the assumption that the tranquility and mental composure of the Saviour ought to have been imperturbable. No doubt, in the case of an invented Christ, it would have been so represented. We should have had the sort of demeanour imputed to him that is alleged to the canonized “saints” of Roman Catholic fable. We should have had the spectacle of a transfixed man, looking placid and at ease, and delivering himself, in beatific trance, of an unnatural speech, calling upon heaven and earth to witness his confidence and submission, without murmur or wince, to a death which was p. 241 necessary for the salvation of men. Instead of that, we have “the man Christ Jesus,” showing all the susceptibilities of a human being. We have him approaching death, the day before, with a fearful apprehension that caused him to “sweat as it were great drops of blood.” We have him praying earnestly that if it were possible. the cup might pass from him: “yet not my will but Thine be done.” After this, we have him unresistingly submitting to apprehension and condemnation, and crucifixion. And then we see him transfixed on the cross, suspended in the most agonizing position in which it is possible for a human being to be placed, with the whole weight of his body bearing upon his out-stretched and lacerated hands and feet. We see him endure for six hours the fierce agonies of crucifixion, and at the end of that time, it is no unnatural sound we hear when, with a loud wail of agony, he exclaims, “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” Is such a wail inconsistent with his previous knowledge in hours of calmness that God required him to die? Nay, is it inconsistent even with the continuance of that knowledge? Was it not the fact that God had forsaken him in the sense of leaving him in the hands of his enemies, and in the sense, too, of withdrawing from him that overshadowing and immeasurable presence of the Spirit that had been with him during all the days of his ministry? The “why” may seem to express surprise where expectation ought to have excluded it, but we have to think that although the fact of his death was known to him beforehand, it may be that he did not realize to himself all the horrors of the ordeal till the dark cloud actually came upon him; and that in the weakness of the hour (for he was crucified through, in, or out of weakness—2 Cor. xiii. 4), his mental vision may have become clouded with the shadow of death, and caused him to ask what he would not have asked in the calm prospect of the event itself. The whole picture is thoroughly unartificial. It is such as men depicting an imaginary or invented Christ would never have drawn. No stronger evidence exists of the truth of Christ’s profession and mission than those very dying words.
p. 242 My Lord, I feel I have trespassed at great length on the attention of the Court. There are other matters with which I had purposed to deal. It would not be foreign to the issue before the Court if I were to dwell on the prophetic feature of the Hebrew Scriptures. On this subject, very much could be said, having a most material bearing; but I feel I must forbear. I must be content to point to the wonderful fact that these Scriptures abound with prophecies that, without exception, have been fulfilled, leaving out of consideration those that belong to a still future age—the age of Christ’s return to the earth, in power and great glory. My Lord, I need not dwell on the significance of this fact of fulfilled prophecy—a significance not to be jeered away by the cry of staleness or any vague reference to the prophetic pretensions of pagan antiquity in general. The prophecies I refer to are not the incoherent mutterings of augurs and astrologers. They are the plain and explicit declarations of events to come—events out of all human calculation. The predictions which belong to the Bible have to do with the futurity of countries, the fortunes of races, the destinies of individuals, which all depend upon so many unknown contingencies that only a Power having control of those contingencies could say what will happen. They are not matters admitting of the action of human discernment. The notion that Moses and the prophets were only astute men, who, by a large discernment of human affairs, were able to foretell what should happen centuries afterwards, is not only absolutely gratuitous, but it is opposed to all experience of men. There are probably as astute men living in our day as in any age, and where is the man that can tell us a day ahead what shall be? On the natural discernment theory, there ought to be better prophets now than at any time, because there is so much larger a stock of human experience to go by than at any former time. Yet, in point of fact, there is not the least ability anywhere to foretell the future. The future is a dead wall to the human eye. No man can forcast even the markets for a day ahead, let alone political destinies which are so peculiarly liable to unknown p. 243 contingency. This inability to penetrate the future is appealed to in the Scriptures as the evidence of imposture on the part of those in Israel who falsely pretended to be divine. The challenge is put in this form: “Let them bring forth and show us what shall happen . . . SHOW THE THINGS THAT ARE TO COME HEREAFTER that we may know that ye are gods” (Isa. xli. 22, 23). In contrast to this, we have the following declaration from God: “I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times, the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all my pleasure.” “Behold the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: BEFORE THEY SPRING FORTH, I TELL YOU OF THEM” (Isa. xlvi. 9; xlii. 9). Moses and the prophets foretold the fate of the Jews thousands of years ahead, and also the leading developments of Gentile power in their relation to God’s further purpose on earth. It cannot be said that the ability to do this was a Jewish faculty: for the Jews are as helpless to-day as their Gentile neighbours. They have had no prophets among them since God forsook them for their iniquities, and dispersed them through the countries. There is only one possible explanation of the prophecies in the case, and that is the explanation given by the prophets themselves, when they represent that God spoke to them what they said and wrote, and in that case, Christ has risen from the dead; for his resurrection is required by them.
With this brief indication of a great, and pregnant, and powerful argument on behalf of the resurrection of Christ, I must hasten to the close of my address. My Lord, I have proved my case in every way in which it is possible for such a case to be proved. I have proved the defendants justified in the course from which the plaintiffs would restrain them, by proving that Christ rose from the dead. I have proved this by the testimony of eye-witnesses. I have proved these eye-witnesses capable eye-witnesses, and trustworthy eye-witnesses. I have proved that their testimony is true, by the effect of the work done by these eye-witnesses. I have proved it p. 244 by the nature of the testimony they gave, as regards its bearing on those receiving it. I have proved it by proving the divinity of the whole national scheme, in which the resurrection of Christ was but an item in a divine programme. I have proved it by the nature of the national writings produced in connection with that programme; and I have proved it by the fulfilment, and the still continuing fulfilment of the word of prophecy delivered in connection with the whole work throughout. And what is the answer, my Lord, to this incontestable argument? Science, my Lord, science; nothing but science. The opposition of the Bad Laugh school may pass without consideration as the mere raving dogmatism of a reckless hostility which has neither concern for truth nor capacity for weighing evidence. It is different with the opposition of men of the stamp of Mr. Shrewd Observer and Professor Bioplasm. Their opposition is at least what we may call a respectable opposition. It is an opposition that springs from a candid inability to reconcile the resurrection of Christ with certain other conceptions of truth. It is an opposition, to a certain extent, worth arguing with. But what does it amount to, my Lord? I make bold to affirm, on the strength of much that has already transpired in the course of this trial, that it is an opposition that is bound to give way before the application of true reason. It is an opposition to evidence that cannot be overthrown on the grounds of scientific assumptions that are not only undemonstrable, but which there are many reasons for doubting, and which, even if there were no reasons for doubting them, cannot safely be placed against manifest truth, in view of the unstable and changeful nature of all human conceptions of the universe. My Lord, what is science? It is but the most we know at any given moment. But can we ever be sure we know enough to dogmatize? Is it not the fact that much of even what we call knowledge is hypothesis, which acts as a disintegrating ingredient, crumbling the finest scientific edifice to ruins with the advance of time? The knowledge of to-day discredits the science of yesterday; and to-morrow the knowledge of to-day seems incomplete and even fallacious and far behind.
p. 245 It is true that the resurrection of Christ involves the mystery of a personal God, and brings with it all that comes with a supernatural revelation; but I submit, my Lord, there is nothing in true science inconsistent with these. Science reduces no difficulty, lessens no mystery, dissipates none of the incomprehensibility that may be felt to attach to a theistic view of the origin of things. No one has more clearly recognized or more forcibly expressed this fact than the leading scientific intellect of the present age. Professor Tyndall in his inaugural address at the meeting of the British Association, at Manchester, says: “Science does not in any degree lessen the wonder with which we look at the material universe. At best it only marshals the phenomena of Nature under the head of all its sequences, which are called law; but the great ocean of the unknown simply recedes as we advance, and all the researches that science may make to the end of time will never abridge by one hair’s-breadth the infinite expanse of mystery across that boundless ocean. The curiosity of the intellect will always sail towards an ever-vanishing horizon. The region of mystery lies not merely in the distance, but also at our very feet.” He said when he has looked at the spring-tide, at the sprouting leaves, and grass, and flowers; when he has seen the general joy of opening life, he has asked himself, “Can it be that there is no being or thing in Nature that knows more about these matters than I do? Can it be that I, in my ignorance, represent the highest knowledge existing of these things in the universe?” And his answer is: “The man who puts that question to himself, if he be not a shallow man; if he be capable of being penetrated by a profound thought, will never answer it by professing that creed of Atheism which has been so lightly attributed to me.” Consequently, my Lord, whatever objections may be entertained against the resurrection of Christ, on the ground of its assumed inconsistency with the modes of Nature’s subsistences, are evidently without scientific foundation, in so far as science itself can explain nothing to us, and give us no information as to the ultimate spring of Nature’s operations. As the learned authority I have just quoted says, we can only know the phenomena of p. 246 Nature; we cannot know the power that educes them. Under the thin surface of our deepest knowledge, there lie the eternal foundations of the unexplorable absolute, on which the highest intellects are obliged to write “mystery,” “unknowable.” If Nature’s ultimate modus in esse be incomprehensible, how can a man maintain that Christ’s resurrection is inconsistent with it? It is a question of whether it happened, and not of whether it could happen. It is only veritable idiotcy that would draw the boundary line of the possible. It is fact, not theory; truth, not philosophy, that must govern mortal vaticinations. The resurrection of Christ is a fact attested by every law of evidence. At the bidding of what are we to reject it? At the bidding of a theory that is undemonstrated? that is undemonstrable? yea, worse, that is inconsistent with many of the most palpable scientific elements of the case? At the bidding of a theory, whose originator says a few miracles were wrought to begin life on earth, but none to guide and finish it? and whose principal apostle says there was no miracle at all, except the astounding miracle of life generating itself before it existed to generate? and who lays down the extraordinary scientific dogma that this self-generation of life, though possible countless ages ago, under conditions that he has to imagine, is now no longer possible on earth? My Lord, the man who on such slender grounds of scientific speculation—such fantastic speculation—who at the bidding of such monstrous scientific dogmatism and presumption, can throw overboard the palpable and invaluable historic verities of the Christian faith—I say such a man can only be excused on the ground that he must be but imperfectly acquainted with the facts connected with those verities, or has failed to estimate and weigh them at their proper value. My Lord, the tide has already begun to turn against these evolutionistic extravagances, and I make bold to predict that it will not be long before the bare mention of them will be hailed with shrieks of laughter.
I have contended that true science is not inconsistent with the resurrection of Christ. I will now go further, my Lord, and contend that true science requires such an p. 247 opening of hope in the horizon of human life. True science, my Lord, deals with all knowledge in a manner as large as the universe itself. It does not consist of collecting specimens, and classifying genera, and discoursing technically on some special branch of knowledge, such as botany, entomology, zoology, geology, to wit. Nature is one: and true science deals with it as a whole, and notes those general inductions which the sum total of her general phenomena yield. Now, if there is one thing more obvious than another, it is this, that human life is the highest, and most interesting thing upon the earth at the present time. Every man capable of thinking instinctively feels that all other things exist for this. But there is another thing, my Lord, equally obvious, unhappily, and that is, that human life, though the noblest thing upon earth at the present time, is also in such a state as to be least in harmony with his constitutional needs, capacities, and aspirations. Other creatures fulfil the object of their being; but man is unsatisfied, maldeveloped, aborted in his life, frustrated in his schemes and aspirations—weak in himself, confused and unhappy in his social relations (speaking of these in the highest sense), and under a universal burden of mortality which, despite desires and adaptations for immortality, sink him into the grave. My Lord, I am leaving out of account the explanation furnished by revelation of this state of things. I am dealing with it as a natural phenomenon patent to every man. And I say that as a problem of Nature, there ought to be discoverable a solution, or at least an explanation, of it. I mean, more particularly, that there ought to be some possible exit discernible or conceivable in the system of Nature from this lamentable situation. Nature, in her stupendous powers and possibilities, ought to yield some suggestion of hope that man, her highest work, is not a mistake—that a creature with such wonderful and beautiful possibilities indicated in his constitution, has some sphere corresponding to his aspirations—some destiny answering to the yearnings and desires, and moral, and intellectual potentialities of his nature.
Where is there such token of hope in the system of p. 248 the plaintiffs? My Lord, there is none. They point to the million-numbered ages of the past, and they say, “Behold an endless variation and succession in the forms of biological force; this force eternal, but the individual forms of it evanescent, disappearing generation after generation, never more to re-appear,” “And see,” say they, “in this the picture of the future in which life will go on interminably manifesting itself according to environment, but giving no ground of expectation that vanished forms will be repeated, or individual lives reproduced.” My Lord, in this system, there is no hope: no faith: no Father: no motive power for individual circumspection: no resource upon which individual solicitude can draw for comfort or joy. Is it a wonder, my Lord, that under the influence of such a system, society should be turning gloomy, as an eminent public writer testified only a week or two ago? The wonder would be, if it should be otherwise: for as man is constituted, he requires the lever of external hope to keep his mental machinery in effectual motion. Take away hope and aim, and a high ideal, and human nature inevitably gravitates earthwards to the condition of intellectual stagnation and debasement from which he has been elevated in any little measure of his attainment by the very faith which the plaintiffs would destroy.
I say, my Lord, that in this view of the case alone, the position of the plaintiffs is not a truly scientific one. It is inconsistent with those general inductions that the intellect instinctively draws from the spectacle of matchless wisdom and power around us in heaven and earth. It is not reasonable to suppose that the stupendous system of the universe exists for no higher end than the feeble gratification of an ephemeral and decaying race of animals. It is not reasonable to suppose that the aspirations of the noblest of mankind are without a counterpart in the region of the possible. It is not reasonable to suppose that the earnest upliftings of the human heart in agonizing desire towards a Higher than man are without a meaning in the universe of being. And, because these things are not reasonable, the system of the plaintiffs, which involves these terrible postulates, is in the highest degree unreasonable, p. 249 and unphilosophic, and unscientific. True science ought to leave room for, even if it could not show us the complement of, Nature’s own fundamental indications. I do not mean that, seeing men hungry, it ought to conclude that all men will be fed; but, in the presence of hunger, it ought to admit the existence of food, and the possibility, by the right exertions, of obtaining it. The system of the plaintiffs denies this in relation to the highest of all food for which man craves. It denies the possibility of a future life; it denies the attainability of perfection; it denies a Father with power and intelligence guiding all things after the counsel of His own will; it does all this on the puny grounds of its own weak and finite impressions of truth on matters with which the human intellect is unfitted to cope, while it refuses to accept truth that is demonstrated—historic truth, that cannot be rejected without doing violence to every maxim of evidence.
My Lord, on all points, the position of the defendants presents a complete and striking contrast to that of the plaintiffs. The resurrection of Christ brings with it the glorious counterpart of every induction which the universe yields to the ear of reason. It brings with it the pledge of the Eternal Father’s existence and love; for it was the Father who raised him from the dead, and we need a Father. It ensures to us the loftiest ideal for the elevation and comfort of the mind; for his resurrection introduced him to a priesthood in which he stands as the Father’s representative, beseeching us to be reconciled to God, and to become his friends, in the forgiveness and abandonment of our sins and the adoption of his commandments; and such a priesthood is exactly suited to human need. It offers us a theme and object of unbounded personal hope of good to come: for the risen Christ promises to come again, and raise from the dead all who receive him, and introduce them to a state of perfection identical with that in which he himself now exists; and, surely, the mind rusts and despairs, and sinks to inanity, for want of some assured prospect of perfect good. It gives us the guarantee of well-being for all mankind; for the risen Christ, when he so comes, comes as p. 250 King, to establish a new and universal government—the government of himself and his immortal friends, under which, when the rickety and wretched systems of the present era shall have been suppressed by his strong arm, the human race will wake to a new and well-ordered life, in which existence will no longer be a drudge and a vanity, but the joyous effectuation of every rational object of life, in “glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and goodwill to men.” It affords us the much desired and securely established vision of an endless future of unclouded peace and untarnished glory upon earth, when the mission of the risen Christ shall have culminated, after a provisional reign of a limited period, in the complete removal of sin and death from every denizen of the habitable globe. My Lord, I have done. I protest against, and oppose, with all my heart, the mistaken application of the plaintiffs. It would become them, rather, as good and truly scientific men, to ask the Court to place all the facilities which the resources of this kingdom may afford, at the disposal of the defendants, that, with trumpet voice, they might proclaim to the ends of the world, the joyful news that Christ has risen from the dead, and comes anon to bless all families of the earth with righteousness, plenty, wisdom, joy, and peace.
(A pause followed the conclusion of Sir Noble Acceptorof Alltruth’s speech, which had evidently produced a deep impression on the Court).
His Lordship: The Court has listened with great interest to your masterly address, Mr. Alltruth. What course do you now propose to take?
Sir Noble Acceptorof Alltruth: We propose, my Lord, to call one or two of the defendants. We shall be very brief in our examination of them.
His Lordship: Do you propose to take them now?
Sir Noble Acceptorof Alltruth: Probably it would be more acceptable to the Court if we take them after the adjournment.
His Lordship: Very well.
The Court adjourned.