156 The Resurrection, and the truth of Christianity.

proceeds to argue that such miracles must be expelled from any Life of Christ which criticism' will condescend to accept. They belong, he contends, to that 'torrent of legend,' with which, according to the rationalistic creed, Jesus was surrounded after His Death by the unthinking enthusiasm of His disciples b. But then a question arises as to how much is to be included within this legendary 'torrent.' In particular, and above all else, is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave to be regarded as a part of its contributions to the Life of Christ? Here there is a division among the rationalizing critics. There are writers who reject our Lord's miracles of power, His miraculous Conception, and even His Ascension into heaven, and who yet shrink from denying that very fundamental fact of all, the fact that on 'the third day He rose from the dead, according to the Scriptures ".' A man must have made up his mind against Christianity more conclusively than men are generally willing to avow, if he is to speculate with M. Renan in the face of Christendom, as to the exact spot in which 'the worms consumed the lifeless body' of Jesus d. This explicit denial of the literal Resurrection of Jesus from the grave is not compensated for by some theory identical with, or analogous to, that of Hymenæus and Philetuse respecting the general Resurrection, whereby the essential subject of Christ's Resurrection is changed, and the idea of Christianity, or the soul of the converted Christian, as distinct from the Body of the Lord Jesus, is said to have been raised from the dead. For such a denial, let us mark it well, of the literal Resurrection of the Human Body of Jesus involves nothing less than an absolute and total rejection of Christianity. All orthodox Churches, all the great heresies, even Socinianism, have believed in the Resurrection of Jesus. The literal Resurrection of Jesus was the cardinal

b Schenkel, Charakterbild Jesu, p. 21: 'Dass ein Lebensbild, wie dasjenige des Erlösers, bald nach dessen irdischem Hinscheiden von einem reichen Sagenstrom umflossen wurde, liegt in der Natur der Sache.' It may be asked-Why? If these legendary decorations are the inevitable consequences of a life of devotion to moral truth and to philanthropy, how are we to explain their absence in the cases of so many moralists and philanthropists ancient and modern ?

c Cf. Hase, Leben Jesu, p. 281, compared with p. 267.

d Les Apôtres, p. 38: Pendant que la conviction inébranlable des Apôtres se formait, et que la foi du monde se préparait, en quel endroit les vers consumaient-ils le corps inanimé qui avait été, le samedi soir, déposé au sépulcre? On ignorera toujours ce détail; car, naturellement, les traditions chrétiennes ne peuvent rien nous apprendre là-dessus.'

e

2 Tim. ii. 18: Υμέναιος καὶ Φίλητος, οἵτινες περὶ τὴν ἀλήθειαν ἠστόχησαν, λέγοντες τὴν ἀνάστασιν ἤδη γεγονέναι. I Tim. i. 20.

The Resurrection, and other Christian miracles. 157

fact upon which the earliest preachers of Christianity based their appeal to the Jewish people f. St. Paul, writing to a Gentile Church, expressly makes Christianity answer with its life for the literal truth of the Resurrection. 'If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain... Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished §.' Some modern writers would possibly have reproached St. Paul with offering a harsh alternative instead of an argument. But St. Paul would have replied, first, that our Lord's honour and credit were entirely staked upon the issue, since He had foretold His Resurrection as the 'sign' which would justify His claims h; and secondly, that the fact of the Resurrection was attested by evidence which must outweigh everything except an à priori conviction of the impossibility of miracle, since it was attested by the word of more than two hundred and fifty living persons who had actually seen the Risen Jesus i. As to objections to miracle of an à priori character, St. Paul would have argued, as most Theists, and even the French philosopher, have argued, that such objections could not be urged by any man who believed seriously in a living God at all. But on the other hand, if the Resur

Acts i. 22, ii. 24, 32, iii. 15, iv. 10, v. 30, x. 40, xiii. 30, 33, 34, xvii. 31. I Cor. xv. 14, 18. h St. Matt. xii. 39, 40. 1 1 Cor. xv. 6: Επειτα ὤφθη ἐπάνω πεντακοσίοις ἀδελφοῖς ἐφάπαξ, ἐξ ὧν οἱ πλείους μένουσιν ἕως ἄρτι, τινὲς δὲ καὶ ἐκοιμήθησαν. It is quite arbitrary to say that the Resurrection with Paul is by no means a human corporeal resurrection as with the Evangelists,' that 'his woon kauoí implies no more than a flash and a sound, which he interpreted as a presence of Christ.' (Westm. Rev. Oct. 1867, p. 529.) On this shewing, the pen Zíμavi in St. Luke xxiv. 34 might similarly be resolved into an illusion. The éwpáкaμev of St. John xx. 25 might be as unreal as the éúpaка of 1 Cor. ix. I. Contrast with the positive tone of 1 Cor. xv. 6 the measured hesitation of 2 Cor. xii. 2. It is also a mere assumption to say that a 'palpable body' could not be seen at once by 500 persons; and the suggestion that St. Paul's own belief in 'a continued celestial life of Christ,' and in the moral resurrection of Christians was 'afterwards materialized' into 'the history of a bodily resurrection of Christ, and the expectation of a bodily resurrection of mankind from the grave,' is nothing less than to fasten upon the Apostle the pseudo-spiritualistic error, against which in this chapter he so passionately contends. On this subject, see 'The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,' by R. Macpherson, D.D., pp. 127, 346; Pressensé, Jesus Christ, pp. 660-665.

'Dieu peut-Il faire des miracles, c'est à dire, peut-Il déroger aux lois, qu'Il a établies? Cette question sérieusement traitée serait impie, si elle n'était absurde. Ce serait faire trop d'honneur à celui, qui la resoudrait negativement, que de le punir; il suffirait de l'enfermer. Mais aussi, quel homme a jamais nié, que Dieu pût faire des miracles?' Rousseau, Lettres écrites de la Montagne, Lettre iii.

158 Christ's miracles how related to His Divinity.

rection be admitted to be a fact, it is puerile to object to the other miracles of Jesus, or to any other Christian miracles, provided they be sufficiently attested. To have admitted the stupendous truth that Jesus, after predicting that He would be put to a violent death, and then rise from the dead, was actually so killed, and then did actually so rise, must incapacitate any thoughtful man for objecting to the supernatural Conception or to the Ascension into heaven, or to the more striking wonders wrought by Jesus, on any such ground as that of intrinsic improbability. The Resurrection has, as compared with the other miraculous occurrences narrated in the Gospels, all the force of an à fortiori argument; they follow, if we may use the term, naturally from it; they are fitly complemental incidents of a history in which the Resurrection has already made it plain, that we are dealing with One in Whose case our ordinary experience of the limits and conditions of human power is altogether at fault.

6

But if the miracles of Jesus be admitted in the block, as by a 'rational' believer in the Resurrection they must be admitted; they do point, as I have said, to the Catholic belief, as distinct from any lower conceptions respecting the Person of Jesus Christ. They differ from the miracles of prophets and Apostles in that, instead of being answers to prayer, granted by a Higher Power, they manifestly flow forth from the majestic Life resident in the Workerk. And instead of presenting so many difficulties' which have to be surmounted or set aside, they are in entire harmony with that representation of our Saviour's Personal glory which is embodied in the Creeds. St. John accordingly calls them Christ's 'works,' meaning that they were just such acts as might be expected from Him, being such as He was. For our Lord's miracles are something more than evidences that He was the organ of a Divine revelation. They do not merely secure a deferential attention to His disclosures respecting the nature of God, the duty and destiny of man, His own Person, mission, and work. Certainly they have this properly evidential force; He Himself appealed to them as having it. But it would be difficult altogether to account for their form, or for their varieties, or for the times at which they were wrought, or for the motives which were actually assigned for working them, on the supposition that their value was only evidential. They are like the kind deeds of the wealthy, or the good advice of the

Wilberforce on the Incarnation, p. 91, note 11. Christian Remembrancer, Oct. 1863, p. 274. 1 St. John x. 38.

Their value not merely evidential.

159

wise; they are like that debt of charity which is due from the possessors of great endowments to suffering humanity. Christ as Man owed this tribute of mercy which His Godhead had rendered it possible for Him to pay, to those whom (such was His love) He was not ashamed to call His brethren. But besides this, Christ's miracles are physical and symbolic representations of His redemptive action as the Divine Saviour of mankind. Their form is carefully adapted to express this action. By healing the palsied, the blind, the lame, Christ clothed with a visible form His plenary power to cure spiritual diseases, such as the weakness, the darkness, the deadly torpor of the soul. By casting out devils from the possessed, He pointed to His victory over the principalities and powers of evil, whereby man would be freed from their thraldom and restored to moral liberty m. By raising Lazarus from the corruption of the grave, He proclaimed Himself not merely a Revealer of the Resurrection, but the Resurrection and the Life itself. The drift and meaning of such a miracle as that in which our Lord's 'Ephphatha' brought hearing and speech to the deaf and dumb is at once apparent when we place it in the light of the Sacrament of baptism ". The feeding of the five thousand is remarkable as the one miracle which is narrated by all the Evangelists; and even the least careful among readers of the Gospel cannot fail to be struck with the solemn actions which precede the wonder-work, as well as by the startling magnificence of the result. Yet the permanent significance of that extraordinary scene at Bethsaida Julias is never really understood, until our Lord's great discourse in the synagogue of Capernaum, which immediately follows it, is read as the spiritual exposition of the physical miracle, which is thus seen to be a commentary, palpable to sense, upon the vital efficacy of the Holy Communion.

m St. Matt. xii. 28; St. Luke xi. 20.

St. Mark viii. 34, 35.

• Compare St. John vi. 26-59; and observe the correspondence between the actions described in St. Matt. xiv. 19, and xxvi. 26. The deeper Lutheran commentators are noticeably distinguished from the Calvinistic ones in recognising the plain Sacramental reference of St. John vi. 53, sqq. See Stier, 'Reden Jesu,' in loc.; Olshausen, Comm. in loc.; Kahnis, H. Abendmahl, p. 104, sqq. For the ancient Church, see St. Chrys. Hom. in loc.; Tertull. De Orat. 6; Clem. Alex. Pædagog. I. vi. p. 123; St. Cyprian, De Oratione Dominicâ, p. 192; St. Hilary, De Trin. viii. 14, cited in Wilb. H. Euch. p. 199. The Church of England authoritatively adopts the sacramental interpretation of the passage by her use of it in the Exhortation at the time of the celebration of the Holy Communion. "The benefit is great,

160

The mysteries of our Lord's Earthly Life

In our Lord's miracles then we have before us something more than a set of credentials; since they manifest forth His Mediatorial Glory. They exhibit various aspects of that redemptive power whereby He designed to save lost man from sin and death; and they lead us to study, from many separate points of view, Christ's majestic Personality, as the Source of the various wonders which radiate from it. And assuredly such a study can have but one result for those who honestly believe in the literal reality of the wonders described; it must force upon them a conviction of the Divinity of the worker P.

if with a true penitent heart and lively faith we receive that Holy Sacrament for then we spiritually eat the Flesh of Christ and drink His Blood; then we dwell in Christ and Christ in us; we are one with Christ and Christ with us.' Cf. too the 'Prayer of Humble Access.'

P It may be urged that Socinians have been earnest believers in the Resurrection and other preternatural facts of the Life of Christ, while explicitly denying His Godhead. This is true; but it is strictly true only of past times, or of those of our contemporaries who are more or less inaccessible, happily for themselves, to the intellectual influences of modern scepticism. It would be difficult to find a modern Socinian of high education who believed in the literal truth of all the miraculous incidents recorded in the Gospels. This is not merely a result of modern objections to miracle; it is a result of the connexion, more clearly felt, even by sceptics, than of old, between the admission of miracles and the obligation to admit attendant dogma. In his Essay on Channing, M. Renan has given expression to this instinct of modern sceptical thought. 'Il est certain,' he observes, 'que si l'esprit moderne a raison de vouloir une religion, qui, sans exclure le surnaturel, en diminue la dose autant que possible, la religion de Channing est la plus parfaite et la plus épurée qui ait paru jusqu'ici. Mais est-ce là tout, en vérité, et quand le symbole sera réduit à croire à Dieu et au Christ, qu'y aura-t-on gagné? Le scepticisme se tiendra-t'il pour satisfait ? La formule de l'univers en sera-t-elle plus complète et plus claire ? La destinée de l'homme et de l'humanité moins impénétrable? Avec son symbole épuré, Channing évite-t-il mieux que les théologiens catholiques les objections de l'incrédulité? Hélas! non. Il admet la résurrection de Jésus-Christ, et n'admet pas sa Divinité; il admet le Bible, et n'admet pas l'enfer. Il déploie toutes les susceptibilités d'un scholastique pour établir contre les Trinitaires, en quel sens le Christ est fils de Dieu, et en quel sens il ne l'est pas. Or, si l'on accorde qu'il y a eu une Existence réelle et miraculeuse d'un bout à l'autre, pourquoi ne pas franchement l'appeler Divine? L'un ne demande pas un plus grand effort de croyance que l'autre. En vérité, dans cette voie, il n'y a que le premier pas qui coute; il ne faut pas marchander avec le surnaturel; la foi va d'une seule pièce, et, le sacrifice accompli, il ne sied pas de réclamer en détail les droits dont on a fait une fois pour toutes l'entière cession.' Études d'Histoire Religieuse, pp. 377, 378. Who would not rather, a thousand times over, have been Channing than be M. Renan? Yet is it not clear that, half a century later, Channing must have believed much less, or, as we may well trust, much more, than was believed by the minister of Federal-street Chapel, Boston?