rection, some of His followers must have been cognizant of the fact. In that case it is impossible to acquit them of having invented the fiction that He had left the world, and gone up into heaven. If, on the other hand, we suppose that He remained several years in retirement, the same fiction must have been propagated while He was still living. In either case, the most liberal attribution of credulity and enthusiasm to his followers will fail to account for the origin of the delusion. The supposition of fraud is the only possible solution, a fraud which must have succeeded in removing whole mountains of difficulties, such as I have enumerated in considering the theory of visions, and which it will be unnecessary again to refer to. The truth is, that this theory could never have been suggested by those who have propounded it, if they had considered that the problem before them was not simply to put forward a possible account of the origin of a belief in a resurrection, but one which would satisfy the conditions of history, and account for the erection of the Christian Church on the basis that its Founder rose again from the dead.

One possible theory remains; but its bare statement will be its sufficient refutation. It is this. It is this. The body was committed to the custody of His friends, and interred by them; but it was removed by His enemies without their knowledge. On entering the tomb, His friends to their surprise found it empty; and in their inability to account for what had become of it, they adopted the theory that He must have risen from the dead; and thereupon they proceeded to reconstruct the Church. Such a theory, in addition to impossibilities. peculiar to itself, has to encounter all those which I have adduced in the course of the foregoing argument.

The foregoing reasonings therefore establish the following conclusion. The assumption that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the only one which will satisfy the historic facts: the account therefore which the Church has always given of its origin is the only true one-He has risen from the dead.

His resurrection being thus established, the Gospels take their genuine place in history; the Synoptics as three reports of the actions and teaching of Jesus Christ, as they were reported by His followers, and composed within that interval of time during which such traditionary reminiscences must have preserved all their freshness; and the Fourth Gospel, as an account of the same divine life derived from an independent source of information. This in an evidential point of view is all that we require. It establishes the truth of Christianity as a divine revelation. To determine anything beyond this does not belong to that branch of theology which is strictly evidential; and to encumber ourselves with the defence of unnecessary positions tends rather to weaken than to strengthen our defence.

SUPPLEMENT I.

The appearance of Our Lord to St. Paul stands on a different basis from the appearances which I have discussed in the preceding Lecture. It will be therefore desirable to give a brief consideration to its evidential value.

The affirmation in the 15th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians with respect to the interview with Our Lord on the road to Damascus, "And last of all, He was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time," puts it on a par with the appearances to the original disciples, and affords decisive proof that Paul was fully convinced of its objective reality. The Epistles, however, furnish us with no information respecting the circumstances, which can only be learned from the Acts of the Apostles.

Two facts, however, they establish on the Apostle's

express testimony: first, that previously to his conversion, he had persecuted the Church of God and wasted it, and secondly, that after his conversion he became its most laborious Missionary, and that the whole of his future life was one devoted act of self-sacrifice to the service of his Master.

The Acts of the Apostles furnish us with three accounts of the circumstances attending his conversion; one in the direct narrative of the historian, and the other two in speeches purporting to have been uttered by St. Paul. Putting these accounts together, the facts are as follows:

St. Paul left Jerusalem inspired with a deadly hatred against the followers of Jesus, and in possession of letters commendatory from the High Priest to the Synagogues at Damascus, for the purpose of raising a persecution against the Christians in that city, and, if possible, bringing them bound to Jerusalem. As Paul's party approached the city, they found themselves surrounded by a light from heaven, "above the brightness of the sun." This light was seen by Paul and his companions, who thereupon prostrated themselves to the ground. In the midst of this light, Paul saw a glorious figure, who addressed him by name, and expostulated with him for persecuting him, and who in answer to Paul's inquiry who he was, declared that he was Jesus. Here occurs a slight variation between the narrative of the historian, and one of the Apostle's own accounts of the same transaction, the former telling us that Paul's companions "stood speechless, hearing a voice, but seeing no man,' while the latter states that his companions "saw the light, and were afraid, but they heard not the voice of him that spake to him." According to the second account of St. Paul a prolonged conversation took place between him and the person who thus appeared to him. The effect of the light on the Apostle was to strike him blind, so that he had to be led by the hand of his companions, and conducted to Damascus. During three days he continued without sight, after which he recovered it by a miraculous interposition, on which occasion something resembling scales fell from his

eyes. He forthwith joined the Christian Church, and during the next twenty-five years devoted himself in an unceasing course of labour and suffering to the service of his Master.

Such are the facts. The utmost has been made of the slight variation in the accounts above referred to, as throwing suspicion on their historical accuracy; but the Greek is quite consistent with the fact that St. Paul's companions heard the sound of a voice, but did not distinguish articulate words. Even if the unhistorical character of the Acts of the Apostles were granted, it is in the highest degree improbable that a forger, and especially one who has displayed such acuteness in his forgery, would have been betrayed into so palpable a contradiction as to have affirmed in the same work that Paul's companions did, and did not hear the voice.

The following consideration fully establishes the historical character of the narrative given in the Acts. Whatever objections may be urged against the earlier chapters, the results of modern investigation have proved that no document which has been handed down from ancient times rests on a firmer historical foundation than the twenty-seventh chapter, which gives us the account of St. Paul's voyage and shipwreck. No shadow of doubt can rest on the mind of any one who studies this chapter, that the person who composed it was one of Paul's companions. The perusal of the preceding chapters renders it no less certain that the author of them had accompanied the Apostle in his Missionary travels during several years. This fact is alone sufficient to establish the authenticity of the account. It is incredible that a person who had been Paul's companion for a considerable period, did not receive from him some account of the event to which he attributed his conversion, and which had changed him from a persecutor into the most devoted Missionary of the Christian cause. This being so, it follows that the threefold account as we read it in the Acts, relates the circumstances of St. Paul's conversion as he himself believed in them.

Such then are the facts to be accounted for. Only two theories respecting them are possible. Either the facts. were objective realities; or the Apostle was labouring under some species of mental hallucination.

Even unbelievers must admit that the former, if true, is a philosophical account of the facts and of the results which followed them. The question therefore arises, Can any theory of visions afford an adequate solution of them?

The following is the most plausible explanation which unbelief has propounded of the conversion of St. Paul on the supposition that the appearance of Jesus was due to mental hallucination. The Apostle was a man of that exalted and enthusiastic temperament which leads those subject to it to confound the subjective and the objective. This is said to be proved, not only by the whole tenour of his writings, but by the fact that after his conversion, he was in the habit of seeing visions, and falling into trances. This state of mind, acting on the beliefs in which he had been educated, made him an uncompromising opponent of Christianity, and led him to take a very active part in the murder of Stephen. The demeanour of the Martyr however had profoundly impressed him; and the whole scene continued to haunt his imagination. In this divided state of mind, yet with his former hatred of Jesus still in the ascendant, he started for Damascus with the commission from the Jewish priests. His journey gave him ample time for meditation. The image of the murdered Stephen, and the work of persecution on which he was about to enter, produced in him a feeling of deep distraction. As he approached Damascus, a natural phenomenon, such as a thunderstorm and a flash of lightning, occurred. Paul, already in a state approaching frenzy, fell to the earth in terror. His excited imagination created the image of Jesus himself, and made him fancy that he heard his voice saying, "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me," the voice which he heard being nothing but the echo of his own thoroughly aroused conscience. Further meditation led him to join the Christian Church,