CHAPTER IV.

THE

CREDENTIALS OF CHRISTIANITY-THE

RESURRECTION OF

CHRIST.

THE

HE crowning miracle of Christianity is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. On this great fact the Apostles ever rested the proof of their Master's claims. Peter and the other Apostles announced it, a few weeks after its occurrence, to the people of Jerusalem generally, and boldly affirmed it in the presence of the Sanhedrim, when summoned to appear before them. Addressing the crowds who gathered around him and the Apostle John, after the healing of the lame man who had so long sat asking for alms at the Beautiful' gate of the temple, Peter said, 'Ye men of Israel, why marvel ye at this man? or why fasten ye your eyes on us, as though by our own power or godliness we had made him to walk? The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified His Servant Jesus; whom ye delivered up, and denied before the face of Pilate, when he had determined to release Him. But ye denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the Prince of Life; Whom God raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses. And by faith in His name hath His name made this man strong, whom ye behold and know' (Acts iii. 12—16). To the Sanhedrim he declared, 'Ye rulers of the people, and elders, if we this day are examined concerning a good deed done to an impotent man, by what means this man is made whole; be it known unto you all, and to all the people of Israel, that in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye

crucified, whom God raised from the dead, even in Him doth this man stand here before you whole' (Acts iv. 8-10). So, likewise, the Apostle Paul, addressing the Athenians, appealed to this fact as conclusively attesting our Lord's present exaltation, and His appointment by the Father to exercise the final judgment. 'God now commandeth men that they should all everywhere repent; inasmuch as He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead (Acts xvii. 30, 31).

To appreciate this testimony to the claims of the Lord Jesus, it is necessary to bear in mind that He Himself, in the course of His public ministry, repeatedly foretold His own death and resurrection. From the very first, He referred to these events, and spoke of His resurrection as that which should vindicate all His pretensions. He did so in His first visit to Jerusalem as a religious Teacher. When appealed to by the Jews, 'What sign showest Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things?' He replied, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up' (John ii. 18, 19). In His intercourse with His Apostles He often spoke of these coming events, unwilling as they were to think of the death of One whom they so revered and loved, and especially to think of His enduring the ignominious and torturing death of the cross. He dwelt on this topic again and again, and declared that on the third day He should rise again. So well was it known that He had uttered this prediction, that after the chief priests and Pharisees had accomplished their guilty purpose, and our Lord's lifeless body was deposited in Joseph's tomb, they went to Pilate and said, 'Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest haply His disciples come and steal Him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: and the last error will be worse than the first' (Matt. xxvii. 63, 64).

Again, it is necessary to remember the special bearing of our Lord's resurrection on His loftiest claim,-even to be the Son of God, in a sense altogether peculiar and unique. It was on the ground of this claim that the Sanhedrim condemned Him to death as a blasphemer; and although, for some time, they rested their application to Pilate for His death on other pleas, they were obliged, at last, to disclose the real ground on which they had passed judgment upon Him. We have a law,' they said, and by that law He ought to die, because He made Himself the Son of God' (John xix. 7). This, then, was the great point at issue; and as we contemplate the Lord Jesus, after His death of shame and agony, coming forth from the sepulchre, no longer the Man of sorrows, we boldly affirm with St. Paul, that He was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection of the dead' (Rom. i. 4).

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The evidence on which the Apostles relied as attesting the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was ample and conclusive. The very fact that His body was not securely kept in the sepulchre, guarded, as it was, by Roman soldiers, at the request of the chief priests, was itself an evidence of the resurrection. In no other way can it be satisfactorily accounted for. The supposition that His timid disciples, who had forsaken Him in the hour of danger, formed the scheme of removing His body will not bear examination for a moment. Had they done so, and endeavoured to carry that scheme into effect, they would have been apprehended by the Roman guard, or even have met death in the attempt. Besides, the one thought of those who loved the Saviour, after the awful scene of Calvary had closed, was to do honour to His sacred body. The feeling which actuated Joseph of Arimathæa and Nicodemus, and the devout Galilean women who hastened with spices to the tomb on the first day of the week, was doubtless shared by His sincere followers generally.

But the Apostles had the evidence also of repeated interviews with their risen Lord. They saw Him; they touched Him; they even sat with Him at table, and partook with Him of their

ordinary food. This was an evidence which could not be resisted; and it was most impressively set forth by St. Peter in his address to the company assembled in the house of Cornelius. After referring to the public ministry of the Lord Jesus, that He went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him,' he added, 'And we are witnesses of all things which He did both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem; whom they slew, hanging Him on a tree. Him God raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead' (Acts x. 39–41).

In connection with this evidence of the resurrection of our Lord, it is important to reflect that it is only this fact, combined with the other great event which marked the opening of the Christian dispensation, the coming of the Holy Ghost,which can account for the change in the Apostles of our Lord. Before His death and resurrection they were timid and almost powerless; and, though they sincerely loved Him, they had not entered fully into His great spiritual designs, and in the hour of peril, they 'forsook Him and fled.' But now they stood forth boldly to assert His claims in the face of obloquy and persecution. And they adhered to their testimony, and to the cause of their risen Lord, until, at length, they sealed their testimony with their blood. By only not bearing their witness and not affirming the claims of their Master, they might, for the most part, have lived in security and ease; but they voluntarily encountered privations, sufferings, and even death itself, rather than renounce their allegiance to Him.

But besides the twelve, who stood forth as the first witnesses of our Lord's resurrection, we have the testimony of another who was once the fiercest opponent of the name of Jesus, who haled to prison many who believed in Him, and even compelled some of them to blaspheme. Saul, the fiery persecutor, when on his way to Damascus, breathing out threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord Jesus,' was himself

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arrested by the Saviour's power, and heard from His lips the question, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?' That scene led, in his case, to an entire change of character; he became an Apostle of Him whose cause he had sought to overthrow; and henceforth he was ever ready to endure suffering, reproach, persecution, and death itself, for the sake of the Lord Jesus. And while he dwelt, especially in his reasonings with the Jews, on the fulfilment of prophecy in our Lord's Person and work, he ever made prominent the well-attested fact of His resurrection, as that on which His claims reposed as on a firm and immovable basis. Thus in writing to the Church at Corinth he says, ‘I delivered unto you, first of all, that which also I received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried; and that He hath been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures; and that He appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then He appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; then He appeared to James; then to all the Apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, He appeared to me also' (1 Cor. xv. 3-8).

The two allied facts of our Lord's death and resurrection are confirmed, as we have already intimated, by two of the institutions of Christianity, the Lord's Supper and the Lord's Day. To illustrate the bearing of these on the argument, we may take an analogous case in the history of the Jewish people. That people observed the passover. At a particular period of the year, they put away all leavened bread, and with very peculiar rites, all calculated to recall the passing of the destroying angel over the families of Israel, when the firstborn of Egypt fell victims to his power, and, in connection with this, the coming forth of their fathers from that land of bondage, they ate the paschal lamb. Now the observance of this institution by generation after generation attested the facts which it commemorated. Had an attempt been made to introduce it, some hundreds of years afterwards, to commemorate a supposed fact