[3]. Renan, The Apostles, p. 37.
[4]. The Nineteenth Century, March, 1889.
[5]. The Nineteenth Century, June, 1889. Professor Huxley's papers quoted here will also be found in Agnosticism and Christianity, pp. 84, et seq. and 96 et seq.
[6]. Renan closes his treatise upon this subject as follows: "The glory of the resurrection, then, belongs to Mary of Magdala. After Jesus it is Mary who had done most of the foundation of Christianity. The shadow created by the delicate sensibility of Magdalene wanders still on the earth. Queen and patroness of idealists, Magdalene knew better than any one how to assert her dream, and impose on every one the vision of her passionate soul. Her great womanly vision: 'He has risen,' has been the basis of the faith of humanity. Away, impotent reason! Apply no cold analysis to this chef d'oeuvre of idealism and of love. If wisdom refuses to console this poor human race, betrayed by fate, let folly attempt the enterprise. Where is the sage who has given to the world as much joy as the possessed Mary of Magdala?"—The Apostles, p. 61.
[7]. Renan. He thus tells the story of the appearing of Jesus to the five hundred brethren at once: "More than five hundred persons were already devoted to the memory of Jesus. In the absence of the lost Master, they obeyed the chief of the disciples, and above all, Peter. One day when following their spiritual chiefs, the Galileans had climbed one of the mountains to which Jesus had often led them, they fancied they saw him again. The air on these mountain tops is full of strange mirages. The same illusion which had previously taken place in behalf of the more intimate of the apostles [he refers to the transfiguration, Matt. 17] was produced again. The whole assembly imagined that they saw the divine spectre displayed in the clouds; they fell upon their faces and worshiped." The Apostles, p. 76.
[8]. Renan. This is his "rational" (!) conception of the event: "One day when they were assembled together a thunder storm arose. A violent wind burst the windows open—the sky seemed on fire. Thunder storms in those countries are accompanied by wonderful illuminations; the atmosphere is furrowed, as it were, on every side with garbs of flame. Whether the electric fluid had penetrated into the very chamber itself or whether a dazzling flash of lightning had suddenly illuminated all their faces, they were convinced that the spirit had entered, and that he was poured out upon the head of each one of them under the form of tongues of fire." The Apostles, p. 95.
[9]. Renan, The Apostles, p. 98 et seq.
[10]. Thus Alexander Campbell in Millennial Harbinger, vol. II, (1831) pp. 86-96. Also Howe's Mormonism (1834). He thinks the Witnesses incompetent, "Nor will any one disagree with us, when we shall have proven that the Book of Mormon was a joint speculation between the 'Author and Proprietor.' [Joseph Smith is alluded to] and the Witnesses," ch. 7.
[11]. Mormonism and the Mormons, by Daniel P. Kidder, pp. 54, 55.
[12]. Prophet of the Nineteenth Century, p. 46.