The Supernatural in the New Testament, Possible, Credible, and Historical / Or, An Examination of the Validity of Some Recent Objections Against Christianity as a Divine Revelation

by C. A. Row

But the Church did not perish; it set itself to the work of reconstruction. It expanded and grew. Within the space of eight years after the Crucifixion, the believers in the Resurrection could be numbered by thousands. This is an indisputable fact. Again it expanded and grew, and it never ceased to grow until in less than three hundred years after the public execution of its Founder by the authority of the Roman government, one of its professed adherents mounted the imperial throne, and found its strength sufficient to enable him to make it one of the institutions of the State. These facts are without a parallel in history. How are they to be accounted for? The followers of Jesus affirmed that their Master rose from the dead; and that He thus resumed His place as the Messiah of His Church. Unbelievers, in the face of the evidence before us, cannot deny that the great body of His followers must have believed that He had done so within the short interval of a few months after His public execution. Our documents on this point are distinct and definite. They affirm that He was not only seen but handled by many of His disciples after His Resurrection, that He ate with them, and that they had interviews with Him individually and collectively. I must now examine the alternative positions; and first, that His supposed appearances were delusions of the imagination.

The loose and general affirmation has been made that the followers of Jesus were so enthusiastically attached to Him that the idea of His death was simply unbearable, and that they attempted to get rid of the fact by supposing that He had risen from the dead.

I reply first: that all such general statements are worthless. We have specific facts before us; and these can only be accounted for by facts which are equally definite, and not mere fancies. The assertion before me is not only a bare supposition without one atom of evidence to rest upon, but it contradicts all the known facts of the case. So far is it from having been the case that the disciples were in such a state of enthusiastic exultation, that our own documents inform us that they had fallen into the lowest state of despondency.

But further: when a theory is propounded to account for an historical fact, the possibility of the supposition must be supported by some analogous cases in the history of man, more or less resembling it. All theories which are devoid of this support are worthless as history. Let those, therefore, who would urge this on our acceptance as an account of the origin of the greatest event in history, show that something like it has occurred in the records of the past. Let them show us one instance of a body of men whose enthusiasm for their leader was so great that, when he had been put to death by the authority of the government of the country, they got over this by fancying that he had been raised from the dead, and then took to persuading others of its truth. The enthusiasm of followers for their leaders has urged them to form plots, and even to make attempts to rescue them from the hands of their enemies. Such enthusiasm, however, is not even hinted at in the case of the disciples of Christ. No whisper of tradition has reached us that any of them formed a plot, or made a solitary attempt to rescue their Master. Are we then to believe that they imagined a resurrection to repair the damage of His Crucifixion? Such imaginative conceits would never have made a single convert to their story. They left [pg 455] their Master to perish in His agony, and when He had expired under the hands of His executioners, restored Him to an ideal life by imagining that He was risen from the dead. Such fictions may be safely dismissed without further notice.

Secondly: Let us suppose that some one of His disciples thought that he actually saw Him, and in the height of his enthusiasm converted a fancy into a fact; and persuaded the other disciples that He was risen from the dead: that these too, in turn, were wrought up into so high a state of enthusiasm that they likewise fancied that they saw Him: thus the delusion spread. I reply:—

First: As I have already observed, we are entitled to demand that some analogous case should be adduced before we can be rationally asked to accept such theories as to the solution of an unquestionable historical fact. Surely, if such are the workings of human nature under influences so general as enthusiasm and credulity, some similar occurrence must be no uncommon event in history. Let one therefore be adduced.

Secondly: Nothing is easier to affirm than that some credulous and enthusiastic follower of Jesus mistook a fancy of his imagination for a fact, thought that he had seen Him alive, and communicated his enthusiasm to the rest. Whatever may be said as to the possibility in fits of enthusiasm of a few half-crazy fanatics mistaking fancies for facts, it is clear that to communicate this enthusiasm to others is a very difficult undertaking, especially when they are in a depressed state of mind. As I have already shown, it is in the highest degree difficult, if not impossible, to persuade even very credulous persons of the occurrence of an actual resurrection, as all history and fiction prior to the Advent testify. A case of a person who professed to [pg 456] have seen, touched, conversed, and eaten with one who was raised from the dead is not on record. The belief in ghost stories and apparitions of the departed is to be met with at every turn. Sorcery professed to be able to bring departed spirits from the under-world, but it never attempted to restore to life a body which once was dead.

Between these two classes of facts the distinction is most important. The enthusiasm or credulity which easily creates the one belief, refuses to accept the other. What we have to account for in this case is, not that some imaginative follower thought that he had seen the spirit of the crucified Jesus, come from the under-world to make a communication to his followers, and that the other disciples credulously accepted the report: but that the appearance was that of his body restored to the functions of animal life—in one word, a Resurrection, able to repair the damage which had been occasioned by his Crucifixion.

But for the purpose of arguing the question we must suppose that some one of the enthusiastic followers of Jesus fancied that he saw Him after His death, and mistook that fancy for a fact. I own that it is very difficult even to assume the existence of enthusiasm in the present instance, because all the known facts as well as the conditions of the case prove that whatever enthusiasm had once existed, it was at a very low ebb on the morning of the supposed Resurrection. Still, however, the assumption must be made, or argument will be impossible. As one enthusiast will be as good as another, let us assume that our supposed enthusiast was Mary Magdalene, who went early to the sepulchre, found the stone gone, saw the gardener in the dim light, mistook him for Jesus, and went and told her friends that she had seen Him risen from the dead: or [pg 457] to put the case more simply, that her excited brain created some spectral illusion; and that under its influence she thought she saw Him, and proceeded to convey the report to her friends.

It at once strikes us as most unaccountable that, enthusiastic as she must have been, she did not do something to assure herself of the reality of the bodily presence of her Master. It was hard even for an enthusiast to believe that it was He. If she had spoken, and it was the gardener, she would have been at once cured of her delusion. If she had attempted to embrace Him and it had been a phantom, the same result would have followed. Surely the intensity of her love, however credulous or fanatical she might be, would not have allowed her to leave the spot without some suitable demonstration. Equally incredible is it that she should have left Him, without inquiring whither He intended to betake Himself, or obtaining the promise of some future meeting at which His disconcerted friends might see Him. However enthusiastic she may have been, it is simply untrue to human nature, that she should have thought that her much loved Master had appeared to her in bodily reality, and that she should neither have spoken to Him, touched Him, nor endeavoured to ascertain the place of His proposed retreat, nor what His intentions were about the future. If she had done any of these things, it would have dissipated her delusions.