Not only do the prophecies point to his resurrection, but as already[9] shown, Jesus himself foretold it as well as the manner and circumstances of his death; and it is more rational to accept it, than to believe that such an One as is portrayed in the Gospels was either false or mistaken. “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” has found none to accept the challenge in eighteen hundred years! On the contrary, as Dr. Taylor has said,[10] “Before the portraiture which the Evangelists have painted, men of every age have stood in rooted admiration.” And as J. S. Mill concedes,[11] “It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical: for none of his disciples or their proselytes were capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to him, or imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels.”
His resurrection was a moral necessity from his own character as delineated in the Gospels, even our enemies themselves being judges. His could not have been “the richest of human lives,” as declared by Hooykaas,[12] nor his utterances “the most beautiful moral teaching that humanity has received,” as avowed by Renan, if his power to lay down his life and “to take it again” were at the best a mere delusion.
His predictions of his death and resurrection, as we have before shown, are so interwoven with the entire narrative, that it is impossible to set them aside and leave anything to which we can assent as true, of all his recorded acts and words; and there is no alternative except to believe that he uttered them, or else to arbitrarily set aside the testimony of the four Evangelists, as well as that of Paul.
That the Christ of the Gospels should rise from the dead, as he said, is in the highest degree probable. Only by his resurrection could he vindicate himself from the charge of blasphemy. Without it, the cross was a gibbet, a monument of folly if not of crime. Without it, the sacrament which he instituted on the eve of his crucifixion, keeps in perpetual remembrance the falsity of his pretensions, his impotency to save himself from his enemies. Without it, the taunt of those who mocked him, “He saved others, himself he cannot save,” was merited. Without it, while one might pity him for his sufferings, we should the more sympathize with the Sanhedrim in protecting the people from a visionary enthusiast, if not a wilful impostor, and inflicting (although by irregular methods) the penalty for blasphemy expressly commanded by the Mosaic Law.
It cannot be too strongly stated that there is no middle ground. If he was what he claimed, his resurrection was already assured. If he was not what he claimed, he could not have been the exalted character eulogized by those who deny his resurrection, and before which the world bows in reverence.
If he was what he claimed, we can see a grand and all-sufficient reason why God (if there be a God) should by miracle give the highest possible authentication to his mission.
He said, “I am the light of the world;” and the world was in darkness. He said that he came forth from God, and he ought to show his credentials. He said he was the Son of God, and that he always did those things that pleased Him; which he could not do, if he set up claims destitute of foundation. He said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth, may have in him eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”
The great central truths which he declared in all his teachings, were the fact of sin, the need of a Saviour, and that he is a Saviour.
If sin, as all experience testifies, is universal, always downward, and its end when finished death, the redemption of multitudes[B] of the human race from its power to holiness, and bliss, and endless progress, as “heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ,” was an object worthy of divine interposition, and only an atheist should look upon such a miracle of redemption as impossible or improbable.
“’Twas great to speak a world from naught,