The Proofs of Christ's Resurrection; from a Lawyer's Standpoint

by Charles R. Morrison

’Twas greater to redeem.”

Christ’s resurrection being established, the darkness over the land, the rending of the veil, the coming[13] out of the tombs, the ministry of the angels in the garden before his betrayal, and at the sepulchre, the earthquake, the rolling away of the stone, and the fear that came upon the watchers, were fitting accompaniments of the transactions which they surrounded.

Nor, if some of them are not mentioned by other historians, are they overthrown, for omission is not contradiction, in history any more than in courts. Why should Josephus, who was not born till some years after the crucifixion, and not a Christian, be expected to mention them? And as to Greek and Roman writers, even Renan[14] says that “it is not surprising that they paid little attention to a movement which was going on within a narrow space foreign to them. Christianity was lost to their vision upon the dark background of Judaism.”

And so his being seen by Stephen the first martyr, by John in the Apocalypse, and by Paul on the way to Damascus, are in harmony with the record of his resurrection and ascension, and may be said to confirm them.

Yet it may be questioned if Paul would have been so absolutely certain that Jesus (against whose followers he was breathing out threatening and slaughter) said to him, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” but for the previous appearances. If he would, he does not rest the case upon the one to himself. He gives the others first, and then adds, “And last of all ... to me also.” While there is a mutual support, the most solid basis for our belief is, in the incontrovertible and tangible appearances which preceded Paul’s conversion; and when John would declare the certainty of their faith, he says, “That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our eyes, that which we have beheld, and our hands handled.” (1 John i. 1).

And viewing the indubitable proofs of his resurrection, in their relation to the prophecies concerning him, the necessity for his advent, his predictions concerning himself, his character and works and teachings from his incarnation to his ascension, the lives and deaths of his Apostles, the wonderful enlargement of his little church, when the Apostles “with great power gave their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,” and its equally wonderful continuance, extension, moral influence, inspirations and hopes, they rise to the sublimity of moral certainty.

These things cannot rationally be accounted for unless there is a God, and if there is a God, as all courts of justice everywhere assume, and universal conscience declares, to refuse assent to the conclusion to which they necessarily lead,—the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,—cannot be the exercise of right reason.

Least of all should lawyers, accustomed to weigh evidence, refuse to believe upon the testimony of others. As Gibson, the great chief justice of Pennsylvania, said: “Give Christianity a common law trial; submit the evidence pro and con to an impartial jury under the direction of a competent court, and the verdict will assuredly be in its favor.”

We have not the witnesses before us; but it is every day’s practice to prove historical facts by any approved and general history, and such are our Gospels and Epistles; and they are confirmed by sacraments and institutions that continue to our times, and will continue to the end of the world.

Nor does the sufficiency of the proofs depend upon any question of the precise extent of the genuineness of the Gospels, or their exact agreement. Men accustomed to weigh evidence know that it is enough if the substance of the issue is proved, and that a literal agreement is never to be expected in honest witnesses. In all the great facts of the Resurrection, the Gospels and the Epistles concur. This has been found satisfactory to such standard authors in the legal profession as Blackstone and Kent and Story, such masters of the rules of evidence as Starkie and Greenleaf, and such giants as Lord Brougham, John Marshall, Theophilus Parsons, Jeremiah Mason and Daniel Webster, and many others both of the dead and the living, and no historical event rests on a firmer basis.