No doubt you would be much more impressed if the tangible body of some dead friend of yours, after being buried in the earth, had appeared to certain witnesses and touched them, and eaten in their company, than if a vivid apparition of the friend had appeared to the same witnesses; but I think you would much more easily believe the latter than the former; and you might be more impressed by a strong conviction of the latter than by a doubtful, timid, clinging to the former. I can hardly think that if you had received several accounts from independent witnesses, of apparitions of this kind resulting in a marvellous change of character in all who had seen them, you would at once put them aside simply because they might be called in some sense natural. The very fact of their being natural would lead you to consider how strange must have been the causes that had produced such strange results; how powerful must have been the personality that had thus forced itself on the mental retina of the seers of the apparition; and if something important had followed from such a vision, say, for example, the writing of a great poem, or the foundation of a noble empire, I cannot think that you would set down the vision as a negligible trifle.
But you feel, I dare say, that, though you might be impressed by the stories of such an apparition, you could not feel certain that the apparition represented any reality; there would be no definite proof that the witnesses of the apparition were not under the influence of a delusion. Well, I will admit that there would be no proof of the ordinary kind, that is to say, no proof such as is conveyed through the senses about ordinary terrestrial phenomena; but I think you might feel certain; only it would be that kind of certainty which is largely bred from Faith and Hope. And this sort of certainty, and no other, appears to me that which was intended to be produced by the Resurrection of Christ. His manifestations were unseen and unheard save by the eye and ear of Faith. If the proof of His resurrection had not depended upon Faith, then the Roman soldiers would have seen His material body miraculously issuing from the shattered sepulchre, and the companions of Saul would have both seen Christ and understood the voice that cried, “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” If we could ascertain exactly the historical basis for the account in the Fourth Gospel of Christ’s manifestation to the doubting Thomas we should probably find—supposing that we were really justified in treating the account as historical—that there was in Thomas a strong desire to believe, combined with a strong sense of the impossibility of attaining adequate proof. As in the life of Christ, so in the resurrection of Christ, conviction appears never to have been forced on any entirely unwilling unbeliever.
In order to believe in the resurrection of Christ, it is not enough to be convinced that the evidence is honest and genuine, and that the witnesses could not be deceived; that kind of belief savours of the law-court, and there is nothing spiritual in it; but the man who truly and spiritually accepts Christ’s resurrection is he who says to himself as he reviews the life of Christ and the history of the Church: “Being what He was, and having done the work that He has done, this Jesus of Nazareth ought not to have succumbed to death. If there is any evidence to shew that the veil of the invisible has been so far thrown back, be it for a moment, as to shew me Jesus in the spiritual world still living and triumphant over death, my conscience opens its arms at once to embrace that belief.” And there is this advantage in basing your faith on the spiritual resurrection of Jesus, that you keep the region of faith distinct from the region of disputable testimony. If you rest your hopes on the material resurrection, that is a question of doubtful evidence. Your heart says, “Oh that it might be true!” Your brain says, “I cannot honestly say that I think it is true.” Hence a constant conflict between heart and brain, while you are forced again and again to ask yourself, “Must I be dishonest in order that I may persuade myself that I am happy? And even if I can honestly believe in the material resurrection to-day, how do I know that some new evidence—the discovery of some new Gospel for example—may not overturn my belief to-morrow?”
But the life and doctrine of Christ, the conversion and letters of St. Paul, the growth and victories of the Church, and the present power of Christ’s Spirit are facts that can never be overthrown; and if you say, “On the basis of these indisputable facts, considered as a part of the evolution and training of mankind I rest my hope and my faith that Jesus has conquered death and still lives and works among us and for us”—why then you rest on a basis that cannot be shaken. And surely such a faith is more strong, more spiritual, more comforting, yes, and more certain too, than a “knowledge” which you know in your own heart to be no knowledge! How long will mankind be content to be ignorant that the HALF which constitutes truth is worth more than the WHOLE which is made up of truth and truth’s integumentary illusion! How many there are to whom the saying of old Hesiod is still unmeaning:
Alas thou know’st not, silly soul,
How much the half exceeds the whole!
You cannot obtain, and must not expect to obtain, any demonstrative proof of the Resurrection of Christ, any more than you can obtain a demonstrative proof of the existence of a God: yet you can feel as strong and as sincere a conviction of the former fact as of the latter.
It is curious that St. Paul’s parallel between the Resurrection of Christ and that of men should be so habitually overlooked. He assumes, as a matter of course, a similarity, almost an identity, between the Resurrection of men and the Resurrection of Christ: “If there is no resurrection of the dead neither hath Christ been raised,” and again: “Now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep.” This reasoning holds excellently, if the Resurrection is to be the same for us as it was for our Saviour, a spiritual Resurrection, and if the Resurrection of Christ visibly revealed the universal law which shall apply to all who are animated by the Spirit of God. But if Christ’s Resurrection was of a quite different kind, if it was a bodily stepping out of the tomb three days after burial, how can this be called the “first fruits” of the Resurrection of men whose bodies will all decay and for whom therefore no such stepping out from the tomb can ever be anticipated? The best, the truest, the most comforting belief in the end will be found to be that Jesus was “put to death in the flesh but quickened (not in the flesh but) in the spirit.” And as it was with Him, so we believe it will be with us.
But perhaps you will remind me that one of the Creeds mentions “the Resurrection of the body,” and that St. Paul anticipates the Resurrection, not of a “spirit,” but of “a spiritual body;” and you may ask me what I infer from this. I for my part infer that St. Paul desired to guard against the notion that the dead lose their identity and are merged in God or in some other essence; he wished to convey to his hearers that they would still retain their individuality, the power of loving and of being loved; possibly also he wished to suggest a life of continued activity in the service of God; and in order to express this he used such language (metaphorical of course) as would unmistakeably imply that identity would be preserved, and activity would be possible. But he took care to guard his language against materialistic misinterpretation by insisting that the body would be “spiritual” and therefore invisible to the earthly eye and cognizable only by the spirit. The new body, he says, is “a building from God,” “a house not made with hands, eternal;” and he prefaces this by saying “the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” Hereby he clearly implies that the new body will be “not seen.” Elsewhere he tells us that “the things prepared by God” for them that love Him (and of course he includes in these the “building from God, the house not made with hands”) are such as eye “hath not seen nor ear heard, nor have they entered into the heart of man; but God hath revealed them unto us by the Spirit;” and again, “the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of God,” which has been imparted to the faithful.
To speak honestly, I must add that, even if I found St. Paul had committed himself repeatedly to any theory of a material or semi-material Resurrection, consonant with the feelings of his times, I should not have felt bound to place a belief in a materialistic detail of this kind upon the same high and authoritative level as the belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, or any other general and spiritual article of faith. But I find no such materialism in St. Paul. He appears to me to say consistently, 1st, that Christ’s Resurrection was a type of (“the first fruits of”) the Resurrection of mankind; 2nd, that in contrast to the first man Adam, the earthy, who became a living soul, the last Adam, the heavenly, became a “life-giving spirit;” 3rd, that, as we have borne the image of the earthy, so we shall also bear the image of the heavenly; 4th, that the “body” of the faithful after death will be “spiritual,” just as the Church of God is “a spiritual house,” and the sacrifices of the saints are “spiritual sacrifices.” There is no more ground for thinking that St. Paul supposed that we should hereafter have spiritual hands, or be spiritual bipeds, than for thinking that he supposed the sacrifices of the Church to be spiritual sheep, or the temple of the Church to be composed of celestial stones. After our Resurrection, we are still to be conscious of God’s past love, still to rejoice in His present and never-ending love, still to be capable of glorifying and serving God, of loving as well as of being loved—this St. Paul’s theory of the “spiritual body” certainly implies; and it need not imply more. And what our Resurrection will be, that Christ’s Resurrection was.