Nearly a year passed over during which they lived this charmed life, suspended, as it were, between heaven and earth.[2.20] The charm, far from diminishing, increased. It is the peculiarity of grand and holy enterprises, that they always become grander and more pure of themselves. The feeling towards a beloved one whom we have lost is always more intense than on the day following his death. The more distant it is, the more intense does this feeling become. The sorrow which at first was part of it, and in a certain sense diminished it, is changed into a serene piety. The image of the departed one is transfigured, idealized, and becomes the soul of life, the principle of every action, the source of every joy, the oracle which we consult, the consolation which we seek in times of despondency. Death is a necessary condition of every apotheosis. Jesus, so beloved during His life, was even more so after His last breath; or rather His last breath became the commencement of His actual life in the bosom of His Church. He became the intimate friend, the confidant, the travelling companion, the one who, at the corner of the road, joins you and follows you, sits down to table with you, and reveals Himself as He vanishes out of your sight.[2.21] The absolute want of scientific exactitude in the minds of these new believers, was the reason why no question was ever propounded as to the nature of His existence. They represented Him as impassible, endowed with a subtle body, passing through open windows, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, but always alive. Sometimes they thought that His body was not a material body; that it was a pure shadow or apparition.[2.22] At other times they accorded to Him a material body with flesh and bones; with an unaffected minuteness, and as if the hallucination had wished to be on its guard against itself, they represented Him as drinking and eating; nay even as feeling.[2.23] Their ideas on this point were as vague and uncertain as the waves of the sea.
With difficulty have we thus far dreamed, in order to propose a trifling question, but one which admits not of easy solution. Whilst Jesus rose again in this real manner, that is to say in the hearts of those who loved Him; while the immovable conviction of the apostles was being formed and the faith of the world being prepared—in what place did the worms consume the lifeless corpse which, on the Saturday evening, had been deposited in the sepulchre? This detail will be always steadily ignored; for, naturally, the Christian traditions can give us no information on the subject. It is the spirit which quickeneth; the flesh is nothing.[2.24] The resurrection was the triumph of the idea concerning its reality. The idea once entered upon its immortality, what need of discussion about the body?
About the year 80 or 85, when the actual text of the first Gospel received its last additions, the Jews had already formed a fixed opinion in regard to it.[2.25] According to them, the disciples came by night and stole away the body. The consciences of the Christians were alarmed at this report, and, in order to put an end to such an objection at once, they invented the circumstances of the guard of soldiers and the seal affixed to the sepulchre.[2.26] This circumstance, related only in the first Gospel, and mixed up with legends of very doubtful authority,[2.27] is in no respect admissible.[2.28] But the explanation of the Jews, although unanswerable, is far from altogether satisfactory. We can scarcely admit that those who so bravely believed that Jesus had risen again, were the very ones who had carried off the body. However slight the accuracy with which these men reflected, we can hardly imagine so strange an illusion. It must be remembered that the little Church was at this moment completely dispersed. There was no organization, no centralization, and no open regularity of proceeding. The contradictory stories which have reached us respecting the incidents of the Sunday morning, prove that the reports were spread through different channels, and that there was no particular care on their part to harmonize them. It is possible that the body was taken away by some of the disciples, and by them carried into Galilee. The others, remaining at Jerusalem, would not have been cognizant of the fact. On the other hand, the disciples who carried the body into Galilee,[2.29] could not have, as yet, become acquainted with the stories which were invented at Jerusalem, so that the belief in the resurrection would have been propounded in their absence, and would have surprised them accordingly. They could not have protested; and had they done so, nothing would have been disarranged. When a question of miracles is concerned, a tardy correction is not the way to a denial.[2.30] Never did a material difficulty prevent the sentimental development and creation of the desired fictions.[2.31] In the history of the recent miracle of Salette, the imposture has been clearly demonstrated;[2.32] this does not damage the prosperity of the temple, nor the increase of belief in it. It is also permissible to suppose that the disappearance of the body was the work of the Jews. Perhaps they thought that in this way they would prevent the scenes of tumult which might be enacted over the corpse of a man so popular as Jesus. Perhaps they wished to prevent any noisy funeral ceremonies, or the erection of a monument to this just man. Lastly, who knows that the disappearance of the body was not effected by the proprietor of the garden or by the gardener?[2.33] This proprietor, as it would seem from such evidence as we possess,[2.34] was a stranger to the sect. They chose his cave because it was the nearest to Golgotha, and because they were pressed for time.[2.35] Perhaps he was dissatisfied with this mode of taking possession of his property, and caused the corpse to be removed. Of a truth, the details related by the fourth Gospel of the linen cloths left in the tomb, and of the napkin folded away carefully by itself in a corner,[2.36] scarcely agree with such a hypothesis as this. This last circumstance would lead to the conclusion that a female hand had slipped in there.[2.37] The five stories of the visit of the women to the tomb are so confused and so embarrassed, that we may well be permitted to suppose that they conceal some misconception. The female conscience, when under the influence of passionate love, is capable of the most extravagant illusions. Often is it the abettor of its own dreams.[2.38] To introduce these kinds of incidents regarded as miraculous, deliberately deceives no one; but all the world, without thinking of it, is induced to connive at them. Mary of Magdala had been, according to the parlance of the age, “possessed with seven devils.”[2.39] In all this we must consider the want of precision of eastern women, from their absolute defect of education and the particularly slight knowledge of their sincerity. The conviction of being exalted, renders any return to oneself impossible. When one sees the heaven everywhere, one is induced at times to put oneself in the place of heaven.
Let us draw a veil over these mysteries. In the circumstances of a religious crisis, everything being considered as divine, the very grandest effects can be produced from the very meanest causes. If we were witnesses of the strange facts which lie at the bottom of all works of faith, we should see therein circumstances which seem to us quite out of proportion to the importance of the results, and others at which we could but smile. Our old cathedrals are counted amongst the most beautiful things of the world; one can scarcely enter them without being in some sort inebriated with the infinite. But these splendid marvels are almost always the blossoming of some little deceit. And what does it matter definitively? The result alone counts in such a matter. Faith purifies all. The material incident which has produced the belief in the resurrection was not the veritable cause of the resurrection. It was love that made Jesus rise again; and this love was so powerful that a little risk was sufficient to build up the universal faith. If Jesus had been less loved, if the belief of the resurrection had had less reason for its establishment, these sorts of risks would have been incurred in vain; nothing would have come of it. A grain of sand causes the fall of a mountain, when the moment for the fall of the mountain has arrived. The grandest results are produced altogether from causes very grand and very insignificant. The grand results alone are real; the little ones only serve to hasten the production of an effect which has been a long time in a state of preparation.
CHAPTER III.
RETURN OF THE APOSTLES TO JERUSALEM.—END OF THE PERIOD OF APPARITIONS.
The apparitions, in the meanwhile, as is usually the case in all movements of too credulous enthusiasm, began to diminish. Popular chimeras are nearly allied to contagious diseases; quickly do they become stale and change their shape. The activity of these ardent souls was already turned in another direction. That which they believed they had heard from the lips of their beloved and resuscitated friend, was the command to go before him to preach and to convert the world. But where should they commence? Naturally at Jerusalem.[3.1] The return to Jerusalem was accordingly resolved upon by those who at this time directed the movements of the sect. As these journeys were ordinarily made in caravanseries at the periods of the feasts, we may suppose, with sufficient probability, that the return of which we are treating, took place at the feast of Tabernacles at the end of the year thirty-three or at the Paschal feast of the year thirty-four. Galilee was, accordingly, abandoned by Christianity, and abandoned for all time. The little church which remained there, doubtless, still existed; but we intend to speak no more of it. It was probably crushed, like all the rest, by the frightful catastrophe which overwhelmed the country during the war of Vespasian; the residue of the dispersed society took refuge, from that time, in Jerusalem. After the war, it was not Christianity which was replanted in Galilee; it was Judaism. In the second, third, and fourth centuries, Galilee was altogether a Jewish country, the centre of Judaism, the country of the Talmud.[3.2] Thus Galilee was considered as of no account whatsoever in the history of Christianity; but this was the sacred time of the church, par excellence; it conferred on the new religion its enduring qualities, its poetry, its penetrating charms. “The Gospel,” according to the theory of the synoptics, was a Galilean work. But we shall endeavor to show, further on, that “The Gospel,” thus understood, has been the principal cause of the success of Christianity, and continues to be the surest guarantee of its future history.
It is probable that a portion of the little school which surrounded Jesus during his last days had remained at Jerusalem at the time of their separation. The belief in the resurrection was already established. This belief became accordingly developed from two points of view, each having a perceptibly different aspect, and such, doubtless, is the reason for the completely different variations which are so remarkable in the stories of the apparitions. Two traditions—one Galilean, the other Jerusalemitish—were intended; according to the former, all the apparitions (except those of the earliest period) had occurred in Galilee; according to the latter, they had all taken place at Jerusalem.[3.3] The agreement of the two portions of the little church respecting the fundamental dogma, only served, as was natural, to confirm the common belief. They were united by the bonds of the same faith; again and again they said, “He is risen!” Perhaps the joy and enthusiasm which were the consequence of this harmony produced for them certain other visions. It is at about this period that we can place the “vision of James” mentioned by St. Paul.[3.4] James was the brother, or at least the kinsman, of Jesus. It is not clear that he accompanied Jesus during his last sojourn at Jerusalem, but he came there, probably, with the apostles, when they departed from Galilee. All the chief apostles had had their vision; it was hard that this “brother of the Lord” should not also have had his. It would appear that this vision was eucharistic—that is to say, one in which Jesus appeared taking and breaking the bread.[3.5] Later, those members of the Christian family who attached themselves to James, and who are called the Hebrews, referred that vision to the very day of the resurrection, and pretended that it had been the first of all.[3.6]
It is, indeed, very remarkable that the family of Jesus, certain members of which during his life had been unbelieving and opposed to his mission,[3.7] should now have become members of the Church and hold a position of eminence in it. We are compelled to suppose that the reconciliation took place during the sojourn of the apostles in Galilee. The renown with which the name of their kinsman had suddenly become invested—these five hundred persons who believed in him and were assured that they had seen him resuscitated—might have made an impression on their minds.[3.8] Since the definitive establishment of the apostles at Jerusalem, we see with them Mary, the mother of Jesus, and the brethren of Jesus.[3.9] As far as Mary is concerned, it appears that John, in the belief that he was thus obeying a recommendation of his Master, had adopted her and taken her into his own house.[3.10] He perhaps took her to Jerusalem. This woman, whose history and personal characteristics had been veiled in profound obscurity, became henceforth of great importance. The saying which the Evangelist puts into the mouth of some unknown woman: “Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked!” began to be verified. It is probable that Mary did not survive her son many years.[3.11]