M. Renan's method is—whilst of course not believing them, yet not supposing conscious fraud—to treat these records as the description of natural, unsought visions on the part of people who meant no harm, but who believed what they wished to believe. They are the story of a great mistake, but a mistake proceeding simply, in the most natural way in the world, from excess of "idealism" and attachment. Unaffected by the circumstance that there never were narratives less ideal, and more straightforwardly real—that they seem purposely framed to be a contrast to professed accounts of visions, and to exclude the possibility of their being confounded with such accounts; and that the alleged numbers who saw, the alleged frequency and repetition and variation of the instances, and the alleged time over which the appearances extended, and after which they absolutely ceased, make the hypothesis of involuntary and undesigned allusions of regret and passion infinitely different from what it might be in the case of one or two persons, or for a transitory period of excitement and crisis—unaffected by such considerations, M. Renan proceeds to tell, in his own way, the story of what he supposes to have occurred, without, of course, admitting the smallest real foundation for what was so positively asserted, but with very little reproach or discredit to the ardent and undoubting assertors. He begins with a statement which is meant to save the character of the Teacher. "Jesus, though he spoke unceasingly of resurrection, of new life, had never said quite clearly that he should rise again in the flesh." He says this with the texts before him, for he quotes them and classifies them in a note. But this is his point of departure, laid down without qualification. Yet if there is anything which the existing records do say distinctly, it is that Jesus Christ said over and over again that He should rise again, and that He fixed the time within which He should rise. M. Renan is not bound to believe them. But he must take them as he finds them; and on this capital point either we know nothing at all, and have no evidence to go upon, or the evidence is simply inverted by M. Renan's assertion. There may, of course, be reasons for believing one part of a man's evidence and disbelieving another; but there is nothing in this case but incompatibility with a theory to make this part of the evidence either more or less worthy of credit than any other part. What is certain is that it is in the last degree weak and uncritical to lay down, as the foundation and first pre-requisite of an historical view, a position which the records on which the view professes to be based emphatically and unambiguously contradict. Whatever we may think of it, the evidence undoubtedly is, if evidence there is at all, that Jesus Christ did say, though He could not get His disciples at the time to understand and believe Him, that He should rise again on the third day. What M. Renan had to do, if he thought the contrary, was not to assume, but to prove, that in these repeated instances in which they report His announcements, the Evangelists mistook or misquoted the words of their Master.
He accepts, however, their statement that no one at first hoped that the words would be made good; and he proceeds to account for the extraordinary belief which, in spite of this original incredulity, grew up, and changed the course of things and the face of the world. We admire and respect many things in M. Renan; but it seems to us that his treatment of this matter is simply the ne plus ultra of the degradation of the greatest of issues by the application to it of sentiment unworthy of a silly novel. In the first place, he lays down on general grounds that, though the disciples had confessedly given up all hope, it yet was natural that they should expect to see their master alive again. "Mais I'enthousiasme et l'amour ne connaissent pas les situations sans issue." Do they not? Are death and separation such light things to triumph over that imagination finds it easy to cheat them? "Ils se jouent de l'impossible et, plutôt que d'abdiquer l'espérance, ils font violence à toute réalité." Is this an account of the world of fact or the world of romance? The disciples did not hope; but, says M. Renan, vague words about the future had dropped from their master, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that they would soon see him back. In vain it is said that in fact they did not expect it. "Une telle croyance était d'ailleurs si naturelle, que la foi des disciples aurait suffi pour la créer de toutes pièces." Was it indeed—in spite of Enoch and Elias, cases of an entirely different kind—so natural to think that the ruined leader of a crushed cause, whose hopeless followers had seen the last of him amid the lowest miseries of torment and scorn, should burst the grave?
Il devait arriver [he proceeds] pour Jésus ce qui arrive pour tous les hommes qui ont captivé l'attention de leurs semblables. Le monde, habitué a leur attribuer des vertus surhumaines, ne peut admettre qu'ils aient subi la loi injuste, révoltante, inique, du trépas commun…. La mort est chose si absurde quand elle frappe l'homme de génie ou l'homme d'un grand coeur, que le peuple ne croit pas à la possibilité d'une telle erreur de la nature. Les héros ne meurent pas.
The history of the world presents a large range of instances to test the singular assertion that death is so "absurd" that "the people" cannot believe that great and good men literally die. But would it be easy to match the strangeness of a philosopher and a man of genius gravely writing this down as a reason—not why, at the interval of centuries, a delusion should grow up—but why, on the very morrow of a crucifixion and burial, the disciples should have believed that all the dreadful work they had seen a day or two before was in very fact and reality reversed? We confess we do not know what human experience is if it countenances such a supposition as this.
From this antecedent probability he proceeds to the facts. "The Sabbath day which followed the burial was occupied with these thoughts…. Never was the rest of the Sabbath so fruitful." They all, the women especially, thought of him all day long in his bed of spices, watched over by angels; and the assurance grew that the wicked men who had killed him would not have their triumph, that he would not be left to decay, that he would be wafted on high to that Kingdom of the Father of which he had spoken. "Nous le verrons encore; nous entendrons sa voix charmante; c'est en vain qu'ils l'auront tué." And as, with the Jews, a future life implied a resurrection of the body, the shape which their hope took was settled. "Reconnaître que la mort pouvait être victorieuse de Jésus, de celui qui venait de supprimer son empire, c'était le comble de l'absurdité." It is, we suppose, irrelevant to remark that we find not the faintest trace of this sense of absurdity. The disciples, he says, had no choice between hopelessness and "an heroic affirmation"; and he makes the bold surmise that "un homme pénétrant aurait pu annoncer dès le samedi que Jésus revivrait." This may be history, or philosophy, or criticism; what it is not is the inference naturally arising from the only records we have of the time spoken of. But the force of historical imagination dispenses with the necessity of extrinsic support. "La petite société chrétienne, ce jour-là, opéra le véritable miracle: elle ressuscita Jésus en son coeur par l'amour intense qu'elle lui porta. Elle décida que Jésus ne mourrait pas." The Christian Church has done many remarkable things; but it never did anything so strange, or which so showed its power, as when it took that resolution.
How was the decision, involuntary and unconscious, and guiltless of intentional deception, if we can conceive of such an attitude of mind, carried out? M. Renan might leave the matter in obscurity. But he sees his way, in spite of incoherent traditions and the contradictions which they present, to a "sufficient degree of probability." The belief in the Resurrection originated in an hallucination of the disordered fancy of Mary Magdalen, whose mind was thrown off its balance by her affection and sorrow; and, once suggested, the idea rapidly spread, and produced, through the Christian society, a series of corresponding visions, firmly believed to be real. But Mary Magdalen was the founder of it all:—
Elle eut, en ce moment solennel, une part d'action tout à fait hors ligne. C'est elle qu'il faut suivre pas à pas; car elle porta, ce jour-là, pendant une heure, tout le travail de la conscience chrétienne; son témoignage décida la foi de l'avenir…. La vision légère s'écarte et lui dit: "Ne me touche pas!" Peu a peu l'ombre disparait. Mais le miracle de l'amour est accompli. Ce que Céphas n'a pu faire, Marie l'a faite; elle a su tirer la vie, la parole douce et pénétrante, du tombeau vide. Il ne s'agit plus de conséquences à déduire ni de conjectures à former. Marie a vu et entendu. La résurrection a son premier témoin immédiat.
He proceeds to criticise the accounts which ascribe the first vision to others; but in reality Mary Magdalen, he says, has done most, after the great Teacher, for the foundation of Christianity. "Queen and patroness of idealists," she was able to "impose upon all the sacred vision of her impassioned soul." All rests upon her first burst of entbusiasm, which gave the signal and kindled the faith of others. "Sa grande affirmation de femme, 'il est ressuscité,' a été la base de la foi de l'humanité":—
Paul ne parle pas de la vision de Marie et reporte tout l'honneur de la première apparition sur Pierre. Mais cette expression est très~inexacte. Pierre ne vit que le caveau vide, le suaire et le linceul. Marie seule aima assez pour dépasser la nature et faire revivre le fantome du maitre exquis. Dans ces sortes de crises merveilleuses, voir après les autres n'est rien; tout le mérite est de voir pour la première fois; car les autres modèlent ensuite leur vision sur le type reçu. C'est le propre des belles organisations de concevoir l'image promptement, avec justesse et par une sorte de sens intime du dessin. La gloire de la résurrection appartient donc à Marie de Magdala. Après Jésus, c'est Marie qui a le plus fait pour la fondation du Christianisme. L'ombre créée par les sens délicats de Madeleine plane encore sur le monde…. Loin d'ici, raison impuissante! Ne va pas appliquer une froide analyse à ce chef-d'oeuvre de l'idéalisme et de l'amour. Si la sagesse renonce à consoler cette pauvre race humaine, trahie par le sort, laisse la folie tenter l'aventure. Où est le sage qui a donné au monde autant de joie, que la possédée Marie de Magdala?
He proceeds to describe, on the same supposition, the other events of the day, which he accepts as having in a certain very important sense happened, though, of course, only in the sense which excludes their reality. No doubt, for a series of hallucinations, anything will do in the way of explanation. The scene of the evening was really believed to have taken place as described, though it was the mere product of chance noises and breaths of air on minds intently expectant; and we are bidden to remember "that in these decisive hours a current of wind, a creaking window, an accidental rustle, settle the belief of nations for centuries." But at any rate it was a decisive hour:—