Where else could He be?
For that He disappeared, and disappeared finally, within six weeks of the Crucifixion must be considered certain; there is no one who will be bold enough even to hazard a conjecture that the appearance of Christ alluded to by St. Paul, as having been vouchsafed to him some years later, was that of the living Christ, who had chosen upon this one occasion to depart from the seclusion and secrecy which he had maintained hitherto. But if Christ was still living on earth, how was it possible that no human being should have the smallest clue to His whereabouts? If He was dead how is it that no one should have produced the body? Such a mysterious and total disappearance, even in the face of great jeopardy, has never yet been known, and can only be satisfactorily explained by adopting the belief which has prevailed for nearly the last two thousand years, and which will prevail more and more triumphantly so long as the world shall last—the belief that Christ was restored to the glory which He had shared with the Father, as soon as ever He had given sufficient proofs of His being alive to ensure the devotion of His followers.
Before we can reject the supernatural solution of a mystery otherwise inexplicable, we should have some natural explanation which will meet the requirements of the case. A confession of ignorance is not enough here. We are not ignorant; we know that Christ died, inasmuch as we have the testimony of all the four Evangelists to this effect, the testimony of the Apostle Paul, and through him that of all the other Apostles; we have also the certainty that the centurion in charge of the soldiers at the Crucifixion would not have committed so grave a breach of discipline as the delivery of the body to Joseph and Nicodemus, unless he had felt quite sure that life was extinct; and finally we have the testimony of the Church for sixty generations, and that of myriads now living, whose experience assures them that Christ died and rose from the dead; in addition to this tremendous body of evidence we have also the story of the spear wound recorded in a Gospel which even our opponents believe to be from a Johannean source in its later chapters; and though, as has been already stated, this wound cannot be insisted upon as in itself sufficient to prove our Lord’s death, yet it must assuredly be allowed its due weight in reviewing the evidence. The unbeliever cannot surely have considered how shallow are all the arguments which he can produce, in comparison with those that make against him. He cannot say that I have not done him justice, and I feel confident that when he reconsiders the matter in that spirit of humility without which he cannot hope to be guided to a true conclusion, he will feel sure that Strauss is right in believing that the death of our Lord cannot be seriously called in question.
But this being so, the reappearances, which we have seen to be established by the collapse of the hallucination theory, must be referred to supernatural or miraculous agency; that is to say, our Lord died and rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures. Whereon His disappearance some six weeks later must be looked upon very differently from that of any ordinary person. If our Lord could have been shewn to have been a mere man, who had escaped death only by a hair’s breadth, but still escaped it, perhaps some one of the theories for His disappearance, or some combination of them, or some other explanation which has not yet been thought of, might be held to be sufficient; but in the case of One who died and rose from the dead, there is no theory which will stand, except the one which it has been reserved for our own lawless and self-seeking times to question. Through the light of the Resurrection the Ascension is clearly seen.
My task is now completed. In an age when Rationalism has become recognised as the only basis upon which faith can rest securely, I have established the Christian faith upon a Rationalistic basis.
I have made no concession to Rationalism which did not place all the vital parts of Christianity in a far stronger position than they were in before, yet I have conceded everything which a sincere Rationalist is likely to desire. I have cleared the ground for reconciliation. It only remains for the two contending parties to come forward and occupy it in peace jointly. May it be mine to see the day when all traces of disagreement have been long obliterated!
To the unbeliever I can say, “Never yet in any work upon the Christian side have your difficulties been so fully and fairly stated; never yet has orthodox disingenuousness been so unsparingly exposed.” To the Christian I can say with no less justice, “Never yet have the true reasons for the discrepancies in the Gospels been so put forward as to enable us to look these discrepancies boldly in the face, and to thank God for having graciously allowed them to exist.” I do not say this in any spirit of self-glorification. We are children of the hour, and creatures of our surroundings. As it has been given unto us, so will it be required at our hands, and we are at best unprofitable servants. Nevertheless I cannot refrain from expressing my gratitude at having been born in an age when Christianity and Rationalism are not only ceasing to appear antagonistic to one another, but have each become essential to the very existence of the other. May the reader feel this no less strongly than I do, and may he also feel that I have supplied the missing element which could alone cause them to combine. If he asks me what element I allude to, I answer Candour. This is the pilot that has taken us safely into the Fair Haven of universal brotherhood in Christ.
Appendix
I
The Burial
(John xix. 38–42)