In the two last chapters of John the appearances amount to four:—

Paul extends them to six:—

Upon this most momentous question, then, every one of the Christian writers is at variance with every other. Nor is this all, for two of the number bring the earthly career of Jesus to its final close in a manner so extraordinary that we cannot even imagine the occurrence of such an event, of necessity so notorious and so impressive, to have been believed by the other biographers, and yet to have been passed over by them without a word of notice or allusion. Can it be for a moment supposed that two out of the four Evangelists had heard of the ascension of Christ—that the most wonderful termination of a wonderful life—and either forgot to mention, or deliberately omitted it? And may it not be assumed that Paul, when detailing the several occasions on which Christ had been seen after his crucifixion, must needs, had he known of it, have included this, perhaps the most striking of all, in his list? In fact the ascension rests entirely on the evidence of two witnesses, both of them comparatively late ones, the forger of the last verses of Mark, and the third Evangelist. Neither of them stand as near the events described as the true author of Mark, as Matthew, or as Paul, from no one of whom do we hear a word of the ascension. Nor do even these two witnesses relate their story in the same terms. The finisher of Mark merely tells us that after his parting charge to the eleven, he was received into heaven and sat at God's right hand; a statement couched in such general terms as even to leave it doubtful whether there was any distinct and visible ascension, or whether Jesus was merely taken to heaven like any other virtuous man, though enjoying when there a higher precedence (Mk. xvi. 19). Especially is this doubt fostered by the fact that this Gospel, when speaking of the witnesses to Christ's resurrection, never alludes to any of the physical proofs of his actual existence so much dwelt upon in Luke and the last chapter of John. Very much more definite is the statement at the close of the third Gospel. There it is related that Jesus led his disciples out to Bethany, where he blessed them and that, in the very act of blessing, he was parted from them and carried up into heaven (Lu. xxiv. 50, 51). The same author subsequently composed the Acts of the Apostles, and in the interim he had greatly improved upon his previous conception of the ascension. When he came to write the Acts, he was able to supply, what he had omitted before, the last conversation of the master with the disciples he was about to leave; he knows too that after the final words—no blessing is mentioned here—he was taken up and received by a cloud; that while the disciples were gazing up, two men in white—no doubt the very couple who had been seen at the sepulchre— were perceived standing by them, and that these celestial visitors told them that Jesus would return from heaven in the same way in which he had gone to it (Acts i. 9-11). Unhappy Galileans! little could they have dreamt for how many centuries after that day their successors would watch and wait, watching and waiting in vain, for the fulfillment of that consoling prophecy.

Casting a retrospective glance at the stories of the Resurrection and the Ascension, we may perhaps discern at least a psychological explanation of their origin and of the currency they obtained. Whatever other qualities Jesus may have possessed or lacked, there can be no question that he had one—that of inspiring in others a strong attachment to himself. He had in his brief career surrounded himself with devoted disciples; and he was taken from their midst in the full bloom of his powers by a violent and early death. Now there are some who have been taught by the bitter experience of their lives how difficult, nay, how impossible it is to realize in imagination the fact that a beloved companion is in truth gone from them forever. More especially will this mental difficulty be felt when he whom death has parted from our sides is young, vigorous, full of promise; when the infinite stillness of eternal rest has succeeded almost without a break upon the joyous activity of a well-spent life; when the being who is now no more was but a moment ago the moving spirit of a household, or the honored teacher of a band of friends who were linked together by his presence.

Where the association has been close and constant; where we have been accustomed to share our thoughts and to impart our feelings; where, therefore, we have habitually entwined not only our present lives, but our hopes and wishes for the future around the personality of the dead, this refusal of the mind to comprehend its loss is strongest of all. Emotion enters then upon a strange conflict with Reason. Reason may tell us but too distinctly that all hope of the return of the beloved one to life is vain and foolish. But Emotion speaks to us in another language. Well nigh does it prevent us from believing even the ghastly realities which our unhappy eyes have been compelled to witness. Deep within us there arises the craving for the presence of our friend, and with it the irrepressible thought that he may even yet come back to those who can scarcely bear to live without him. Were these inevitable longings not to be checked by a clear perception that they originate in our own broken hearts, we should fancy that we saw the figure of the departed and heard his voice. In that case a resurrection would have taken place for us, and for those who believed our tale. So far from the reappearance of the well-known form seeming to be strange, it is its failure to reappear that is strange to us in these times of sorrow. We fondly conceive that in some way the dead must still exist; and if so, can one, who was so tender before, listen to our cry of pain and refuse to come? can one, who soothed us in the lesser troubles of our lives, look on while we are suffering the greatest agony of all and fail to comfort? It cannot be. Imagination declines to picture the long future of solitude that lies before us. We cannot understand that we shall never again listen to the tones of the familiar voice; never feel the touch of the gentle hand; never be encouraged by the warm embrace that tells us we are loved, or find a refuge from miserable thoughts and the vexations of the world in the affectionate and ever-open heart. All this is too hard for us. We long for a resurrection; we should believe in it if we could; we do believe in it in sleep, when our feelings are free to roam at pleasure, unrestrained by the chilling presence of the material world. In dreams the old life is repeated again and again. Sometimes the lost one is beside us as of old, and we are quite untroubled by the thought of parting. Sometimes there is a strange and confusing consciousness that the great calamity has happened, or has been thought to happen, but that now we are again together, and that a new life has succeeded upon death. Or the dream takes a less definite form. We are united now; but along with our happiness in the union there is an oppressive sense of some mysterious terror clouding our enjoyment. We are afraid that it is an unsubstantial, shadowy being that is with us; the least touch may dissipate its uncertain existence; the slightest illness may extinguish its feeble breath. Granting only a strong emotion and a lively phantasy, we may comprehend at once how, in many lands, to many mourners, the images of their dreams may also become the visions of their waking hours. They see him again; they know that he is not gone; he is beside them still.

But for us, who live in a calmer age, and see with scientific eyes, there is no such comfort. Not to us can the bodily forms of those who have gone before us to the grave appear again in all the loveliness of life. In the first shock of our bereavement we may indeed indulge in some such visionary hope; but as day after day passes by and leaves us in a solitude that does but deepen with the lapse of time, we learn to understand only too well that we are bereft forever. Hope gradually dwindling to a fainter and fainter remnant, is crushed at last by the miserable certainty of profound despair. Yet even then, the mind of man refuses to accept its fate. The scene of the reunion, which we cannot but so ardently desire, is postponed to another season and to a better world. Many are they to whom this final hope is an enduring consolation, but if even that should fail us in the hour of darkness, as the more primitive and simpler hope failed before it; if here again emotion is reluctantly compelled to yield to reason; then there is still one refuge in despondency, and a refuge of which we can never be deprived. It is the thought that death, so cruel now, will one day visit us with a kinder touch; and that the tomb, which already holds the nearest and the dearest within its grasp, will open to receive us also in our turn to its everlasting peace.

Subdivision 3.—The Ideal Jesus.

The Gospel attributed by the current legend to St. John differs from the other three Gospels in almost every respect in which difference is possible. The events recorded are different. The order of events is different. The conversations of Jesus are different. His sermons are different. His opinions are different. The theories of the writer about him are different. Were it not for the name and a few leading incidents, we should be compelled to say that the subject of the biography himself is different. A more conspicuous unlikeness than that of the synoptical to the Johannine Jesus it is not easy to conceive in two narratives which depict the same hero. In the synoptical Gospels Jesus is plain, direct, easy of comprehension, and fond of illustrating his meaning by short and simple parables. In John he is obscure, mystical, symbolic, and of his favorite method of teaching by parables there is not a trace. Both descriptions cannot be true. It would be monstrous to suppose either that the synoptical Gospels omitted some of his most extraordinary miracles and some of his most remarkable discourses, or that the Gospel of John passed over in silence the whole of that side of his character which is portrayed in the ethical maxims, the parables, and the exhortations of its predecessors. Were it so, none of the four could be accepted as other than an extremely one-sided and imperfect biography, and each of them is plainly regarded by its author as complete within itself. None of them refers to extraneous sources to supplement its own deficiencies. The concluding verse of the fourth Gospel does indeed allude to many unrecorded actions of Jesus, which, if they were all written, would fill more books than the world could contain. But, not to rely on the fact that the last chapter is spurious, these words contain no intimation that a mode of teaching completely different from that here recorded was ever employed by Jesus. And this is the point in which John's narrative is peculiar. Again, to turn to the Synoptics, there is no shadow of an intimation in them that, between the last supper and arrest, Jesus addressed to his disciples a long and remarkable discourse, full of the most interesting revelations. Can we suppose that they could have forgotten it, delivered as it was at such a moment as this, the very last before their master's condemnation at which he was able to speak to them? Such a supposition is utterly untenable. The two traditions embodied in these versions of his life do not therefore, as some learned men—Ewald, for example—have supposed, supplement, but exclude one another.