Before concluding this chapter a few remarks may be made on the alleged difficulties of the Christian theory. There are only two of any importance. The first is that the Resurrection would be a miracle, and probably nine out of ten men who disbelieve it, do so for this reason. It is not that the evidence for it is insufficient (they have perhaps never examined it) but that no conceivable evidence would be sufficient to establish such an event. Miracles, they say, are incredible, they cannot happen, and that settles the point; for it is of course easier to believe any explanation, visions, swoons, or anything else, than the occurrence of that which cannot happen.
But we have already admitted, in [Chapter VII.], that miracles are not incredible. And though no doubt, under ordinary circumstances, a dead man coming to life again would be so extremely improbable as to be practically incredible; yet these were not ordinary circumstances, and Christ was not an ordinary man. On the contrary, as we shall see, He was an absolutely unique Man, claiming moreover to be Divine, and having a mass of powerful evidence both from His own Character, from previous Prophecies, and from subsequent History, to support His claims. Therefore that He should rise from the dead, as a proof that these claims were well-founded, does not seem so very improbable after all.
The other difficulty refers to Christ's not appearing publicly to the Jews. Why, it is asked, did He only appear to His own disciples? Surely this is very suspicious. If He really did rise from the dead, and wished the world to believe it, why did He not settle the point by going publicly into Jerusalem?
But we cannot feel sure that this would have settled the point. No doubt the Jews who saw Him would have been convinced, but the nation as a whole might, or might not, have accepted Christianity. If they did not, saying for instance it was due to a pretender, it would have been worse than useless. While if they did, the Romans would very likely have looked upon it as a national insurrection, and its progress would have been more than ever difficult. It would also have greatly weakened the force of Prophecy; since, in the absence of ancient manuscripts, people might think that the old Jewish prophecies had been tampered with, to make them suit their Christian interpretation. But now these prophecies, having been preserved by men who are opposed to Christianity, are above suspicion.
Moreover, to get the world to believe in the Resurrection required not only evidence, but missionaries, that is to say, men who were so absolutely convinced of its truth, as to be willing to spend their whole lives in witnessing for it, in all lands and at all costs. And the chief object of the appearances may have been to produce such men; and it is obvious that (apart from a miraculous conversion like St. Paul's) there could not have been more than a few of them.
For only a few could have conversed with Christ, and eaten with Him after His death, so as to be quite certain that He was then alive; only a few could have known Him so intimately before, as to be quite certain that it was really He, and only a few had loved Him so dearly as to be willing to give up everything for His sake. In short, there were only a few suitable witnesses available. And Christ's frequently appearing to these few—the chosen witnesses as they are called[329]—in the private and intimate manner recorded in the Gospels, was evidently more likely to turn them into ardent missionaries (which it actually did) than any public appearance. Indeed it so often happens that what everybody should do, nobody does; that it may be doubted whether Christ's publicly appearing to a number of persons in Jerusalem would have induced even one of them to have faced a life of suffering, and a death of martyrdom, in spreading the news. This objection, then, cannot be maintained.
[329] Acts 10. 41.
In conclusion, it seems scarcely necessary to sum up the arguments in this chapter. We have discussed at some length the veracity, knowledge, investigation, and reasoning of the first witnesses of the Resurrection; and as we have seen, not one of these points can be fairly doubted. In fact the evidence in favour of each is overwhelming. Therefore the alternative theories—the Falsehood, the Legend, the Vision, and the Swoon Theory—which are founded on denying these points, are all untenable. And this greatly supports the conclusion we arrived at in the last chapter; so that combining the two; we have an extremely strong argument in favour of the Resurrection of Christ.