Two main methods may be employed in investigating and proving the alleged occurrences of Sacred History: (1) The method which is based upon the evidence of spiritual consciousness and experience, derived from religious conversion and from communion with God; (2) the method that rests upon the application of historic facts and legal rules to the testimony of those who have asserted the existence of such occurrences.
It has been contended by many that the first of these methods is the supreme test, and the only proper one, in solving religious problems and in reaching full and final assurance of the existence of spiritual truths. It is confidently asserted by such persons that the true Christian who has accepted Jesus as his personal Redeemer and has thereby found peace with God, needs no assurance from Matthew that the Christ was the Heaven-begotten and Virgin-born. Such a Christian, it is said, has positive proof from within that Jesus was divine. It is further contended that all forms of religious truth are susceptible of the same kind of proof. It is argued that from despairing hope, born of the longing and the tears of a mother who, grief-stricken and broken-hearted, kneels in prayer beside the coffin of her firstborn, springs stronger evidence of a future life and of an everlasting reunion with loved ones, than comes from all the assurances of immortality handed down by saints and sages. The advocates of this theory contend that the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus should be proved mainly by the method of spiritual consciousness and experience, and only incidentally by the historical testimony of the sacred writers. They boldly maintain that the Resurrection was a spiritual fact born of a spiritual truth; and that within the soul of each true believer is the image of the risen Jesus, reflected from Heaven in as perfect form as that seen by Paul while journeying to Damascus.
It would be decidedly ungenerous and unjust to deny the force of the contention that spiritual consciousness and religious experience are convincing forms of proof. To do so would be to offer gratuitous insult to the intelligence and sincerity of millions of consecrated men and women who have repeatedly proclaimed and are still proclaiming that the Spirit of God and Christ within them attests the reality of religion.
But on the other hand the doctrine of religions consciousness, as a mode of proof, certainly has its limitations. Spiritual proofs are obviously the very best means of establishing purely spiritual truths. But not many truths of religion are purely spiritual. The most of them are encased within historic facts which may themselves be separately considered as historic truths. In a sense, all spiritual truth is born of historic truth; that is, historic truths, in the order of our acquisition of a knowledge of them, antedate and create spiritual truths. The religious consciousness of the Resurrection of Jesus would never have been born in our hearts if we had never read the historical records of the physical Resurrection. Nor could we have ever had a religious experience of the divinity of Jesus if we had never read the historical accounts of His miracles, of His Virgin birth, His fulfillment of prophecy, and His Resurrection from the dead, unless Jesus had personally communicated to us evidences of His divinity. These separate and historic facts, of which spiritual truths are born, cannot be proved by religious consciousness and experience.
The distinctions herein suggested are very aptly and beautifully expressed by Professor Inge in his Bampton Lectures on Christian Mysticism, in which he says: "The inner light can only testify to spiritual truths. It always speaks in the present tense; it cannot guarantee any historical event, past or future. It cannot guarantee either the Gospel history or a future judgment. It can tell us that Christ is risen, and He is alive for evermore, but not that He rose again the third day."
From the foregoing, then, it is clear that in dealing with the historical facts and circumstances of the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, we cannot remotely employ the method of proof which is based upon religious consciousness and experience, since these events are matters of the past and not of the present. We have been compelled, therefore, to resort to the legal and historical method of proof; since we could not assume the correctness of the record, as such an assumption would have been lacking in legal requirement and judicial fitness.
It has also been thought not to be within the scope of this treatise, or consistent with the purpose of the author of these volumes, to enter into a discussion of the question of inspiration in the matter of the origin of the New Testament Gospels, as the record of fact in the trial of Jesus. As secular historians, rather than as inspired writers, must the Evangelists be regarded in this connection; since the title of this work suggests and demands a strictly legal treatment of the theme proclaimed. The author would respectfully suggest, however, that the day is past for complete reliance upon the theory of inspiration and a total rejection of all analysis and investigation. That the Scriptures are sacred and inspired, and neither need nor permit questions involving doubt and speculation as to origin and authenticity will no longer meet the challenge or dissipate the fears of the intellectual leaders of the human race. The Christianity of the future must be a religion of reason as well as of faith, else it cannot and will not endure the shocks of time, or survive the onward march of the soul. If the teachings of the Nazarene are a faithful portrayal and a truthful expression of all the verities of Heaven and earth, then Christianity has nothing to fear from the discoveries of Science, from Roman catacombs, Arabian hieroglyphics, the sands of Egypt, or the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. Science is the High Priestess of Nature and Nature's oracles, and no single revelation of Science can disprove or contradict the simplest truth of Nature's God.
If, on the other hand, Christianity be fundamentally and essentially false, ignorance and bigotry will not preserve and perpetuate it; all the prayers of the faithful, all the martyrdom of the centuries, will not suffice to save it from death and annihilation.
But the Christian need have no fear of the results of scientific investigation or historic revelation. Assyriology, archæology, and paleontology, interpreted and applied by the finest scholarship and the most superb intellects of earth, have spent all their stupendous and concentrated forces in the direction of the discovery of natural and historic facts that would confirm or destroy the Christian theory of things. And yet not one natural or historic fact has been discovered that seriously disturbs the testimony of the Evangelists or impairs the evidence of Christianity. A few unlettered fisherman, casting nets for a livelihood in the waters of Gennesaret, framed a message to humanity based upon the life and martyrdom of a Galilean peasant, their spiritual Lord and Master, and proclaimed it to the world; and all the succeeding centuries of scientific research and skeptical criticism have not shaken mankind's confidence in its truthfulness and its potency. If eighteen hundred years of scientific investigation have resulted only in proof and vindication of the historic asseverations of the Sacred Scriptures, and further investigation gives promise of still further proof and vindication, tending to remove all doubts and destroy all fears, nothing but rank stupidity and crass ignorance will place obstacles in the way of ultimate analysis and complete revelation.
In Part II of this volume, following the plan heretofore suggested, the element of Law has been considered. Hebrew criminal jurisprudence, based upon the Mosaic Code and upon the Talmud, has been outlined and discussed. A more exhaustive treatment has been given than the subject would seem to justify, but the writer is convinced that the Criminal Code of the Jews must be of surpassing interest to the general reader, regardless of whether certain peculiar rules therein contained have reference to the trial of Jesus or not. The bulk of this Code has been inserted in this work because it is felt that a comprehensive view of any system enables the student of a particular trial under that system to grasp more fully and to appreciate more keenly the merits of the proceedings.