The Destiny of the Soul: A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life

by William Rounseville Alger

general intelligence and energy. And they had, too, the most abundant opportunities of knowledge in regard to the facts to which they bore witness. They were present in the places, at the times, when and where the events occurred. Every motive would conspire to make them scrutinize the subject and the attendant circumstances. And it seems they did examine; for at first some doubted, but afterwards believed. They had been close companions of Jesus for more than a year at the least. They had studied his every feature, look, gesture. They must have been able to recognise him, or to detect an impostor, if the absurd idea of an attempted imposition can be entertained. They saw him many times, near at hand, in the broad light. Not only did they see him, but they handled his wounded limbs and listened to his wondrous voice. If these means of knowing the truth were not enough to make their evidence valid, then no opportunities could be sufficient.

Whoso allows its full force to the argument thus far will admit that the testimony of the witnesses to the resurrection is conclusive, unless he suspects that by some cause they were either incapacitated to weigh evidence fairly, or were led wilfully to stifle the truth and publish a falsehood. Very few persons have ever been inclined to make this charge, that the apostles were either wild enthusiasts of fancy, or crafty calculators of fraud; and no one has ever been able to support the position even with moderate plausibility. Granting, in the first place, hypothetically, that the disciples were ever so great enthusiasts in their general character and conduct, still, they could not have been at all so in relation to the resurrection, because, before it occurred, they had no belief, expectations, nor thoughts about it. By their own frank confessions, they did not understand Christ's predictions, nor the ancient supposed prophecies of that event. And without a strong faith, a burning hopeful desire, or something of the kind, for it to spring from, and rest on, and be nourished by, evidently no enthusiasm could exist. Accordingly, we find that previous to the third day after Christ's death they said nothing, thought nothing, about a resurrection; but from that time, as by an inspiration from heaven, they were roused to both words and deeds. The sudden astonishing change here alluded to is to be accounted for only by supposing that in the mean time they had been brought to a belief that the resurrection had occurred. But, secondly, it is to be noticed that these witnesses were not enthusiasts on other subjects. No one could be the subject of such an overweening enthusiasm as the hypothesis supposes, without betraying it in his conduct, without being overmastered and led by it as an insane man is by his mania. The very opposite of all this was actually the case with the apostles. The Gospels are unpretending, dispassionate narratives, without rhapsody, adulation, or vanity. Their whole conduct disproves the charge of fanaticism. Their appeals were addressed more to reason than to feeling; their deeds were more courageous than rash. They avoided tumult, insult, and danger whenever they could honorably do so; but, when duty called, their noble intrepidity shrank not. They were firm as the trunks of oaks to meet the agony and horror of a violent death when it came; yet they rather shunned than sought to wear the glorious crown from beneath whose crimson circlet drops of bloody sweat must drip from a martyr's brows. The number of the witnesses for the resurrection, the abilities they possessed, their opportunities for knowing the facts, prove the impossibility of their being duped, unless we suppose them to have been blind fanatics. This we have just shown they were not. Would it not, moreover, be most marvellous if they were such heated fanatics, all of them, so many men?

But there is one further foothold for the disbeliever in the historic resurrection of Christ. He may say, "I confess the witnesses were capable of knowing, and undoubtedly did know, the truth; but, for some reason, they suppressed it, and proclaimed a deception." As to this charge, we not only deny the actuality, but even the possibility, of its truth. The narratives of the evangelists contain the strongest evidences of their honesty. The many little unaccountable circumstances they recount, which are so many difficulties in the way of critical belief, the real and the apparent inconsistencies, none of these would have been permitted by fraudulent authors. They are the most natural things in the world, supposing their writers unsuspiciously honest. They also frankly confess their own and each others' errors, ignorance, prejudices, and faults. Would they have done this save from simple hearted truthfulness? Would a designing knave voluntarily reveal to a suspicious scrutiny actions and traits naturally subversive of confidence in him? The conduct of the disciples under the circumstances, through all the scenes of their after lives, proves their undivided and earnest honesty. The cause they had espoused was, if we deny its truth, to the last degree repulsive in itself and in its concomitants, and they were surrounded with allurements to desert it. Yet how unyielding, wonderful, was their disinterested devotedness to it, without exception! Not one, overcome by terror or bowed by strong anguish, shrank from his self imposed task and cried out, "I confess!" No; but when they, and their first followers who knew what they knew, were laid upon racks and torn, when they were mangled and devoured alive by wild beasts, when they were manacled fast amidst the flames till their souls rode forth into heaven in chariots of fire, amidst all this, not one of them ever acknowledged fraud or renounced his belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Were they not honest? Others have died in support of theories and opinions with which their convictions and passions had become interwoven: they died rather than deny facts which were within the cognizance of their senses. Could any man, however firm and dauntless, under the circumstances, go through the trials they bore, without a feeling of truth and of God to support him?

These remarks are particularly forcible in connection with the career of Paul. Endowed with brilliant talents, learned, living at the time and place, he must have been able to form a reliable opinion. And yet, while all the motives that commonly actuate men loudmouthed consistency, fame, wealth, pride, pleasure, the rooted force of inveterate prejudices all were beckoning to him from the temples and palaces of the Pharisaic establishment, he spurned the glowing visions of his ambition and dashed to earth the bright dreams of his youth. He ranged himself among the Christians, the feeble, despised, persecuted Christians; and, after having suffered every thing humanity could bear, having preached the resurrection everywhere with unflinching power, he was at last crucified, or beheaded, by Nero; and there, expiring among the seven hills of Rome, he gave the resistless testimony of his death to the resurrection of Jesus, gasping, as it were, with his last breath, "It is true." Granting the honesty of these men, we could not have any greater proof of it than we have now.

But dishonesty in this matter was not merely untrue; it was also impossible. If fraud is admitted, a conspiracy must have been formed among the witnesses. But that a conspiracy of such a character should have been entered into by such men is in itself incredible, in the outset. And then, if it had been entered into, it must infallibly have broken through, been found out, or been betrayed, in the course of the disasters, perils, terrible trials, to which it and its fabricators were afterwards exposed. Prove that a body of from twelve to five hundred men could form a plan to palm off a gross falsehood upon the world, and could then adhere to it unfalteringly through the severest disappointments, dangers, sufferings, differences of opinion, dissension of feeling and action, without retiring from the undertaking, letting out the secret, or betraying each other in a single instance in the course of years, prove this, and you prove that men may do and dare, deny and suffer, not only without motives, but in direct opposition to their duty, interest, desire, prejudice, and passion. The disciples could not have pretended the resurrection from sensitiveness to the probable charge that they had been miserably deceived; for they did not understand their Master to predict any such event, nor had they the slightest expectation of it. They could not have pretended it for the sake of establishing and giving authority to the good precepts and doctrines Jesus taught; because such a course would have been in the plainest antagonism to all those principles themselves, and because, too, they must have known both the utter wickedness and the desperate hazards and forlornness of such an attempt to give a fictitious sanction to moral truths. In such an enterprise there was before them not the faintest probability of even the slightest success. Every selfish motive would tend to deter them; for poverty, hatred, disgrace, stripes, imprisonment, contempt, and death stared in their faces from the first step that way. Dishonesty, deliberate fraud, then, in this matter, was not merely untrue, but was impossible. The conclusion from the whole view is, therefore, the conviction that the evidence of the witnesses for the resurrection of Jesus is worthy of credence.

There are three considerations, further, worthy of notice in estimating the strength of the historic argument for the resurrection. First, the conduct of the Savior himself in relation to the subject. The charge of unbalanced enthusiasm is inconsistent with the whole character and life of Jesus; but suppose on this point he was an enthusiast, and really believed that three days after his death he would rise again. In that case, would not his mind have dwelt upon the wonderful anticipated phenomenon? Would not his whole soul have been wrapped up in it, and his speech have been almost incessantly about it? Yet he spoke of it only three or four times, and then with obscurity. Again: suppose he was an impostor. An impostor would hardly have risked his reputation voluntarily on what he knew could never take place. Had he done so, his only reliance must have been upon the credulous enthusiasm of his followers. He would then have made it the chief topic, would have striven strenuously to make it a living and intense hope, an immovable, all controlling faith, concentrating on it their desires and expectations, heart and soul. But he really did not do this at all. He did not even make them understand what his vaticinations of the resurrection meant. And when they saw his untenanted body hanging on the cross, they slunk away in confusion and despair. Admit, again, that Christ was enthusiast, or impostor, or both: these qualities exist not in the grave. Here was their end. They could neither raise him from the dead nor move him from the tomb. No considerations in any way connected with Christ himself, therefore, can account for the occurrences that succeeded his death.

Secondly, if the resurrection did not take place, what became of the Savior's body? We have already given reasons why the disciples could not have falsely pretended the resurrection. It is also impossible that they obtained, or surreptitiously disposed of, the dead and interred body; because it was in a tomb of rock securely sealed against them, and watched by a guard which they could neither bribe nor overpower; because they were too much disheartened and alarmed to try to get it; because they could not possibly want it, since they expected a temporal Messiah, and had no hope of a resurrection like that which they soon began proclaiming to the world. And as for the story told by the watch, or rather by the chief priests and Pharisees, it has not consistency enough to hold together. Its foolish unlikelihood has always been transparent. It is unreasonable to suppose that fresh guards would slumber at a post where the penalty of slumbering was death. And, if one or two did sleep, it is absurd to think all would do so. Besides, if they slept, how knew they what transpired in the mean time? Could they have dreamed it? Dreams are not taken in legal depositions; and, furthermore, it would be an astounding, gratuitous miracle if they all dreamed the same thing at the same time.

Finally, a powerful collateral argument in proof of the resurrection of Christ is furnished by the conduct of the Jews. It might seem that if the guards told the chief priests, scribes, and Pharisees, of the miracles which occurred at the sepulchre, they must immediately have believed and proclaimed their belief in the Messiahship and resurrection of the crucified Savior. But they had previously remained invulnerable to as cogent proof as this would afford. They had acknowledged the miracles wrought by him when he was alive, but attributed them even his works of beneficence to demoniacal power. They said, "He casteth out devils by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of devils." So they acted in the present case, and, notwithstanding the peerless miracle related by the sentinels, still persisted in their alienation from the Christian faith. Their intensely cherished preconceptions respecting the Messiah, their persecution and crucifixion of Jesus, the glaring inconsistency of his teachings and experience with most that they expected, these things compelled their incredulity to every proof of the Messiahship of the contemned and murdered Nazarene. For, if they admitted the facts on which such proof was based, they would misinterpret them and deny the inferences justly drawn from them. This was plainly the case. It may be affirmed that the Jews believed the resurrection, because they took no fair measures to disprove it, but threatened those who declared it. Since they had every inducement to demonstrate its falsity, and might, it seems, have done so had it been false, and yet never made the feeblest effort to unmask the alleged fraud, we must suspect that they were themselves secretly convinced of its truth, but dared not let it be known, for fear it would prevail, become mighty in the earth, and push them from their seats. In the rage and blindness of their prejudices, they cried, "His blood be on us and on our children!" And from that generation to our own, their history has afforded a living proof of the historic truth of the gospel, and of the stability of its chief corner stone, the resurrection of Christ. The triumphal progress of Christianity from conquering to conquering, together with the baffled plans and complete subjection of the Jews, show that their providential preparatory mission has been fulfilled. If God is in history, guiding the moral drift of human affairs, then the dazzling success of the proclamation of the risen Redeemer is the Divine seal upon the truth of his mission and the reality of his apotheosis. Planting himself on this ground, surrounding himself with these evidences, the reverential Christian will at least for a long time to come cling firmly to the accepted fact of the resurrection of Christ, regardless of whatever misgivings and perplexities may trouble the mind of the iconoclastic and critical truth seeker.

The Christian Scriptures, assuming the resurrection of Christ as a fact, describe it as a fulfilment of prophecy. Luke reports from the risen Savior the words, "O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day." Peter declares that the patriarch David before "spake of the resurrection of Christ." And Paul also affirms, "That the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again." One can scarcely hesitate in deciding the meaning of these words as they were used by the apostles. The unanimous opinion and interpretation of the Christians of the first centuries, and of all the Church Fathers, leave no shadow of a doubt that it was believed that the resurrection of Jesus was repeatedly foretold in the Old Testament, expected by the prophets, and fulfilled in the event as a seal of the inspired prophecy. Furthermore, Jesus himself repeatedly prophesied his own resurrection from the dead, though his disciples did not understand his meaning until the event put a clear comment on the words. He charged those who saw his transfiguration on the mount, "Tell it to no man until the Son of Man be risen again from the dead." The chief priests told Pilate that they remembered that Jesus said, while he was yet alive, "After three days I will rise again." Standing in the temple at Jerusalem, Jesus said once, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "When, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them;" and then they understood that "he had spoken of the temple of his body." It is perfectly plain that the New Testament represents the resurrection of Christ as the fulfilment of prophecies, those prophecies having been so expounded by him.

There are few problems presented to the candid Christian scholar of to day more perplexing than the one involved in the subject of these prophecies. Paul declares to King Agrippa, "I say none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead and should show light unto the Gentiles." It is vain to attempt to disguise the fact that the ingenuous student cannot find these prophecies in the Old Testament as we now have it. He will search it through in vain, unless his eyes create what they see. Let any man endeavor to discover a passage in the Hebrew Scriptures which, taken with its context, can fairly bear such a sense. There is not a shadow of valid evidence of any kind to support the merely traditional notions on this subject. The only way of discerning predictions of a death, descent, and ascent, of the Messiah, in the law and the prophets, is by the application of Cabalistic methods of interpretation, theories of occult types, double senses, methods which now are not tolerable to intelligent men. That Rabbinical interpretation which made the story of Ishmael and Isaac, the two children borne to Abraham by Hagar and Sarah, an allegory referring to the two covenants of Judaism and Christianity, could easily extract any desired meaning from any given text. Bearing in mind the prevalence of this kind of exegesis among the Jews, and remembering also that they possessed in the times of Jesus a vast body of oral law, to which they attributed as great authority as to the written, there are two possible ways of honestly meeting the difficulty before us.