phet. Seeing and knowing that their hopes were sunk in his grave, and that they were left as sheep without a shepherd, we may reasonably infer that a mournful incredulity, an incredulity like that of St. Thomas, not a hastiness to believe the miracle of the resurrection, must have been the natural tendency of Christ's disconsolate followers.

And let me here observe, in addition to what has been said before on the same subject, how much the truth of this great miracle of the resurrection is illustrated by the detail of the circumstances which took place immediately subsequent to it. If, on our Lord's death, one of the more active disciples had put himself at the head of the rest, had harangued on the promise of the resurrection on the third day, and had kindled their enthusiasm to expect and anticipate it, there might then be some pretence that their faith or their anticipations fathered their belief that the fact expected took place. But the plain truth is, that, as might naturally be imagined in the case of sincere and simpleminded men, they were oppressed and astounded. They had "trusted that it had been he which

a See pp. 111 and 116.

should have redeemed Israel"". But on the moment of his death that hope abated. They had nothing preconcerted, no system, no plan : nor was their hope re-kindled but by the re-appearance of Him, who alone, according to what we see of the case, had the power either to rescue or re-animate them. Thus apparent it is, if the whole history be not fabulous, that it was Christ's resurrection which inspired the apostles with zeal, not their zeal which inclined them to credit the resurrection.

To this it is to be added, that the credit obtained for the Christian miracles in the age when our religion was first promulgated, was obtained in an age which, as it has often been proved, is so far from being liable to the charge of blindness or ignorance, that among the ancients there was, probably, no age so intellectual. It is known to have been an age, in which, if we look first to the Jews, we have reason to think that the scepticism of the Sadducee was no less disposed to criticise narrowly the evidence adduced for any Christian miracle, than the bigotry of the Pharisee must have been

a Luke xxiv. 21.

prone to reject it. If we look to the heathen world, it was also an age in which the general cultivation of the intellectual powers both by the Grecian schools and philosophers, and by the transmission of their opinions into the Roman literature, must have been extended more widely than in any preceding, and possibly than in any subsequent age of antiquity.

But farther also:-it has been seen that all or most of these characters of the truth of the Scripture miracles unite in the evidences of two revelations. The journey of the Israelites out of Egypt took place, according to the chronology of our Bibles, in the year of the world MMDXIII. Christ began to teach, according to the same computation, in the year MMMMXXXV. The two revelations were therefore separated from one another by an interval of not less than fifteen centuries. These two revelations are two parts of one system. If either be proved, that one proves both and if each, therefore, may be proved severally by a chain of miracles possessing the most unexceptionable title to credit, this conspiration of separate evidences confers a double strength on

both. Even though we should grant that there may be other true miracles, yet the strength and evidence, both of the Jewish and the Christian, are clearly discriminated from all other pretensions, which have ever, in any other instance or instances, been exhibited or proclaimed to the world. Nothing is found in history at all resembling the miracles of Christianity, except it be the miracles of the Mosaic dispensation. There is nothing to compare with the Mosaic miracles except the miracles of Christianity. This coincidence of the two proofs in one can be nothing else also than miraculous in itself, is no less beyond the power of man to have caused, than it is singular and beyond comparison.

a See Ch. V.

M

SECTION IV.

OF THE OBJECTION THAT OUR EVIDENCE IS MERE PARTY EVIDENCE, AND THAT THIS IS FAR FROM BEING TRULY

THE CASE.

Ir will be here objected that all this evidence is party evidence. We produce our own books; we tell our own story. It has been the fortune, it will perhaps be said, of Christianity, to become the predominant religion of Europe. The history of the opposition to it has been suppressed or neglected. This is said to be the reason why we have now no means of alleging any formal or detailed refutation of those miracles on which the evidence of it rests. There are other reported facts, it may be said, in ancient history of the same kind. It is shrewdly suspected that in the long contests which took place between the states of Greece and the Persian empire, the spirit and colouring of the romantic history which has been transmitted to us is wholly fallacious. It is the same with regard to the wars of Carthage and Rome. All our authorities display the virtue of one side,