Resurrection events," it is objected, "one evangelist states that Objection: many of those who had been buried arose and ap- of the cavepeared in Jerusalem, and thus Christ was not the buried first to rise from the dead." This objection comes Only after bodies. Christ's duced no from not carefully reading the statement in the resurrection Gospel, which distinctly says that these apparitions took place after Christ was Himself risen from the dead. "How then," it may be asked, "if that occurred, did it not produce a sensation in Jerusalem "But it proat least amongst those to whom the dead appeared?" sensation!" No doubt it did, and we have no evidence to the contrary. And last of the objections concerning the Crucifixion with which time and space will permit us to deal, we shall refer to the case of the penitent thief related by Luke. The penitent "Your thief," says the critic, "was a prodigy, Objection: for he had faith in the divinity of Jesus, whereas thief the Apostles were still in their unbelief". Why not? He was a penitent thief at the point of death, and surely God could reward his penitence by an insight denied even to Apostles, did He choose to do so. Before concluding our remarks upon the crucifixion and death of Christ, we should like to ask a question of those who deny that Jesus died on Calvary. If He did not die then, as history If Jesus did testifies, when and where did that event occur? Calvary, If writers deny a well-acknowledged fact, they are where then? supposed to have some alternative evidence to give not die on in support of their assertion-evidence, not supposition and theory. Where is the proof that Christ died elsewhere? When and under what circumstances? It is impossible to follow all the vagaries of the carping critic. We have attempted to deal with the serious objections, and we can assure the reader that he has only to look these difficulties fairly in the face to solve most of them. Conclusion: We may then here conclude our treatment of the Jesus died on crucifixion and death of Christ. We have seen these events established as historical facts alike by pagan, Jewish and Christian testimony, and we have found the Scriptural evidence corroborative and corroborated. Calvary CHAPTER VI THE RESURRECTION I. HISTORICAL ARGUMENT may proving the tion JESUS CHRIST have been an historical character; Necessity of His teaching may have been sublime and unpre- Resurreccedented-He may have laid down His life upon the cross as a testimony to His life's work, but that does not prove Him to be God. Nay, we may say that if He claimed to be the long-expected deliverer, the Messiah, His work was in some sense a failure if all ended with death, for the very people to whom He came especially, rejected and Jesus always regarded as still reject Him. How then does it come to pass God that the Christian world claims for Him the title of the Godhead ? It is no new claim. From earliest times it has been handed down. The Emperor Julian (born A.D. 331) reproached the Christians with worshipping a dead Jew.' Pliny the Viceroy of Bithynia writing to the Emperor Testimony Trajan (98-117) many years after the crucifixion, says that even at that early date the Christians were very numerous, and worshipped Jesus as their God. He put some of them upon the rack in order 1 Cyril Alex. and præf. Julian, vi. 194. 1 of Pliny to discover their principles, and "they confessed,” he writes, "that they used to assemble together before dawn to sing praise to Christ as their God. . . . Seeing, however, the number of its (Christianity's) followers, I have thought it expedient to have your opinion on the subject, for members of very high rank and either sex, are imperilled by it. Towns, villages and countries are infected on all sides by this superstition. The temples and the Gods are almost deserted, and sacrifices are scarcely ever offered." Thus at the very start of Christianity we have pagan testimony Yet he died to the worship of Jesus as God. And yet this a slave's death Jesus died the death of a slave at Jerusalem, and His lifeless body was laid into the grave. If all ended with His crucifixion how is He God? How came His followers to raise Him to the rank of Some unique divinity? Something extraordinary must then event must have happened-some great and startling miracle have taken place after His death to proclaim Him other than merely human. As Dante says: have caused the idea Dante What had occurred? "That all the world," said I, "should have been turned The rest were not an hundredth part so great.' What then had occurred, or had been alleged to have occurred, in order to explain the numerous that event converts to the worship of Jesus as their God? It is stated by the Christian Church that Jesus rose again from the dead on the third day, with the same body which had been laid lifeless in the grave -rose again by His own power, and that this body Resurrection was endowed with new attributes not ordinarily alleged as pertaining to the human frame, and that He died no more, but ascended into Heaven. Assuredly, if this be true, Jesus Christ was God, for none but God could work so great a marvel. Here then we have the reason why, as Pliny says, the early Christians worshipped the Crucified, and here again we have the explanation of the numerous conversions to this new religion. "But," it may be asked, Is it a fact? were these converts justified in their belief? Is it a fact that this miracle took place? the subject we are now about to consider. the answer depends the life of Christianity. recognises this when he says: "If Christ be risen from the dead, then is our teaching vain, and of the your faith is also vain". It was the one great fact which stood prominently forward in the teaching of the early Christian Church. It was the seal set upon the life and doctrines of Jesus, which proved that He was no mere teacher sent from God, but was that very God Himself. The whole authority Christianity and position of Christian teaching are based upon the Godhead of its Founder, for without that God 66 That is Upon Paul Paul's testinot mony to the 'importance subject built on it |