considered the whole of Paul's evidence, we have Summing up of Paul's position and in it a most valuable witness to the Resurrection in the person of one who had had every facility evidence for complete knowledge and who himself declares that he had seen the risen Christ. As has been concisely said: "We have evidence then of the Faith in the Resurrection at four distinct dates at least, namely A.D. 57, the approximate date of the fifteenth chapter of the First Epistle of the Corinthians; A.D. 51, the approximate date of the visit of St. Paul to Corinth when he taught them the Gospel of the Resurrection, to which he refers in his Epistle; A.D. 47 or 44, the date referred to in the second chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians; and A.D. 35 or 33 the date referred to in the first chapter. If, as is practically certain, the death of Christ on the Cross took place in A.D. 29 or 30 (which no one doubts except those very few persons who doubt the existence of Christ altogether) we have evidence that within at the most twenty-eight years, and at the least four years, the Resurrection belief had grown up."1 III. SYNOPTICS AND FOURTH GOSPEL We now pass on to a consideration of the The Synopevidence which is to be obtained from the Synoptic and the tic Gospels Gospels and that according to John. Once again Fourth Gospel 1 Hon. and Rev. J. G. Adderley, Evidence for the Resurrection; MacMillan, The Religious Doubts of Democracy. G value of tine's views Professor 1 let the reader distinctly understand our position. We are considering the Scriptural writings as historical documents and not as inspired works. They contain many things which are hard to underPosition and stand, many mysteries which are beyond the these works reach of human reason, because they deal with the Infinite and His Revelation. St. Augustine St. Augus- has well said, "Ego vero evangelio non crederem, nisi ecclesiæ Catholicæ me commoveret auctoritas ".1 And Professor Huxley has, as we have seen at an earlier period,' corroborated this famous dictum. The whole value of Scripture is based upon the authority of the Christian Church that declared it to be Scripture. Its meaning is for her to define in accordance with the deposit of Faith left her by her Founder. During the long course of centuries which have elapsed since first she put her seal upon these writings, errors by copyists, omissions, interpolations, unauthorised additions and mistakes may have crept into various editions of them and the same Church which gave the writings to us may sooner or later be called upon to examine the present copies and pronounce upon them. She has guarded the Scriptures zealously and has refused to give her sanction to such translations as were undertaken without her leave. That no vital error has found its way into her approved 2 Page 2. 1 Contra epistolam Manichæi, cap. v. text she gives us her guarantee, but she gives us Examples of omission none as to the possibilities I have named. Let me exemplify my meaning. The last twelve verses of addition and the last chapter in Mark's Gospel are very generally held to be a subsequent addition to the original, and we find discrepancies in numerical quotations in the Old Testament. In the accounts given us by the synoptics one omits the genealogies, and in Gospels in harmony on those of the Passion and Resurrection all do not all main relate the same incidents and some of the accounts points cannot be clearly harmonised. Yet on all the main facts they are in unison. Take the accounts of the Passion and Resurrection for example. The hour of the Crucifixion is differently statedthe visits to the empty tomb appear confusingthe order of the appearances of the risen Christ seems to differ-but all agree that Jesus died upon the Cross, that the tomb was empty, that Jesus rose again and was seen of many. In a court of justice we look for agreement on essential points and we expect minor differences in the evidence. Minor discrepancies Where a group of witnesses gives exactly the same in evidence testimony in every detail we rightly suspect collusion of no value and infer falsehood. And the same rules must be applied to the Scriptural witnesses of the Resurrection. Yet Strauss objected to the historicity of this fact because of the discrepancies in the testimony. Had these writings been the invention of a craftily formed story, these discrepancies would never have occurred. The very fact of the difficulties on minor points is one of our best guarantees against fraud. And it is neither judicial nor reasonable to disbelieve the story they lay before us merely because they are alleged to be not in absolute agreeIllustrations ment on every point. Paley has given some useful from Paley illustrations in this matter. "The embassy of the Jews to deprecate the execution of Claudius's order to place his statue on their temple, Philo places in harvest, Josephus in seed-time: both contemporary writers." And yet the embassy was truly sent and the order truly given. He then quotes the case of the execution of the Marquis of Argyle. Lord Clarendon relates that he was condemned to be hanged and was executed on the day of his condemnation. On the other hand Burnet, Woodrow, Heath and Echard concur in stating that Argyle was beheaded, not on the Saturday of his condemnation but on the following Monday. Yet Argyle was sentenced to death and was put to death as nobody doubts.1 "When," says Lessing, "Livy, Polybius and Tacitus describe the same event with such diversities as to contradict each other, has the event itself, in which they all agree, ever been denied?" and from Lessing It is not for me here to discuss the genuine1 Paley's Evidences, Edn. S.P.C.R., 1872, p. 544. ness and authenticity of the various writings in the We are here New Testament. That will be done elsewhere. not concerned with and authen A great discussion is going on upon these points, genuineness and one would believe in reading the criticisms of ticity of certain learned writers of the past and present Testament the New century, that these works had never before been writings subjected to criticism. Such, however, is not the case. From the time of Papias (died A.D. 160) Higher down to that of Anselm (born A.D. 1033) we find a great deal of very earnest critical work. A second period commenced with Anselm and carries us down to the discussion of the problem of Universals. In it arose the scholastic school of philosophy which we find engaged in constructive and critical work. It issued in a definite systematic form of Philosophy and carries us down to the times of its greatest exponent, Thomas of Aquin (born A.D. 1227). Then came the period in which the discussion of subtle and useless subjects led to the decay of scholasticism. It was followed by the Renaissance with its devotion to belles lettres and the fine arts, and the neglect of criticism, till the last century saw the revival of a purely critical philosophy, and the study of historical criticism as a special department of it. To a very large extent the critical objections that are offered to-day against Christianity are old as Celsus from whom indeed many of them are taken. As we have said, it is criticism not a new thing |