Jesus could he press forward towards the new mark, seeking to apprehend it himself (Phil. iii. 12). It was not he who had chosen Christ, but Christ who had chosen and ordained him, that he should go and bring forth much fruit (John xv. 16; Rom. i. 1; Gal. i. 15). Thenceforth he knows and designates himself as an apostle of Jesus Christ, not by his own will, but " by the will of God" (2 Cor. i. 1); called "not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised Him from the dead" (Gal. i. 1).

We shall see further on, that in the construction of primitive Christianity, as attempted by the critical school, we always have a beginning without a beginning, because everything is already existing beforehand. The same is the case with all subjective explanations of the manifestation vouchsafed to St. Paul. They are obliged to suppose that a belief in Christ existed in him before he believed, and an image of Christ, such as could only be formed afterwards, before Christ appeared to him they make him be converted while he was still a Pharisee raging against the Christians. All these attempts are defeated by their psychological inconceivableness far more than by the difficulty of explaining the impression on the senses without an external appearance of Christ.

We revert to the issue before raised. Does the appearance of our Lord to St. Paul speak for or against the attempt to explain all His other appearances as visions, and thus to deny the reality of the resurrection? May we not safely say that the endeavour of Strauss to employ the internal nature of this event as a handle to reduce all the other manifestations related in the Gospels to mere subjective phenomena, recoils upon himself? Just as the appearance of the risen Saviour to St. Paul before Damascus can only be conceived as external and bodily, so all the other manifestations enumerated by him in 1 Cor. xv. must be regarded in like manner. But even were the former subjective, the converse would not follow with certainty, viz. that all the manifestations vouchsafed to the older apostles were so too. Moreover, in comparing both, we should not overlook the distinction, that before Damascus the body of our Lord (about which, however, nothing is said)

This is correctly stated by Weizsäcker, Untersuchungen über d. evangelische Geschichte, p. 570. Cf. Keim, Der geschichtliche Christus, p. 137.

was long since fully glorified (hence the blinding light); whereas, when appearing before the ascension, it was in a transitional state.

But St. Paul is not merely an immediate eye-witness of the resurrection; he also testifies to it with his person and history. In his sudden transformation, and in his entire subsequent life-work, he appears as an incomparably energetic and joyous witness and martyr for the Christian faith, who constantly refers his preaching to an immediate vocation by Christ. He himself is one long living proof for the objective fact that the risen Saviour appeared before Damascus.

This leads us from the historical credibility of our records -which was the first part of the proof demanded by Strauss -to the second, viz. that certain indubitable events cannot be explained without having recourse to the fact of the resurrection.

k

III.-COLLAPSE OF THE VISIONARY HYPOTHESIS IN CONSEQUENCE OF INDUBITABLE CIRCUMSTANCES AND FACTS.

Besides the conversion and history of St. Paul already alluded to, there is a series of other facts, all of which no less demand the bodily resurrection of Christ as a necessary precondition. Such are the belief of the disciples, and their unanimous testimony that the resurrection took place on the third day; the actual disappearance of the body of Jesus out of the grave; the entire revolution in the disciples' state of mind after the risen Saviour had appeared to them; and last but not least, the world-wide effects proceeding from the resurrection. Let us consider these a little more closely.

The belief of the disciples in the bodily resurrection of our Lord is confessed by the critical school; and this fact cannot be explained as the result of a mere vision. If we picture to ourselves the condition and consciousness of the disciples at that time, we must first ask, how-unless their Master actually issued forth from the grave-could the idea of the resurrection occur to them? They believed, we are told, in the Messiahship of Christ, and in His victorious existence after death. But why should this belief take the shape of a fact so utterly unheard of, as that He should shortly come forth again

from the grave? It has been shown that at that time the belief in the resurrection of the righteous at the last judgment was current among the Jews; but the notion of the resurrection of a dead man, who leaves his grave in a body already transformed long before the judgment-day, was as little thought of by the contemporaries of Christ (cf. John xi. 24) as by any of the Old Testament writers. This idea was so foreign to the disciples, as well as to the Jewish world in general, that had they had visions of Christ, their only conclusion could have been that His soul was living in heavenly glory; but never that the Master who had died before their eyes had gone forth from the grave again alive. Their belief in the resurrection was to all intents and purposes quite a new belief. "The Messianic expectations of the Jews contained no idea corresponding to it." But since it is undeniable that from their first public appearance the apostles preached of their Lord, who had not only been received up into heaven, but who had also risen again in body, we ask, how was this new element introduced into their view of the Messiah unless a fact of their indubitable experience convinced them of it? Strauss confesses that the Pharisees believed only in a resurrection at the last day, but adds, "There was no difficulty, from the standpoint of Jewish thought at that time, in supposing that the resurrection of some particularly holy man might take place earlier in an isolated instance" (pp. 303, 304). But the artifice of supposing an exception in this one case will not help Strauss to get over this inconvenient difficulty.

1

Moreover, we ask, whence did the disciples obtain the notion of a glorified body? On other occasions when the dead were. raised, something quite different took place, viz. a return to the present mortal body, but not a transformation of this mortal flesh into a glorified body. Besides, our critics maintain that these raisings of the dead were myths or deceptions, and therefore cannot have been the source of this belief. The same is the case with the history of our Lord's transfiguration, which Strauss derives from the opinion of the Jewish Christians, that Moses was a type of Christ (pp. 516 et ss.). "The belief in the rapture and heavenly life of Enoch, Elijah, or Moses, was rather a hindrance than otherwise to the applica

1 Weizsäcker, ubi sup. p. 574.

tion of such notions to a man of the present age, especially one who had been seen to die" (Weizsäcker, ubi sup.). Whence, then, could the idea of a glorified body, with these apparently irreconcilable attributes of sudden disappearance and palpableness, proceed? Our opponents have not as yet answered even these preliminary questions.

With regard to the psychical possibility of visions, hallucinations, or phantasms, medical science teaches us, that in consequence of a strong excitement of the imagination, and of the cerebral activity thereby caused, the organs of sense may be affected in such a manner as to make the subject believe that it hears or sees an external object corresponding to the internal impression thus produced. There are impressions on the senses-proceeding entirely from internal causes, without any corresponding external object-by which the nerves of sense are affected precisely in the same manner as by an external perception; the person who has such impressions errs only in referring the image produced by them to some outward cause. However, these visionaries themselves do not always consider the image they see to be objective realities. But though self-deception in consequence of a vision is not impossible, yet it must be remembered that a vision is always caused, in part at least, by some abnormal condition of the body. And how soon must a subjective image of this kind vanish before any attempt at definite personal intercourse, accompanied by conversation and touch!

Some upholders of the "visionary" hypothesis, without giving up the subjective character of these appearances, are willing to grant that influences without or from above—“ a personal working of the departed spirit of Christ upon His disciples "may have helped to produce them. Is this any more conceivable than an appearance of the risen Saviour Himself? Or is a vision thus magically produced within the disciples more comprehensible than the resurrection? Are not words and sounds (if they do not proceed from an illusion), without an actual appearance, more marvellous than the appearance itself? Do such explanations carry us a step beyond the miraculous? They are but one more proof of ' Cf. among others, Joh. Müller, Lehrbuch der Physiologie, vol. ii. pp. 563

et ss.

Rothe's maxim, that "without miracles the divine revelation must infallibly degenerate into magic."

Our opponents are compelled further to suppose that the passionate imagination of the disciples stretched out its feelers after their indispensable Master. Instead of this, we see that on each occasion He appears to His followers quite unexpectedly; so much so, that at first they will not believe, and He has to rebuke their unbelief. From this it is clear that they were not prepared for the immediate reappearance of Jesus, especially in the shape of a resurrection from the dead. Here the psychological precondition of visions is wanting. The deep dejection on account of their Master's shameful death could scarcely give wings to a new and joyous faith. We see the poor shepherdless sheep in fear of the Jews, in doubts and conflicts respecting their Messianic hopes, in perplexity as to the future. These are not the frames of mind from which ecstatic visions might be expected to proceed, but rather the contrary. For in other parts of the New Testament we see visions come upon those who are seeking for a deeper knowledge of God by means of tranquil contemplation, still communion, firm faith, and earnest prayer and fasting.

And finally, the mental and physical impossibility of visions by so many people at once. Critics may talk of a chain of spiritual sympathy which can bind down whole assemblies at once. But in the New Testament, visions presuppose a certain moral and religious effort and frame of mind in the individual who has them, and cannot be shown to be "infectious." In this case, too, there would always be one who began and drew the others after him; whereas, in various appearances of our Lord, many, ay hundreds, at once and simultaneously perceived Him. We do not deny that science can tell us of cases in which visions were seen by whole assemblies at once; but where this is the case, it has always been accompanied by a morbid excitement of the mental life, as well as by a morbid bodily condition, especially by nervous affections. Now even if one or several of the disciples had been in this morbid state, we should by no means be justified in concluding that all were so. They were surely men of most varied temperament. and constitution. And yet one after another is supposed to have fallen into this morbid condition; not only the excited