In using this argument, we have for the moment granted that the body had been given up to the Jews. But that could not be; for, according to Roman law, the dead bodies of those who had been executed were given to those who claimed them. Now, if our evangelic records are not fictitious, it was Joseph of Arimathea who put in this claim, and who, after having obtained from the Roman governor the body of Jesus, buried it in his own sepulchre. This account agrees with what we are told of the women, that, in going to the sepulchre, their intention had been to embalm the body. They were therefore sure that they should have the disposal of it; which proves that it had remained in the hands. of the friends of Jesus. Besides, did not the Jews, when they charged the disciples with having stolen and made away with the body, themselves thereby confess as clearly as possible that it had not remained in their hands?

So, then, this body, so precious both to the love of one party and to the hatred of others, is not in the hands of either! Friends and enemies alike, we are to suppose, look for it, and cannot find it. What, then, really became of it? The only possible explanation of this mysterious disappearance is that it reappeared as the body of Jesus risen.1

1 The question has been asked, What was the nature of that risen body? Was it a material body like ours? If so, how could Jesus have appeared in it in a room with the doors closed? Or was it a body of some non-material nature? If so, how could it eat, or allow itself to be handled? In any case, the reality of the resurrection cannot be compromised by the obscurity which hangs over the new body of Jesus. We are here in a region which altogether transcends our

No success, then, has yet attended any of the attempts made to account for the fact of the testimony of the apostles, while suppressing that of the resurrection itself. The apostles did not invent the story of the resurrection: their good faith is acknowledged. They did not mistake one fact for another, confounding a mere awakening out of sleep with a resurrection that is conceded. Nor, lastly, were they the dupes of their imagination, fancying that they saw and heard things which really took place only in their minds; the very nature of the appearances, the number and character of the witnesses, the mysterious disappearance of the body, shut out the third hypothesis. And with this the list of rationalistic attempts at explanation is exhausted.

What has been my purpose in this discussion of a purely scientific nature? Has it been to afford to my readers a basis for faith in the resurrection of Jesus? By no means; faith cannot be founded upon argument; all that science can aspire to do is to dissipate doubts that have been suggested by science. To beget faith is the work of the testimony of the apostles, displaying itself before our conscience in its noble, holy simplicity. The divine characteristics that distinguish it are immediately seized by

experience. The whole condition of Jesus at that period was one of transition. "I am not yet ascended," He says in John xx. 17, "but I ascend." His body also, then, was in process of transformation. On the one hand, it participated in the nature of the former body; on the other, it had in some measure the attributes of the spiritual body-that is to say, it was perfectly under the command of the soul, and subject to its will. The ascension marked the terminal point of this time of development.

all minds which possess in their purity the instincts of the true, the good, the divine. Out of these is born Faith. If she should happen to meet on her way with the objections of Science which threaten to bar her passage, she is not troubled; she waits and leaves Science to act by herself. The latter soon sets herself to her proper work; she re-tests the argument she has used, and soon with her own hands sweeps away the difficulties she has accumulated. When Science has accomplished this task, in the way in which we have just been endeavouring to do, Faith, seeing thenceforth the way clear before her, marches on again in peace, with the feeling of one more victory won, and of a more assured possession of the treasure in which she rejoices.

III. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE RESURRECTION

But what, then, is there in the fact of the resurrection of Jesus which is so precious to faith? Is this prodigy different in its nature from so many others recorded in our sacred books?

Twice, when Jesus was asked for a miraculous attestation to His claim as Messiah, He referred those who so pressed Him to the miracle of the resurrection, and He added that "no other sign should be given them." In fact, His other miracles have something of an accidental character about them; but this is an essential part of the divine plan in the working out of our salvation. It is one of the great redeeming acts of God. It has, then, a character of necessity, and it was for that reason that

Jesus could speak of it beforehand as the true sign. He could not have so spoken of any of His ordinary miracles.

To bring into clear light this special importance of the resurrection, I will begin with two preliminary remarks :—

1. If the resurrection is a fact, it cannot be an isolated one; this divine act must contribute something essential to the ensemble of a great work of God. Considered apart from that which went before and that which followed it, such a miracle would seem even stranger and more out of harmony with reason than it is in its own nature. It is in virtue of the place which it occupies in a homogeneous whole, that, without ceasing to be supernatural, it becomes at the same time logical and natural. It is thereby freed from that character of abruptness which it would otherwise wear. It is a mountaintop in the middle of the chain of which it forms one of the main connecting links. And this chain, if we wish to discern it, is not difficult to make out; it is the sacred history, that of the Old Testament, which in all its lines converges upon this great fact, and that of the New, which wholly flows from it. As the existence of the fruit proves that of the tree which bare it, and as from it one may argue the nature of that which is to be its product; so, by the divine fact of the resurrection, the divine character of that Israelitish history which culminates in it is demonstrated, and the divine renewal of the whole condition of humanity which dates from that moment finds its explanation.

2. It is not more possible for the miracle of the resurrection, if it was a reality, to have been an isolated fact, than it is for the part which that miracle plays in the divine history to which it belongs to have been a secondary part.

By the fact of the absence of any human agent as its instrument, it takes its place on a level with the most prodigious of miracles, that of the creation. This analogy holds good even to the very fundamental nature of the two facts: to summon into life and to recall to life are not these two acts of the same nature? Creation is the victory of Omnipotence over nothingness; the resurrection is the victory of this same power over death, which is the likest thing to nothingness known to us. As the creation is the primordial fact in the history of the universe, the resurrection of Jesus Christ must be its central fact. It is that or nothing.

Let us now endeavour to penetrate into the essence of the fact.

First of all, it is proper to give a hearing upon this subject to those who were commissioned to proclaim the resurrection, and to present this work of God to the faith of mankind. Now, the apostolic comment upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ is briefly summarized for us by the greatest of the founders of the gospel: (6 Christ was delivered because of our offences, and was raised again for our justification."1

1Rom. iv. 25. We use the expression “because of," and not "for," because the latter term is ambiguous. It is impossible to misunderstand it in the Greek, provided one keeps close to the words used by the apostle.