perhaps still later, whether in Galilee or Judea is uncertain; I incline to think in Judea, and that it is followed almost immediately by the ascension. That this harmony is in all respects correct I do not assert; it is only hypothetical, but there is nothing in any of the four narratives inconsistent with it. It is at all events clear that there is a substantial accord in the four accounts. They are not irreconcilable, and the discrepancies are in matters of minor and comparatively unimportant details.

the morning of the third day, first discovered at | are later. The commission to the eleven is given or about daybreak, and followed by numerous appearances to different witnesses, and at different times, all the Evangelists agree. (5.) The principal discrepancies are the following: The time of the visit to the tomb by the women is described by Mark as sunrise, by John as "while it was yet dark"; two angels are described as at the tomb by Luke and John, one by Matthew and Mark; an appearance to all the women is described in Matthew, an appearance to Mary alone in Mark and John, and no answering appearance in Luke. In Mark the women say nothing to any man, in the other three Evangelists they tell the disciples. These are, I believe, all the discrepancies of any moment. They are none of them of a character to invalidate the truthfulness of the concurrent testimony to the essential facts. Most of them are easily explicable; for explanations see notes on the various passages; all, I believe, would be explicable if we knew all the facts. (6.) Finally, while a harmony of these accounts is possible, any harmony, constructed in our imperfect knowledge of the events, is necessarily hypotheti-rection of Jesus Christ; it formed the basis of cal. With this explanation I embody what ap- the first apostolic preaching (Acts 2:24-32; 3: 21; pears to me to be a probable order of the events, 4:2, 10; 10: 39-40; 13: 30-37; 17: 31, 32); and it was unias recorded by the four Evangelists, supple-versally accepted by Christians at the time when mented by Luke in Acts 1:1, 2, and Paul in Paul wrote the first Epistle to the Corinthians, 1 Cor. 15:3-7.

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2. Authentication of the Resurrection. Since the resurrection of Jesus Christ necessarily carries with it the supernatural origin and divine authority of Christianity, it is not strange that from the earliest ages it has been the chief evidence of Christianity in the hands of Christians, and the chief point of attack on the part of unbelievers. The following considerations have led the majority of impartial students of history to consider the resurrection of Jesus Christ as well authenticated as any fact in history. (1.) The early church universally believed in the resur

i. e., within about thirty years after its supposed Occurrence. It is incredible that a myth should have grown up, without substantial foundation, in a quarter of a century, in spite of hostility of both Jew and Gentile, and during the lifetime of those who were competent to contradict and dispute the falsehood if it had been false. (2.) This belief is sustained by four narratives which (see above) substantially agree, yet, which are all unmistakably original and independent accounts, neither produced by collusion, nor drawn from a common source. The accounts bear in many places the evident indication of being prepared by eye-witnesses; and of being the natural and even child-like description of events which the narrators themselves could not comprehend. The very seeming contradictions afford incidental evidence of the belief of the narrators. "Nothing can exceed in artlessness and simplicity the four accounts of the first appearance of Jesus after his crucifixion. If these qualities are not discernible here, then we must despair of ever being able to discern their presence anywhere."

Several women-the exact number is not known-go together at early dawn, between daybreak and sunrise, to the tomb, to anoint the body. They find the grave opened and the body gone. Mary, supposing that the tomb has been rifled by the enemies of the Lord, hastens instantly back to the city for help, tells Peter and John, who forthwith hasten to the sepulchre. She accompanies, or more probably follows them, unable to keep up. That they hastened is evident from John 20: 4. Meanwhile the angel in the tomb has announced the resurrection of the Lord to the other women, who have gone back into the city to tell the news to the disciples. Peter and John come, find the tomb empty, and depart perplexed. Mary, in greater grief than before, at the helplessness of their situation, their Lord's tomb robbed, and their Lord's body borne away to some dishonored grave, remains weeping, is accosted by some one whom she believes to be the gardener, discovers in him her risen Lord, and hastens to Jerusalem to inform the disciples. This I believe to be the first ap-|-(Furness.) (3.) This universality of belief pearance of Jesus to any of the disciples, and probably the basis of the less full and accurate account of Matt. 28: 9, 10. The same day Christ appears to the disciples at Emmaus (Luke); and on the evening of that day to the ten at meat; and a week later again, when Thomas is present. The appearances in Galilee (John, ch. 21; Matt. 28: 16, 17)

must, on any hypothesis, be accounted for. It cannot be accounted for by the ancient Jewish explanation, viz., that the body was stolen and the story of resurrection invented by the disciples (Matt. 28: 13). This is not only negatived by the precautions which the priests took against fraud (Matt. 27: 62-66), by the facts that the disciples

were not anticipating a resurrection (see below), | Christ on their walk to Emmaus, had given up and that such a deception could not possibly and did not, in fact, enure in any way to their advantage, but also by the abundant evidence of their honesty in their labors and self-sacrifice, and by the incredibility of the supposition that a number of men could have banded together to promulgate such a system of religion as that of Jesus Christ, embodying such exalted precepts and principles of truth, purity, and love, by means of a deliberately-framed fraud. This hypothesis is now almost, if not quite, universally abandoned, even by infidel scholars. For example, "Only thus much need be acknowledged, that the disciples firmly believed that Jesus had arisen; this is perfectly sufficient to make their further progress and operations intelligible."—(Strauss.) "It is an indisputable fact that in the early morning of the first day of the week following the crucifixion, the grave of Jesus was found empty * * * It is a second fact that the disciples and other members of the Apostolic communion were convinced that Jesus was seen after his crucifixion." -(Schenkel.) The honesty of the Apostles is even admitted by the Jewish Rabbinical writings, which accounts for the disappearance of the body by saying that it was removed from the grave by the priests (see note on verses 11-15, above). Nor can this universal belief be explained by the hypothesis that Christ did not really die, but swooned, and was subsequently recovered from his swoon. For his death is as well authenticated as any fact in history. It was made sure of by the enmity of the priests (Matt. 27: 62, 63), by the spear-thrust of the soldiers (John 19: 34, 35), by the questioning of Pilate (Mark 15: :44), these concurrent facts being testified to by independent witnesses; and the recovery of Jesus from a swoon could not have formed the basis of any belief in a resurrection, without deliberate fraud on the part of his followers, which, as we see, is not regarded as tenable even by infidels. Nor can this belief be accounted for by regarding it with Renan as the production of an enthusiastic imagination and ardent hope in the disciples, in other words as a spiritual fantasy. For they had no such imagination and no such hope. The fact of the resurrection is attested, not by persons predisposed to believe in it, but by skeptical critics hard to be convinced. They were utterly disheartened by his death and had as little expectation of his resurrection as they had before entertained of his crucifixion. The women who came to anoint the body were surprised and grief-stricken to find it gone; they thought the tomb had been robbed. When they carried back the report of the resurrection to the other disciples "their words seemed to them as idle words, and they believed them not." The two disciples who conversed with the unrecognized

their faith in the Messiahship, and were thunderstruck at the revelation of his presence. When he appeared to the ten, Thomas refused to accept their testimony. So marked and stubborn was their incredulity, that Christ more than once upbraided them for their unbelief. The reader who is interested to see how little historical basis there is for the latest and perhaps most popular rationalistic theory of the resurrection, namely, that it was the honest figment of a diseased imagination, the unconscious creation of those who amuse themselves with what is impossible, and, rather than renounce all hope, do violence to every reality," may find it in an examination of the following among other passages, indicating how stolid, prosaic, despairing, unhopeful, and unimaginative were the witnesses who have testified to the resurrection (Mark 16: 10-14; Luke 24:11-20, 21, 25, 32, 37-39; John 20: 9, 11-13, 24, 25). The facts, then, are indisputable, even admitted by rationalistic writers,-Schenkel, Renan, Strauss, and by Rabbinical writers (see Goldstien's Life of Jesus),-that the grave of Jesus was found empty early in the morning of the first day of the week following the crucifixion, that it was not opened by connivance of the disciples, that they believed that they saw their risen Lord, conversed with him, touched him, ate with him, that this belief was shared by above five hundred persons who at different times had intercourse with him (1 Cor. 15: 3-8), that on this belief the whole structure of Christianity, as a divine religion, was rested by the early preachers, at a time when it would have been easy to expose the error, if error there were, and was universally believed in the church, within thirty years after its occurrence. (4.) Only the fact of the resurrection can account for the marvelous change in the spirit and character of the Apostles. While he lived they had no accurate conception of his mission, believed he was about to inaugurate a political Jewish kingdom, were eager for precedence in it, and this even up to the time of his Passion, looked to the last moment for a miraculous deliverance from the Roman soldiers, when this hope was crushed by Christ's surrender, forsook him and fled, and after his crucifixion abandoned all idea of his being the Messiah and returned to their old avocation of fishing (Matt. 16: 22; 20: 20-24; Luke 19:11; 29: 24–30; John 21: 3). But the resurrection completely transformed them; inspired them with a new conception of Christ's kingdom as for all people, with a new courage to suffer for the sake of their risen Lord and his kingdom, and with a new purpose to preach Christ and him crucified everywhere as a spiritual redemption for sin (Acts 2: 39; 5: 41; 10:43). Neither fraud nor fiction are competent to account for the moral contrast

The view is taken from near the foot of the Mount of Olives; the garden of Gethsemane is in the foreground; in the background, on the left, is the north corner of the east wall of Jerusalem. The path crosses the Cedron near the garden of Gethsemane.

THE GOSPEL

ACCORDING TO

MARK,

WITH

NOTES AND COMMENTS.