What difference is there then in the two cases? And why may we not assume, on the strength of this analogy, that Paul, in thus affirming as to Christ the further impotence of death, intended nothing more than to refer it solely to the divine will and purpose?

In regard to the general tenor of the preceding objection to the view under consideration, that it essentially detracts from the significancy and importance of the great fact of our Lord's resurrection, it seems to me that it belongs not to us to sit in judgment upon the wisdom of the divine counsels; and then, because of the darkness of our own minds, to call in question what we cannot comprehend. It is enough for us to know the facts,-those facts which forced conviction upon the minds of the unwilling disciples; and which they have recorded with all the simplicity of their own belief, under the guidance of the Spirit of truth. Those simple facts we have endeavored to bring out and place in a clear light. In a calm review of them, may we not, to some extent at least, mark and comprehend the wisdom of God in the adaptation of the means to the end? What was the object of our Lord's sojourn of forty days on earth? He indeed held converse with his disciples; he gave them their commission to preach the gospel; but they were not endued with power from on high until after his ascension. His abode on earth was not necessary simply for that purpose in respect to them; any more than in the case of Paul. What then was the object? May we not find a satisfactory answer in considerations like the following. May we not regard it as in accordance with the divine plan and wisdom, that full and complete evidence of the great fact of Christ's resurrection and exaltation, his triumph over death and the grave,-evidence adapted to the constitution and feeble capacities of the human mind and to human experience,-should exist and be presented, first to his disciples, and through them to the world? Was not such evidence necessary, in order that men might believe on him as Lord and Christ; and so become assured of his power to save all who come unto him, and to bestow upon them a like reward of bliss and glory? What then was this appropriate evidence? The eleven apostles, who were appointed to be witnesses, were slow to believe. They had disbelieved the testimony of the women, and of the disciples returning from Emmaus. Suppose no further evidence of Christ's resurrection had ever been given; would the apostles have believed that he was risen? Would the world now have any valid ground

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of belief? But the Lord afforded further proof. He presented himself to the eyes of his amazed disciples; and they thought it was a spirit. Suppose the Lord had left them in this belief; should we now have any good evidence of his resurrection? He did not thus leave them; but appealed to the evidence of their own senses,―to the visible, tangible, palpable evidence before them,—that it was he himself in his own body of flesh and bones. Here was evidence which they could not gainsay nor resist; and yet they doubted until he ate before them. The same evidence in a more striking and convincing form, was repeated to them in the presence of Thomas. They believed, that it was their Lord indeed, who was thus risen in his own body from the dead; and they beheld him afterwards ascend to his heavenly glory. Not a doubt remained upon their minds; and they, the appointed witnesses, have so recorded their own convictions, that no one who reads can doubt the truth and conscientiousness of their testimony. Would they, or could they, according to the constitution of the human mind, have received the same unwavering convictions, and borne the same convincing testimony, had our Lord not presented himself to them in his own human body? In other words, would the chain of evidence, in any other way, have been as full and complete ?-If these remarks are well founded, we see at once a momentous and sufficient object and motive, why the Saviour should have remained on earth for forty days in his human body. And this being shown, the objection raised against the significancy of this mode of our Lord's resurrection, falls to the ground.

It may be said, and it sometimes is said, that Paul brings for ward his own vision of the glorified Saviour as evidence of the Lord's resurrection; and that therefore we must regard this species of proof as being in itself just as valid and convincing as any other. This statement seems to me to overlook the facts of the case. The other apostles testify to their having seen and, at the behest of their Lord, handled his real and veritable body of flesh and bones, as raised again from the dead, after they had seen him crucified and laid in the tomb. Paul testifies that several years afterwards he saw the glorified Redeemer, who gave hin an express commission to be an apostle to the Gentiles. This vision was to him a confirmation of the testimony of the witnesses to the Lord's resurrection; and he presents it to others in the

same light. Paul was not and does not claim to have been, a witness of our Lord's resurrection; Matthias had long before been selected for that office. Indeed, had we only the isolated evidence afforded by Paul's vision, what valid ground should we have for believing that Christ rose at all from the tomb? Paul did not see the body laid in the sepulchre; he did not see nor know the Lord during his forty days on earth; he saw him only in glory. Did his testimony stand alone, an isolated vision unsupported by the array of other and stronger evidence, I see not wherein it would much differ in kind from the alleged evidence of the Korân.

The resurrection of our Lord is often brought forward by the sacred writers as the pledge and pattern of the future resurrection of the saints to glory. On this ground an objection is sometimes taken to that view, which we have been considering. The saints, it is said, are everywhere represented as being raised at once in their glorified bodies; and if this be so, then our Lord, their pattern, must also have been so raised from the dead. If this objection have any force, it applies obviously and directly to the fact of the Lord's forty days' manifestation upon earth; and only indirectly or not at all to the nature of his resurrection-body. The Saviour, when he rose, had a mission to fulfil on earth; he rose in his human body, fulfilled this mission, and assumed a glorified body in his ascension to heaven. The saints have no such future mission upon earth; the moment of their resurrection and ascension is one and the same; and in this moment their bodies also are to be glorified. The promise and their hope is, not that they shall rise in the same manner in all respects as the Lord rose; but that as he was raised up and entered into his glory, so they too shall rise and enter into the same glory.

With the main subject of this discussion is closely connected another inquiry, which has of late been again brought into notice, viz. Whether our Lord ascended more than once into heaven? Such an opinion was maintained in the beginning of the last century by W. Whiston, the Socinian;2 was repeated doubtfully by Kaiser of Erlangen five and twenty years ago;3 and has recently been advanced, as if wholly new, by Kinkel, a private teacher at

1 See espec. 1 Cor. c. 15.

2 Sermons and Essays, Lond. 1709, p. 156 sq. Replied to by J. SCHMID, Diss. Theol. Whistono, multiplicam Christi in coelos ascensionem propugnanti, opposita. Lips. 1712.

› Monogrammata theol. Christ. dogmat. Erlang. 1819, p. 147.

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the University of Bonn, in an article in the Theologische Studien und Kritiken, translated and published in the Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review for Feb. 1844.2 This whole hypothesis of repeated ascensions, as stated by Kinkel, rests on two propositions; first," that the notices which the New Testament furnishes on the ascension of Christ, in respect to the time, place, and circumstances are wholly inconsistent with each other;" and secondly, "that Christ's glorification, and consequently the ascension, must have taken place immediately after the resurrection."3 If the discussions of the present Article, and of that in the last Number of this work, upon the resurrection and ascension of Christ, are worth anything, both these propositions are shown to be without foundation; and of course the hypothesis of several ascensions built upon them, falls of itself. And further, the very language of Peter in Acts 1: 22, necessarily implies that there was but a single ascension: "Beginning from the baptism of John, unto THAT SAME DAY THAT HE WAS TAKEN UP FROM US, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." That same day is but a single day; or, if not, what day is meant ?—It is also somewhat remarkable that Kinkel, if he wrote in sober earnest, should have omitted all notice of our Lord's appearance to the women, who embrace his feet; and also of his appearance to the assembled disciples, both in the absence and presence of Thomas, when Jesus gives them convincing proofs of the reality of his human body. It is easy to maintain any and every opinion or theory, if we may thus leave out of view all opposing evidence.

My task is ended. But there is one inference from this whole discussion, so solemn and momentous, that I cannot forbear to present it, and to press it upon the attention of the reader. I would not charge this inference upon those pure and holy men in every age, who may have held a different view; for they did not carry out in their own minds the consequences of their speculations. I have already stated the two conclusions which follow irresistibly from the facts recorded by the chosen witnesses of our Lord's resurrection; first, that the disciples believed the body of their Lord after his resurrection to be the same identical

Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1841. Heft 3.

2 The only reply I have seen to the article of Kinkel is by the Pastor Koerner in the Biblischen Studien von Geistlichen des Königr. Sachsens, 1str. Jahrg. 1842, p. 161 sq.

Biblioth. Sacra and Theol. Review, Feb. 1844, p. 155, 162.

body of flesh and bones, which they had seen crucified and laid in the sepulchre; and secondly, that our Lord himself took special pains to impress this very belief upon their minds. No candid inquirer can call in question the completeness of the evidence on these two points. If then our Lord was not thus in his human body, it follows that he took special pains to deceive his disciples, and that they were actually deceived. This then is the tremendous result;-I shudder while I write;-our holy and blessed Redeemer was a deceiver; the holy apostles were false witnesses of God; and our holy religion, the sacred fabric of Christianity, with all its blessed and wide-spread influences, is the most stupendous delusion the world ever saw. From such a consum. mation may God deliver us!

ARTICLE V.

SOUTH'S SERMONS.

Sermons preached upon several occasions. By Robert South, D.D. Prebendary of Westminster, and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. A New Edition, in Four Volumes.-Philadelphia: 1844.

By Leonard Withington, Newbury, Mass.

THERE cannot be a greater proof of the triumph of genius over all its obstacles than the republication of these Sermons, in this country, one century and more than three quarters of another af ter their delivery; this bitter, this sarcastic, this snarly churchman, who never spared his foes and was dreaded even by his friends, here appears in this land of the Puritans, with all his abominations on his head. We, Dissenters, have every reason to hate him; and the heart sometimes influences the taste; and makes us slow to admire the abilities which we find it impossible to love. But Dryden has remarked, that, "if a poem have genius it will force its own reception in the world. For there's a sweetness in good verse which tickles while it hurts; and no man can be heartily angry with him, who pleases him against his

1 See p. 304 above.