dition arrested by his own countrymen,
and handed over to the imperial governor; a rebel adjudged to death by
Roman law; a three hours' darkness over all the land; an earthquake
breaking open graves and rending the temple veil; a number of ghosts
wandering about Jerusalem; a crucified corpse rising again to life, and
appearing to a crowd of above 500 people; a man risen from the dead
ascending bodily into heaven without any concealment, and in the broad
daylight, from a mountain near Jerusalem; all these marvellous events
took place, we are told, and yet they have left no ripple on the current
of contemporary history. There is, however, no lack of such history, and
an exhaustive account of the country and age in which the hero of the
story lived is given by one of his own nation--a most painstaking and
laborious historian. "How shall we excuse the supine inattention of the
Pagan and philosophic world to those evidences which were presented by
the hand of Omnipotence, not to their reason, but to their senses?
During the age of Christ, of his apostles, and of their first disciples,
the doctrine which they preached was confirmed by innumerable prodigies.
The lame walked, the blind saw, the sick were healed, the dead were
raised, demons were expelled, and the laws of nature were frequently
suspended for the benefit of the Church. But the sages of Greece and
Rome turned aside from the awful spectacle, and, pursuing the ordinary
occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious of any alterations
in the moral or physical government of the world. Under the reign of
Tiberius the whole earth, or at least a celebrated province of the Roman
Empire, was involved in a preternatural darkness of three hours. Even
this miraculous event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the
curiosity, and the devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age
of science and history. It happened during the lifetime of Seneca and
the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or
received the earliest intelligence, of the prodigy. Each of these
philosophers, in a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena
of nature--earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his
indefatigable curiosity could collect. Both the one and the other have
omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has
been witness since the creation of the globe. A distinct chapter of
Pliny is designed for eclipses of an extraor