which they
had no motive, why did they not produce it and say, 'There is an
answer to your nonsense. There is the dead man. Let us hear no more
of this absurdity of His having risen from the dead'?

'He died ... according to the Scriptures, and He was buried.' And the
angels' word carries the only explanation of the fact which it
proclaims, 'He is not here--He is risen.'

I take leave to say that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
established by evidence which nobody would ever have thought of
doubting unless for the theory that miracles were impossible. The
reason for disbelief is not the deficiency of the evidence, but the
bias of the judge.

III. And now I have no time to do more than touch the last thought. I
have tried to show what establishes the facts. Let me remind you, in
a sentence or two, what the facts establish.

I by no means desire to suspend the whole of the evidence for
Christianity on the testimony of the eyewitnesses to the
Resurrection. There are a great many other ways of establishing the
truth of the Gospel besides that, upon which I do not need to dwell
now. But, taking this one specific ground which my text suggests,
what do the facts thus established prove?

Well, the first point to which I would refer, and on which I should
like to enlarge, if I had time, is the bearing of Christ's
Resurrection on the acceptance of the miraculous. We hear a great
deal about the impossibility of miracle and the like. It upsets the
certainty and fixedness of the order of things, and so forth, and so
forth. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead; and that opens a door
wide enough to admit all the rest of the Gospel miracles. It is of no
use paring down the supernatural in Christianity, in order to meet
the prejudices of a quasi-scientific scepticism, unless you are
prepared to go the whole length, and give up the Resurrection. There
is the turning point. The question is, Do you believe that Jesus
Christ rose from the dead, or do you not? If your objections to the
supernatural are valid, then Christ is not risen from the dead; and
you must face the consequences of that. If He is risen from the dead,
then you must cease all your talk about the impossibility of miracle,
and be willing to accept a supernatural revelation as God's way of
making Himself known to man.

But, further, let me remind you of the bearing of the Resurrection
upon Christ's work and claims. If He be lying in some forgotten
grave, and if a