storical fact, that so much and no more is
positively known of the end of Jesus of Nazareth. On what grounds can a
reasonable man be asked to believe any more? So far as the narrative in
the first gospel, on the one hand, and those in the third gospel and the
Acts, on the other, go beyond what is stated in the second gospel, they
are hopelessly discrepant with one another. And this is the more
significant because the pregnant phrase "some doubted," in the first
gospel, is ignored in the third.

But it is said that we have the witness Paul speaking to us directly in
the Epistles. There is little doubt that we have, and a very singular
witness he is. According to his own showing, Paul, in the vigour of his
manhood, with every means of becoming acquainted, at first hand, with
the evidence of eye-witnesses, not merely refused to credit them, but
"persecuted the Church of God and made havoc of it." The reasoning of
Stephen fell dead upon the acute intellect of this zealot for the
traditions of his fathers: his eyes were blind to the ecstatic
illumination of the martyr's countenance "as it had been the face of an
angel;" and when, at the words "Behold, I see the heavens opened and
the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God," the murderous mob
rushed upon and stoned the rapt disciple of Jesus, Paul ostentatiously
made himself their official accomplice.

Yet this strange man, because he has a vision one day, at once, and with
equally headlong zeal, flies to the opposite pole of opinion. And he is
most careful to tell us that he abstained from any re-examination of the
facts.

Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood; neither went I up
to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me; but I went away
into Arabia. (Galatians i. 16, 17.)

I do not presume to quarrel with Paul's procedure. If it satisfied him,
that was his affair; and, if it satisfies any one else, I am not called
upon to dispute the right of that person to be satisfied. But I
certainly have the right to say that it would not satisfy me in like
case; that I should be very much ashamed to pretend that it could, or
ought to, satisfy me; and that I can entertain but a very low estimate
of the value of the evidence of people who are to be satisfied in this
fashion, when questions of objective fact, in which their faith is
interested, are concerned. So that when I am called upon to believe a
great deal more than the oldest gospel tells