, "He cannot have died,"
and after a while their faith rose to the conviction which declared, "He
is not dead;" then they passed into an ecstatic mood and visions followed
which are the germ out of which the gospel stories have grown.

219. These different forms of the vision-hypothesis have been subjected to
most searching criticism by Keim, who is all the more severe because his
own thought has so much that is akin to them. There are two objections
which refute the hypothesis. The first is that the uniform tradition
which connects the resurrection and the first appearances with the "third
day" after the crucifixion leaves far too short a time for the recovery of
faith and the growth of ecstatic feeling which are requisite for these
visions, even supposing that the disciples' faith had such recuperative
powers. The second is that once such an ecstatic mood was acquired it
would be according to experience in analogous cases for the visions to
continue, if not to increase, as the thought of the risen Lord grew more
clear and familiar; yet the tradition is uniform that the appearances of
the risen Christ ceased after, at most, a few weeks. The only later one
was that which led to the conversion of Paul; and though Paul was a man
somewhat given to ecstatic experiences (see II. Cor. xii.), he carefully
distinguishes in his own thought his seeing of the Lord and his heavenly
visions. In a word, the disciples of Jesus never showed a more healthy,
normal life than that which gave them strength to found a church of
believers in the resurrection in the face of persecution and scorn.

220. Keim seeks to avoid the difficulties which his own acute criticism
disclosed in the ordinary vision-theory, by another which rejects the
gospel stories as legendary, yet frankly acknowledges that the faith of
the apostles in the resurrection was based on a miracle. Their certainty
was so unshakable, so uniform, so abiding, that it can be accounted for
only by acknowledging that they did actually see the Lord. This seeing,
however, was not with the eyes of sense, but with the spiritual vision,
which properly perceives what pertains to the spirit world into which the
glorified Lord had withdrawn when he died. In his spiritual estate he
manifested himself to his disciples, by a series of divinely caused and
therefore essentially objective visions, in which he proved to them
abundantly that he was alive, was victor over death, and had been exalted