sked 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 anyone 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 me about the final events
of the history of Jesus on the authority of Paul (1 Corinthians xv.
5-8) I must pause. Did he think it, at