any subsequent time, worth
while "to confer with flesh and blood," or, in modern phrase, to
re-examine the facts for himself? or was he ready to accept anything
that fitted in with his preconceived ideas? Does he mean, when he
speaks of all the appearances of Jesus after the crucifixion as if
they were of the same kind, that they were all visions, like the
manifestation to himself? And, finally, how is this account to be
reconciled with those in the first and third gospels--which, as we
have seen, disagree with one another?

Until these questions are satisfactorily answered, I am afraid that,
so far as I am concerned, Paul's testimony cannot be seriously
regarded, except as it may afford evidence of the state of traditional
opinion at the time at which he wrote, say between 55 and 60 A.D.;
that is, more than twenty years after the event; a period much more
than sufficient for the development of any amount of mythology about
matters of which nothing was really known. A few years later, among
the contemporaries and neighbours of the Jews, and, if the most
probable interpretation of the Apocalypse can he trusted, among the
followers of Jesus also, it was fully believed, in spite of all the
evidence to the contrary, that the Emperor Nero was not really dead,
but that he was hidden away somewhere in the East, and would speedily
come again at the head of a great army, to be revenged upon his
enemies.[72]

Thus, I conceive that I have shown cause for the opinion that Dr.
Wace's challenge touching the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer,
and the Passion was more valorous than discreet. After all this
discussion, I am still at the agnostic point. Tell me, first, what
Jesus can be proved to have been, said, and done, and I will say
whether I believe him, or in him,[73] or not. As Dr. Wace admits that
I have dissipated his lingering shade of unbelief about the
bedevilment of the Gadarene pigs, he might have done something to help
mine. Instead of that, he manifests a total want of conception of the
nature of the obstacles which impede the conversion of his "infidels."

The truth I believe to be, that the difficulties in the way of
arriving at a sure conclusion as to these matters, from the Sermon on
the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, or any other data offered by the
Synoptic gospels (and _a fortiori_ from the fourth gospel), are
insuperable. Every one of these records is coloured by the
prepossessions of those among whom the pr