the awful spectacle, and pursuing the
ordinary occupations of life and study, appeared unconscious
of any alterations in the moral or physical government of the
world. Under the reign of Tiberius the whole earth, or at least
a celebrated province of the Roman Empire, was involved in a
preternatural darkness of three hours. Even this miraculous
event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity,
and the devotion of all mankind, passed without notice in an
age of science and history. It happened during the lifetime
of Seneca and the elder Pliny, who must have experienced the
immediate effects, or received the earliest intelligence of
the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work,
has recorded all the great phenomena of Nature, earthquakes,
meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable
curiosity could collect. But the one and the other have
omitted to mention the greatest phenomenon to which mortal
eye has been witness since the creation of the globe. A
distinct chapter of Pliny is designed for eclipses of an
extraordinary nature and unusual duration; but he contents
himself with describing the singular defect of light which
followed the murder of Caesar, when, during the greatest
part of the year, the orb of the sun appeared pale and without
splendour. This season of obscurity, which surely cannot be
compared with the preternatural darkness of the Passion, had
been already celebrated by most of the poets and historians
of that memorable age.

No Greek nor Roman historian nor scientist mentioned that strange
eclipse. No Jewish historian nor scientist mentioned the rending of the
veil of the temple, nor the rising of the saints from the dead. Nor do
the Jewish priests appear to have been alarmed or converted by these
marvels.

Confronted by this silence of all contemporary historians, and by the
silence of Mark, Luke, and John, what are we to think of the testimony
of Matthew on these points? Surely we can only endorse the opinion of
Matthew Arnold:

And the more the miraculousness of the story deepens, as after
the death of Jesus, the more does the texture of the incidents
become loose and floating, the more does the very air and aspect
of things seem to tell us we are in wonderland. Jesus after his
resurrection not known by Mary