of the Gospel according to the Hebrews speaks for James; and in each case the probability is that the account had passed through many intermediate narrators. The accounts individually are insufficient evidence; nor can they together make up a cumulative proof, because they proceed from witnesses only nominally independent, but in reality influenced by the same views and feelings.

Secondly, These accounts present irreconcilable contradictions.

Thirdly, They resemble very much other tales of apparitions in the sudden coming and vanishing of Jesus.

Fourthly, It has been very common in the Jewish and Christian, as well as other churches, for those who wished to enforce a particular precept or doctrine to say that some eminent prophet, angel, or saint, had appeared to reveal it to them. Jesus appears to the two disciples, to tell them that he suffered in fulfilment of the prophecies; to the eleven in Galilee, in order to give them the baptismal commission to all nations; to the disciples at Jerusalem, to give them the power of remitting or retaining sins; and to Thomas, to proclaim the necessity of believing in his resurrection without having seen him.

Fifthly, There were many who disbelieved these accounts in the earliest times.

Sixthly, Most of the attestations of the resurrection of Jesus in the apostolic writings do not of necessity apply to these accounts of his appearance, but to the general doctrine that he was risen, which might be in an invisible or spiritual manner. And those which bear a further

sense seem to allude to stories of visions.

VII. The ascension of Jesus into heaven is related only by Luke, and by the author of the last twelve verses of Mark.* It is alluded to John xx. 17, but no account is

*It is remarkable that, if these twelve verses be omitted, as Jerome and Gregory Nyssen say was generally done in the early copies, Mark, the follower of Peter, relates neither the miraculous birth, the resurrection, nor the ascension of Christ.

given of it. That in the appendix to Mark is given in a careless manner in one verse, and places the transaction immediately after the first appearance to the eleven at Jerusalem. Luke in the Gospel seems to agree with this as to the time; but in the Acts, where he is more circumstantial, he says it took place forty days afterwards. A more striking event could hardly be imagined than the ascent of Jesus in the presence of his disciples; yet one of the Evangelists says not a word concerning it; another, supposed to have been one of the witnesses, stops short when he approaches it; and only those two of the four, who are allowed not to have been eye-witnesses (and only one of these, if Mark did not write the last twelve verses) give any account of it. The belief that Jesus must have ascended into heaven like Enoch and Elijah was likely to give rise to some dramatic descriptions of the event, as of a real scene; and one highly-coloured representation has been preserved or drawn by Luke.

The ancient Jewish prophets, like many eastern writers, were accustomed to mix facts, visions, and allegories, in the same narrative, without marking clearly where one sort of writing ends and another begins; and this vivid manner of writing was imitated by their readers and admirers, the early Christians. Looking at the matter in this way, the stories of the temptation, the preaching to the spirits in prison, the appearances of Jesus after his death, and the ascension, are pleasing romances. But in considering them as matters of fact, we become as much embarrassed as if we were to endeavour to explain in the same way the books of Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Revelations.

The most beautiful fictions are those which bring to

* The passage of the Lord before Moses (Exod. xxxiv. 6) is related as much in the style of facts as the rising up of Moses early in the morning, verse 4.

view the forms of departed friends; for in these the colours of the imagination are both deepened and softened by the more refined feelings, friendship, esteem, and sorrow. The sudden loss of such a leader as Jesus must have left a strong impression on any minds; much more on those of fishermen and peasants of an eastern country, who believed him to be the Messiah. The romantic hopes which he had excited, the sublime views to which he had raised their minds, and the feelings of veneration and attachment to himself which he had awakened, could not at once subside. All these powerful sources of action found a vent in the continuance of his plans, in the institution of memorials of him, in heightening and colouring to other hearers the incidents of his life, and in cultivating the delightful illusions of his resurrection, perpetual presence, and future re-appearance. Fictions proceeding from such feelings, and also connected, as they were in the case of the disciples, with the real interests of life, must be of a different character from those thrown out in the mere wantonness of imagination. Hence the appearance of simplicity, earnestness, and reality, which in the midst of palpable inconsistencies, pervade the evangelic histories, and render even their fictions unique. Hence also the reason of the superiority of the evangelic style to most of the similar fictions in the apocryphal books; for as these were written at later times, the immediate impressions produced by the advent of Jesus had become much weakened. In short, in the stories of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus we see traces of the sentiments awakened in some inhabitants of an eastern and imaginative clime, at an eventful period of their country's history, by the life, precepts, and sudden death, of one of the most extraordinary persons in history.

It is undoubtedly more gratifying to enter into the feelings of the disciples, and, transporting ourselves in imagination to Jerusalem, Bethany, and the Mount of

Olives, now become desolate by the absence of their master, whose conversation and undertaking had formerly rendered every hill and village a place of interest-to listen with anxiety to the reports of those who say he is risen; to allow our wishes to overcome distrust; to imagine that the risen Messiah is still walking the earth, secure in his immortal state from further attempts of his enemies; to expect him at times to throw aside his invisible veil, and to look for him on the mountain, high road, and lake; to believe that his now divine nature enables him to assume different forms at pleasure, and to convert each dimly seen or indistinctly remembered shape into Jesus; and when he seems finally to have left the earth, to see him ascending to the right hand of God, there to wait the appointed time for revealing his kingdom. But imagination and feeling are unsafe guides in an inquiry into facts. The real occurrence is often found to bear no proportion in grandeur to the shape which it has assumed in contemplation. And in the circumstances attending the death of Jesus, we are forced to see a striking instance of the tendency of the mind to invest ordinary events with a higher beauty and interest than unimpassioned observation alone could discover, and to give to the common places of the world an impress of that higher life and perfection toward which it seems borne by its own nature. The disappearance of the body of the crucified Nazarene loses the mysterious grandeur which its connexion with themes most interesting to mankind had drawn around it, and shrinks into a comparatively poor and trifling incident when we approach for close inspection: but the sublime views which it was in part the occasion of bringing forth, and the moral revolution which it contributed to promote, are in themselves deeply-interesting facts, which have an important bearing on every inquiry concerning the ultimate destination of the human mind.

CHAPTER VIII.

REMARKS ON THE OTHER MIRACLES IN THE FOUR GOSPELS.

IN common life marvellous tales are often met with, which, on taking the trouble to trace them back through various stages to their source, we find to have originated in something perfectly intelligible and natural. And when we have done this in some instances, we conclude that the same result would follow in the case of similar tales, coming to us through the same channels, although in this latter case we might not have the means of following up such a tedious investigation.

For instance,-Irenæus says "There were some who had heard Polycarp relate, how St. John, going one day to the bath in Ephesus, and finding the heretic Cerinthus in it, started back instantly without bathing, crying out, Let us run away, lest the bath should fall upon us while Cerinthus, the enemy of truth, is in it." of truth, is in it." Iren. 1. iii. c. 3. Epiphanius tells the same story of Ebion, and adds that, "St. John had never before made use of the public baths, till he was sent thither on this occasion by divine inspiration, to give this open testimony of his detestation of heresy." Feuardentius, in his notes on this passage of Irenæus, says that Jerome, in his treatise against the Luciferians, affirms that "immediately after the retreat of St. John, the bath actually fell down, and crushed Cerinthus to death." An ordinary event is thus grown into a miracle of some magnitude.

There is no reason why we should not apply the same mode of investigation to the narratives of the writers ceding Irenæus, viz. those of the New Testament.

pre

In Matthew ch. iv., and Mark i., there is an account of