The Fair Haven

ion of Certa

s of D

sidered as doing better justice to his opinions than the passages which I have quoted and, I trust, refuted. I have quoted fully, and have kept nothing in the background. If I had known of anythin

the name of Strauss so terrible to the ears of English Churchmen? Surely nothing but the ominous silence which has been maintained concerning him in almost all quarters of our Church. For what can he say or do against the other miracles if he be powerless against the Resurrection? He can make sentences which sound plausible, but that is no great fea

e to do so with the same unflinching examination as heretofore, concealing nothing that has been said, or that can be said; going out of my way to find arguments for opponents, if I do not think that they have put forward all that from

gle reader, but I am convinced that the arresting of infidelity depends mainly upon the general recognition of two broad facts. The first is this-that the Apostles, even after they had received the gift of the Holy Spirit were still fallible though holy men; the second-that there are certain passages in each of

we have not sufficient faith in our own creed to believe that it will bear the removal of the incrustations of time and superstition. When men see our cowardice, what can they think but that we must know that we have cause to be afraid? We drive men into unbelief in spite of themselves,

hey imagine that they are now serving: if Turks, they would have massacred both Jew and Christian; if Papists at the time of the Reformation they would have persecuted Protestants: if Protestants, under Elizabeth, Papists. Truth is to them an accident of birth and training, and the Christian faith is in their eyes true because these a

idens from generation to generation, and each party accuses the other of disingenuousness, obstinacy and other like serious defects of mind-it may be certainly assumed that the truth lies wholly with neither side, but that each should make some concessions to the other. A third party sees this at

both from amon

eth even him that i

in the heart of

eof is sweeter tha

ent age and not be aware of many difficulties in connection with the Christian religion; they have studied the question more deeply than perhaps the unbeliever imagines; and having said this much they give themselves credit for being wide-minded, liberal and above vulgar prejudices: but when pressed as to this or that particular difficulty, and asked to own that such and such an objection of the infidel's needs explanation, they will have none of it,

n who might have been assumed to be above condescending to such trickery. A great preface concerning candour, with a flouris

of language such as this without bringing for

tance to come to a clear understanding. Thus, to omit all notice of many other discrepancies, the accounts of Mark, Luke, and John concur in stating that when the women came to the tomb of Jesus very early on the Sunday morning, they found it already empty: the stone was gone whe

ere was a great earthquake, and that an angel came down from Heaven, and rolled away the stone, and sat upon it, and that the guard who ha

ed away, and not seen it, and so on; those who say that we should find no difficulty if we knew all the facts are still careful to abstain from any example (so far as I know) of the sort of additional facts which would serve their purpose. They cannot give one; any mind which is truly candid-white-not scrawled and scribbled over till no character is decipherable-will feel at once that the only question to be raised is, which is the more correct account of the Resurrection-M

ee then what Dean Alford-a writer whose professions of candour and talk about the duty of unflinching examination leave nothing to be desired-has to say upon this point. I will first quote the passage in full from Matthew, and then give the Dean'

ew's acco

here was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, 'Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.' And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell hi

the Dean's note on

rs, that He had been in the habit of so saying. (From what source can Dean Alford know that our Lord was in the habit of so saying? What particle of authority is there for this alleged habit of our Lord?) As to the understanding of the words we must remember that hatred is keener sighted than love: that the raising of Lazarus would shew what sort of a thing rising from the dead was to be; and the fulfilment of the Lord's announcement of his crucifixion would naturally lead them to look further to what more he had announced. (2) How should the women who were solicitous about the removal of the stone not have been still more so about its being sealed and a guard set? The answer to this last has been given above-they were not aware of the circumstance because the guard was not set till the evening before. There would be no need of the application before the approach of the third day-it is only made for a watch, εω? τη? τρ?τη? ημ?ρα? (ver. 64), and it is not probable that the circumstance would transpire that night-certainly it seems not to have done so. (3) That Gamaliel was of the council, and if such

ut the notes quoted, are the Dean's, un

fence of Matthew's accuracy against th

ve known of any prophecy of Christ's Resurrection when His own disciples had ev

. True, according to Matthew, Christ had said that as Jonah was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so the Son of Man should be three days and three nights in th

already seen the raising of Lazarus, on whom corruption had begun its work, they must have expected the Resurrection. After having seen so stupendous a

ing the Resurrection from the dead was to be, and that the fulfilment of Christ's prophecy con

ad the chief priests to look further to the fulfilment of the prophecy of the Resurrection, so would it lead the Apostles; this supposition of one set of men who can see everything, and of another with precisely

ed their question in this shape, they have asked it badly, and Dean Alford's answer is sufficient: they might have asked, how the other three writers could all tell us that the stone was already gone when the women got there

imself as doubtful whether or no Christianity was of God, whereas had he known the facts relate

e that such a story should have not reached him; the matter could never have been kept so quiet but that it must have leaked out. Men are not so utterly bad or so utterly foolish as Dean Alford

ignorance or their indolence as historians. Dean Alford has well substantiated the independence of the four narratives, he has well proved that the writer of the fourth Gospel could never have seen the other Gospels, and yet he supposes that that writer either did not know the facts related by Matthew, or thought it

eing well aware that Christ had raised Lazarus from the dead but very recently they did not believe that he would rise, but feared (so Matthew says) that the Apostles would steal the body and pretend a resurrection: up to this point we admit that the story, though very improbable, is still possible: but when we read of their bribing the guards to tell a lie under such circumstances as those which we are told had just occurred, we say that such conduct is impossible: men are to

rn to another not

e particulars must be full of arbitrary assumptions, and carry no certainty with them: and I may remark that of all harmonies those of the incidents of these chapters are to me the most unsatisfactory. Giving their compilers all credit for the best intentions, I confess they seem to me to weaken instead of strengthening the evidence, which now rests (speaking merely objectively) on the unexceptionable testimony of

cy which could not be accounted for would be found, if the facts were known in the exact order in which they occurred. In other words, he leaves the difficulty where it was. Yet surely it is a very grave one. The same events are recorded by three writers (one being professedly an eye-witness, and the others independent writers), in a way which is virtually the same, in spite of some unimportant variations in the manner of telling it, while a fourth give

others-i.e., that they have suffered-miraculously little, but still something-at the hands of time; people would have to familiarise themselves with new ideas, and this can seldom be done without a certain amount of wrangling, disturbance, and unsettling of comfortable ease: it is therefore by all means an

danger, we are bound to speak the truth. We have nothing to do with consequences and moral tendencies and risk to this or that fundamental principle of our belief, nor yet with the possibility of lurid lights being thrown here or there. What are these things to us? They are not our bus

urrection were becoming scarce, and when it was felt that some more unmistakably miraculous account than that given in the other three Gospels would be a comfort and encouragement to succeeding generations. We, however, must now follow the example of "even the best" of the German commentators, and discard it as soon as possible. On having d