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Why did they not imprison the apostles and Joseph of Aremathea, till they made them confess what was become of the body, and all the other circumstances of their imposture? But no such course was pursued by them; and as to the soldiers, instead of being put to death for a flagrant infringement of military discipline, they are permitted to go at large, as if they had committed no offence whatsoever. And is it not very remarkable, that the disciples, on the supposition they had stolen the body, should immediately afterwards have publicly appeared at Jerusalem, proclaiming themselves as the disciples of Jesus; accusing the chief priests as his slayers and murderers; and to their faces asserting that he had risen from the dead? When that accusation was made, why did not the sanhedrim, who were so ready to menace the apostles with torments and persecutions, if they persisted in preaching Christ, publicly accuse them with having stolen the body of their master while the guard slept? Why, instead of commanding them not to teach in the name of Jesus, did they not confront the apostles with the guards? But upon this investigation they did not enter; and the only reason that can be assigned is, that they well knew what the soldiers had told them, and it was this which filled them with apprehension.

The conduct of the sanhedrim implies, that they themselves were conscious that Jesus had risen from the dead. This is evident from the charge they bring against the apostles: "Behold, ye have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this man's blood upon us." That is, ye intend to bring upon us the guilt of shedding the blood of Jesus, for this is the only meaning of such phraseology in the Scriptures. We are told that when Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing towards releasing Christ, he took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person, see ye to it; and that then all the people answered and said, His blood be on us, and on our children. To this, the sanhedrim evidently referred. If Jesus Christ was an impostor, the guilt of shedding his blood could not rest upon their heads, as they well knew. Therefore, if they had not been conscious that he had risen from the dead, they could not have used this phraseology. Let any one of common intelligence put all these circumstances together, and he must at once perceive that the Jewish story concerning the missing body of Jesus Christ, wears suspicion and fraud upon its face; it hangs so badly together, that in no court of law could it be ad

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mitted as affording sufficient ground, upon which to build a decision.

We now have before us, the accounts respectively given by the disciples of Christ and the Jewish rulers, and out of these we must make our choice. If we prefer that of the Jewish rulers, we must take it as it is, accompanied with many and insuperable difficulties. If we adopt that of the disciples, we must acknowledge that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, and by consequence that he is the Son of God, and the Bible is a Revelation from God. For his resurrection asserts his own divine mission, and he has given his testimony to the divine mission of Moses and the prophets.

But the adversaries object, that the Christian account of the resurrection is unworthy of credit, because Jesus did show himself to the chief priests and the Jews. Mr. Olmsted says, "Let us suppose some man now to appear among us, who was born long before Jesus is said to have lived; let us suppose him to have been a great traveler and to have visited Judea, some three or four years previous to the commencement of Christ's ministry; and again, a few days after the great day of pentecost. Let his journal read as follows: Visited Judea its inhabitants Jews, Romans, Grecians, &c., all devoted tenaciously to their respective religions.' Some fifty or sixty pages after this, we find the following: Visited Judea again, found all its inhabitants had abandoned their former religions, and had adopted a new one, the founder of which was one Jesus, who, these people all agreed, had declared himself a prophet and a son of God, had been crucified on a charge of sedition, had risen from the dead, and assended to heaven, which ascension was in mid-day, and which was seen, as all these people declared, by the whole of them; that while in the air, so as to be seen by all the people, he uttered in a voice, so loud as to be heard by all the people, I am the son of God; keep this day holy until the end of the world, by meeting together and eating bread and drinking wine, and be baptized also in commemoration of my burial and resurrection;' as all these people make the same declaration and are living in obedience to this injunction, I am convinced that the fact was as they report it." "

To this it is replied, that if Jesus Christ had appeared to the chief priests and Pharisees, who had long been plotting his death, the inveterate malice which they felt towards him had so filled their minds with prejudice, that it is not at all probable, they would have submitted to the testimony. They had already attributed his miracles to the power of the devil; and his resurrection of Lazarus from the

dead, of which they had the fullest information, only stimulated them to hasten his death. Instead of submitting to the evidence of the soldiers, they endeavored to suppress it. And had he showed himself to them after his resurrection, they no doubt would have represented that it was a spectre, or a delusion, wrought by satanic influence. But, suppose that he had appeared to them, and had publicly ascended to heaven in the presence of all the people, and that thereby the whole Jewish nation were brought to submit to the testimony, and acknowledged him to be the Messiah, would Mr. Olmsted and his fellow Infidels have been satisfied? On the other hand, is it not most manifest that these very circumstances would have been seized upon, and the assertion made, that the chief priests and rulers, influenced by political motives, had resorted to a stale trick for the promotion of some selfish and ambitious project? Or if it were conceded that the trick was not performed by the chief men of the nation, would not Infidels in our days have urged that these men, under the belief that they had slain the Son of God, being conscience stricken, imagined they were haunted with ghosts and sprites?

Such testimony as this could have exercised no influence upon the other nations, who were their contemporaries, and must have died with themselves. Then also, Christianity would have been represented as a contrivance of the priests and chief men of Judea to answer their own selfish ends, and its progress would have been attributed to the secular influence of its advocates. Thereby, as Mr. Horne judiciously observes, "It would have been deprived of that most distinguishing, and satisfactory evidence, which it now possesses, that it derived its origin from God, and owed its success to a signal interposition of divine power. But the inveterate opposition of the Jewish priests and rulers to the cause, and their violent persecutions of the Christians, removed all suspicion of priestcraft and political design." The truth then, is, we have much more satisfactory testimony that Christ rose from the dead, than that which Mr. Olmsted and Infidels of his class seem to intimate would satisfy them. from the age of the apostles down to the present time, ordinances, in certain respects analogous with our celebration of American independence, have been observed as commemorative of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the descent of the Holy Ghost, and during the age of the apostles, there is every reason to believe that these ordinances were observed by tens of thousands of persons, who possessed equal facilities of informing themselves whether the facts commemorated did take place, as the men of the present day have

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of informing themselves whether American independence was really proclaimed.

But if the Infidel still object, and maintain that the disciples of Jesus Christ advanced a positive falsehood concerning his resurrection, how will he account for the fact that those men, who were recently terrified, one into a denial of his Master, and the rest into a cowardly abandonment of him, suddenly came forward in the face of the whole nation, and of their rulers, with the greatest firmness, and undaunted boldness, and at all times and on all occasions mutually consistent? How will he account for the fact that before the people, yea, before the very council who condemned their Master to death, with astonishing steadiness and resolution they declared what they themselves were conscious was a falsehood? Besides, the secret was not confined to a few; upwards of five hundred persons are stated to have seen him after his resurrection, of whom the greater part, says the apostle, when he wrote, remain to this time. How will the Infidel account for the fact that all these five hundred persons, to the very last, persisted in asserting, that with their own eyes they had seen Christ after his pretended resurrection? Will he explain how it happened that out of this multitude of males and females apostles, and disciples, not one of them ever came forward and acknowledged the practice of an imposture? Will he explain the strange pertenacity of these people in maintaining, and publishing a known falsehood, and that to establish a religion which, as they well knew, exposed them to hatred, contempt, persecution, imprisonment, and death? Will he show upon what principles of human action these persons were so enamored with what they themselves knew was a gross fabrication of their own, that they were ready to sacrifice every thing, even life itself, for the pleasure of making the world believe a groundless falsehood? And when he has satisfactorily solved all these difficulties, then the Infidel is bound to show on satisfactory testimony, moral and historical, how all the circumstances, in their minutest details, attending the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ happened to have been predicted by many different individuals, who lived in different ages of the world. All this those men are bound to do, who deny that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

CHAPTER VII.

DIVINE AUTHORITY AND INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

HAVING considered the proof of the divine authority of the Old and New Testament Scriptures, derived from the miracles which were wrought by the founders of the dispensations contained in them, in attestation of the truth of their divine mission, we now proceed to consider the second great branch of the same proof, that from prophecy.

PROPHECY is a miracle of knowledge, a declaration, a description, a representation of something future, beyond the power of human sagacity to discover or to calculate, and it is the highest evidence that can be given of supernatural communion with God, and of the truth of divine revelation.

"No argument," says Mr. Watson, "a priori against the possibility of prophecy can be attempted by any one who believes in the existence and infinitely perfect nature of God. The Infidel author of "The Moral Philosopher," indeed, rather insinuates than attempts fully to establish a dilemma with which to perplex those who regard prophecy as one of the proofs of a divine revelation. He thinks that either prophecy must respect events necessary, as depending upon necessary causes, which might be certainly foreknown and predicted; or that, if human actions are free, and effects contingent, the possibility of prophecy must be given up, as it implies foreknowledge, which, if granted, would render them necessary. The first part of this objection might be allowed, were there no predictions to be adduced in favor of a professed revelation, except such as related to events which human experience has taught to be dependent upon some cause, the existence and necessary operation of which are within the compass of human knowledge. But to foretell such events would not be to prophesy, any more than to say that it will be light to-morrow at noon, or that on a certain day and hour next year there will occur an eclipse of the sun or moon, when that event had been previously ascertained by astronomical calculation. If, however, it were allowed that all events depended upon a chain of necessary causes, yet in a variety of instances, the argument from prophecy would not be at all affected; for the foretelling of necessary results in certain circumstances is beyond human intelligence, because they can

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