The Fair Haven

stimony C

ion taken above-that is to say, to make him regard the conversion as mainly, if not entirely,

d that it is derived from some description furnished by St. Paul himself of the vision mentioned, I. Cor. xv., which again is very possibly the same as that of II. Cor. xii. For the purposes of the present investigation, however, the whole story must be set aside. At the same time it should be borne in mind, that any detraction fr

s, therefore, in ancient history stand out more clearly revealed to us than that of St. Paul, whereas a thick veil of darkness hangs over that of each one of the Evangelists. Who St. Matthew was, and whether the gospel that we have is an original work, or a translation (as would appear from Papias, our highest authority), and how far it has been modified in translation, are things which we shall never know. The Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke are involved in even greater

to this that his conclusions were forced upon him. We therefore feel that, whereas from a scientific point of view, the Gospel narratives can only be considered as the testimony of early and sincere writers of whom we know little or nothing, yet that in the evidence of St. Paul we find the missing link which connects us secur

St. Paul as derivable from I.

first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures: and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures; and that He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that He

h flesh and blood"-"neither," he continues, "went I up to Jerusalem to them which were Apostles before me, but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus: then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see (ιστορησαι) Peter, and abode with him fifteen days, but others of the Apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother." Since, then, he must have heard some story concerning Christ's reappearances before his conversion and subsequent sojourn in Arabia, and since he had heard nothing from eye-witnesses until the time of his going up

r of the Acts was right as regards the place of his conversion; but the fact of there having been a church in Damascus of sufficient importance for Paul to go thither to persecute it, involves the l

f Sunday as the Lord's day. We know that the observance of this day in commemoration of the Resurrection was a very early practice, nor is there anything which would seem to throw doubt upon the fact of the first "Sunday" having been also the Sunday of the Resurrection. Another confirmation of the ea

widely known names of Peter and his fellow Apostles. The facts are probably these, that our Lord first shewed Himself to the women, but that Peter was the first of the Apostolic body to see Him; it was natural that if our Lord did not choose to show Himself to the Apostles without preparation, Peter should have been chosen as the one best fitted to prepare them: Peter probably collected the other Apostles, and then the Redeemer shewe

tells us. It is true that on the occasion of his visit to Peter he saw none other of the Apostles save James-but there is nothing to lead us to suppose that there was any want of unanimity among them: no trace of this has c

e sufficient for their purpose: one of preparation to Peter-another to the Apostles-another to the outside world, and then one or two more-but still not more than enough to establish the fact beyond all possibility of dispute. The writer of the Acts tells us that Christ was seen for a space of forty days-presumably not every day, but from time to time. Now forty days is a mystical period, and one which may mean either more or less, within a week or two, than the precise time stated; it seems u

ld have used the words quoted above, if he had held that the appearances which he records had been spread over a space of years intervening between the Crucifixion and his own vision. Where would be the force of "born out of due time" unless the time of the previous appearances had long passed by? But if, at the time of St. Paul's conversion, it was already many years since the last occasion upon which Christ had been seen by his disciples, we find ourselves

ose who trusted in him, and served him faithfully. But we meet with nothing of the sort: we are told that Christ was seen a few times shortly after the Crucifixion, then after a lapse of several years (I am surely warranted in saying this) Paul himself saw Him-but no one in the interval, and no one afterwards. This is not the manner of the hallucinations of uneducated people. It is altogether too sober: the state of mind from which alone so bas

vision Strauss w

ace, as he names himself the last of the Apostles, but in exactly the same rank with the others. Thus much, therefore, Paul knew-or supposed-that the appearances which the e

e never really saw him. But, says Strauss, he uses the same word for his own vision and for the appearances to the earlier Apostles: it is plain therefore that he did not suppose the

had seen him: indeed, so long as he believed that he had seen Christ no less really than the others, one cannot see why he should have used any other word for his own vision than that which he had applied to the others: we should even expect that he would do so, and should be surprised at his having done otherwise. That Paul did believe in the reality of his own vision is indisputable, and his use of the word ωφθη was probably dictated by a desire to assert this b

is pen, and to maintain that because he once uses it on the occasion of an appearance which he held to be vouchsafed by revelation, therefore, wherever else he uses it, he must have intended to refer to something seen by revelation: the words "as of one born out of due time" imply the utterly unlooked for and transcendent nature of the favour, and suggest, even though they do not compel, the inference that while the other Apostles had seen Christ in the common course of nature, as a visible tangible being before their waking eyes, he

ar was laid most heavily upon the Apostles. Strauss maintains that the appearances were unconsciously antedated by Peter; we can only say that the circumstances of the case, as entered into more fully above, render this

tion but in their own disordered brains, as to have turned the whole world after them by the sheer force of their conviction of the truth of their delusions, and yet that suddenly, within a few weeks from the commencement of this intoxication, they should have come to a dead stop and given no further sign of like extravagance. The hallucinations must have been so baseless, and would argue such an utter subordination of judgement to imagination, that instead of ceasing they must infallibly have ended in riot and disorganisation; the fact that they did cease (which cannot be

y date at which the reappearances commenced,-at their small number and short duration-things so foreign to the nature of hallucination; at the excellent opportunities which Paul had for knowing what he tells us; at the plain manner in which he tells it, and the more than proof which he gave of his own conviction of its truth; at the impossibility o