all ages of the Christian Church. It was held by Clement of Alexandria, by Origen, by Chrysostom, and it is understood to prevail in the Roman Catholic Church, where it holds some relation to the doctrine of transubstantiation. More recently it has been brought out with great distinctness, and defended with conspicuous ability, by writers of another school, and everything which argument and learned exegesis can render in its favor may be found displayed in a treatise by Hindmarsh on the resurrection of Christ, and a more recent one by Professor Bush, on the same subject. Its alleged proofs are mainly as follows:

1. Christ was seen by no one after his resurrection, except by his own friends and followers. Not the least intimation is dropped anywhere that it was a fact of public notoriety, or that the Jews were witnesses of it. If they had been, all Jerusalem would have been filled with wonder and commotion; his murderers would have been overwhelmed at the sight, and we should have had some relation of it in the Evangelic narratives. Moreover, Paul, in enumerating the "witnesses of the resurrection, names none but personal followers. "He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, after that by about five hundred brethren at once, after that by James, then by all the Apostles." But if he rose again in the natural

body, why was he not seen walking the streets of Jerusalem on that great morning, and why was not all Judæa, and indeed all Palestine, made a witness of an event so important and astounding?

2. But, again, Christ was not seen, even by his own friends and followers, except at special times and on special occasions. Where was he during the intervals? Where did he abide, or with whom did he live? During the forty days' sojourn on the earth, why are we not told of his travellings to and fro? Whenever he appears to his disciples, he takes them by surprise, and the interview is short; which shows conclusively that at other times they had no knowledge of the place where he was, and that they did not even conceive of him as living in any locality upon the earth.

3. The manner of his appearance and disappearance proves that he did not inhabit a body which was subject to the laws of space and time. He vanishes out of their sight, or becomes suddenly invisible. He appears suddenly among them, while the doors are shut and bolted. He does not meet them by travelling from place to place. The two disciples who saw him at Emmaus hasten to Jerusalem to tell the tale, and lo! he is there with them. They journey away to Galilee, eighty miles and more, and Christ is there. They come back to Jerusalem, and he is there. Had he, like them, travelled through the

intermediate space? If so, why did he not go and return with them, as his custom used to be?

4. Such was the entire transformation, that his nearest friends did not know him after his resurrection. Mary recognized him at the tomb, not through his appearance, but through the tones of his voice. The two disciples walk and conversc with him through a good part of seven miles, and sit down with him at table, and yet they know him not. And the reason of this is not to be mistaken, for the narrator expressly avers that he appeared in another form.

5. The whole color of the narratives shows that the intercourse between Jesus and his disciples was on an entire new basis after his resurrection. There is an awful distance between them, totally unlike the old familiarity, and their minds are impressed with the fact that this intercourse is not normal, but supernatural. Hence his words to Mary, "Touch me not"; hence the spell laid on their faculties in the upper room, by the Sea of Galilee, and on the mountain where the five hundred assembled. It was not the former colloquial intercourse, but their minds were bowed down in posture of adoration, as if beneath some demonstration from a supernal world.

6. The language which is used to describe the post-resurrection appearances of Christ is peculiar and distinctive. It is equivalent to the ex

pression, "He made himself visible." It does not indicate the journeying from place to place for the purpose of meeting a friend, but rather the unveiling of his person from a superior state to the cognizance of those who were suddenly made sensible of his presence.

It is vain to deny that some of these reasons are cogent and strong; and, in the absence of countervailing testimony, they would be irresistibly conclusive. But there are opposing facts, too clearly stated and too stubborn to be reasoned away. They are as follows:

1. The entire phenomena at the tomb on the great morning. Why are we brought there at all to see the open door, and to look down through the awful recess? If Christ arose only in the spiritual body, what more have we to do with the natural body or the place where it lay? Nothing whatever. Spiritual body does not pass through natural space, and it did not need the stone to be rolled away, or the tomb door to be opened, in order to its emergence into the spiritworld. Christ would have passed into the other life, as all men do, by ordinary death, — the spiritbody being evolved from the natural, and the latter left to the usual process of decay. Yet the angel descends, removes the stone, and opens the door, as if for the body to emerge from its

recess, whereupon the body disappears from within the tomb, leaving its grave-clothes behind, and Jesus immediately after is seen standing without; and if, after all, there was no resurrection of the natural body, these appearances are the most systematic and stupendous illusion to the senses that history has anywhere described.

2. Christ avers that he is not a mere spirit, but that he appears in a body of veritable flesh and bones; and he invites them to test the fact by the sense of touch as well as sight. We are told that there is spiritual touch as well as spiritual sight, and that these words have an important spiritual meaning; that the idea of the times was, that a spirit was nothing but a phantom, and that Christ now intended to dissipate that fantasy from their minds. All this may be so. But the fact which here stands out in boldest and sharpest outline is this: that Christ impresses on their senses the truth that he is clothed in flesh and bones, that is, material substance: they so understand him, and he means they shall so understand him;-and if, after all, there were no flesh and bones in the case, then we think that the science of hermeneutics is worthless, and that we cannot be satisfied that the Bible has a literal sense anywhere on which its truths may repose secure.

3. Christ not only offers to Thomas the test of