such public proof of his resurrection as would have left no room for unbelief.  He showed himself, “not to all the people” —­not to his enemies, whom his appearance would have overwhelmed—­but “to witnesses chosen before;” to the circle of his own friends.  There is no evidence which a jury could admit that he was ever actually dead.  So unusual was it for persons crucified to die so soon, that Pilate, we are told, “marvelled.”  The subsequent appearances were strange, and scarcely intelligible.  Those who saw him did not recognize him till he was made known to them in the breaking of bread.  He was visible and invisible.  He was mistaken by those who were most intimate with him for another person; nor do the accounts agree which are given by the different Evangelists.  Of investigation in the modern sense (except in the one instance of St. Thomas, and St. Thomas was rather rebuked than praised,) there was none, and could be none.  The evidence offered was different in kind, and the blessing was not to those who satisfied themselves of the truth of the fact by a searching inquiry, but who gave their assent with the unhesitating confidence of love.

St. Paul’s account of his own conversion is an instance of the kind of testimony which then worked the strongest conviction.  St. Paul, a fiery fanatic on a mission of persecution, with the midday Syrian sun streaming down upon his head, was struck to the ground, and saw in a vision our Lord in the air.  If such a thing were to occur at the present day, and if a modern physician were consulted about it, he would say without hesitation, that it was an effect of an over-heated brain, and that there was nothing in it extraordinary or unusual.  If the impression left by the appearance had been too strong for such an explanation to be satisfactory, the person to whom it occurred, especially if he was a man of St. Paul’s intellectual stature, would have at once examined into the facts otherwise known, connected with the subject of what he had seen.  St. Paul had evidently before disbelieved our Lord’s resurrection, had disbelieved it fiercely and passionately; we should have expected that he would at once have sought for those who could best have told him the details of the truth.  St. Paul, however, did nothing of the kind.  He went for a year into Arabia, and when at last he returned to Jerusalem, he rather held aloof from those who had been our Lord’s companions, and who had witnessed his ascension.  He saw Peter, he saw James; “of the rest of the apostles saw he none.”  To him evidently the proof of the resurrection was the vision which he had himself seen.  It was to that which he always referred when called on for a defence of his faith.

Of evidence for the resurrection in the common sense of the word there may be enough to show that something extraordinary occurred; but not enough, unless we assume the fact to be true on far other grounds, to produce any absolute and unhesitating conviction; and inasmuch as the resurrection is the keystone of Christianity, the belief in it must be something far different from that suspended judgment in which history alone would leave us.