The Fair Haven

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Strauss says that, "in the presence of the believers in Jesus," the
conviction that he was a false teacher--an impostor--"must have
become every day more doubtful to him. They considered it not only
publicly honourable to be as convinced of his Resurrection as they
were of their own life--but they shewed also a state of mind, a quiet
peace, a tranquil cheerfulness, even under suffering, which put to
shame the restless and joyless zeal of their persecutor. Could HE
have been a false teacher who had adherents such as these? Could
that have been a false pretence which gave such rest and security? on
the one hand, he saw the new sect, in spite of all persecutions, nay,
in consequence of them, extending their influence wider and wider
round them; on the other, as their persecutor, he felt that inward
tranquillity growing less and less which he could observe in so many
ways in the persecuted. We cannot therefore be surprised if in hours
of inward despondency and unhappiness he put to himself the question,
'Who after all is right, thou, or the crucified Galilean about whom
these men are so enthusiastic?' And when he had got as far as this,
the result, with his bodily and mental characteristics, naturally
followed in an ecstasy in which the very same Christ whom up to this
time he had so passionately persecuted, appeared to him in all the
glory of which his adherents spoke so much, shewed him the perversity
and folly of his conduct, and called him to come over to his
service."

The above comes simply to this, that Paul in his constant contact
with Christians found that they had more to say for themselves than
he could answer, and should, one would have thought, have suggested
to Strauss what he supposes to have occurred to Paul, namely, that it
was not likely that these men had made a mistake in thinking that
they had seen Christ alive after his Crucifixion. There can be no
doubt about Strauss's being right as to the Christian intensity of
conviction, strenuousness of assertion, and readiness to suffer for
the sake of their faith in Christ; and these are the main points with
which we are concerned. We arrive therefore at the conclusion that
the first Christians were sufficiently unanimous, coherent and
undaunted to convince the foremost of their enemies. They were not
so BEFORE the Crucifixion; they could not certainly have been made so
by the Crucifixion alone; something beyond the Crucifixion must have
occurred to give them such a moral ascendancy as should suffice to
generate a revulsion of feeling in the mind of the persecuting Saul.
Strauss asks us to believe that this missing something is to be found
in the hallucinations of two or three men whose names have not been
recorded and who have left no mark of their own. Is there any
occasion for answer?

It is inconceivable that he who could write the Epistle to the Romans
should not also have been as able as any man who ever lived to
question the early believers as to their converse with Christ, and to
report faithfully the substance of what they told him. That he knew
the other Apostles, that he went up to Jerusalem to hold conferences
with them, that he abode fifteen days with St. Peter--as he tells us,
in order "to question him"--these things are certain. The Greek word
?st???sa? is a very suggestive one. It is so easy to make too much
out of anything that I hardly dare to say how strongly the use of the
verb ?st??e?? suggests to me "getting at the facts of the case,"
"questioning as to how things happened," yet such would be the most
obvious meaning of the word from which our own "history" and "story"
are derived. Fifteen days was time enough to give Paul the means of
coming to an understanding with Peter as to what the value of Peter's
story was, nor can we believe that Paul should not both receive and
transmit perfectly all that he was then told. In fact, without
supposing these men to be so utterly visionary that nothing durable
could come out of them, there is no escape from holding that Peter
was justified in firmly believing that he had seen Christ alive
within a very few days of the Crucifixion, that he succeeded also in
satisfying Paul that this belief was well-founded, and that in the
account of Christ's reappearances, as given I. Cor. xv., we have a
virtually verbatim report of what Paul heard from Peter and the other
Apostles. Of course the possibility remains that Paul may have been
too easily satisfied, and not have cross-examined Peter as closely as
he might have done. But then Paul was converted BEFORE this
interview; and this implies that he had already found a general
consent among the Christians whom he had met with, that the story
which he afterwards heard from Peter (or one to the same effect) was
true. Whence then the unanimity of this belief? Strauss answers as
before--from the hallucinations of an originally small minority. We
can only again reply that for the reasons already given we find it
quite impossible to agree with him.

[The quotation from Strauss given in this chapter will be found pp.
414, 415, 420, of the first volume of the English translation,
published by Williams and Norgate, 1865. I believe that my brother
intended to make a fresh translation from the original passages, but
he never carried out his intention, and in his MS. the page of the
English translation with the first and last words of each passage are
alone given. I could hardly venture to undertake the responsibility
of making a fresh translation myself, and have therefore adhered
almost word for word to the published English translation--here and
there, however, a trifling alteration was really irresistible on the
scores alike of euphony and clearness.--W. B. O.]

CHAPTER IV--PAUL'S TESTIMONY CONSIDERED

Enough has perhaps been said to cause the reader to agree with the
view of St. Paul's conversion taken above--that is to say, to make
him regard the conversion as mainly, if not entirely, due to the
weight of evidence afforded by the courage and consistency of the
early Christians.

But, the change in Paul's mind being thus referred to causes which
preclude all possibility of hallucination or ecstasy on his own part,
it becomes unnecessary to discuss the attempts which have been made
to explain away the miraculous character of the account given in the
Acts. I believe that this account is founded upon fact, and 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 from the
historical accuracy of the writer of the Acts, is more than
compensated for, by the additional weight given to the conversion of
St. Paul, whom we are now able to regard as having been converted by
evidence which was in itself overpowering, and which did not stand in
need of any miraculous interference in order to confirm it.

It is important to observe that the testimony of Paul should carry
more weight with those who are bent upon close critical investigation
than that even of the Evangelists. St. Paul is one whom we know, and
know well. No syllable of suspicion has ever been breathed, even in
Germany, against the first four of the Epistles which have been
generally assigned to him; friends and foes of Christianity are alike
agreed to accept them as the genuine work of the Apostle. Few
figures, 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 obscurity. The authorship, date,
and origin of the fourth Gospel have been, and are being, even more
hotly contested than those of the other three, and all that can be
affirmed with certainty concerning it is, that no trace of its
existence can be found before the latter half of the second century,
and that the spirit of the work itself is eminently anti-Judaistic,
whereas St. John appears both from the Gospels and from St. Paul's
Epistles to have been a pillar of Judaism.

With St. Paul all is changed: we not only know him better than we
know nine-tenths of our own most eminent countrymen of the last
century, but we feel a confidence in him which grows greater and
greater the more we study his character. He combines to perfection
the qualities that make a good witness--capacity and integrity: add
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 securely with actual
eye-witnesses and gives us a confidence in the general accuracy of
the Gospels which they could never of themselves alone have imparted.
We could indeed ill spare either the testimony of the Evangelists or
that of St. Paul, but if we were obliged to content ourselves with
one only, we should choose the Apostle.

Turning then to the evidence of St. Paul as derivable from I. Cor.
xv. we find the following:

"Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached
unto you, which also ye have received and wherein ye stand. By which
also ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you,
unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you 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 was seen of above
five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater portion remain
unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that He was
seen of James; then of all the Apostles. And last of all He was seen
of me also, as of one born out of due time."

In the first place we must notice Paul's assertion that the Gospel
which he was then writing was identical with that which he had
originally preached. We may assume that each of the appearances of
Christ here mentioned had in Paul's mind a definite time and place,
derived from the account which he had received and which probably led
to his conversion; the words "that which I also received" surely
imply "that which I also received IN THE FIRST INSTANCE": now we
know from his own mouth (Gal. i., 16, 17) that AFTER his conversion
he "conferred not with 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 (?st???sa?) 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 to Jerusalem three years
later, it is probable that the account quoted above is the substance
of what he found persisted in by the Christians whom he was
persecuting at Damascus, and was at length compelled to believe. But
this is very unimportant: it is more to the point to insist upon the
fact that St. Paul must have received the account given I. Cor. xv.,
3-8 within a very few years of the Crucifixion itself, and that it
was subsequently confirmed to him by Peter, and probably by James and
John, during his stay of fifteen days in Peter's house.

This account can have been nothing new even then, for it is plain
that at the time of Paul's conversion the Christian Church had spread
far: Paul speaks of RETURNING to Damascus, as though the writer 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 lapse
of considerable time since the original promulgation of our Lord's
Resurrection, and throws back the origin of the belief in that event
to a time closely consequent upon the Crucifixion itself.

Now Paul informs us that he was told (we may assume by Peter and
James) that Christ first reappeared WITHIN THREE DAYS OF THE
CRUCIFIXION. There is no sufficient reason for doubting this; and
one fact of weekly recurrence even to this day, affords it striking
confirmation--I refer to the institution of 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 early date assigned to the Resurrection by St. Paul, is to be
found in the fact that every instinct would warn the Apostles AGAINST
the third day as being dangerously early, and as opening a door for
the denial of the completeness of the death. The fortieth day would
far more naturally have been chosen.

Turning now from the question of the date of the first reappearance
to what is told us of the reappearances themselves, we find that the
earliest was vouchsafed to St. Peter, which is at first sight opposed
to the Evangelistic records; but this is a discrepancy upon which no
stress should be laid; St. Paul might well be aware that Mary
Magdalene was the first to look upon her risen Lord, and yet have
preferred to dwell upon the more 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
shewed Himself alive to all together. This is what we should gather
from St. Paul's narrative; a narrative which it would seem arbitrary
to set aside in the face of St. Paul's character, opportunities and
antecedent prejudices against Christianity--in the face also of the
unanimity of all the records we have, as well as of the fact that the
Christian religion triumphed, and of the endless difficulties
attendant on the hallucination theory.

We conclude therefore that Paul was satisfied by sufficient evidence
that our Lord had appeared to Peter on the third day after the
Crucifixion, nor can any reasonable doubt be thrown upon the other
appearances of which he 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 come down to us, and
would surely have done so if it had existed. If any dependence at
all is to be placed on the writers of the New Testament it did not
exist. Stronger evidence than this unanimity it would be hard to
find.

Another most noticeable feature is the fewness of the recorded
appearances of Christ. They commenced according to Paul (and this is
virtually according to Peter and James) immediately after the
Crucifixion. Paul mentions only five appearances: this does not
preclude the supposition that he knew of more, nor that the women who
came to the sepulchre had also seen Him, but it does seem to imply
that the reappearances were few in number, and that they continued
only for a very short time. They were 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
upon the whole most reasonable to conclude that the reappearances
recorded by Paul, and some few others not recorded, extended over a
period of one or two months after the Crucifixion, and that they then
came to an end; for there can be no doubt that St. Paul conceived
them as having ended with the appearance to the assembled Apostles
mentioned I. Cor. xv., 7, and, though he does not say so expressly,
there is that in the context which suggests their having been
confined to a short space of time.

It is perfectly clear that St. Paul did not believe that any one had
seen Christ in the interval between the last recorded appearance to
the eleven, and the vision granted to himself. The words "and last
of all he was seen also of me AS OF ONE BORN OUT OF DUE TIME" point
strongly in the direction of a lapse of some years between the second
appearance to the eleven and his own vision. This confirms and is
confirmed by the writer of the Acts. St. Paul never could 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 driven back to a time
closely consequent upon the Crucifixion as the only possible date of
the reappearances. But this is in itself sufficient condemnation of
Strauss's theory: that theory requires considerable time for the
development of a perfectly unanimous and harmonious belief in the
hallucinations, while every particle of evidence which we can get
points in the direction of the belief in the Resurrection having
followed very closely upon the Crucifixion.

To repeat: had the reappearances been due to hallucination only,
they would neither have been so few in number nor have come to an end
so soon. When once the mind has begun to run riot in hallucination,
it is prodigal of its own inventions. Favoured believers would have
been constantly seeing Christ even up to the time of Paul's letter to
the Corinthians, and the Apostle would have written that even then
Christ was still occasionally seen of those 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 baseless a delusion could spring, is one which
never could have been contented with the results which were evidently
all, or nearly all, that Paul knew of. St. Paul's words cannot be
set aside without more cause than Strauss has shewn: instead of
betraying a tendency towards exaggeration, they contain nothing
whatever, with the exception of his own vision, that is not
imperatively demanded in order to account for the rise and spread of
Christianity.

Concerning that vision Strauss writes as follows:

"With regard to the appearance he (Paul) witnessed--he uses the same
word (?f??) as with regard to the others: he places it in the same
category with them only in the last place, 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 elder disciples had seen soon after the Resurrection of
Jesus had been of the same kind as that which had been, only later,
vouchsafed to himself. Of what sort then was this?"

I confess that I am wholly unable to feel the force of the above.
Strauss says that Paul's vision was ecstatic--subjective and not
objective--that Paul thought he saw Christ, although he 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 earlier Apostles to have seen
Christ in the same sort of way in which they saw themselves and other
people, but to have seen him as Paul himself did, i.e., by
supernatural revelation.

But would it not be more fair to say that Paul's using the same word
for all the appearances--his own vision included--implies that he
considered this last to have been no less real than those vouchsafed
earlier, though he may have been perfectly well aware that it was
different in kind? The use of the same word for all the appearances
is quite compatible with a belief in Paul's mind that the manner in
which he saw Christ was different from that in which the Apostles 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
?f?? was probably dictated by a desire to assert this belief in the
strongest possible way, and to place his own vision in the same
category with others, which were so universally known among
Christians to have been material and objective, that there was no
occasion to say so. Nevertheless there is that in Paul's words on
which Strauss does not dwell, but which cannot be passed over without
notice. Paul does not simply say, "and last of all he was seen also
of me"--but he adds the words "as of one born out of due time."

It is impossible to say decisively that this addition implies that
Paul recognised a difference in kind between the appearances,
inasmuch as the words added may only refer to time--still they would
explain the possible use of [?f??] in a somewhat different sense, and
I cannot but think that they will suggest this possibility to the
reader. They will make him feel, if he does not feel it without
them, how strained a proceeding it is to bind Paul down to a
rigorously identical meaning on every occasion on which the same word
came from his 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 had himself seen Him not less truly, but
still only by special and unlooked for revelation. If such thoughts
were in his mind he would not probably have expressed them farther
than by the touching words which he has added concerning his own
vision. So much for the objection that the evidence of Paul
concerning the earlier appearances is impaired by his having used the
same word for them, and for the appearance to himself. It only
remains therefore to review in brief the general bearings of Paul's
testimony as given I. Cor. xv., 1-8.

Firstly, there is the early commencement of the reappearances: this
is incompatible with hallucination, for the hallucination must be
supposed to have occurred when most easy to refute, and when the
spell of shame and fear 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 very improbable; that if
Peter told Paul that he saw Christ on the third day after the
Crucifixion, he probably firmly believed that he did see Him; and
that if he believed this, he was also probably right in so believing.

Secondly, there is the fact that the reappearances were few, and
extended over a short time only. Had they been due to hallucination
there would have been no limit either to their number or duration.
Paul seems to have had no idea that there ever had been, or ever
would be, successors to the five hundred brethren who saw Christ at
one time. Some were fallen asleep--the rest would in time follow
them. It is incredible that men should have so lost all count of
fact, so debauched their perception of external objects, so steeped
themselves in belief in dreams which had no foundation 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 denied) and that they
were followed by no disorder, but by a solemn sober steadfastness of
purpose, as of reasonable men in deadly earnest about a matter which
had come to their knowledge, and which they held it vital for all to
know--this fact alone would be sufficient to overthrow the
hallucination theory. Such intemperance could never have begotten
such temperance: from such a frame of mind as Strauss assigns to the
Apostles no religion could have come which should satisfy the highest
spiritual needs of the most civilised nations of the earth for nearly
two thousand years.

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