The Fundamentals - 1910: Vol.5

104

The Fundamentals believe, no amount of proof will convince him. Such a man must be left to his own deliberate choice of error and false- hood ; but any man who really desires to know the truth and is willing to obey it at any cost must accept the resurrection of Christ as an historically proven fact. A brilliant lawyer in New York City some time ago spoke to a prominent minister of that city asking him if he really believed that Christ rose from the dead. The minister re- plied that he did, and asked the privilege of presenting the proof to the lawyer. The lawyer took the material offered in proof away and studied it. He returned to the m in is ter , and said, “I am convinced that Jesus really did rise from the dead. But,” he then added, “I am no nearer being a Chris- tian than I was before. I thought that the difficulty was with my head. I find that it is really with my heart.” There is really but one weighty objection to the doctrine that Jesus arose from the dead, and that is, “There is no conclusive evidence that any other ever arose.” To this a sufficient answer would be, even if it were certain that no other ever arose, it would not at all prove that Jesus did not arise, for the life of Jesus was unique, His nature was unique, His character was unique, His mission was unique, His history was unique, and it is not to be wondered at, but rather to be expected, that the issue of such a life should also be unique. However, all this objection is simply David Hume’s exploded argument against the possibility of the miraculous revamped. According to this argument, no amount of evidence can prove a miracle, because miracles are contrary to all experience. But are miracles contrary to all experience? To start out by saying that they are is to beg the very question at issue. They may be outside of your experience and mine, they may be outside the experience of this entire generation, but your experience and mine and the experience of this entire generation is not “all experience.” Every student of geology and astronomy knows that things

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