86 The Fundamentals been greatly struck by this in reading the accounts.” Any one who carefully and intelligently reads them will be struck with the same fact. 3. The third thing that we notice about these Gospel narratives is their naturalness, straightforwardness, artless- ness and simplicity. The accounts, it is true, have to do with the supernatural, but the accounts themselves are most natural. There is a re- markable absence of all attempt at coloring and effect. There is nothing but the simple, straightforward telling of facts as they actually occurred. It frequently happens that when a witness is on the witness stand, the story he tells is so artless, so straightforward, so natural, there is such an en- tire absence of any attempt at coloring or effect that his tes- timony bears weight independently of anything we may know of the character or previous history of the witness. As we listen to his story, we say to ourselves, “This man is telling the truth.” The weight of this kind of evidence is greatly increased and reaches practical certainty when we have sev- eral independent witnesses of this sort, all bearing testimony to the same essential facts, but with varieties of detail, one omitting what another tells, and the third unconsciously reconciling apparent discrepancies between the two. This is the precise case with the four Gospel narratives of the resur- rection of Christ. The Gospel writers do not seem to have reflected at all upon the meaning or bearing'of many of the facts which they relate. They simply tell right out what they saw in all simplicity and straightforwardness, leaving the philosophizing to others. Dr. William Furness, the great Unitarian scholar and critic, who certainly was not over-much disposed in favor of the supernatural, says, “Nothing can ex- ceed in artlessness and simplicity the four accounts of the first. appearance of Jesus after His crucifixion. If these qualities are not discernible here, we must despair of ever being able to discern them anywhere.”
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker