The Resurrection of Jesus Christ 97 winds, “Be still,” and there was a great calm: so now again in this sublime, this awful moment, He does not excitedly tear the napkin from His face and fling it aside, but abso- lutely without human haste or flurry, or disorder, He unties it calmly from His head, rolls it up and lays it away in an orderly manner in a place by itself. Was that made up? Never! We do not behold here an exquisite masterpiece of the romancer’s art; we read here the simple narrative of a matchless detail in a unique life that was actually lived here upon earth, a life so beautiful that one cannot read it with an honest and open mind without feeling the tears com- ing into his eyes. But some one will say, all these are little things. True, and it is from that very fact that they gain much of their sig- nificance. I t is just in such little things that fiction would disclose itself. Fiction displays itself différent from fact in the minute; in the great outstanding outlines you can make fiction look like truth, but when you come to examine it minutely and microscopically, you will soon detect that it is not reality but fabrication. But the more miscroscopically we examine the Gospel narratives, the more we become impressed with their truthfulness. There is an artlessness and natural- ness and self-evident truthfulness in the narratives, down to the minutest detail, that surpasses all the possibilities of art. The third line of proof that the statements contained in the four Gospels regarding the resurrection of Jesus Christ are exact statements of historic fact, is III. THE CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST There are certain proven and admitted facts that demand the resurrection of Christ to account for them. 1. Beyond a question, the foundation truth preached in the early years of the Church’s history was the resurrection. This was the one doctrine upon which the Apostles were ever
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