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The events supposed to be explained by the theory need only to be studied carefully for one to utterly refute -fhe theory. There is a third theory of the resurrection which has been given fairly recent currency, namely, the “hallucina tion theory.” Emil Ludwig, in his Son of Man at the close of the chapter on the crucifixion, alludes to this theory When he states: “The women who know Jesus, in their waking dreams, think that once more they see Him walking among them.” This makes the resurrection of Jesus a matter of mass hallucination, a state brought about by over-wrought nerves and fervent hopes. If it was an hallucination, then, of course, the body of Jesus was still reposing in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. When the early Church claimed that Jesus had risen, the only answer that was necessary was for these persons to produce His body or bones. This matter of hallucination is worthy of notice from a purely psychological standpoint. Apparently it af fected people who had no expectation of seeing Jesus again. The apostles frankly confessed, to their own shame, that this was so in their case. They had paid scant attention to Hi's words, or had so little comprehen sion of what He was talking about that they thought His death was the finale. The Gospel writers have not only stated this, but every implication of their writings seems to be consistent with it. So then when we are told that "above five hundred brethren” saw Him alive after His resurrection, we are dealing with a spontaneous hallucinatory experience, quite unusual in that it was not induced by the leaders of the group, or by any ex pectation they had. Not only that, but the hallucination lasted for forty days, and subsequent to it, never once did any of the apostles suspect that they had been vic timized by their own imaginations, or* by mass hysteria. The Body of Jesus Must Be Disposed Of The most meaningful fact in the series of facts mentioned by the Gospel writers, and by the alleged explanations, is this: If Jesus did not rise in the body, then the body was somewhere available to the malice of His enemies. It must be understood by the simplest, that the men who wanted Him to die in the first place had infinitely more reason for wanting Him to stay dead. It is one thing to kill a man who might be a prophet; it is exceedingly embarrassing to have the dead man come to life, and dispel forever all suspicion as to his sanctity or his relationship to God. Pilate was not a theologian; he had condemned Jesus only in order to placate the Sadducean leadership. Blasphemy against Jehovah had no juridical signi ficance in Roman law; Pilate yielded only because of political pressure. Having committed Jesus to death, he could not afford to be careless, lest he stand convicted of a greater political blunder than his first, namely, the killing of an inspired leader and prophet in Israel with all the possibility of a religious uprising under the leadership of the Man he had killed. The Sadducees and Caiaphas had many good reasons for wanting Jesus to stay dead. The first was based upon their theory about fhe life beyond. Dead-men did not live again; there was no hereafter according to the Sadducean teaching. The second was personal, They , had been in cluded in Jesus’ fierce and accurate denunciation of the whole leadership of the Jewish people. Jesus had also quite completely made a fool of all those who had at tempted to trip Him by the clever devices that would have worked on an ordinary man. There was the humilia tion of a personal defeat that made Caiaphas desirous of keeping dead the Man whom he had killed. The third was financial. Jesus had twice cleansed the temple of its obnoxious merchandising, and each time He had un doubtedly cut into the revenue of the high priest and-
his kinsmen. Finally, if the resurrection of Jesus were true, they stood convicted, not only of the murder of a prophet, but of the Son of God, since the resurrection authenticated what Jesus proclaimed Himself to be. No theft of a body, no hallucination on the part of Jesus’ disciples, no wandering of a sick and dying Jesus into any Judean household could have over-ridden the vengeance and malice of the high priest. If the body was available anywhere, he would have seen to it that it was restored to its original resting place, and again put under guard. Those who deny the bodily résurrection of Jesus must clearly account for the failure of the enemies of Jesus to produce that body when the early Church be gan to preach His bodily resurrection. Indeed they must explain why it was that Julian, who had all the docu ments at hand, in offering, 800 years later, to produce the proof that Jesus was Caesar’s subject, never once denied the resurrection of Jesus. Nor so far as I can find out, did Celsus, that most bitter and ingenious enemy of the Christian Church. The reason the high priest told the soldiers to spread the story that the body of Jesus had been stolen was clever enough to care for the situation at the moment. Could they have foreseen, however, that the Christian Church in time to come would take this one doctrine as its central theme while its enemies stood impotent to produce the body of Jesus and the people who stole that body, they would have thought many a time that they were not as intelligent as they had considered them selves. The Meaning of the Resurrection There are certain factors of Christian doctrine which by their very nature cannot be proven as facts in them selves, but must be accepted on the authority of other facts. The birth of Christ by its very nature cannot be proved. No man can prove his own paternity; it depends entirely upon the honesty of his mother, and perhaps circumstances that might prevent a paternity other than the one claimed. The significant fact of the resurrection is this: first, that it is a fact. We accept it on authority of the inspired Word of God. It has better attestation than any other MARVEL OF MARVELS 4 * Marvel of marvels, if I myself shall behold X With mine own eyes my King in His city of gold; Where the least of lambs is spotless white in the fold, Where the least and last of saints in spotless white is stoled, X Where the dimmest head beyond a moon is T aureoled. X 4 * O saints, my beloved, now mouldering to mould *4 in the mould, 4 * Shall I see you lift your heads, see your cere- 4 * ments unroll’d, See with these very eyes? who now in darkness and cold Tremble for the midnight cry, the rapture, the tale untold— 4 * The Bridegroom cometh, eometh, His Bride to T enfold! Christina Georgina Rossetti. X 4« ef* 4* 4* X
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