R e s u r r e c t i o n
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STATEMENT OF MR. JUSTICE BREWER OF THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT. "The existing evidence of Christ's resurrection is satisfactory to me. I have not examined it from the legal standpoint;, but Greenleaf has done so, and he is ( the highest authority on evidence cited in our courts."
the most inoffensive and peaceful man- ner, they could expect nothing but con- tempt and opposition, revilings, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undis- mayed, nay, rejoicing. One after an- other was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted - their work with increased vigor and resolution. i, HE annals of military warfare /•j afford scarcely an example of t f i the like heroic constancy, pa- ^ ^ tience and unblenching cour- age. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the "grfeat truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore im- possible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have nar- nated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this mat- ter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from wilhout, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony 'of good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happi- ness in this life or in the world to come. Such conduct in the apostles would, morever, have been utterly irreconcil- able with the fact that they possessed the ordinary.constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others in our race; swayed by the same motives, ani- . mated by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions,
The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon, first, their hon- esty; secondly, their ability; thirdly, their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conform- ity of their testimony with experience, and fifthly, the coincidence of their testi- mony with collateral circumstances. HONESTY OF THE WITNESSES. ET the evangelists be tried by A t ] these tests. of human experience, that men ordinar- ily speak the truth when they have no prevailing motive or inducement to the contrary. This presumption, to which we have before alluded, is applied in • courts of justice, even to witnesses whose integrity is not wholly free from suspicion; much more is it applicable to the evangelists, whose testimony went against all their worldly interests. The great truths which the apostles declared were that Christ had risen from the dead and that only through repentance from sin and faith in Him could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling terrors that can be presented to the mind of man. Their Master had recently perished a;s a malefactor by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to over- throw the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The inter- ests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. Propagating this faith, even in And first to their honesty. Here they are entitled to the benefit of the general course
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