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In an article in the “Westminster Review,” in “The Life of Christ, by Strauss,” occurs the following passage:—

“For of the two alternatives open to free inquiry, that if Jesus died he never reappeared, or if he reappeared he never died, Strauss considers the former not only preferable, but the only tenable one; for he cannot persuade himself that a feeble sufferer, who at first had scarcely strength to leave the tomb, and in the end succumbed to death, could have contrived to inspire his followers with the conviction that he was the Prince of life, the Conqueror of the grave. Strauss thus admits that faith in the supernatural revival of the buried Nazarene was undoubtedly the profession of the Christian Church, the unconditional antecedent without which Christianity could have had no existence. If, then, we refuse to assume the resurrection to be an historical fact, we have to explain the origin of the Church's belief in it. The solution which satisfies Strauss, and which seems to us also an adequate interpretation of the problem, is dependent [pg 081] on the two following positions: 1. The appearance of Jesus was literally an appearance, an hallucination, a psychological phenomenon. 2. It was also a sort of practical fallacy of confusion, a case of mistaken identity.

“But it will be said that this natural solution of the problem implies a foregone conclusion—the rejection of the Orthodox or supernatural solution. Of course it does; and accordingly Strauss has been accused of dogmatical or unphilosophical assumption. But the rejection of the theological solution is not the result of ignorant prejudice, but of enlightened investigation. Anti-supernaturalism is the final irreversible sentence of scientific philosophy, and the real dogmatist and hypothesis-maker is the theologian. That the world is governed by uniform laws is the first article in the creed of science, and to disbelieve whatever is at variance with those uniform laws, whatever contradicts a complete induction, is an imperative, intellectual duty. A particular miracle is credible to him alone who already believes in supernatural agency. Its credibility rests on an assumption—the existence of such agency. But our most comprehensive scientific experience has detected no such agency. There is no miracle in nature; there is no evidence of any miracle-working energy in nature; there is no fact in nature to justify the expectation of miracle. Rightly has it been said by an English savant and divine, that testimony is a second-hand assurance, a blind guide, that can avail nothing against reason; and that to have any evidence of a Deity working miracles, we must go out of nature and beyond reason.

“Strauss's prepossession, therefore, is justifiable. It is the prepossession of the rational theist, who does not believe in a God who changes his mind and improves with practice—the prentice maker of the world; it is the prepossession of the pantheist, in whose theory of the perfect government of an immanent God, miracle is an extravagance and absurdity; it is the prepossession of the philosophical naturalist, whose [pg 082] experience of the operations of nature recognizes no extra-mundane interventionalism.”

We have quoted this passage as containing the most distinct statement of an extreme anti-supernaturalism. Admitting the death of Jesus as a fact, it denies his resurrection as a fact, and that on doctrinal and theoretic grounds. Declaring anti-supernaturalism to be the final irreversible sentence of scientific philosophy, it assumes supernaturalism to be a denial that the world is governed by uniform laws. It assumes the resurrection of Christ to be at variance with those uniform laws. It denies the existence of any supernatural agency in the affairs of this world. It denies that there ever has been a miracle in nature, or any extra-mundane intervention in the history of nature or man.

This is what claims to be science, at the present time. We deny that it is science, and assert it to be pure dogmatism and theory, contradicted by numerous facts. It is pure theory to assume the resurrection of Jesus to be a violation of law. It is pure theory to define a miracle to be something opposed to law. It is pure theory to assume that the miraculous facts ascribed to Jesus in the Gospels must have been, if they occurred, violations of law. It is an assumption, contradicted by geology, that there is nothing in the experience of the naturalist of the operations of nature to show any extra-mundane intervention.

We have admitted, indeed, that these same assumptions have been made by Orthodox theology. Orthodox theologians have also assumed the miracles of Christ to be violations of the laws of nature. But some of the most distinguished theologians, in all ages of the Church, have not so defined them. And there is no reason why the man of science should deny the possibility of fact because an unscientific explanation has been given of that fact by others. This writer virtually says, “I will not believe that Christ appeared after his death, on any amount of testimony, because [pg 083] some persons have defined such appearances as being opposed to the laws of nature.” It is certainly true that we cannot fully believe in the reality of any phenomenon which seems to us to be a violation of law. It is also true that the reported facts concerning the appearances of Jesus seem like a violation of law. But the scientific course is neither to deny the facts, nor to explain them away, but to study them, in order to see whether, after all, they may not lead us to some new laws, before unknown.

The resurrection of Jesus deserves this study, since, according to the confession of science itself, the Christian Church rests upon that belief. Strauss admits that Christianity could not have existed without it. But, hastily assuming that the real appearance of Jesus himself would be a violation of a law of nature, he supposes this immense fact of Christendom to rest on an hallucination and a case of mistaken identity.

But perhaps, after all, the resurrection may have been an example of a universal law. Like other miracles, which are sporadic instances, in this world, of laws which may be the nature of other worlds, so the resurrection may have been as natural an event as any other in the life of Jesus. Perhaps it is a law of nature that all souls shall become disengaged from the earthly body on the third day after death. Perhaps they all rise in a spiritual body, substantial and real, but not usually perceptible by the senses. Perhaps, in the case of Jesus, that same superior command of miraculous force, which appeared during his life, enabled him to show himself easily and freely whenever he would. What became of the earthly body we do not know; it may have been removed by the priests or soldiers to prevent the disciples from getting possession of it. The body in which Christ appeared differed evidently from the earthly body in various ways. It came and went mysteriously; it was sometimes recognized, and sometimes not; and it ascended [pg 084] into the spiritual world instead of passing again to death and the grave. Perhaps, therefore, it may be a universal law that souls rise out of the material body into a higher state, clothed in another body, substantial and real, but not material. The essence of the resurrection is this: Resurrection is not coming to life again with the same body, but ascent into a higher life with a new body.

It may be said that all this is only a perhaps. Very well; it is only a perhaps, but that is all we want in order to refute the logic of the article just quoted. The scientific sceptic says, “I will not believe that Jesus was really seen after death, because that would be a violation of a law of nature.” We reply, “No, not necessarily. It might perhaps have been thus and so.” That will do; for if we can show that it is not necessarily a violation of a law of nature, we wholly remove the objection.

But we may go farther, and assert that such a supposition as we have made not only accords with the story in the Gospels, but also with the whole spirit of Christianity, and with all the analogies of nature. The resurrection of Jesus, so regarded, becomes the most natural thing in the world. If souls live after death, as even natural instinct teaches, they live somewhere. As by the analogy of nature we see an ascending scale of bodily existence up to man, whose body is superior to that of all other animals, because fitted for the very highest uses, so if man is to live hereafter and elsewhere, and not in this earthly body, analogy would anticipate that he should live in a body still, but in a higher form. If Jesus, therefore, rose in this higher body, and appeared to his disciples, it was to lift them above fear of death by showing that this corruptible must put on incorruption. So his resurrection was not merely coming to life again in the same body, but rising up into a higher body and a higher state, to show us how we are to be, to give us a [pg 085] glimpse of the hereafter, to bridge over the gulf between this life and that to come.