Lord's resurrection, was not overlooked by the infidels of antiquity. It was urged in one of the first written attacks upon Christianity; and Origen, whose elaborate confutation of that able adversary is still extant, allows that the objection is not contemptible. The fact which creates the whole difficulty (that Jesus was not seen in public after his interment) seems, indeed, confessed in the text, and confirmed in general by the evangelical history. Nevertheless, this fact is not to be admitted without some limitation. We read in St. Paul's first Epistle to the Corinthians, of a certain appearance of our Lord to more than five hundred brethren at once. So large a company is not likely to have been assembled in a house, nor is it likely that they met by accident; the assembly must have been called together for some express purpose, and what purpose so likely as to receive the satisfaction which was absolutely afforded them, of beholding with their own eyes their crucified Lord restored to life? Nor is it to be supposed, that an object of the human size and form could be seen distinctly by five hundred persons all at once, but by day-light. Here, then, is one appearance of our Lord, in which no circumstance of privacy could be pretended. It was by day-light; in the open air. Notice had been given of the time and place of the appearance. The notice which drew together so numerous an assembly, at a distance from the capital, or any populous town, must have been very public; and from a sight to which five hundred brethren were admitted, it is not easy to conceive that any who were not brethren, if they were pleased to repair to the appointed place at the appointed time, could be excluded. Indeed, if this appearance of the five hundred, recorded by St. Paul, was the same with

that on the Galilean hill, recorded by St. Matthew, which is the opinion of the most learned critics and divines, and is highly probable, because the appearance on the Galilean hill was an appearance at a set time and place, as that to the five hundred must have been; if these, I say, were one and the same appearance, it is certain that our Lord was seen upon this occasion by some who were not brethren. For St. Matthew relates, that when Christ was seen and worshipped on the Galilean hill, "some doubted." Not some of the eleven who are mentioned in the preceding verse, for the eleven doubted not. Thomas was the last of the eleven to believe, yet Thomas ceased to doubt upon our Lord's second appearance in the evening assembly, on the Sunday se'nnight after his resurrection. Nor is it likely that doubters should be included by St. Paul in the number of those whom he dignified with the appellation of brethren. This appearance, therefore, in Galilee was public, not to the disciples only, but to a promiscuous multitude of disciples and of doubtful, unbelieving Jews. The assertion, therefore, of my text, that Christ, raised from the dead, was not shown openly to all the people, is to be understood with some limitation. Once he certainly was shown openly, perhaps not oftener than once; and if once or twice more, still his appearance was not public compared with the unreserved manner of his conversation with the world during his triennial ministry. He resorted not daily to the temple; he preached to no multitudes in the fields; he performed no public miracles; he held no public disputations; he was present at no weddings; he ate not with publicans and sinners. They were only his chosen witnesses to whom ocular proof was repeatedly given that

he was indeed alive again. In a general way of speaking, it is to be confessed that he was not shown openly to all the people. But what if the assertion were true in the utmost sense in which the adversary would wish it to be accepted? What if it were granted, that the pretended appearances after the interment were not public in any single instance? It will follow that our Lord, if he was really alive again, was not seen by many: what of that? Is it a necessary consequence that he was not seen by some? Is the no evidence of the many who saw him not, and have, therefore, nothing positive to say upon the question, to overpower the explicit assertions of those who depose to the fact of repeated appearances? It will hardly be pretended that the bare fact, that he was not seen by the many, amounts in itself to a proof that the story of his resurrection was a fiction.

But it is supposed, I apprehend, that had the resurrection been real, public appearances would have heightened the proof of it; and that, on the other hand, if the thing was a fiction, the concealment of the person who was made to pass for Jesus among the credulous disciples was a means of preventing a detection of the fraud. And it is thought unreasonable to suppose, that the belief of so extraordinary a thing should be required of the world on the part of Heaven, without the highest proof that could be given, or without a fair submission of the evidence to the strictest scrutiny. The objection, therefore, is this, that the proof which is produced of the fact is less than might have been procured had the thing averred been a reality, and that, such as it is, it was not submitted at the time to the examination of the public. In my next discourse I shall endeavour to show you,

that the objection is of a sort to deserve less attention than you may at first imagine, even if what it presumes were true, that the frequency of public appearances would have been a means of heighteuing the evidence of fact on the one hand, or of detecting an imposition on the other. Secondly, I shall show you that both these presumptions are indeed erroneous: that an open conversation with the world would neither have added to the proof of a real resurrection, nor contributed to the detection of a counterfeit. And, after all, I shall show you, that frequent public exhibitions of the person after the resurrection, if they could have heightened the proof of the fact, had been on other accounts improper. Insomuch, that what the story might have gained in credit by an addition of testimony, it would have lost in another way, by an impropriety and inconsistency which might have been charged upon the conduct of our Lord.

Meanwhile, if it should occur to you to wonder that Jesus, after his resurrection, should not be shown openly, but to chosen witnesses, remember, that by the fundamental maxims of the doctrine which Jesus preached, it is the privilege of the "pure in heart," and of them only, to see God. In some sense, indeed, God is seen by all mankind, and by the whole rational creation. God is seen by all men in his works, in the fabric and the motions of the material world. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy-work." very devils see him in his judgments: wise men see him in his providential government of human actions, in the rise and fall of states and empires: the pious believer sees him with the eye of faith, in the miraculous support and preservation of his church from the

The

attacks of open enemies, the treachery of false friends, and the intemperate or the lukewarm zeal of its weaker members. He sees him with the intellectual eye discerning, in part at least, his glorious perfections; and they, and only they who thus see him now, shall at last literally see the majesty of the Godhead in the person of their glorified Lord. By the lost world Jesus shall be seen no more, except as he hath been seen by the unbelieving Jews, in judgment, when he comes to execute vengeance on them who know not God, and obey not the Gospel; but if any man keep his saying, he shall be admitted to his "that where his Saviour is, there he may presence,

be also."