Conceive farther how a Paley would have dealt with so astounding a fact, so crushing an argument as the appearance of the risen Jesus to 500 brethren at once.  How would he have extravagated and revelled in proof!  How would he have worked the topic, that “this could have been no dream, no internal impression, no vain fancy, but a solid indubitable fact!” How he would have quoted his authorities, detailed their testimonies, and given their names and characters!  Yet Paul dispatches the affair in one line, gives no details and no special declarations, and seems to see no greater weight in this decisive appearance, than in the vision to his single self.  He expects us to take his very vague announcement of the 500 brethren as enough, and it does not seem to occur to him that his readers (if they need to be convinced) are entitled to expect fuller information.  Thus if Paul does not intentionally supersede human testimony, he reduces it to its minimum of importance.

How can I believe at second hand, from the word of one whom I discern to hold so lax notions of evidence?  Yet who of the Christian teachers was superior to Paul?  He is regarded as almost the only educated man of the leaders.  Of his activity of mind, his moral sobriety, his practical talents, his profound sincerity, his enthusiastic self-devotion, his spiritual insight, there is no question:  but when his notions of evidence are infected with the errors of his age, what else can we expect of the eleven, and of the multitude?

4.  Paul’s neglect of the earthly teaching of Jesus might in part be imputed to the nonexistence of written documents and the great difficulty of learning with certainty what he really had taught.—­This agreed perfectly well with what I already saw of the untrustworthiness of our gospels; but it opened a chasm between the doctrine of Jesus and that of Paul, and showed that Paulinism, however good in itself, is not assuredly to be identified with primitive Christianity.  Moreover, it became clear, why James and Paul are so contrasted.  James retains with little change the traditionary doctrine of the Jerusalem Christians; Paul has superadded or substituted a gospel of his own.  This was, I believe, pointedly maintained 25 years ago by the author of “Not Paul, but Jesus;” a book which I have never read.

VII.  I had now to ask,—­Where are the twelve men of whom Paley talks, as testifying to the resurrection of Christ?  Paul cannot be quoted as a witness, but only as a believer.  Of the twelve we do not even know the names, much less have we their testimony.  Of James and Jude there are two epistles, but it is doubtful whether either of these is of the twelve apostles; and neither of them declare themselves eyewitnesses to Christ’s resurrection.  In short, Peter and John are the only two.  Of these however, Peter does not attest the bodily, but only the spiritual, resurrection of Jesus; for he says that Christ was[28]