must be confessed by all who allow, what I believe is not denied, that the resurrection of Christ, whether true or false, was asserted by his disciples from the beginning; and that circumstance is, the non-production of the dead body.  It is related in the history, what indeed the story of the resurrection necessarily implies, that the corpse was missing out of the sepulchre:  it is related also in the history, that the Jews reported that the followers of Christ had stolen it away.* And this account, though loaded with great improbabilities, such as the situation of the disciples, their fears for their own safety at the time, the unlikelihood of their expecting to succeed, the difficulty of actual success,+ and the inevitable consequence of detection and failure, was, nevertheless, the most credible account that could be given of the matter.  But it proceeds entirely upon the supposition of fraud, as all the old objections did.  What account can be given of the body, upon the supposition of enthusiasm?  It is impossible our Lord’s followers could believe that he was risen from the dead, if his corpse was lying before them.  No enthusiasm ever reached to such a pitch of extravagancy as that:  a spirit may be an illusion; a body is a real thing, an object of sense, in which there can be no mistake.  All accounts of spectres leave the body in the grave.  And although the body of Christ might be removed by fraud, and for the purposes of fraud, yet without any such intention, and by sincere but deluded men (which is the representation of the apostolic character we are now examining), no such attempt could be made.  The presence and the absence of the dead body are alike inconsistent with the hypothesis of enthusiasm:  for if present, it must have cured their enthusiasm at once; if absent, fraud, not enthusiasm, must have carried it away.

_________

* “And this saying,” Saint Matthew writes, “is commonly reported amongst the Jews until this day” (chap. xxviii. 15).  The evangelist may be thought good authority as to this point, even by those who do not admit his evidence in every other point:  and this point is sufficient to prove that the body was missing.  It has been rightly, I think, observed by Dr. Townshend (Dis. upon the Res. p. 126), that the story of the guards carried collusion upon the face of it:—­“His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept.”  Men in their circumstances would not have made such an acknowledgment of their negligence without previous assurances of protection and impunity.

+ “Especially at the full moon, the city full of people, many probably passing the whole night, as Jesus and his disciples had done, in the open air, the sepulchre so near the city as to be now enclosed within the walls.”  Priestley on the Resurr. p. 24. _________