home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
The California Collection
/
TheCaliforniaCollection.cdr
/
his126
/
isue05e.arj
/
ISUE05E.TXT
Wrap
Text File
|
1990-12-02
|
6KB
|
146 lines
HE AROSE!
. SIMON GREENLEAF, L.L.D., whose "Laws of Evidence" was the
standard textbook in the English speaking law-schools of the
world for many years, tells why he believes.
. Former U. S. Supreme Court Justice Brewer said: "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 his is the highest authority on evidence cited
in our courts."
WHY I BELIEVE HE AROSE!
by Simon Greenleaf, L. L. D.
. The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon,
first, their honesty; secondly, their ability; thirdly, their
number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the
conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the
coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstance.
. Let the evangelists be tried by these tests.
. And first to their honesty. Here they are entitled to the
benefit of the general course of human experience, that men
ordinarily speak the truth when they have no prevailing motive or
inducement to the contrary.
This presumption is applied in
courts of justice, even to witnesses whose integrity is not
wholly free from suspicion; much more it is 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 as a malefactor by the
sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow
the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were
against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and
passions of all rulers and great men of the world were against
them.
Propagating this faith, even in the most inoffensive and
peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt and
opposition, revilings, bitter persecutions, stripes,
imprisonments, torments and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they
zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured
undismayed, nay, rejoicing.
One after another was put to death,
the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and
resolution.
. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of
the like heroic stance, patience and unblenching courage.
They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of
their faith, and the evidences of the great truths which they
asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention
with the most melancholy and terrific frequency.
It was
therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming
the truths they have narrated, 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 matter, 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
without, 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 happiness in this life or in the world to come.
. Such conduct in the apostles would, moreover, have been
utterly irreconcilable 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, animated by the same joys, subdued by the same
sorrows, and subject to the same passions, temptations and
infirmities as ourselves. And their writings show them to have
been men of various understandings.
. If then their testimony were not true there was no possible
motive for this fabrication.
It would have been irreconcilable
with the fact that they were good men. But it is impossible to
read their writings and not feel that we are conversing with men
eminently holy, and of tender consciences, with men acting under
an abiding sense of the presence and omniscience of God, and of
their accountability to Him, living in His fear and walking in
His Ways.
Now, though in a single instance, a good man may fall
when under strong temptation, yet he is not found for years
persisting in deliberate falsehood, asserted with the most solemn
appeals to God, without the slightest temptation or motive, and
against all the opposing interests which reign in the human
breast.
. If, on the contrary, they are supposed to have been bad men,
it is incredible that such men should have chosen this form of
imposture, enjoining, as it does, unfeigned repentance, the utter
forsaking and abhorrence of falsehood and every other sin, the
practice of daily self-denial, self-abasement, and self-
sacrifice, the crucifixion of the flesh with all its earthly
appetites and desires, indifference to honor and hearty contempt
of the vanities of the world; and inculcating perfect purity of
heart and life and intercourse of the soul with heaven.
. It is incredible that bad men should invent falsehood to
promote the religion of the God of truth. The supposition is
suicidal.
If they believed in a future state of retribution, a
heaven and hell thereafter, they took the most certain course, if
false witnesses, to secure the latter for their portion. And if,
still being bad men, they did not believe in future punishment,
how came they to invent falsehoods, the direct and certain
tendency of which was to destroy all their prospects of worldly
honor and happiness and to insure their misery in this life?
From these absurdities there is no escape but in the perfect
conviction and admission that they were good men, testifying to
that which they had carefully observed and considered and well
knew to be true.
Edited by D. Moore
Computers for Christ - Chicago