not otherwise have been received. Observe how difficult it was for the Saviour to satisfy the apostles that he had risen from the dead. Thomas entirely refused

all belief.

It is quite clear that the apostles participated in the universal notion of their countrymen, that the Messiah was to be a temporal Prince, and that they considered the death of Jesus as the annihilation of their hopes-"We trusted that it had been He, that should have redeemed Israel." When Jesus said, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will restore it again," the disciples did not understand him. "Sir, if thou have borne him hence tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away"-such was the language of Mary Magdalen; far from expecting the resurrection, it had not entered her thoughts. When the event was first told the disciples, "Their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not." Every act and word marks their complete consternation and despair-Peter had denied him, they had

all deserted him. When the wrath of his enemies had been satiated, they then only ventured to approach his grave. The desire of embalming the body showed that no change was contemplated, but the usual process of human decay.

With the life of Jesus his religion appeared to come to an end-it depended on his personal authority, and at his departure the whole scheme was dissolved. He was not the Messiah that was expected. In their trying circumstances, the conduct of the apostles was precisely such as might have been expected, upon the supposition that they were men of sober minds, and therefore fit to be believed, in what they afterwards asserted; and indeed nothing short of what they did assert, nothing but what happened, and what they asserted to have happened, can explain their rousing from their despair, and their subsequent preaching of the gospel.

The resurrection produced a total alteration in their views, and yet at first very slowly, but how in their situation were they to think of inventing such a

story, and if it was not a real event, how were they to be benefitted by proclaiming it. The Jews were sufficiently exasperated already, and the disciples had no measure of either prudence or safety, but to sink into silence and obscurity— and how were they to believe such an event, if unreal. Thomas could not be brought to believe it, how could they all agree to adopt a fact, so extraordinary, as the groundwork of a new religion; a religion which they were to announce to the very people, and in the very place, where their Master had been publicly put to death.

But on the supposition of an illusion, who was to fabricate it? Or why? And how or why, were they all, not one, but all of them, to give into the illusion; how were they all at once to be seized by the same simultaneous transport of enthusiasm; make whatever unnatural supposition you please, respecting one man, how are ten others to join him in his insanity, how are they all to be deceived by any unreal appearance, how are they all to

imagine precisely at the same point of time, not once, but repeatedly, the presence of their well-known Master.

Dr. Ferriar always considered it a sufficient argument against ghosts, that they had never been seen by two persons at the same time. Unless the apostles were controlled by the consciousness of superintending, miraculous agency, how were they to have been, as they are said to have been, and as they must have been, "of one mind." Unity of purpose, of interest, of sentiment and opinion were indispensable. Was a Board of twelve likely to secure this unanimity? There seems to have been no such harmony among them before the resurrection; like ordinary men, they were continually disputing about priority. "What was it," said Jesus, “that ye disputed among yourselves by the way?" But they held their peace; for by the way, they had disputed among themselves, who should be greatest; how have these men, collectively and individually, been in an instant transformed from timid, despairing, disap

pointed, jealous, ambitious, and expectant followers, into intrepid, single-minded, harmonious, self-denying, spiritual leaders, in so extraordinary a cause as the propagation of a new religion; and for such an undertaking to have united such consummate courage, and consummate prudence. Almost the last words of Peter in the gospels are represented as a sort of blasphemous denial of his Lord, "he began to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man." We open the Acts of the Apostles, and almost the first passage, that occurs, is a speech of Peter, distinguished alike for boldness and discretion, without the slightest appearance of fanaticism; nor is Peter alone; he is supported by the rest; and their first word, "the Lord has risen," placed them in a state of hostility with the Jews, and probably with the Roman government. When they had once publicly announced, that their Master, who had been crucified, was the expected Messiah, and should have been received as such, they could not but have supposed, that unless miraculously assisted and pro