He says, 'If Christ be not risen, then, are we' the
utterly impossible thing of 'false witnesses to God,' devout
perjurers, as the phrase might be paraphrased: men who are lying to
please God. If Christ be not risen, they have sworn to a thing that
they know to be untrue, in order to advance His cause and His
kingdom. If that theory be not accepted, there is no other about
these men and their message that will hold water for a minute, except
the admission of its truth.

The fashionable modern one, that it was hallucination, is
preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared!
Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread at
intervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included eating
and drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and the
feeling of the breath! Hallucinations that brought instruction!
Hallucinations that culminated in the fancy that a gathered multitude
of them saw Him going up into heaven! The hallucination is on the
other side, I think. They have got the saddle on the wrong horse when
they talk about the Apostolic witnesses being the victims of
hallucination. It is the people who believe it possible that they
should be who are so. The old argument against miracles used to say
that it is more consonant with experience that testimony should be
false, than that a miracle should be true. I venture to say it is a
much greater strain on a man's credulity, to believe that _such_
evidence is false than that _such_ a miracle, _so_ attested, is true.
And I, for my part, venture to think that the reasonable men are the
men who listen to these eye-witnesses when they say, 'We saw Him
rise'; and echo back in answer the triumphant certitude, 'Christ is
risen indeed!'

There is another consideration that I might put briefly. A very
valuable way of establishing facts is to point to the existence of
other facts, which indispensably require the previous ones for their
explanation. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. I
believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, amongst other reasons,
because I do not understand how it was possible for the Church to
exist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ rose
again. Why was it that they did not all scatter? Why was it that the
spirit of despondency and the tendency to separation, which were
beginning to creep over them when they were saying: 'Ah! it is all
up! We _trusted_ that this had been He,' did no