ment of this matter is simply the _ne plus ultra_ of the
degradation of the greatest of issues by the application to it of
sentiment unworthy of a silly novel. In the first place, he lays down
on general grounds that, though the disciples had confessedly given up
all hope, it yet _was natural_ that they should expect to see their
master alive again. "Mais I'enthousiasme et l'amour ne connaissent pas
les situations sans issue." Do they not? Are death and separation such
light things to triumph over that imagination finds it easy to cheat
them? "Ils se jouent de l'impossible et, plutot que d'abdiquer
l'esperance, ils font violence a toute realite." Is this an account of
the world of fact or the world of romance? The disciples did not hope;
but, says M. Renan, vague words about the future had dropped from their
master, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that they
would soon see him back. In vain it is said that in fact they did not
expect it. "Une telle croyance etait d'ailleurs si naturelle, que la
foi des disciples aurait suffi pour la creer de toutes pieces." Was it
indeed--in spite of Enoch and Elias, cases of an entirely different
kind--so natural to think that the ruined leader of a crushed cause,
whose hopeless followers had seen the last of him amid the lowest
miseries of torment and scorn, should burst the grave?

Il devait arriver [he proceeds] pour Jesus ce qui arrive pour tous
les hommes qui ont captive l'attention de leurs semblables. Le
monde, habitue a leur attribuer des vertus surhumaines, ne peut
admettre qu'ils aient subi la loi injuste, revoltante, inique, du
trepas commun.... La mort est chose si absurde quand elle frappe
l'homme de genie ou l'homme d'un grand coeur, que le peuple ne
croit pas a la possibilite d'une telle erreur de la nature. Les
heros ne meurent pas.

The history of the world presents a large range of instances to test
the singular assertion that death is so "absurd" that "the people"
cannot believe that great and good men literally die. But would it be
easy to match the strangeness of a philosopher and a man of genius
gravely writing this down as a reason--not why, at the interval of
centuries, a delusion should grow up--but why, on the very morrow of a
crucifixion and burial, the disciples should have believed that all the
dreadful work they had seen a day or two before was in very fact and
reality reversed? We confess we do not know