fire, amidst all this, not one of them ever acknowledged fraud or
renounced his belief in the resurrection of Jesus. Were they not
honest? Others have died in support of theories and opinions with
which their convictions and passions had become interwoven: they
died rather than deny facts which were within the cognizance of
their senses. Could any man, however firm and dauntless, under the
circumstances, go through the trials they bore, without a feeling
of truth and of God to support him?

These remarks are particularly forcible in connection with the
career of Paul. Endowed with brilliant talents, learned, living at
the time and place, he must have been able to form a reliable
opinion. And yet, while all the motives that commonly actuate men
loudmouthed consistency, fame, wealth, pride, pleasure, the rooted
force of inveterate prejudices all were beckoning to him from the
temples and palaces of the Pharisaic establishment, he spurned the
glowing visions of his ambition and dashed to earth the bright
dreams of his youth. He ranged himself among the Christians, the
feeble, despised, persecuted Christians; and, after having suffered
every thing humanity could bear, having preached the resurrection
everywhere with unflinching power, he was at last crucified, or
beheaded, by Nero; and there, expiring among the seven hills of
Rome, he gave the resistless testimony of his death to the
resurrection of Jesus, gasping, as it were, with his last breath,
"It is true." Granting the honesty of these men, we could not have
any greater proof of it than we have now.

But dishonesty in this matter was not merely untrue; it was also
impossible. If fraud is admitted, a conspiracy must have been
formed among the witnesses. But that a conspiracy of such a
character should have been entered into by such men is in itself
incredible, in the outset. And then, if it had been entered into,
it must infallibly have broken through, been found out, or been
betrayed, in the course of the disasters, perils, terrible trials,
to which it and its fabricators were afterwards exposed. Prove
that a body of from twelve to five hundred men could form a plan
to palm off a gross falsehood upon the world, and could then
adhere to it unfalteringly through the severest disappointments,
dangers, sufferings, differences of opinion, dissension of feeling
and action, without retiring from the undertaking, letting out the
secret, or betraying each other in a single