of Christ
fall within the province of faith, resting on moral grounds, not
within that of knowledge, resting on logical grounds. For example:
what direct proof is there that Christ, when he vanished from the
disciples, went to the presence of God in heaven, to die no more?
It was only seen that he disappeared: all beyond that except as it
rests on belief in the previous words of Christ himself is an
inference of faith, a faith kindled in the soul by God and not
created by the miracle of the resurrection.

That imagination, tradition, feeling, and faith, have much more to
do with the inferences commonly drawn from the resurrection of
Christ than any strict investigation of its logical contents has,
appears clearly enough from the universal neglect to draw any
inferences from, or to attribute any didactic importance to, the
other resurrections recorded in the New Testament. We refer
especially to the resurrection narrated in the twenty seventh
chapter of Matthew, "the most stupendous miracle ever wrought upon
earth," it has been termed; and yet hardly any one ever deigns to
notice it. Thus the evangelist writes: "And the graves were
opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose and came
out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy
city, and appeared unto many." Nothing is inferred from this
alleged event but the power of God. Yet logically what separates
it from the resurrection of Christ? In Greece there was the
accredited account of the resurrection of Er, in Persia that of
Viraf, in Judea that of Lazarus, in other nations those of other
persons. None of these ever produced great results. Yet the
resurrection of one individual from the dead logically contains
all that that of any other individual can. Why, then, has that of
Christ alone made such a change in the faith of the world?
Because, through a combination of causes, it has appealed to the
imagination and heart of the world and stirred their believing
activity, because the thought was here connected with a person, a
history, a moral force, and a providential interposition, fit for
the grandest deductions and equal to the mightiest effects. It is
not accurate philosophical criticism that has done this, but
humble love and faith.

In the experience of earnest Christians, a personal belief in the
resurrection of Christ, vividly conceived in the imagination and
taken home to the heart, is chiefly effective in its spiritual,
not in it