oney to tell
Pilate that they slept at their posts.

How, I ask, did those Jewish priests know that Jesus had said "After
three days I will rise again"? According to John (xx. 9), his very
disciples were ignorant of this fact--"For as yet they knew not the
scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." Could it be unknown
to his intimates, who had been with him day and night for three years,
in all parts of Palestine; yet well known to the priests, who had only
seen him occasionally during a few days at Jerusalem?

There was an "earthquake" before the angels descended. Would not
this have attracted general attention? And is it conceivable that the
soldiers would take money to say they had slept at their posts? The
punishment for that offence was death. Of what use then was the bribe?
Do men sell their honor for what they can never enjoy, and count their
lives as a mere trifle in the bargain? Is it conceivable that the
priests were so foolish as the story depicts them? Would bribing the
soldiers protect them against Christ? If he had risen he was lord of
life and death. Would they not have abandoned their projects against
him, and sought his forgiveness? He who had the power to revive himself
had the power to destroy them.

The appearances of Jesus, after his resurrection, are grotesque in
their self-contradiction. Now he is a pure ghost, suddenly appearing and
suddenly vanishing, and entering a room with shut doors. Then he appears
as solid flesh and blood, to be felt and handled. He even eats broiled
fish and honeycomb.

Such conditions are quite irreconcilable. We may imagine a ghost going
through a keyhole, but is it possible to imagine broiled fish and
honeycomb going through the same aperture? Or is the stomach of a ghost
capable of digesting such victuals?

Has it never struck you as strange, also, that the risen Christ never
appeared to anyone but his disciples? No outsider, no independent
witness, ever caught a glimpse of him. The story is a party report to
prove a party position and maintain a party's interests. Surely, if
Christ died for _all men_, if his resurrection is the pledge of ours,
and if our inability to believe it involves our perdition, _the fact_
should have been established beyond all cavil. Christ should have
stood before Pilate who sentenced him to be crucified; he should have
confronted the Sanhedrim who compassed his death; he might even have
walked about freely amongst the Jews dur