all history there is no fact more clearly proven. God's providence, recognizing* the tremendous importance of this truth, has employed the hatred of the Jews and the incredulity of the Apostles — the gravest obstacles to belief in it — to be the strongest arguments in its favor. A lawyer with Christianity for his client, engaged to prove Christ's Resurrection against the modern Pharisees and Sadducees, would find the earning of his fee an easy task indeed. For, a fact to which many and necessary witnesses testify; witnesses so obstinate in unbelief that they could not be deceived and so circumstanced that they could not deceive others; witnesses willing to seal their wonderfully unanimous testimony with their blood — a fact like that, I say, must be accepted for certain by every impartial, or even prejudiced, tribunal. Now they that saw the risen Saviour were, first of all, many. To say nothing of the angels in the vacant sepulchre who said to the holy women: " He is arisen; He is not here," or of the guard of soldiers who saw Him rise but held their tongue through bribery, we find in the New Testament, which, whatever else it be, is at least true history — we find therein, I say, explicitly recorded twelve distinct apparitions of the resurrected Saviour, one of which at least five hundred persons witnessed. That many other apparitions went unrecorded St. Luke declares, saying that "Christ showed Himself at frequent intervals for forty days speaking to His followers of the kingdom of God." But why, you ask, did Christ appear exclusively to His friends? Why did He not
