tees; the concealment or destruction of wills; the ingratitude to destitute benefactors; the diverting of trust funds for benevolent purposes to objects abhorrent to those who with painful toil accumulated them and with confidence in the stability of human laws bequeathed them; the loneliness and despair that fill human hearts; and the gloomy doubts of the reality of a future existence,—all of which would be rendered impossible if actual apparitions took place,—the conclusion gathers almost irresistible force that neither in the manner of the alleged comings nor in the objects for which they come is there any evidence to be found of their reality.
If it be assumed that the testimony of one or of one hundred to a supernatural event is not sufficient to prove that it occurred, the question, "What becomes of the testimony of the Apostles and the five hundred brethren to the resurrection of Christ, and of Stephen to his seeing the heavens open," arises again. It admits of but one answer. If they had nothing to communicate but the assertion that they saw a human being alive who had been dead, it would be necessary to reject it on the ground that it is far more probable that they were deceived than that such a thing occurred.
But this is not the whole case. They present to us the whole body of Christian doctrine, declaring that it was received from that person who predicted that he would rise from the dead, whom they believed they saw, and with whom on various occasions they conversed after his resurrection. If Christianity in its relation to, and effect upon, the moral nature of the thinker does not convince him of the divine origin and consequent truth of the record, I know of no means of doing so.
