366 MEMOIR OF AUGUSTUS BE MORGAN. 



1869. due either to the exaggerations of Eastern fancy and 

 expression, or to the interpolations of superstitious times. 

 My husband, who believed fully in the account of the 

 resurrection of Christ as given in the Gospels, wished to 

 ascertain the views of those who held what are called 

 ' advanced ' opinions on this head. He wrote and inquired, 

 but told me he could not make out what their ideas 

 were. I once said to him that I thought one element in 

 the question had been generally overlooked, the ' opening 

 of the (spiritual) eyes ' of the witnesses, as mentioned in 

 the Gospels on other occasions. This would give some 

 apparent subjectivity to the fact, but it is nowhere stated 

 that all present saw the rising of Christ. He said, * Very 

 possibly, but there was a rising; the history is clearly 

 given and well attested, and the rejection of it would be 

 to cut away the root from the tree. And the accounts 

 given of this and the other miracles cannot be taken from 

 the history without throwing a discredit 011 the narrators' 

 character that would make all their statements worthless. 

 They say,' he said of the Rationalistic school of interpreters, 

 ' that it is the character of Christ that commands reverence, 

 and proves his mission from God. You cannot separate the 

 two. He himself claimed extra-natural powers, given by 

 the Father. If this was false He was false, and His cha- 

 racter would not have been what it was ; and the men 

 who could invent fictions about His works could not have 

 described the character as they did.' It was with reference 

 to this society that we spoke of public prayer. In his 

 letters on Christian union he speaks of a basis on which 

 people might meet and pray together. He had always said 

 to me that Jesus Christ had not enjoined public prayer; 

 and though He had not forbidden it, the tenor of His 

 teaching was strongly in favour of privacy and seclusion 

 in this most internal and sacred communion. ' Enter into 

 thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 

 Father which is in secret,' &c. But though he felt this 

 strongly himself, he knew that all did not feel with him. 



