152 



REV J. O, F. MURRAY, D.D., O.N 



would, iiave been able to dispense with ocular demonstration, 

 and to earn a snare in the blessing pronounced on those who be- 

 lieved, without having seeD. 



Now if this is, as i cannot doubt, the true interpretation of the 

 scene, sketched in the fewest possible strokes by the Fouith 

 Evangelist, we are, I imagine, shut up to one of tw^o alternatives. 

 Eitner the writer is a consummate literary artist, who has invented 

 with extraordinary ingenuity, a purely imaginary experience to 

 establish the Church's faith in the Eesurrection, and yet has the 

 self-restraint to leave the precise nature of this new corroboration 

 to be divined by his readers, or he is recording in the simplest and 

 most objective form a definite historical experience. And I have 

 no doubt which of these is the simpler hypothesis, if we approach 

 the subject purely as a literary problem. 



Such in substance is the Xew Testament evidence in regard 

 fo the Empty Tomb. I must apologise once more for my insist- 

 ence on this grossly material topic. But I do not see how other- 

 wise to meet w^hat w^e are told b}' most competent observers* 

 is the present situation in regard to the inexhaustible problem of 

 miracles. There is, we are told, a greater readiness to admit 

 their possibility, coupled with a keener realisation of the fallibility 

 of human testimony. This is the modern form of Huxley's 

 demand for expert e^'idence. This is no doubt a perfectly reason- 

 able demand. At the same time the nature of the qualification 

 that we demand of our witnesses must have some relation to the 

 nature of the fact to which they have to testify. And I am still 

 waiting for an answer to the question, which I asked in 

 Cambridge Theological Essays (p. 323): 



" If the fact to be established is the fact of an empty Tomb, 

 why should we doubt the evidence of eyes that v.-ere searching for 

 the Body that had lain in it as the most precious treasure that 

 the world contained? " 



We have no time to examine the different narratives of the 

 appearances of the Eisen Lord in detail. I must content myself 

 with recaUing attention to three points which may fairly be 

 regarded as characteristic of them all. 



The first is the delicate accuracy of their psychology. Eead, 

 for instance, St. John's account of the appearance to Mary 

 Magdalene, or St. Luke's account of the walk to Emmaus. Let 

 a scholar like Dr. Westcott, in his Revelaiion of the Risen Lord, 

 make the narratives live before you. not by reading an\i:hing into 

 them, but simply by helping you to reahse what a scholarly grasp 

 of language shows to be already there. Then, again, mark the 

 conflict of emotions in the hearts of one group of disciples after 



*F. E. Tennant, Constructive Church Quarterly, Dec, 3921, 

 and E. Bevan, Helleiiism and Christianity, p. 233. 



