228 REV. CANON GIRDLESTONE, M.A., ON THE RESURRECTION 



person should like to take part or ask the author to further elucidate 

 any point, it will all add to the interest of our gathering this 

 afternoon. 



Mr, Rouse. — With regard to the main subject I should like to 

 say that the Jews had all power on their side when the number of 

 disciples in Jerusalem was very small and feeble, and therefore it 

 is perfectly certain that if it had been a fraud on the part of the 

 disciples that the Lord had risen from the dead, the Jews would 

 have been able to produce His body or to compel the disciples to do 

 so. Again, not only is there no outside record of their having done 

 so : no record that has come down to us, but no book so far as we 

 know was written by the Jews to dispute the fact of the resurrection. 

 We are indebted to the Bible itself for the idle report which was 

 spread that His disciples came and stole Him away while the guards 

 slept ; and yet the fact that so great a benefactor Who did wonders 

 which the Jews do not deny (though they attribute it to the wrong 

 cause), Who did mighty cures amongst them and Who was a good 

 man (which they do not deny), that they should have put to death 

 this man, and that His disciples should preach all over the Roman 

 world that He was God manifest in the flesh, that He did not linger 

 in the tomb but was risen in a more glorious body, remains as an 

 historical fact. This was a slur upon the nation — that this should 

 go forth to all the world and be told abroad. And yet the Jews of 

 that generation or their children never took the pains to deny that 

 which happened in their own time ; that they never took any pains 

 to write a book on the subject is a thing incredible. Judgment 

 goes by default. Christ must have risen from the dead or we 

 should have had some book in which the Jews denied that fact. 

 Within thirty years of that crucifixion the story of Christ's resur- 

 rection, and of the blessings that were to flow from it, covered such 

 a vast number of miles, that some 1,500 or 2,000 miles from 

 Jerusalem, in the city of Rome, multitudes, as we know from the 

 testimony of Tacitus, were submitting to suffer death rather than 

 give up their belief in Christ. What could have convinced them 

 except that they either saw the resurrection with their eyes, or 

 believed the abundant testimony of those who did 1 



Professor Orchard. — We shall all agree in heartily thanking 

 Canon Girdlestone for his most valuable address. The doctrine of 

 the resurrection is the substantial truth of Christianity • take that 



