ness, but a heavenly Redeemer. Yet the Gospels make the impression of being independent of Paul. Everywhere the Jesus that they present is most strikingly similar to the Christ of Paul; but nowhere—not even where Jesus is made to teach the redemptive significance of His death (Mk. x. 45)—is there the slightest evidence of literary dependence upon the Epistles. Thus the liberal Jesus, if he ever existed, has disappeared from the pages of history; all the sources agree in presenting a heavenly Christ. How shall such agreement be explained?
It might conceivably be explained by the appearances of the risen Christ. If, at the very beginning of the Church's life, Jesus appeared to His disciples, after His death, alive and in heavenly glory, it is conceivable that that experience might have originated the lofty New Testament conception of Jesus' person. But what in turn caused that experience itself? On naturalistic principles the appearances of the risen Christ can be explained only by an impression which the disciples already had of the majesty of Jesus' person. If they had listened to lofty claims of Jesus like those which are recorded in the Gospels, if they had witnessed miracles like the walking on the water or the feeding of the five thousand, then, conceivably, though not probably, they might have come to believe that so great a person could not be holden of death, and this belief might have been sufficient, without further miracle, to induce the pathological experiences in which they thought they saw Him alive after His passion. But if the miraculous be removed from the life of Jesus, a double portion of the miraculous must be heaped up upon the appearances. The smaller be the Jesus whom the disciples had known in Galilee, the more unaccountable becomes the experience which caused them to believe in His resurrection. By one path or another, therefore, the historian of Christian origins is pushed off from the safe ground of the phenomenal world toward the abyss of supernaturalism. To account for the faith of the early Church, the supernatural must be found either in the life of Jesus on earth, or else in the appearances of the risen Christ. But if the supernatural is found in one place, there is no objection to finding it in both places. And in both places it is found by the whole New Testament.
Three difficulties, therefore, beset the reconstruction of
