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THE
DEAN OF RIPON
ON THE
PHYSICAL RESURRECTION OF JESUS,
IN ITS BEARING ON THE
TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY.
BY
THOMAS SCOTT.
PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,
No. 11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
Price Sixpence.
�LONDON:
PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTINBY STHEKT
HAY.MARK. ST, W.
�V
THE REV. DR HUGH M’NEILE
ON THE
RESURRECTION.
To
the
Editor
of the
“Times.”
Sir,—There is one passage in the “Bennett Judg
ment ” on which I desire, with your permission, to
publish a few observations. It is this—After dis
cussing the terms “ corporal,” “ natural,” “ true,” as
applied to the body of Christ, their Lordships say:
“The matters to which they relate are confessedly not
comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible by the
human understanding; the province of reason as applied to
them is, therefore, very limited, and the terms employed
have not, and cannot have, that precision of meaning which
the character of the argument demands.”
The subject-matter referred to is the risen body
of Christ, and I wish to call attention to the nature
of the proof we have of the resurrection of His
body. It is needless to comment on its importance.
Without the historical fact of the resurrection of
Christ’s body, Christianity crumbles into a myth.
We learn from St Luke that Christ showed him
self alive after his Passion by many infallible proofs
(reKpriptois). These are recorded by the Evangelists.
A
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The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Neile
He said, “Behold my hands and my feet that it is I
myself. Handle me and see, for a spirit hath not
flesh and bones as ye see me have.” “Sic hse
actiones, loqui, ambulare, edere, bibere TeK^pia
sunt.”—Beza. All such proofs were addressed to
the senses of the Apostles> and the result was a
process of clear and conclusive reasoning. The
human mind is not capable of clearer proof on
any practical subject than that which is derived
from the testimony of the senses, and the conse
quent deductions of the reason. Such was the proof,
satisfactory, and, as far as human consciousness is
concerned, infallible, which was given of the Resur
rection of Christ. Before his death, his flesh was
similar to ours. “Forasmuch as the children are
partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself
likewise took part of the same ” (avros irapaTrAija/ws
/zereaxe tG»v avr&v). His flesh, then, was an object of
sense, concerning which men might fairly reason—
concerning which reasonable men could not but
reason.
If, after his resurrection, his flesh had been some
thing altogether different—-if it had been something
not comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehen
sible by the human understanding—if the province
of reasoning as applied to it had been, therefore,
very limited—if the terms employed to describe it
had not, and could not have, that precision of
meaning which a proof of his resurrection demanded
—had this been so, how could his resurrection have
been proved, and if his resurrection be not proved,
reasonably and conclusively proved, where is Chris
tianity itself ?
But his flesh after his resurrection was appealed
to as matter of sense and argument and proof, and,
�on the Resurrection.
1
therefore, it was quite comprehensible by the human
understanding, and, therefore, the province of
reason as applied to it was perfect, and therefore
the terms employed to describe it had, and could
not but have, the precision of meaning indispensable
for establishing the fact that he was indeed risen
from the dead.
Deny the clear and conclusive province of reason
as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and you
cannot prove the resurrection of his body.
Admit the clear and conclusive province of reason
as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and you cannot
prove any presence whatever of his flesh in the Lord’s
Supper. Nay, you can prove its absence, for human
reason is altogether competent to the conclusion
that what cannot be seen, or felt, or tasted cannot
be flesh, whatever else it may be, and the question
here is not about something else but about flesh.
All this is made clearer still by contrast. Let the
subject under consideration be “ The Trinity.” Here
we can have no infallible proofs. We may have,
indeed, and we have, clear revelation, reasonably
attested to be revelation, and therefore entitled to
acceptance on authority, as little children accept on
authority; but the subject-matter is confessedly not
comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible,
by the human understanding. The province of
reasoning as applied to it is, therefore, very limited,
and the terms employed in revealing it have not
and cannot have that precision of meaning which
an argument between man and man demands.
Acute controversialists of the Church of Rome
have propagated much deception by treating as
analogous the mystery of the Trinity, and what
they call the mystery of the Sacrament. Under
�8
^Ihe Rev. Dr M'Neile on the Resurrection.
cover of this assumed analogy, strange bewildering
phrases have been introduced and applied to flesh
and blood — " spiritual,” “ supernatural,” “ sacra
mental,” “ mystical,” “ ineffable,” “ supralocal.”
But there is no ground for this. The mode of
the Divine existence is, indeed, a mystery, far
beyond the province of human reason; but flesh
and blood are not so, and bread and wine are not
so; and there is not the slightest intimation in
Holy Scripture of any mystery connected with the
Lord’s Supper. But ecclesiastical tradition? I
willingly leave to others the task of exploring that
troubled sea, which does indeed “ cast up mire and
dirt,” but I may cordially and devoutly embrace
the definition of mysteries as applied to the Lord’s
Supper in our Book of Common Prayer—“ pledges
of His love and for a continual remembrance of His
death, to our great and endless comfort.”
I am, Sir,
Your obliged and obedient servant,
HUGH M’NEILE.
The Deanery, Ripon, June 25.
�DR M’NEILE ON THE RESURRECTION.
N the number of the Times for Thursday, June
27, of the present year (1872), there appeared
the preceding letter on the Bennett Judgment,
addressed to the Editor by Dr Hugh M’Neile, Dean
of Ripon. To this letter I desire to call the special
attention of those who may wish that our religion,
whatever it may be, shall rest on the basis of solid
fact or ascertained truth. It would be scarcely pos
sible to exaggerate the importance of the issue which
the Dean of Ripon has most pertinently raised, or to
lay too much stress on the propositions by which he
believes, or appears to believe, that he has solved the
problem satisfactorily. Like many other clergymen
of the Church of England, and more especially
like many others of the party to which Dr M’Neile
is supposed to belong, he has been disturbed by
that Judgment of the Judicial Committee of Privy
Council which, acquitting Mr Bennett of formal
heresy, seems in his opinion to undermine the
very foundations of the faith of a large majority of
English churchmen. It is well to know what these
foundations are, and Dr M’Neile has exhibited them
in the clearest possible light. For the Judgment
itself, it is enough to say that it regards the whole
subject which furnished the ground of prose
cution for Mr Bennett’s assailants, as wrapped in
dense, if not in impenetrable, mists. Mr Bennett,
I
�Io
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
believing with them that Jesus Christ has ascended
into heaven (seemingly a local heaven above Mount
Olivet,) with that body which was nailed to the
cross and laid in the grave, believes also that he is
sensibly present in the Sacrament of the Altar, and
that being thus present, he is there to be adored
under the symbols of the bread and wine which have
been converted into his flesh and blood by the con
secration of the priest. Christ, therefore, who is
sensibly in heaven (for in the words of the Fourth
Article he has ascended into heaven with flesh,
bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection
of man’s nature) is also present sensibly at the same
time upon a thousand altars. The proposition, if
not actually heretical, looks much like a contradic
tion in terms : but as it does not formally controvert
or contradict any positive statement of the Thirtynine Articles, the defendant is entitled to an ac
quittal. Had this sentence of acquittal been pro
nounced without further comment, Dr M’Neile and
they who go with him would have suffered much less
distress, or perhaps would not have been distressed
at all. But the Judicial Committee was probably
not sorry to avail itself of the opportunity of en
larging the basis for the clergy by admitting as
much vagueness as possible in their engagements ;
and the means which it adopted for this purpose
was the assertion that the subject was one which
can never be really comprehended by anybody, and
that, therefore, a precise definition of the terms em
ployed in the treatment of it is an impossibility.
“ The matters to which they relate,” the Judicial
Committee insists, “ are confessedly not comprehen
sible, or very imperfectly comprehensible, by the
human understanding. The province of reason as
�-c..-
..A,-,., ,
on the Resurrection.
•■ ■-.<'/'ry;,' \
11
applied to them is, therefore, very limited, and
the terms employed have not, and cannot
have, that precision of meaning which the charac
ter of the argument demands.”
The plain inference of all indifferent persons must
be that the Judicial Committee of Privy Council
regards the subject as one which it is better not to
speak about, and therefore also not to think about,
or, at the least, as one on which no churchman
should censure or tease another. To argue upon
it requires that the terms used should carry with
them a precise meaning: but, as the Judicial
Committee holds, from the nature of the subject
they cannot be thus accurately used, and con
sequently the time spent in thinking or speaking
about it must be time wasted. It is, of course,
significant that the highest tribunal of the Church
of England should thus mark as useless or unpro
fitable the doctrine of the nature of the presence
of Christ in the Eucharist. But the declaration
of this tribunal is of greater importance in its
bearings on the traditional theology of the Chris
tian Church and of particular sects or parties in it.
It is not to be supposed that the large and powerful
section in the English Establishment, known popu
larly as Evangelicals or Low Churchmen, should fail
to see the danger into which some of the most im
portant articles of their creed are drawn; and we
can understand the eagerness with which Dr M’Neile
comes forward to repel this assault on what he
regards as the very foundations of the Christian
Faith.
For myself, and for the cause I strive to serve, I
am rejoiced that the Dean of Ripon has, in such
clear and unequivocal language, summoned his
�12
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
brethren, and, indeed, all Christendom to the fight.
There is now some prospect that ages of talking
and disputing may be followed by a grave and
calm discussion of the point at issue, and, as that
point is alleged to be an historical fact, by a final
determination whether it be indeed a fact or not. To
those who are simply anxious to ascertain the truth
of facts, it is a matter of supreme indifference how
the issue comes to be raised. The Apostle of the
Gentiles was thoroughly aware that some preached
Christ from motives which were anything but
creditable; but, so long as Christ was preached, he
was content and glad; and I confess a* satisfaction
not less complete on learning that the Judicial
Committee of Privy Council have been enabled by
a few passing remarks to accomplish that which
the most outspoken of liberal thinkers thus far,
it would seem, have failed, with all their efforts,
to achieve. Whether the trepidation excited by
these remarks is due in any measure to the position
occupied by the highest ecclesiastical tribunal of
the land, I do not care to ascertain. It is enough
that, by some means or other, the great question
between the traditionalists and their opponents
should be put in a fair way towards final settle
ment. I readily avail myself, therefore, of the
opportunity furnished by the letter of Dr M’Neile
to the Times, and, as it is of paramount importance
that his general argument should not be misrepre
sented, I shall take his statements seriatim, so that
my readers may at once see all that is involved in
them.
But at starting it may be said, without any feai*
of wronging the Dean of Ripon, that all his state
ments resolve themselves into the one proposition
�on the Resurrection.
13
that the foundation of his religion is a certain fact
on which the human reason can be fully exercised,
and which must be ascertained and accepted on
similar grounds to those on which we accept any
historical facts whatsoever. With this proposition
there can be no tampering; its value is gone if it
has to undergo any modification. We are not to
take the fact as meaning at one time one thing and
at another time another thing ;■ if a term which we
employ denotes a thing which, so far as all history
tells us, is subject to certain conditions, we are not
to take it as denoting something which exhibits
very different conditions. If we do, our conclusions
cannot possibly rest on evidence, and, if they do not
rest on evidence, they are worthless. Now Mr Ben
nett, following a large, indeed by far the largest, por
tion of that which is called Christendom, asserts that
the risen body of Christ (his flesh and his blood) is
present in the sacrifice of the Eucharist; and the
Dean of Ripon maintains that this proposition
strikes at the very root of Christianity as he under
stands the term. If it may be maintained that the
actual body of Christ, that body with which he was
crucified and was laid in the grave, and with which
he rose again, is present in a hundred or a thousand
places at the same time, what proofs, he asks, have
we that he was ever raised at all ? It must here be
remarked that Dr M’Neile summarily casts aside
all those more or less ingenious methods by which
some interpreters and commentators have endea
voured to accommodate their positions to the
character of the evidence which they have at their
command. He will have nothing to do with the
theories which tell us that we do not really know
what flesh and blood are, and which imply or
B
�14
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Neile
affirm that our knowledge cannot possibly deter
mine whether or not a body of flesh and blood
may become visible and invisible at will, may
pass through rocks or closed doors, may be free
of the law of gravitation, and may or may not be
present in many places at the same time. Thus
much certainly may be said for the commentators
who frame such theories, that, if they are justified
in forging the first links of their chain, there is no
reason why they should not add the last. If a body
of flesh and blood can live without food or drink,
and without the discharge of any of those bodily
functions which we are disposed to regard as essen
tial to life, there seems to be no sufficient warrant
for denying that it may be present at the same
time in more places than one, or even that it may
be ubiquitous. But, if this be so, it also follows
that we know nothing whatever of flesh and blood
and body, and that we are using terms with an
elastic meaning, which may be stretched and
modified at our will. But the nature of the
argument, if it is ever to satisfy the human mind,
requires that the terms should be used with pre
cision; and, if this cannot be done, then it is
obvious that no reasonable belief can possibly issue
from it. I
Against the methods of such commentators Dr
M’Neile enters, therefore, an emphatic protest. With
him terms are not to be modified and altered to suit
the needs of theological arguments. We know what
flesh is and what blood is, and we know what is
meant by a body of flesh and blood; and when we
speak of any of these bodies, we are not to predi
cate of them conditions of which human experience
can furnish no example, for it is obvious that the
�on the Resurrection,
J5
human mind cannot possibly have proof of these
conditions except from experience. If there may
he a hundred or a thousand conditions of bodily ex
istence of which human experience gives us no in
formation, it is self-evident that the whole subject
is removed beyond the province of human reason.
Thus far experience seems to show that a human
body cannot be in more places than one, cannot pass
through solid matter, cannot live without food, and
without the waste which is implied in the need and
the assimilation of food; but if, nevertheless, such a
body can be ubiquitous, or live without food, or
walk on the sea, or float in the air, there is abso
lutely no warrant of reason why it should not be
present at the same moment on all the altars of
Christendom. If this is what is meant by terms
which seem to speak of the risen body of Christ, it
is clear that we have and can have no evidence of
his resurrection. We may receive the assertion on
faith, but it will be to us an assertion with regard
to which human reason can have no function, and
with reference to which there can therefore be no
conviction. Such an assertion Dr M’Neile rejects
with abhorrence. His mind, his human reason, must
be thoroughly satisfied. He is certain that the
Divine Being never meant that it should not be
satisfied. That which God needed, was the free
assent of the human mind, and this assent cannot
be given to statements which that mind is obviously
unable to test.
Dr M’Neile is speaking, of course, of historical
facts, not of dogmas which may possibly refer to
eternal truths, which are confessedly incomprehen
sible. He is careful to contrast the one with the
other. "Let the subject under consideration,” he
B2
�j
6
Rev. Dr Hugh M'Nelle
says, “ be ‘ The Trinity.’ Here we can have no in
fallible proofs. We may have, indeed, and we have
clear revelation, reasonably attested to be revelation,
and therefore entitled to acceptance on authority;
but the subject-matter is confessedly not comprehen
sible, or very imperfectly comprehensible, by the
human understanding. The province of reasoning
as applied to it is therefore very limited, and the
terms employed in revealing it have not and cannot
have that precision of meaning which an argument
between man and man demands.”
If I were criticising the Dean of Ripon’s letter as
a whole, I might point to the strange conclusions
involved in these words. His own opinion is clear
enough, but it is scarcely in accordance with some
facts which are certainly historical. One of these
facts is that a large majority of Christendom has
for an indefinite length of time held that the subject
of the Trinity in Unity may undergo the most minute
dissection and be mapped out in terms employed
with a scientific accuracy of meaning. Each of the
three Divine Persons may in himself be incompre
hensible : but it is nowhere said that the doctrine
propounded concerning them is incomprehensible
also. On the contrary, no document can be pointed
out which is in form more severely technical than
the Athanasian Creed. There is no sort of intima
tion that the tdrms employed in it have not and
cannot have that precision of meaning which an
argument between man and man demands. It
may not be easy to see what attestation there can
possibly be for this revelation beyond the authority
of those who drew up and imposed this symbol on
Christendom; but it is something to know that in
spite of this rigid outlining of the whole of this
�on the Resurrection.
17
subject, which can come only from the most perfect
familiarity, the Dean of Ripon confesses that, while
in some way or other he believes the dogma, he
cannot comprehend it at all, or that at best he com
prehends it very imperfectly; and, moreover, that in
spite of the seeming precision of the several terms
used in the Athanasian Creed he cannot ascribe to
them any such character. In short, he admits that
his own notions on the subject are altogether misty,
and that from the nature of the subject it is im
possible that they can be anything else but misty.
It follows that the dogmas of the Incarnation, of
Atonement, Mediation, and Justification must all be
placed in the same class. For none of these can we
have any infallible proofs. The very gist of the
arguments urged by Dr M’Neile and the theologians
of his school or party generally is that the unaided
human reason could never have worked its way to
those doctrines: that their subject-matter is not
comprehensible, or very imperfectly comprehensible,
by the human understanding; and, therefore, of
those dogmas also our notions must remain misty.
In other words, the whole system of doctrines which
are popularly regarded as the essential character
istics of Christianity, relates to subjects on which it
is impossible to use terms with any such precision
of meaning as is absolutely demanded by arguments
between man and man, and about which, therefore,
by the confession of the Dean of Ripon there is not
much use in thinking or in speaking.
But clearly it would never do to admit that the
doctrines of Christianity are inaccurate'or incomplete
statements of matters in themselves unintelligible,
and to leave it at the same time to be supposed that
Christianity is represented by a misty fabric resting
�18
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Neile
on no solid foundations. It is the special complaint
of Dr M’Neile against the theologians of the Roman
Church that they really cut away such founda
tions “by treating as analogous the mystery of
the Trinity and what they call the mystery of the
Sacrament.” In the latter he holds that there is
really no mystery at all. In the Eucharist there
is no presence of any flesh or any blood, and he pro
tests therefore against the process by which “ under
cover of this assumed analogy, strange bewildering
phrases have been introduced and applied to flesh
and blood, 1 spiritual,’ ‘ supernatural,’ 1 sacramental,’
‘ mystical,’f ineffable,’ 1 supralocal.’ ” We come, there
fore, very near to the point of supreme importance
in these words of Dr M’Neile. The mode of the
Divine existence may be a mystery far beyond the
province of human reason : but he insists empha
tically that flesh and blood are not so, and that
bread and wine are not so. In other words, flesh
and blood, bread and wine, are things about which
we can use terms with a precision of meaning which
leaves no room for the fancy that flesh is bread,
and blood wine, or vice versa. When we speak of flesh
and blood, we speak of things whose nature has been
ascertained by the whole experience of mankind,
and about which that experience has never varied;
for if it has varied, then unless the extent of that
variation has been ascertained, precision of meaning
is gone. If, in spite of our supposed experience
to the contrary, water may sometimes assume the
qualities of fire or wine, it is clear that we cannot
apply with any scientific accuracy the terms used in
defining water. Hence with regard to flesh and
blood, bread and wine, we can trust to no assertions
except such as are attested by human experience;
�on the Resurrection.
19
and hence, finally, the general experience of man
kind that flesh cannot be ubiquitous, and must,
in fact, be strictly local, furnishes an insuperable
objection to the dogma which represents the flesh
of Christ as present on a thousand altars at once.
On this point Dr M'Neile has not the faintest
shadow of a doubt. He stakes everything on the
issue with the most unhesitating confidence. The
flesh of Christ after as before his resurrection was
and is flesh, subject to precisely the same definitions
as those which we apply to all other flesh; and he
insists that if this be not so, “ Christianity crumbles
into a myth,” for, apart from this, we can have no
evidence whatever of the fact of the physical or
material resurrection of his body from the grave.
But I am concerned for the present not so much
with the results of his arguments as with the argu
ments themselves; and I certainly have no tempta
tion to weaken the stress which Dr M’Neile in
his intense earnestness lays upon them. Far
from attempting to disguise the fact that, unless the
physical or material or bodily resurrection of
Jesus is as well attested as the battle of Hastings
or the surrender of Paris to the German armies, he
is left without any real foundation for his faith, he
asserts again and again that this must be so, not
only for himself, but for all who call themselves
Christians, and that the statement is, in fact, a selfevident proposition. He holds it as incontrovert
ible that a rational demonstration of the bodily
resurrection of Jesus is essential to a reasonable
faith in Christianity. It is impossible that a
more momentous issue can be raised for the tradi
tional theology of Christendom ; and it is happily a
tangible one. Unless we have adequate historical
�20
The Rev, Dr Hugh M'Neile
evidence for the resurrection of Christ’s body, Chris
tianity, Dr M’Neile insists, crumbles into a myth.
No room, I must here remark, is left for any misun
derstanding. In that significant, yet, for the tradi
tionalists not very satisfactory, book by which But
ler sought to establish the analogy between re
vealed religion and nature, no stress whatever is
laid on the physical reanimation of the body of
Christ; and the whole argument for human immor
tality with which the work begins seems altogether
to exclude the idea of any such reanimation. Butler’s
one point is that no living power is liable to
destruction; his argument (strange as it may
appear,) is that the body is a living power, and
therefore that it cannot be destroyed. Butler
is careful to distinguish most clearly this living
power from the material particles which we are in
the habit of speaking of as the body. The man who
has lost his arm or his leg makes use of a wooden or
a metal substitute; these limbs, therefore, have no
indispensable connexion with the living power; but
not only this,—the material particles which make up
the outward and tangible form are in a state of per
petual flux, and no particle remains in this sensible
frame for more than six or seven years. Hence the
particles which compose a man’s brain or stomach
have been assimilated by the living power, and been
rejected by it many times over in the space of sixty
or seventy years. That event which we call death
is, therefore, in one main feature, only a sudden
accomplishment of that which is being done by
slow process during that which is called life ; and
as the living power which assimilated these
material particles was in no way affected by the
gradual loss of them, so there is no reason to sup
�on the Resurrection.
21
pose that it is affected by the sudden deposition of
the whole. The living power by the very necessity
of the case lives on; and as it has made use of an
infinite series of particles, and as the resumption
of all these particles is a manifest absurdity and
impossibility, it follows that the particles which
are thrown off from or by the body are thrown
off once and for all. It follows further, and as a
self-evident inference, that if the human entity be
a living power, and if no living power can be de
stroyed, then there is no such thing as the death of
the body, and therefore that there is no such thing
as a resurrection of the body in the sense of a re
animation of that which has been for a time inani
mate. Butler’s argument is, therefore, absolutely
opposed to the notion of a resurrection of the flesh,
except in a sense which they who believe in the re
surrection of the flesh would regard, and justly
regard, as explaining it away. Before it can be
brought within Butler’s system, flesh must be made
-synonymous with body, and body must be defined
as the living power which can make use of mate
rial particles for a special purpose, but which
is quite independent of them, being itself alto
gether impalpable, invisible, inapprehensible by
the senses. It has been absolutely necessary for
me to bring out this clearly in order to show
that Dr M’Neile is not maintaining the same system.
In truth, he could not do so, for, although Butler
nowhere denies in terms the physical resurrection or
reanimation of the body of Jesus, all that his argument
can do is to prove that the reanimation of the flesh
was and is confined to the one instance of the resur
rection of Jesus, and that therefore his resurrection
is wholly unlike the resurrection which alone can
�22
The Rev. Dr Hugh M’Neile
be predicated of ordinary men whose material forms,
not being speedily revivified, decay. Butler has,
indeed, an Anastasis; but it is a rising up, not a
rising again; and, as his argument gains nothing by
proving historically that in one instance a dead body
was, after a short time, reanimated, so he makes no
attempt to prove it. It must, however, be remarked
that, scientifically, his argument does tend to prove
that the so-called resurrection of Jesus, if it occurred,
was the revival of a man who has been in a swoon.
According to Butler, a material particle which has
been rejected by or has passed from the body, has
been rejected or has passed from it for ever. At
the moment which we call death, it deposits all
material particles, and does this for ever; it follows
then that, as this may not be said of the body of
Jesus, the event called death had not, in this
instance, taken place, and that it was, therefore,
simply a case of suspended animation in the form
of coma or swoon. I am not concerned here with
the truth or the falsehood of Butler’s argument,
which philosophically acquires great strength from
the fact that it makes body, mind, soul, and spirit
to be one and the same thing, and thus, exhibiting
in the fullest light the absolute indivisibility of
man, makes his immortality depend on this indi
visibility, inasmuch as living power cannot be
destroyed. This may be true or not true; but it is
of' the utmost consequence, in dealing with the
letter of the Dean of Ripon, to show that not all
Christians can be regarded as upholding his position
that, “ without the historical fact of the resurrec
tion of Christ’s body, Christianity crumbles into a
myth.” As a matter of fact, a book which is
approved and taken up for university and ordina-
�* ■’ \'r
'-r-1//.1.
on the Resurrection.
^fcv'rry /y* r;y.<
23
tion examinations is found to uphold the thesis that
the reanimation of the body of Christ is not in the
least necessary for the existence of Christianity,
and to imply further, that such a reanimation
cannot throw the least light on the nature of
human life and so-called human death, or on the
rising upwards to a higher and better state of that
living power which, for a time, has been content to
manifest its existence by means of an assemblage of
material particles, which, by a constant process, it
assimilated and has thrown off.
This process manifestly cannot be stated as an
historical fact occurring at a definite moment; and
Dr M’Neile would doubtless regard this mode of
looking at the resurrection of Jesus as not less
abominable than a blank denial of it. His termi
nology and the terminology of Bishop Butler have
both alike the same merit of being perfectly clear;
and the latter excludes the idea of a physical reani
mation of so-called dead bodies as much as the
formei' asserts the reanimation of the body of Christ
to be the sole and indispensable foundation of
Christianity. If I may seem to state the same
proposition more than once, it is because Dr M’Neilehimself exhibits his own convictions from as many
points of view as he can, in order to shut out all
possible misconceptions. Hence he fastens with
especial earnestness on the phrase used in the
Acts in speaking of the several Christophanies
after the resurrection. “ We learn from St Luke,”
he says, “ that Christ showed himself alive after his
Passion by many infallible proofs (7eKju»jptots).”
It is well known that the word reKppypiov denotes
absolute demonstrative evidence, or at least the very
strongest kind of proof of which any given thing is
w il..
�24
The Rev. Dr Hugh M 'Neile
susceptible; and it is precisely such evidence as
this which he thinks that the Evangelists have left
to us of the Resurrection. Hence without the least
misgiving that a link or links in the chain of rea
soning may be wanting, he cites the words which
Jesus is said to have uttered, “ Behold my hands
and my feet that it is I myself. Handle me and see,
for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me
have,” and with these he quotes the words of Beza :
“ Sic hae actiones, loqui, ambulare, edere, bibere
p/jpia sunt,” winding up with some sentences of
such extreme importance that I give them here in
full.
“ All such proofs were addressed to the senses of
the Apostles, and the result was a process of clear
and conclusive reasoning. The human mind is not
capable of clearer proof on any practical subject
than that which is derived from the testimony of
the senses and the consequent deductions of the
reason. Such was the proof, satisfactory, and, as far
as human consciousness is concerned, infallible, which
was given of the resurrection of Christ. Before his
death his flesh was similar to ours. “For as much
as the children are partakers of flesh and blood,
he ulso himself likewise took part of the same,
airos irapairXrjcriws fiereoye t&v avruv. His flesh, then,
was an object of sense, concerning which men
might fairly reason, concerning which reasonable
men could not but reason.”
If these words mean anything, they mean that
we may predicate of the risen or reanimated body
of Jesus everything that may be predicated of human
bodies generally, or, in other words, of all flesh and
blood, and by parity of reasoning that we may not
predicate of it anything which cannot be predicated
�on the Resurrection.
*5
of flesh and blood generally; for, if this be allowed,
the matter is at once removed beyond the province
of reason and the senses, within which the Dean of
Ripon insists that it is to be retained. Now, there
are certain things which must be predicated of the
bodies of all men. If we speak of them as eating
and drinking, we presuppose the processes and phe
nomena of digestion and excretion ; if we speak of
them as walking or moving, we presuppose not merely
exertion and consequent weariness, but exertion
and motion under certain definite and invariable
conditions. If any one comes and tells us that
a man, like the cow in the nursery rhyme, jumped
over the moon, or that he walked through a six-feet
thick wall, or that he could show himself and vanish
at will, we should say at once that his statements
might possibly be true so far as his report of what
he thought he had seen was concerned, but that if
it was true, then the creature who did these things
was not made of flesh and blood, but had an organi
sation so entirely different from man, that no points
of likeness could be traced between the one and the
other. If we were told that Mr Disraeli had on
a given day spent many hours in walking round
and round Landseer’s lions in Trafalgar-square, we
might think it strange; if we were told that he had
done this without hat, coat or boots, we might think
it still more strange, but we need not resort to any
further supposition by way of explaining the occur
rence than that he had lost his senses. But if we
were told that he had leaped up from the back of
one of these lions to the top of the Nelson column
and had repeated this exploit ad libitum, we should
have no hesitation in either dismissing the story as
an impudent lie or saying that the person who did
�26
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
this was neither Mr Disraeli nor any human being;
and that, as no such being had ever yet come within
the range of human experience, we must not only
disbelieve the tale, but even disbelieve our own
senses if we fancied that we saw any such thing as
this. It is altogether more likely that we should
be mistaken or that by some means or other we
should be made the victims of an optical delusion,
than that a creature who had a man’s body could
perform acts which all the results of human ex
perience would forbid us to predicate of any man.
In short, if we speak of a man, we speak of a being
who eats and drinks in order to renew the waste of
the bodily tissues and whose eating and drinking is
invariably followed by the process of digestion and
by its results; who cannot go through solid sub
stances or walk on water or float in the air; who
cannot make himself invisible or visible by any
act of the will, but who must come and go, and in
either case must remain visible until he passes
beyond the range of vision or unless some object
cuts him off from the view of the spectator.
So long as our predication follows these laws or
results of human experience, we can treat it as
a strictly reasoning process which appeals directly
and absolutely to our senses. But, according to Dr
M’Neile, there can be no reasoning process, and con
sequently no reasonable conviction, where these
laws or conditions are not observed; and thus he
adds with emphatic earnestness :
“ If, after Christ’s resurrection, his flesh had been
something altogether different,—if it had been
something not comprehensible, or very imperfectly
comprehensible by the human understanding,—if
the province of reasoning as applied to it had been,
�,•-1.v.•,>»>AV‘>:
on the Resurrection.
•*. v*.w.a .•,»
27
therefore, very limited,—if the terms employed to
describe it had not, and could not have, that pre
cision of meaning which a proof of his resurrection
demanded,—had this been so, how could his resur
rection have been proved, and, if his resurrection
be not proved, reasonably and conclusively proved,
where is Christianity itself?”
I am not here concerned with the answer to this
question; but the extreme importance of the argu
ment compels me to repeat that, in Dr M’Neile’s
judgment, the province of reasoning with regard to
the risen body of Jesus is not very limited, that the
subject is not imperfectly comprehensible by the
human mind, and that we may, therefore, demand
such reasonable and conclusive proof of the fact as
is in harmony with the whole course and character
of experience,—nay, that, in the absence of such
proofs, we are mere fools if we give credit to it.
To avoid all possibility of misconception or
injustice, I give the rest of Dr M’Neile’s argument
in his own words, and without breaking in upon
them with any comments:
“ But his flesh after his resurrection was appealed
to as matter of sense and argument and proof, and,
therefore, it was quite comprehensible by the human
understanding, and, therefore, the province of reason
as applied to it was perfect, and therefore the terms
employed to describe it had, and could not but
have, the precison of meaning indispensable for
establishing the fact that he was indeed risen from
the dead.
“ Deny the clear and conclusive province of reason
as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and you
cannot prove the resurrection of his body.
�28
fhe Rev. Dr Hugh NV Nelle
“Admit the clear and conclusive province of
reason as applied to the risen flesh of Christ, and
you cannot prove any presence whatever of his
flesh in the Lord’s Supper. Nay, you can prove
its absence, for human reason is altogether com
petent to the conclusion that what cannot be seen,
or felt, or tasted, cannot be flesh, whatever else it
may be, and the question here is not about some
thing else, but about flesh.”
With this theological issue as between Dr M’Neile
and the Sacerdotalists I have nothing to do. My
business is with the propositions involved in his
words; and among these are (1) that the risen flesh
of Christ is quite comprehensible by the human
mind; (2) that the province of reason as applied to
it is perfect; (3) that unless we can predicate of
that risen flesh all that we can predicate of any
other flesh, and nothing more, the human reason
cannot be exercised upon it at all, and therefore
that on this subject there can be no clear and rea
sonable proof, and therefore no solid and reasonable
conviction, inasmuch as by the change of definition
we have substituted something else (whatever that
may be) for the thing defined,—and thus we should
find ourselves in the present instance professing to
speak about flesh while in reality we are speaking
about that which (whatever it may be) is not flesh
at all.
Now nothing can be clearer, and to the human
mind and reason more satisfactory and conclusive,
than this. Certainly, if it be necessary to the defi
nition of flesh that it should be capable of being
seen, felt, and tasted, then the Sacerdotalists cannot
without absurdity and falsehood maintain that the
flesh of Christ is present whenever the sacrifice of
�on the Resurrection.
29
the Eucharist is offered, that is, in hundreds or in
thousands of places at once. But here we make one
more step in advance. Dr M’Neile’s argument is
here the same as that of the notification given to
weak brothers at the end of the Communion Office
in the Book of Common Prayer, that although the
elements are to be received by communicants kneel
ing, yet no adoration is thereby intended to be done
to them on the score of any corporeal presence of
Christ in the Sacrament, inasmuch as it is against
the truth of his natural body that it should be pre
sent in more places than one, and his body, being, in
heaven, cannot also be upon the earth. Hence
we are to conclude that the compilers of the Prayer
Book shared the conviction of Dr M’Neile, that the
risen body of Christ is subject to the laws and con
ditions to which other fleshly bodies are subject, and
that if we predicate of it that which may not be
predicated of other fleshly bodies, we either deny
its existence or convert it into something else, and
thus put it beyond the province of reason,—which is
not to be done without cutting away at the same
time the very foundations of Christianity.
Without entering into the question of historical
fact, we may here ask whether this position, emi
nently satisfactory though it be to the human rea
son, is altogether in accordance with the statements
in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. Nei
ther from Dr M’Neile nor from the compilers of the
Prayer Book have we received any technical defini
tion of flesh and body; but we have already seen
that there are sundry things which cannot be predi
cated of human bodies, or of any flesh and blood
with which we are acquainted. Thus, for instance,
so far as human experience has gone, it is as much
c
�30
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Neile
a contradiction of fact to say that they can fly, or
go through a solid mountain, as it is to say that
they can be in more than one place at a time. So,
again, we should be bound to say that a being who
could subsist without food, or who could receive
food without being further subject to the processes
of digestion, could not possibly be a man, and that
the substance of which his body or form was com
posed, whatever else it might be, could not possibly
be flesh. But without going further than the Prayer
Book, we have not merely the statement already
cited that it is contrary to the truth of Christ’s natu
ral body that it should be present in more than one
place, but the assertion in the fourth Article that
he ascended into heaven with the same body which
was crucified and raised again from the grave,
and that this body consisted of flesh, bones, and all
things appertaining to the perfection of man’s
nature.* We cannot even conceive of living flesh
apart from blood; indeed, to use Dr M’Neile’s
formula, living flesh without blood, whatever it
may be, is certainly not that which we understand
by the term, and is a something or other utterly
incomprehensible by the human mind, and therefore
altogether removed beyond the province of reason.
Further, if any physiologist were asked to name
the various things appertaining to the perfec
tion of man’s nature, he would give to blood a
place quite as prominent as that of flesh and bones,
* It has been urged by some, that the word Hood has been
omitted in this article by a somewhat disingenuous evasion, in
order to avoid a formal contradiction of the expression of Paul,
that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” All
that I have to do is to insist that blood is necessarily included
under the phrase “ all things appertaining to the perfection of
man’s nature.”
�on the Resurrection.
3i
and, as of equal importance with these, he would
reckon perfect action of all the organs,;—a perfect
action of the brain for the exercise of the highest
thought, and a perfect condition of the digestive
functions for the conversion of food into blood.
Other things may be not less necessary; but with
out these he would say that human nature cannot
exist, and that together with these there must be
certain conditions within which man must by his
very organisation be fettered. Thus he is formed for
walking or running on his feet, not for flying; he
may swim in the water, but he cannot walk upon
it; he may leap for a few feet in the air, but he
cannot rise through it except in a balloon. Now
when in the fourth Gospel we are told that after
Mary and two of the disciples had taken up their
position at the door of the sepulchre, she saw two
angels in white whom she had not seen on entering,
it may be imagined that the angels had come through
the solid rock or earth; for no one has contended
that the bodies of angels consist of flesh, bones,
and other things appertaining to the perfection of
man’s nature. But the body of Jesus after his re
surrection can appear and vanish at will. This is
so far common to all the Christophanies, that it is
unnecessary to specify instances. It can also go
through closed doors, for it is an evasion, from which
Dr M’Neile would doubtless shrink with horror, to
say that anything else can be meant when in the
Johannine narrative we read that “ when the doors
were shut, where the disciples were assembled, Jesus
came and stood in the midst.” It is ridiculous, if
not profane, to suppose that one who had just burst
the barriers of the grave should have to knock at
the door to ask for admission, and if the doors were
C 2
'
', .
�32
The Rev, Dr Hugh M'Neile
♦
open, it cannot be said that they were shut. Again,
his risen body, which moves by mere volition,
may be seen and handled; but human experience
certainly knows nothing of any man capable of
walking about while through his hands and his
feet might be seen the perforations caused by
the nails used in crucifixion, and with a wound
in his side so large that a human hand might be
thrust through it. Further, unless he ascended into
heaven with these perforations and this wound, it
must be supposed either (1) that he had the power
of putting on the appearances of these wounds at
will, so that they would thus be pretences rather
than realities; or (2) that these wounds were
gradually healed in the interval between the
resurrection and the ascension, if according to
the Acts we are to assume that forty days passed
between the two events. Yet more, the body of
Jesus can eat and drink; but the narratives
which speak of his doing so manifestly ascribe
the acts not to any need of the sustenance, but
simply to the desire of showing to the disciples
that he can eat and drink,—to prove, in short, that
he is. not a ghost (whatever this may be),—a fact
which at other times he bids them to test by handling
him. Here already we have a number of acts
predicated of the risen Jesus which could not
possibly be predicated, according to all human
experience, of any man whatsoever. Any one
of them would be held universally to interfere
with the very definition of man, of flesh and of
blood. Lastly, the body of which these acts, utterly
impossible according to human experience and the
conclusions of reason, are predicated, and which
before the crucifixion has walked on the water,
�on the Resurrection.
33
leaves the earth from the top of a hill, and rises
into the air, until at last a cloud veils him from the
sight of his disciples, who are told by the two
men in white apparel who then appear, that he
has gone away into heaven.
Thus, far from having in the risen body of Jesus
a subject perfectly comprehensible by the human
mind and reason, the province of reason as applied
to it being perfect, we have something which utterly
baffles the human mind, and with regard to which
the province of reasoning is so limited as to pre
clude altogether that precision in the use of terms
which an argument between man and man demands.
I perfectly agree with Dr M’Neile that the question
is about flesh and not about something else; nor have
I the slightest doubt that, “the human reason is alto
gether competent to the conclusion that what cannot
be seen, or felt, or tasted cannot be flesh, whatever
else it may be.” But, if I am to trust my reason at
all, I am equally sure that a being who can live
without food, or who can receive food without
digesting it, who can come and vanish and go
through closed doors at will, who can so modify his
form and features that those, who have known him
best fail to recognise him, who can walk on water
and float through the air to a local heaven, is cer
tainly not a man with a body of flesh organised
with everything appertaining to the perfection of
man’s nature, whatever else he may be. He is
thus a person with regard to whom the province of
reason is very limited, and, indeed, cannot be said
to exist at all I and as, where the reason cannot be
exercised there cannot be reasonable proof and
reasonable conviction of a bodily resurrection, it
follows, according to the Dean of Ripon, that Chris
tianity has crumbled into a myth.
�34
The Rev, Dr Hugh M'Neile
Thus, without entering on the question whether
the Gospels or the Acts are historically trustworthy,
my task is accomplished. The Dean of Ripon insists
that all arguments between man and man require
complete precision of meaning in the terms em
ployed ; and we have seen that every one of the
terms employed in speaking of the risen body of
Christ is used in the Gospels and the Acts
with as little precision of meaning as any of
those which, when used by Sacerdotalists who
maintain the doctrine of transubstantiation or
any kindred dogma, Dr M’Neile rejects as inaccu
rate and worthless.
We have also seen that
there is no ground or warrant in the New Testa
ment for the assertion of Beza that the actions
of speaking, walking, eating, and drinking are
physical and senfeible proofs that the risen body
of Christ was the body of a man, a body of flesh and
blood. Were we, I repeat, to see before us now a
being who could eat and drink, but who needed not
to do either and in whom these acts would not, or
need not, be followed by any process of digestion,
who could walk as men walk, but who could do so
on water and in the air as well as on land, and who
could pass through solid substances, we should say
that, whatever else he might be, he could not be a
man, and that his body could not possibly be com
posed of flesh, blood, and bones like our own. We
should say this, even if we saw such a being with
our own eyes ; but how much time would it take
before we could convince ourselves that we were
not under a delusion, or cheated, or duped, and how
much longer would it be before we accepted any such
descriptions and gave credit to them as facts on the
testimony of others ? If we heard any persons bear
�on the Resurrection.
35
witness to the existence of such a being, how would
this differ from the evidence of those Homeric persons
who saw Venus and Mars mingling in the battles of
men, and saw not the blood but the ichor stream
ing from their wounds? We have no need, there
fore to examine the testimony, if any such there be,
unless we abandon the position which Dr M’Neile
insists that we are bound to maintain. We are
dealing, he says, with things which come strictly
within the province of reason ; and we have seen
that the various actions attributed in the Gospels
to Jesus after the resurrection, and indeed before
it, show that, whatever his body may have been
it was a body which was essentially not that of a
human being.
But Dr M’Neile pleads that his flesh after his resurrection was appealed to as matter of sense and
argument and proof. We have seen that if it was
appealed to, the appeal was made to something not
more really identical with human flesh than the
“ corpus Christi ” after the bread has in the Eucharist
undergone consecration. But what knowledge have
we that any such appeal was made ? It is singularly
significant that, although in the apostolic discourses
in the Acts the fact of the resurrection of Jesus is
asserted, no reference is made to any of the incidents
which in the Gospels and in the first chapterthe
Acts are said to have accompanied the crucifixion,
the resurrection, and the subsequent Christophanies.
Of only one man have we at first hand the state
ment that he had “ seen the Lord.” That man is
Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles: but we know that
the instance to which he refers was a vision, and
we might be justified therefore in inferring that the
other Christophanies of which he speaks belong to
1
�36
The Rev. Dr Hugh NT Nelle
events of the same class. But of what use in any
case is his testimony to Dr M’Neile, seeing that Paul
is the one who emphatically asserts that flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and that,
therefore, we shall all be changed, in other words,
that we shall pass into conditions with regard to
which the terms employed cannot have the precision
which arguments between man and man demand ?
But how will it be, if for a moment we suppose that
Paul meant to refer to historical events ? The narra
tive of the Acts states that at some period soon after
the ascension the whole number of disciples Was
120; it also says that the Apostles as they gazed
upwards from Mount Olivet learnt from the two men
in white apparel that the Jesus whom they had seen
ascending should descend again in like manner for the
final judgment, the inference indubitably being that
in the interval no earthly eye should ever see him,
except possibly in trance or vision. In fact, the
coming of the Comforter, which was declared indis
pensable to their spiritual life and growth, was made
dependent on his absence. But Paul, while men
tioning certain Christophanies, some of which may
possibly be among the instances mentioned in the
Gospels, says that in one case he was seen by above
500 brethren at once, thus implying that the whole
number of the disciples considerably exceeded 500,
and adds that he was after this seen of James, then
of all the Apostles. In other words, these mani
festations took place after the ascension, i. e., after
an event subsequent to which the Apostles were
told that there would be none until the final
manifestation for judgment; or else they were
mere visions.
Hence, as I have been obliged
to maintain in my ‘ English Life of Jesus,’
�on the Resurrection.
37
“ either Paul’s statement in an undoubtedly genuine
epistle is delusive, or the narrative in Acts 1 is a
credulous imagination, and from this dilemma there
is no escape.” (P. 334.)
But the book of the Acts is the only one from
which we obtain any information about the so-called
witnesses to the resurrection* I need not here go
over the proof, which I have fully given in the
‘English Life of Jesus,’ that we have not the evidence
of any of them. All that we have is a number of
traditions or narratives, written by whom we know
not, and the composition of which even Dr Tischendorf cannot carry back nearer than fifty or sixty
years to the period of the crucifixion. But, as I have
been compelled to show, it would make no difference
if he could take them further. The narratives
are themselves inconsistent, contradictory, and
in many instances (and these the most important of
all) mutually exclusive, and therefore unhistorical.
We are therefore, by the canons laid down by Dr
* Of one sentence in Dr M’Neile’s letter to the Times I have,
thus far, taken no notice. It is that in which he says, that “ we
learn from St Luke that Christ shewed himself alive after his
Passion,” &c. The meaning of this phrase is, that the book of the
Acts was written by the author of the third gospel. On any show
ing, however, Luke, if he wrote the third gospel, was not one of
the Twelve, and there is nothing but a mere popular tradition
which speaks of him as one of the seventy. The statement seeks
to arrogate for the third gospel and for the Acts an authority
which they do not possess. There is no evidence that Luke wrote
either: nor is it necessary for me to do more than to cite the pas
sage relating to this alleged fact in my ‘ English Life of Jesus : ’
“To assume identity of authorship from the similarity of two pre
faces in an age when pseudonymous writings were as numerous as
falling leaves in autumn, is an excess of credulity. The gospel
of Luke bears no resemblance, in point of style, to the preface to
that gospel, and the preface to the Acts is not much in harmony
with the language of the book which follows it. A conclusion
�38
The Rev. Dr Hugh M'Nelle
M’Neile, driven to the conclusion that for the phy
sical resurrection of Jesus we have absolutely no
evidence whatever.
That this conclusion is the death-blow of Chris
tianity, I am really not at all concerned by the argu
ment to say. It may be fatal to Christianity as
conceived by Dr M’Neile; but the term is unfor
tunately, or fortunately, an elastic one, and, as in the
case of flesh, body, blood, &c., we need an accurate
definition of the term. It is possible that in a sense
which to others, and perhaps hereafter to himself,
may be very real, Christianity may continue to
exist apart from a foundation which is seen to be
one of imagination, not of fact. Certain it is that the
Christianity of Butler’s Analogy does -not need it;
and by the side of the English Bishop of Durham
just as plausible (if not more reasonable) would be that some
writer quite distinct from the author of Luke and Acts, has pre
fixed some verseB of his own before two books which, up to that
time, exhibited no signs of identity of authorship. However this
may be, when two alleged histories are proved to be not histories,
it matters nothing whether they are said to come from one or from
two authors.”—Pp. 328, 329. I can but repeat here that the line of
argument which Dr M’Neile has chosen to follow, in his letter to the
editor of the Times, has made it altogether unnecessary for me to
enter into the historical investigation of the authorship and
the trustworthiness of the gospel narratives. But in that
department, until my conclusions are refuted, and the evi
dence on which they rest is shown to be inconclusive or
erroneous, I may legitimately regard my task as already accom
plished. This evidence and these conclusions I have set forth
with the utmost care in my ‘English Life of Jesus,’ and it only
remains for me to challenge the attention of Dr M’Neile, and of
all who in any measure share his convictions, to a work treating
of matters which Dr M’Neile regards, or professes to regard, ag
indispensably necessary to the existence of Christianity itself.
Above all other men, he is bound by the terms of his letter to
the Times to give to the pages of that work the most patient and
serious consideration. I trust that I may not have cause to ascribe
to him, as to the Christian Evidence Society, a disingenuous and
cowardly evasion of a plain and an imperious duty.
�on the Resurrection.
39
I may place the Swedish Bishop Tegner, who puts
into the mouth of the priest of Balder in his poem
of ‘Frithiof’ the following words :
A Balder dwelt once in the South, a virgin’s son,
Sent by Allfather to expound the mystic runes
Writ on the Nornas’ sable shields, unknown before.
Peace was his war-cry, love to men his shining
sword,
And Innocence sat dove-like on his silver helm.
Pious he lived and taught, until at last he died,
And ’neath far-distant palms his grave in glory
shines.
The heathen priest goes on to say that his doc
trine ■ may one day come to Norway; but the
Christian bishop clearly thinks that a man may
have a fair and true idea of Christianity, even
though he regards Jesus as one who never rose
physically from the grave, and who, moreover, died
a natural death.
Such a conception of Christianity certainly in
volves none of the difficulties with which Dr
M’Neile struggles in vain, and which the so-called
Christian Evidence Society deliberately and per- .
sistently ignores.
*
Am I to conclude that this conception is at once
the doctrine of the Church of England, and the
belief of English Churchmen in general ?
THOS. SCOTT,
11 The Terrace, Farquhar Road, Upper Norwood,
London, S.E.
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Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Dean of Ripon on the physical resurrection of Jesus and its bearing on the truth of Christianity
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Scott, Thomas
M'Neile, Hugh [1795-1879]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 39, [4] p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Part of Morris Misc. Tracts 4. Publisher's series list on unnumbered pages at the end. Date of publication from KVK. Also bound in Conway Tracts 31.
Publisher
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Thomas Scott
Date
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[1872]
Identifier
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G4870
Subject
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Christianity
Jesus Christ
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (A defence of atheism: being a lecture delivered in Mercantile Hall, Boston, April 10, 1861), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Jesus Christ
Resurrection
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Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The myth of the resurrection
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Besant, Annie Wood [1847-1933]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 133-144 p. ; 19 cm.
Series title: Atheistic Platform
Series number: No. 9
Notes: Extensive annotations in ink. Short pieces from other journals or pamphlets cut out and stuck in. Donated by Mr Garvey. Publisher's series list on preliminary pages. Printed by Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh, 63 Fleet Street, London.
Publisher
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Freethought Publishing Company
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1884
Identifier
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G5084
Subject
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Christianity
Atheism
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The myth of the resurrection), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
A language of the resource
English
Atheism
Resurrection