carried the cross until He sank beneath its weight. He had for six hours
endured intense suffering from pain and thirst, and when, after a strong
Roman soldier had thrust a spear into His side, He was taken down from
the cross, and declared by the centurion and his company to be dead, He
was laid without food, and remained for two nights and a day, in a cold
rock-sepulchre, whose door was barred by a great stone, sealed, and
guarded by soldiers. Suppose for a moment that Jesus had survived this
terrible ordeal of suffering, and that, having eluded His Roman guard
and His Jewish persecutors, He had again entered into Jerusalem, it must
have been as a weak, disabled invalid, not as a man possessing normal
strength and vigour. Yet on the third day He showed Himself alive,
bearing no traces of the suffering He had endured except the marks of
His wounds. The feet that had been pierced bore Him from Jerusalem to
Emmaus, a journey of threescore furlongs; and He passed from place to
place with a swiftness of movement and a superiority to obstacles that
filled the disciples with amazement.

In the light of these facts, the view we have been considering is
utterly untenable. It is no matter for wonder that Jesus, after such
exhaustion, died six hours after He had been lifted up on the cross. The
circumstances which preceded His dying are not consistent with the
opinion that while in the sepulchre He recovered from a swoon. It is not
possible to conceive that a man, wounded and bruised--His hands, feet,
and side pierced with nails and spear--could appear so soon, bright and
radiant, strong and vigorous, undistressed by pain or weakness, and
possessing power of movement not only restored, but marvellously
augmented. If Jesus was not really "dead," no explanation can be given
of His disappearance from history. If He had really lived as a man after
His crucifixion, we should have looked for a fresh outbreak of
persecution directed against Him. We have His own testimony by the