Gospel has ever denied this fact. Their moral greatness awakened
an Augustine, a Francis of Assisi, and a Luther. They have been the
unrivalled pattern of all mature and moral manhood for nearly two
thousand years." In law much is made of the question of _motive_.
What motive could the apostles have had in perpetrating the story
of Christ's resurrection upon people? Every one of them (except
one) died a martyr's death for his loyalty to the story of Christ's
resurrection. What had they to gain by fraud? Would they have
sacrificed their lives for what they themselves believed to be an
imposture?

Nor are we to slight the testimony to Christ's resurrection that
comes to us from sources other than that of the inspired writers
of the New Testament. Ignatius, a Christian, and a contemporary of
Christ, a martyr for his faith in Christ, in his _Letter to the
Philadelphians_, says: "Christ truly suffered, as He also truly
raised up Himself. I _know_ that after the resurrection He was
in the flesh, and I believe Him to be so still. And when He came
to those who were with Peter, He said to them, 'Take, handle me,
and see that I am not an incorporeal phantom!'" Tertullian, in
his _Apolegeticus_, says: "The fame of our Lord's remarkable
resurrection and ascension being now spread abroad, Pontius Pilate,
according to an ancient custom of communicating novel occurrences
to the emperor, that nothing might escape him, transmitted to
Tiberius, Emperor of Rome, an account of the resurrection of our
Lord from the dead...Tiberius referred the whole matter to the
Senate, who, being unacquainted with the facts, rejected it." The
integrity of this passage is unquestioned by even the most sceptical
critics.