things ten years after the supposed resurrection, there was a
unanimous concurrence of belief on the part of the whole primitive
Church, so that even the heretics who said that there was no
resurrection of the dead could be argued with on the ground of their
belief in Christ's Resurrection. The whole Church with one voice
asserted it. And there were hundreds of living men ready to attest
it. It was not a handful of women who fancied they had seen Him once,
very early in the dim twilight of a spring morning--but it was half a
thousand that had beheld Him. He had been seen by them not once, but
often; not far off, but close at hand; not in one place, but in
Galilee and Jerusalem; not under one set of circumstances, but at all
hours of the day, abroad and in the house, walking and sitting,
speaking and eating, by them singly and in numbers. He had not been
seen only by excited expectants of His appearance, but by incredulous
eyes and surprised hearts, who doubted ere they worshipped, and
paused before they said, 'My Lord and my God!' They neither hoped
that He would rise, nor believed that He had risen; and the world may
be thankful that they were 'slow of heart to believe.'

Would not the testimony which can be alleged for Christ's
Resurrection be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so,
why is it not enough to guarantee this too? If, as nobody denies, the
Early Church, within ten years of Christ's Resurrection, believed in
His Resurrection, and were ready to go, and did, many of them, go to
the death in assertion of their veracity in declaring it, then one of
two things--Either they were right or they were wrong; and if the
latter, one of two things--If the Resurrection be not a fact, then
that belief was either a delusion or a deceit.

It was not a delusion, for such an illusion is altogether unexampled;