But, besides this, it must be remembered that, granting the reality of a miracle like the resurrection, it is obvious that, having been witnessed by a limited number of witnesses, it must necessarily be dependent afterwards for its acceptance upon testimony. On the supposition of its actual occurrence, a few only could receive it upon ocular demonstration, and the vast majority of mankind, if they received it, could only do so upon the testimony of others. It is therefore clearly conceivable on the hypothesis that many who rejected it might do so in direct contravention of the truth. Indeed, all who rejected it must do so. Because, then, there are found those who reject the evidence of the resurrection of Christ, it by no means follows they have not done so in contravention of the fact. The question really is not whether there is still left any possible room for doubt--for that we have seen there always must be--but whether the existing testimony is sufficiently unbroken, and sufficiently uniform, and sufficiently valid, to be reasonably conclusive. And on this point the known Epistles of St. Paul are singularly clear. They witness to the fact of five hundred persons having seen the risen Jesus at one time, of the universal acceptance of belief in the resurrection, so that neither in the Churches of Rome, Corinth, or Galatia, does there seem to have been a single Christian who doubted it. They witness to the fact that St. Paul himself had lived in familiar intercourse with Peter, James, and others, who had known the Lord, and that he had originally joined the Christian body at the most six or seven years after the resurrection, when he must have had abundant opportunities of testing the validity of its evidence, and when it would have been impossible for him to have given in his allegiance to an event so contrary to his experience, except upon conclusive proof. Bearing in mind that under any circumstances some must content themselves with belief on testimony, it is difficult to conceive of any testimony which could be more convincing or more satisfactory than that of this Apostle; especially seeing that he was at the first a violent persecutor of the faith he preached; that he must have had ample means of sifting the evidence on which it rested; and, because, living at the time he did, so near to the death of Christ, that which his testimony loses in the matter of personal eye-witness it more than gains, all things considered, in the matter of deliberate conviction and devoted lifelong service. That is to say, the conversion of the persecutor Saul of Tarsus is itself a wondrous evidence of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The letters of the Apostle are the expression of his mature belief; but at the time when that belief was formed he must have had ample means of knowing how far he had followed a cunningly devised fable, and how far that which he believed was truth and was no lie.