If the Christian records had been thrown aside and forgotten, while the world, passing on its way, reached a mental culture such as we now possess; and then, in some exploration, the Gospels had been brought to light: would they not have been regarded by the critics of that day as wholly anomalous, and as refusing to fit in with any theory of the growth and progress of the literary faculty in mankind? The surprise caused by the discovery would have been like that of excavators at Mycenae, if they had found a watch in the treasury of Agamemnon. This aspect of the matter belongs to the realm of critical literature rather than to mine, and I only note it for a hint. The literary aspect of the History of the Resurrection has yet to be written; it would be curious to see it treated from the point of view of one, who, shut out from a knowledge of the religious history of mankind, lighted on it as a mere literary treasure. There is one point on which I cannot forbear to touch. Our Lord never mentions His persecutors, He never touches on the past. The apparition of a legend usually either reveals a burning secret, or embodies resentment for the past; frequently it personifies hatred or foretells destruction, and its fateful whispers make the blood of enemies run cold. But in all the utterances of the Risen Lord not a word is said of the coming destruction of Jerusalem, not a syllable is breathed of the treason of Judas, or of the persistent malice of the scribes. There is an ineffable grandeur—so unconscious that we may fail to mark it—in the utter oblivion that is passed on the foes who had beset the path of the Son of Man. He no more resents the ills that men had wrought Him on His way through life, than the traveller, who has reached his home, resents the insect plague of the desert or the tempests he has met with at sea. The past is lost to sight, and our Lord displays but one thought and one interest, and that is for the disciples and their work. He has now done with the rest of the world and He belongs wholly to them. He is lifted above all human contention into that serene atmosphere, which we feel ourselves to be breathing, when, reading the story, we seem to find ourselves in the presence of the Risen Lord. I will now quote St Paul’s account of the chief occasions when our Lord appeared; but I can only discuss one or two points of the History. “And that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also.”(333)