When the evidence of the Gospels regarding the great central dogmas of ecclesiastical Christianity is shown to be untrustworthy and insufficient, apologists appeal with confidence to the testimony of the Apostle Paul. We presume that it is not necessary to show that, in fact, the main weight of the case rests upon his epistles, as undoubted documents of the apostolic age, written some thirty or forty years after the death of the Master. The retort has frequently been made to the earlier portion of this work that, so long as the evidence of Paul remains unshaken, the apologetic position is secure. We may quote a few lines from an able work, part of a passage discussed in the preceding chapter, as a statement of the case: "In the first place, merely as a matter of historical attestation, the Gospels are not the strongest evidence for the Christian miracles. Only one of the four, in its present shape, is claimed as the work of an Apostle, and of that the genuineness is disputed. The Acts of the Apostles stand upon very much the {399} same footing with the Synoptic Gospels, and of this book, we are promised a further examination. But we possess at least some undoubted writings of one who was himself a chief actor in the events which followed immediately upon those recorded in the Gospels; and in these undoubted writings St. Paul certainly shows by incidental allusions, the good faith of which cannot be questioned, that he believed himself to be endowed with the power of working miracles, and that miracles, or what were thought to be such, were actually wrought by him and by his contemporaries..... Besides these allusions, St. Paul repeatedly refers to the cardinal miracles of the Resurrection and Ascension; he refers to them as notorious and unquestionable facts at a time when such an assertion might have been easily refuted. On one occasion he gives a very circumstantial account of the testimony on which the belief in the Resurrection rested (1 Cor. xv. 4-8). And not only does he assert the Resurrection as a fact, but he builds upon it a whole scheme of doctrine: 'If Christ be not risen,' he says, 'then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.' We do not stay now to consider the exact philosophical weight of this evidence. It will be time enough to do this when it has received the critical discussion that may be presumed to be in store for it But as external evidence, in the legal sense, it is probably the best that can be produced, and it has been entirely untouched so far."(1) We have already disposed of the "allusions" above referred to. We shall in due time deal with the rest of the statements in this passage, but at present it is sufficient to agree at {400}