We shall not limit our inquiry to the testimony of Paul, but shall review the whole of the evidence adduced for the Resurrection and Ascension. Hitherto, our examination of the historical books of the New Testament has been mainly for the purpose of ascertaining their character, and the value of their evidence for miracles and the reality of Divine Revelation. It is unnecessary for us here minutely to recapitulate the results. The Acts of the Apostles, we have shown, cannot be received as testimony of the slightest weight upon any of the points before us. Written by an unknown author, who was not an eye-witness of the miracles related; who describes events not as they occurred, but as his pious imagination supposed they ought to have occurred; who seldom touches history without transforming it by legend until the {406} original elements can scarcely be distinguished; who puts his own words and sentiments into the mouths of the Apostles and other persons of his narrative; and who represents almost every phase of the Church in the Apostolic age as influenced, or directly produced, by means of supernatural agency; such a work is of no value as evidence for occurrences which are in contradiction to all human experience. Briefly to state the case of the Gospels in other words than our own, we repeat the honest statement of the able writer quoted at the beginning of this chapter: "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."(l) We may add that the third Synoptic does not, in the estimation of any one who has examined the Acts of the Apostles, gain additional credibility by being composed by the same author as the latter work. The writers of the four Gospels are absolutely unknown to us, and in the case of three of them, it is not even affirmed that they were eyewitnesses of the Resurrection and Ascension and other miracles narrated. The undeniably doubtful authorship of the fourth Gospel, not to make a more positive statement here, renders this work, which was not written until upwards of half a century, at the very least, after the death of Jesus, incapable of proving anything in regard to the Resurrection and Ascension. A much stronger statement might be made, but we refer readers to our former volumes, and we shall learn something more of the character of the Gospel narratives as we proceed. Although we cannot attach any value to the Gospels {407}