To my mind the manifestation of the Resurrection of Christ appears, not
as an isolated fact, but as a part, and the central part, of the great
revelation of the immortality of the soul which has been conveyed by God
to man, in accordance with the laws of human nature, from the beginning
of the creation of the world by the medium of imaginative Faith. In the
same way the laws of astronomy have been conveyed by God to man, in
accordance with the laws of human nature, from the beginning of the
creation of the world, by the medium of imaginative Reason. I have shewn
in previous letters that Imagination has been the basis of all that is
worth calling knowledge. To shew the bearing of this on the
manifestations of the Resurrection of Christ shall be the object of my
next letter.
Footnote 27:
“And the men that journeyed with him stood speechless hearing the
voice but beholding no man,” Acts ix 7: “And they that were with me
beheld indeed the light but they heard not the voice of him that spake
to me,” _ib._ xxii. 9. Whether Saul’s companions saw and heard nothing
except subjectively, through force of sympathy, or whether (comp. John
xii. 29) some natural phenomenon may have been interpreted in one way
by Saul and in another way by his companions, cannot now be
determined; but I have confined myself to indisputable fact in stating
that Saul “saw a sight and heard words which other people, his
companions, with the same opportunities for seeing and hearing, did
not see and did not hear.”
XXI
THE RESURRECTION REVEALED
MY DEAR ——,
You are startled, and well you may be, “at the notion that the
resurrection of Christ has been the mere offspring of the imagination.”
I am quoting your words, but you have not quoted mine. I never said, nor
should I dream of saying, that the resurrection of Christ was “the
offspring of the imagination,” any more than I should say that the law
of gravitation is “the offspring of the imagination,” or that light is
“the offspring of the eye.” But this is just an ordinary specimen of the
way in which people whose minds are blocked and choked with prejudice,
misunderstand what is contrary to their preconceptions. You have made up
your mind that the Imagination is a kind of excrescence on humanity, a
faculty independent of the Creator, and incapable of being made by Him
the medium of revelation; and so you pervert my words to suit your
fancies. But what I said was that Imagination is the basis of all that
is worth calling knowledge, and that, as God reveals the laws of
astronomy through imaginative Reason, so He has revealed the
Resurrection of Christ through imaginative Faith.
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