We know not with what body Jesus appeared to Paul six years after his ascension; nor with what body or just when his saints shall rise. But when Paul says that Christ, having died for our sins, was _buried_ and rose again the _third day_, and was seen by those enumerated, it would be a most violent perversion of language to infer that it was not a _material_ resurrection. His flesh had not then seen corruption, and he had not yet ascended. The state of things had changed at the time he was seen by Paul, and hence the mode of his appearance was different. Paul could not have been ignorant that the Apostles were persuaded that they beheld and handled the corporeal body of their risen Lord, and if he had entertained a different idea of the character of the appearances to them, he could not have written as we have quoted. As will be shown in subsequent chapters, he had “received,” a corporeal resurrection, and so he “delivered.” These four Epistles of Paul were written about A.D. 58, or within less than thirty years from the Crucifixion. By them, two things are established beyond dispute. _First_, the doctrine of the Resurrection, whether true or false, is not a _myth or legend_, in any sense in which those words are commonly understood, or in any sense in which they should ever be used. Nor are the appearances or _supposed_ appearances of our risen Lord, mentioned by Paul (whether they be regarded as real or not), _myths or legends_. The _doctrine_ of the Resurrection was not the product of a subsequent age; it was received from the beginning. Nor were the _appearances_ of our risen Lord, which were the basis of that doctrine, the product of a subsequent age. A skeptic, if he will or must, may say that the doctrine is not true, and that the appearances which were accepted as evidence of it were not real; but he cannot without an abuse of language say that the one, or the others, are _myths or legends_.