They also assume that the Apostles were in a state of mind conducive to misleading fancies. The reverse of this is true. It must, however, be conceded that the idea of a restoration to life of one who had been dead was not strange to them; for three[15] such instances were recorded in their Scriptures, and they had witnessed three miracles of the kind. But these were in respect to persons who, after they were raised up, lived and died as other men; and they were brought to life by some visible agency, as by a prophet in the name of the Lord, or Jesus by his own word. The resurrection which the disciples came to believe was, on the contrary, to a temporary sojourning with them, and then an ascension before their eyes; and it was accomplished by no visible hand. And although Jesus had predicted his death and resurrection, they could not understand the one, any more than the other, because they could not conceive how that their Messiah could suffer death at the hands of his enemies. The evidence upon this point is most conclusive; and its scope was admirably put by Gilbert West,[16] four generations ago. “This, therefore, being their settled notion of the Messiah, can we wonder their former faith in him should be extinguished, when they saw him suffering, crucified, and dying, and, instead of saving others, not able to save himself? To prepare them for these events he had indeed most circumstantially foretold[17] his own sufferings, death, and resurrection; but the Apostles themselves assure us that they did not understand those predictions till some time after their accomplishment; and they made this confession at a time when they were as sensible of their former dullness, and undoubtedly as much amazed at it as they now pretend to be who object to it against them; so that their veracity upon this point is not to be questioned.... They had conceived great expectations from the persuasion that he was the Christ of God; but these were all vanished; their promised deliverer, their expected king, was dead and buried, and no one left to call him from the grave as he did Lazarus. With his life, they might presume, ended his power of working miracles; and death, perhaps, was an enemy he could not subdue, since it was apparent he could not escape it, and hence their despair.”