The greatest obstacle to their acceptance of his resurrection was their inability to comprehend his death if he were indeed the true Messiah. And hence we find that Jesus in the walk to Emmaus, opens to the disciples the Scriptures concerning himself, and says, “Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory?” We may well suppose that with other prophecies, he interpreted to them what Daniel had said (c. ix. 26) that “after three score and two weeks, shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself;” and that wonderful chapter in Isaiah (the fifty-third) so descriptive of his passion, that it seems “as if written at the foot of the cross;” and all the sacrifices for fifteen hundred years; and that it was not possible “that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins;” and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so was the Son of Man “lifted up.” And so to the Apostles he explained the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day.” (Luke xxiv. 45, 46). He reminds them what he had said, that all things must needs be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and in the Prophets and in the Psalms concerning himself (Luke xxiv. 44). The angels say to the women, “Tell his disciples and Peter he goeth before you into Galilee, and there shall ye see him as he said unto you” (Mark xvi. 7); and also, “Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered up into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again” (Luke xxiv. 6, 7). And we find that when the disciples understood the mystery of his death, they joyfully accepted the proofs of his resurrection; and Peter, who had said, “Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall never be unto thee” (Matthew xvi. 23), on the day of Pentecost could explain that Jesus (whom God had “raised up, having loosed the pangs of death”), was delivered up to be crucified and slain “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”; and that David spake of his resurrection. (Acts ii. 22-31.) Not only do the prophecies point to his resurrection, but as already[9] shown, Jesus himself foretold it as well as the manner and circumstances of his death; and it is more rational to accept it, than to believe that such an One as is portrayed in the Gospels was either false or mistaken. “Which of you convicteth me of sin?” has found none to accept the challenge in eighteen hundred years! On the contrary, as Dr. Taylor has said,[10] “Before the portraiture which the Evangelists have painted, men of every age have stood in rooted admiration.” And as J. S. Mill concedes,[11] “It is of no use to say that Christ, as exhibited in the Gospels, is not historical: for none of his disciples or their proselytes were capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to him, or imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels.”