The question before us then, becomes clear and definite, freed from the vagueness with which it has been endeavoured to obscure it. If it can be proved that the Christian Church owed its origin to its belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that its renewed life began within the briefest interval after His crucifixion, the whole discussion becomes narrowed into the following issue: Is it possible that such a belief, within so short a time after His death, could have originated in a fiction? Three alternatives are open for our acceptance, and three only; either: Jesus did not really die, while his followers supposed that He had, and they mistook some appearance of Him after His crucifixion for a resurrection: Or they imagined that He appeared to some of them after His death, but the appearance was a delusion of their imaginations: Or He rose from the dead as an objective fact. Other alternatives there are none; and with respect to this particular miracle, the whole apparatus of myth, legend, development and compromise, which is so liberally used to account for the supernatural portions of the Gospels, is simply worthless as a rational account of the origin of the story. A very bold affirmation has been made, that no contemporary testimony can be adduced for the performance of any miracle recorded in the New Testament. This assertion is founded on the supposition that none of the Gospels can be proved to have been written earlier than the end of the first, or the beginning of the second century. It is alleged that they are of very uncertain authorship, that two of them do not profess to communicate anything but second‐hand information; and the proof of the early composition of the other two utterly fails. The three first Gospels being thus quietly assigned to the region of myths and legends, and the fourth affirmed to be a forgery, it is asserted that contemporary evidence for the truth of the supernatural narratives of the Gospels wholly disappears. What then is contemporaneous testimony to a fact? Few persons who actually witness events compose histories of them. There is scarcely an account of a great battle which has been composed by the general who commanded in it; and when such accounts have been published by persons who were actually present, they could have witnessed but a small portion of the events which they describe. Such is the case with the great mass of facts which constitute the history of the past. The chief actors in them are seldom the historians. But although such persons rarely compose narratives of events at which they were actually present, yet it is quite possible to possess testimony which for all practical purposes is of equal value. As I have already pointed out, such testimony consists of historical documents composed by persons who lived during the time in question, and who had ample means of procuring information from those who must have known the truth of the occurrences.