Thirdly: Although these letters were written within so brief an interval after the Crucifixion as from twenty‐five to thirty years, yet they afford evidence which carries us up to a much earlier period. St. Paul’s conversion dates at least eighteen years earlier than the earliest of them. His testimony therefore is good as to the general nature of the beliefs of the Christian Church during the whole period of his ministry. It proves, among many other things, this all‐important point, that the Resurrection of Christ was believed by the whole Christian community, and formed the groundwork of the existence of the Church, within less than ten years after the crucifixion. But the Apostle’s hostile connection with the Christian sect dates still earlier. As a persecutor he must have ascertained what were the leading subjects of the Christian belief, and must have subjected the whole matter to a rigid investigation. Above all, he could not have failed to know whether the belief in the Resurrection of Christ was or was not from its commencement the ground of the renewed life of the Christian Church. Every consideration must have induced him when a persecutor to make this entire question the subject of a most careful investigation. Nothing was more important than that he should ascertain whether any considerable interval had elapsed between the Crucifixion of Christ and the propagation of the report of His Resurrection; and his means of ascertaining the truth about it must have been complete. To determine this for certain would have been most important in his work of convicting the founders of the new sect of imposture; for if any considerable time had elapsed between the death and reported resurrection, it would have afforded that of which all the theories of unbelief stand in need, a sufficient interval for the delusion to grow and propagate itself; or, if the belief was the result of fraud, for the imposition to be concocted and spread. St. Paul’s testimony therefore affords the most conclusive proof that the belief in the Resurrection as a fact was contemporaneous with the foundation of the Church; that it was the cause of its renewed vitality; that no interval could have elapsed between the death of Jesus and His reported resurrection, sufficient for the growth of myth or legend, the fabrication of an imposture, or the gradual spreading of the hallucinations of a single individual among a multitude of persons. In one word, if the belief in the Resurrection originated in the conversion of some subjective delusion into an objective fact, it must have been one which spread with incomprehensible rapidity.