Lastly as to their _sufferings_. This is the most important point, since voluntary suffering in any form, but especially in its extreme form of martyrdom, seems conclusive as to a man's veracity. Persons do not suffer for what they believe to be false; they must have believed it to be true, though this does not of course prove that it actually was true. And here is the answer to the common objection, that since all religions have had their martyrs, this kind of evidence proves nothing. On the contrary, it does prove something, though it does not prove everything. It does not prove that what the man died for was true, but it does prove that he believed it to be true. It is therefore a conclusive test as to his _veracity_. What evidence have we, then, that the first witnesses suffered for the truth of what they preached? And once more the evidence is complete and overwhelming, both from the Acts and St. Paul's Epistles. We need only refer to these latter, as their genuineness is undisputed. St. Paul then, in one place, gives a list of the actual sufferings he had undergone; he alludes to them in numerous other places, and often as if they were the common experience of all Christians at the time; and in one passage he expressly includes the other Apostles with himself in the long list of sufferings he describes. While he elsewhere declares that at a still earlier time, before his conversion, he himself persecuted the Christians _beyond measure_.[314] [Footnote 314: 2 Cor. 11. 24-27; Rom. 8. 35; 1 Cor. 4. 9-13; Gal. 1. 13.] There can thus be no doubt as to the continual sufferings of the first witnesses, and, as just said, it is a decisive proof of their veracity. We conclude therefore that when they asserted that Christ rose from the dead, they were asserting what they honestly believed whether rightly or wrongly, to be true. And as this belief was due, simply to the witnesses believing that they saw Christ alive after His death; we must further conclude that they honestly believed in the appearances of Christ as recorded by themselves, and their friends, in the New Testament. In other words, these accounts are not _intentionally_ false. So much for the _veracity_ of the witnesses. It is not, as a rule, denied by modern opponents of the Resurrection; but in early times, when men ought to have known best, it was evidently thought to be the only alternative. St. Paul declares emphatically that unless Christ had risen, he and the other Apostles were _false witnesses_, in plain words _liars_.[315] That was the only choice. They were either saying what they knew to be true, or what they knew to be false. And the idea of there being some _mistake_ about it, due to visions, or swoons, or anything else, never seems to have occurred to anyone. [Footnote 315: 1 Cor. 15. 15.] (_B._) THE LEGEND THEORY.