ment likewise. The scheme itself is the most desperate that could be imagined. Had they stolen the body, or had the body been removed by any means whatever, they provoked immediate investigation. Could it be produced, they would be covered with shame and ridicule, besides being punished as impious impostors. No retreat was open, no equivocation could avail, no subtlety extricate them, after they had once publicly announced the crucified, as the expected Messiah. They had put their hands to the plough, and could not look back; they were solemnly and deliberately pledged to the cause, and to each other, and they must either extort their security by making some extraordinary impression upon the public mind, by commanding awe and reverence, or they must expect to be swept away by the remorseless violence of the Jews or the judicial cruelty of the Romans.

But the most extraordinary part of all is this, that the apostles entirely shift their ground, and announce a creed in direct

n See Locke, Reasonableness of Christianity.

opposition to their own acknowledged and doubtless openly avowed prejudices. Not merely does a total change take place in their characters, but in that of the religion which they profess. Up to this period, they unquestionably expected, that however obscured for a time, the splendour of the Messiah would at length break forth. Even after the resurrection, their thoughts, by their own account, were earthly, ambitious, Jewish. Their first question is, Lord wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel? The thrones of Judah, the glories of their nation, and their own consequent aggrandizement, start anew into their hearts with the first revival of hope.

• The dream of the earthly kingdom of the Messias did so possess their minds, (for they had sucked in this doctrine with their first milk,) that the mention of the most vile death of the Messias, repeated over and over again, did not at all drive it thence. The image of earthly pomp was fixed at the bottom of their hearts, and there it stuck; nor by any words of Christ could it as yet be rooted out; no, not when they saw the death of Christ, when together with that they saw his resurrection: for then they also asked, Wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Acts i. 6. Lightfoot on Matt. xviii. 1. See also White's third Bampton Lecture.

All this is now at once discarded and disclaimed. It can scarcely be supposed, but that their ambitious and splendid prospects, the expectation of which could not be suppressed by the commanding presence of their Master, must have been openly announced, or at least incautiously betrayed in some of the public scenes in which they had been concerned; in the triumphant entry, for instance, into Jerusalem, or when Jesus vindicated the sanctity of the temple, by expelling the moneychangers. That they should dare then suddenly to turn round, and having avowedly proclaimed a triumphant, now as openly announce a crucified Messiah; that after the death of Christ had visibly filled them with amazement and despair, they should immediately assert his death to be a preordained and essential part of their religion, the great characteristic article of their creed, him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain :

P Acts ii. 23.

upon what principle can we account for this dauntless inconsistency, this flagrant tergiversation, the promptitude and decision with which they adopt almost instantaneously, and avow distinctly these new and dangerous opinions? How are they become thus enamoured with the abject and suffering part of their Master's character, attached not to the glories, but to the cross of Christ, proselytes to a creed, the rewards of which were remote and spiritual? How have they all at once detected their own misapprehensions of the prophetic intimations of the Messiah? having so recently construed them according to the popular prejudice, now invented or imagined the higher and more mysterious import of the same predictions? For clearly the redemption which they preached was directly opposite to that which they in common with all the nation anticipated? At this particular period, when depression, terror, and despair might have incapacitated them for sober calculation or connected reasoning, they have struck out at once the outline of a new,

connected, and consistent system of religious doctrines. Now as long as their hopes lasted, we can conceive their enthusiasm unsubdued; we can even understand how they should hope against all hope. When the cross was still before their eyes, and before the expiring cry of their Master had sounded upon their ears, it is possible to suppose that their rooted prejudices might withstand the shock; that they should expect some signal and immediate interposition. When the insulting exclamation was made, If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross, they might have looked on in mute solicitude, still expecting their adversaries to be put to shame by the accomplishment of their disdainful demand. But when neither the insult of his enemies nor his own sufferings excited any intervention in his behalf; when he had manifestly given up the ghost, and the limbs had become rigid in death; when the prodigies which took place at the crucifixion, and which might have reawakened their hopes, had passed away; when the earth had ceased to shake, and the sun resumed its