NEGRO SLAVERY.-Another dread hinderance to the growth of right principles, is too little thought of and cared about, by the professed disciples of Right. I know that it will be observed' We have White Slavery enough to think of;' but that does not lessen the enormous fact that there is Black Slavery--and that in Democratic America 3 millions of human beings are bought and sold because their skins are darker than the Saxon race. Who does not feel ashamed of the word Republican' when American Slavery is mentioned? and who, that has a common portion of brains, does not perceive how largely it would aid the advance of real freedom all over the world, if the land of Washington were, at once, to abolish slavery? I must confess that I, for one, feel ashamed of having said so little about this enormous evil. Democrats should protest oftener and more loudly against it. And, just now, the Question becomes doubly important: Congress is opening the debate fully scarcely a day passes but this 'domestic institution' of America is angrily mentioned: all the forces of public opinion are gathering, and an explosion of Slavery in America seems at hand, though the Legislature has recently given up even the Free States to be made the hunting ground of the Slaveholders, in pursuit of their fugitive slaves. Public opinion in England, if loudly expressed, will not fail to aid the emancipation of the 3 millions of Negro captives. THOMAS COOPER. CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY, ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS's 'LEBEN JESU.' A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIVERED AT THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848-9, AND 1849-50. BY THOMAS COOPER, Author of "The Purgatory of Suicides." VII. THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION. If by the former, how is the removal of the body of Jesus to be accounted for? I know not that I can, in this point of our inquiry, do better than quote Charles Hennell, the translator of Strauss-not, however, in his translation of the great analyst, but in his own work, the "Enquiry concerning the Origin of Christianity." He thinks the affair of the removal of the body was contrived by Joseph of Arimathea, to relieve himself from the disciples. "The report which arose amongst the Jews that the body had been stolen away, is confirmed by the admission on all sides that it was not to be found; but by whom it was stolen is not so clear. The questien seems to lie between Joseph and the disciples. The subsequent conduct of the disciples, their boldness and apparent sincerity in asserting publicly the resurrection and the speedy re-appearance of Jesus, together with the style of earnestness in their writings, (of which the first epistle of Peter is a striking instance,) render it difficult to believe that they were guilty of such a gross deception. In this affair they have more the air of men imposed upon than of imposters. To exaggerate and somewhat embellish facts, in subsequent narrations, has been done sometimes by men on the whole well-meaning and honest; but to contrive the removal and secret disposal of the body with a view to publishing its resurrection, betokens a greater degree of fraud than appears to agree with the Apostles' characters. There are no indications of such a proceeding on their part in any of the narratives; for all agree that the news of the disappearance of the body was unexpected and surprising. Nor would it have been easy for them to effect such a purpose, since the garden was not theirs, nor the tomb in their keeping. On the other hand, the silence of Joseph, when his testimony might have been so useful one way or the other, and his retiring suddenly from a business in which he had begun to be conspicuous, indicate an anxiety to avoid meeting questions. There were many motives for the contrivance on his part; and he was well able to execute it, for he was an influential man, and the body lay in his own tomb and garden. Moreover, he had probably the cooperation of Nicodemus, who was in nearly the same position. But as, History loses sight of Joseph and Nicodemus exactly at the time when they ceased to have any open intercourse with the disciples, viz., when they had embalmed the body of Jesus, and allowed the women to see where it was laid. Thus they were the parties whom we last saw in charge of the body; and it is for them to give an account of it. from that moment, they have shrunk from public notice, conjecture alone is able to follow up their examination, and to gain an insight into their counsels and doings on the evening of the day of the crucifixion, and the sabbath which followed it. On the close of that eventful day they could not have been undisturbed or inactive, for a more perilous situation than theirs could hardly be conceived. They had been in secret communication with the Galilean who had just been executed for the treason of aiming at the throne of the Jews; and the examination of his followers, or even an indiscreet word from them, might proclaim to the governor, or their brethren of the Sanhedrim, that they too were his disciples. One of those tumults to which the Jewish populace were so prone might be excited by the friends of Jesus: this would stimulate the governor to a more rigid investigaton of the affair, and to more sweeping excentions. Or, supposing even that no such attempt were made, the continual resort of the disciples to the tomb in his garden must draw attention to Joseph, and strengthen suspicion against him. The disciples must be dismissed; but in what manner? To forbid them access to the garden, or to renounce them harshly, might provoke the disclosures which he was anxious to avoid. "The accounts before us supply the rest. The women came to the tomb early, and found that the body was gone. On a subsequent they found a young man there, who, if he were not an angel, must have been some one employed by Joseph, for who can suppose that he would have allowed an unauthorized person to be in such an important charge at such a critical time; this person told the women that Jesus was risen and gone into Galilee, whither his disciples were to follow him. "Thus, if the accounts be disentangled from thoso contradictory miraculous additions which have every appearance of being the fictions of later times, the facts which remain, and a natural conjecture which links them together, offer an easy solution of the mystery. The question concerning the disposal of the body of Jesus does not appear to have excited much attention at the time; for we nowhere learn that any search was instituted for it by the Jewish rulers; which certainly they would have done if they had thought it worth while; for it cannot be supposed that they believed that Jesus was actually risen on the mere report of some of the disciples. But there was, in fact, no reason for such a search; they were satisfied with having put Jesus out of their way, since he appeared to be a political as well as religious innovater; and then they had no more pressing matters to think of. The disciples did not appear to be men of dangerous characters; and being deprived of their chief, might very well be left to think and say what they pleased concerning his body. A belief in its resurrection might very well be allowed them, provided they abstained from efforts to avenge him. Whereas the exhibition of the dead body would have exasperated them, and, perhaps, the multitudes with whom Jesus had been popular. The formation of a new religious society by the few followers of Jesus was not important enough to occupy much of their attention, particularly as, at first, they did not seem to differ much from the other Essenes; and when, after thirty years, they had become numerous enough to make it worth while to disprove their assertion of the resurrection, it was not easy for any one to find the body, unless he had the assistance of Joseph or Nicedemus, which they were not likely to afford.” Strauss himself, however, evidently does not favour the supposition that Joseph of Arimathea removed the body of Jesus, or that the imagination of the disciples was quickened by such an incident. He rather inclines to the conclusion that the disciples really returned to their home in Galilee (pursuant to Matthew's statement), where they gradually began to breathe freely-after their depression and fear-and where their faith in Jesus began once more to expand into vigour. 'Here,' he observes, where nobody lay in the grave to contradict bold suppositions, might gradually be formed the idea of the resurrection of Jesus; and, when this conviction had so elevated the courage and enthusiasm of his adherents that they ventured to proclaim it in the metropolis, it was no longer possible, by the sight of the body of Jesus, either to convict themselves, or to be convicted by others.' The reasonings of Strauss may, however, well stand together with those of his able and accomplished translator. Joseph of Arimathea may have judged it necessary, for his own security, to remove the body of Jesus; and that removal, rendering the finding of the body impossible by his disciples when they ventured to return to Jerusalem, served to strengthen the notions of a resurrection, which they had formed during their flight into Galilee. : One conviction must force itself on the minds of all who pursue this enquiry determinedly that these accounts of the Resurrection and Ascension have been the growth of a much greater length of time than our first sight of them would indicate. According to the Acts, it is true, the disciples appear in Jerusalem to proclaim the Resurrection only seven weeks after the crucifixion-namely, at Pentecost, or the festival of the announcement of the old law. But the mythical reason for the writer making this statement immediately suggests itself: the new law must be announced on the festival of the old. The statement cannot be considered historical-not merely because the period of seven weeks is too short to have afforded time for the preparation of the disciples' views; but the whole picture of the feast of Pentecost, in the Acts, is too wildly legendary for belief. The other statement, that the disciples were convinced of Jesus's resurrection so early as on the second morning after his burial, by appearances which they witnessed, leads Strauss to some important concluding observations, with which I will, if you please, also conclude this inquiry: "As regards the other statement-it might certainly require some time for the mental state of the disciples to become exalted in the degree necessary, before this or that individual amongst them could, purely as an operation of his own mind, make present to himself the risen Christ in a visionary manner; or before whole assemblies, in moments highly wrought enthusiasm, could believe that they heard him in every impressive sound, or saw him in every striking appearance: but it would uevertheless be conceived, that, as it was not possible he should be held by the bonds of death (Acts ii. 24), he had passed only a short time in the grave. As to the more precise determination of this interval, if it be held an insufficient explanation, that the sacred number three would be the first to suggest itself; there is a further idea which might occur,--whether or not it be historical that Jesus was buried on the evening before a sabbath,-namely, that he only remained in the grave during the rest of the sabbath, and thus rose on the morning after the Sabbath which by the known mode of reckoning, might be reconciled with the round number of three days. "When once the idea of a resurrection of Jesus had been formed in this manner, the great event could not be allowed to have happened so simply, but must be surrounded and embellished with all the pomp which the Jewish imagination furnished. The chief ornaments which stood at command for this purpose, were angels; hence these must open the grave of Jesus, must, after he had come forth from it, keep watch in the emply place, and deliver to the women, who (because without doubt women had had the first visions) must be the first to go to the grave, the tidings of what had happened. As it was Galilee where Jesus subsequently appeared to them, the journey of the disciples thither, which was nothing else than their return home, somewhat hastened by fear, was derived from the direction of an angel; nay, Jesus himself must already before his death, and, as Matthew too zealously adds, once more after the resurrection also, have enjoined this journey on the disciples. But the farther these narratives were propagated by tradition, the more must the difference between the locality of the resurrection itself and that of the appearances of the risen one, be allowed to fall out of sight as inconvenient; and since the locality of the death and resurrection was not transferable, the appearances were gradually placed in the same locality as the resurrection,-in Jerusalem, which, as the more brilliant theatre, and the seat of the first Christian Church, was especially appropriate for them." London: Printed and Published by JAMES WATSON, 3, Queen's Head Passage, Paternoster Row. |