and how shall we account for his conversion without the Resurrection and Ascension? The greatest
of modern sceptics paused at the problem, and felt almost forced to admit an actual miracle, as the
only rational solution of that conversion. The Holy Spirit was the inspiring and propelling power
of the apostolic age, and made the fishers of Galilee fishers of men.
A Christian, who has experienced the power of the gospel in his heart, can have no difficulty
with the supernatural. He is as sure of the regenerating and converting agency of the Spirit of God
and the saving efficacy of Christ as he is of his own natural existence. He has tasted the medicine
and has been healed. He may say with the man who was born blind and made to see: "One thing I
do know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see." This is a short creed; but stronger than any argument.
The fortress of personal experience is impregnable; the logic of stubborn facts is more cogent than
the logic of reason. Every genuine conversion from sin to holiness is a psychological miracle, as
much so as the conversion of Saul of Tarsus.
The secret or open hostility to the supernatural is the moving spring of infidel criticism. We
may freely admit that certain difficulties about the time and place of composition and other minor
details of the Gospels and Epistles are not, and perhaps never can be, satisfactorily solved; but it
is, nevertheless, true that they are far better authenticated by internal and external evidence than
any books of the great Greek and Roman classics, or of Philo and Josephus, which are accepted by
scholars without a doubt. As early as the middle of the second century, that is, fifty years after the
death of the Apostle John, when yet many of his personal pupils and friends must have been living,
the four Canonical Gospels, no more and no less, were recognized and read in public worship as
sacred books, in the churches of Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Italy, and Gaul; and such universal
acceptance and authority in the face of Jewish and heathen hostility and heretical perversion can
only be explained on the ground that they were known and used long before. Some of them, Matthew
and John, were quoted and used in the first quarter of the second century by Orthodox and Gnostic
writers. Every new discovery, as the last book of the pseudo-"Clementine Homilies," the
"Philosophumena" of Hippolytus, the "Diatessaron" of Tatian, and every deeper investigation of
the "Gospel Memoirs" of Justin Martyr, and the "Gospel" of Marcion in its relation to Luke, have
strengthened the cause of historical and conservative criticism and inflicted bleeding wounds on
destructive criticism. If quotations from the end of the first and the beginning of the second century
are very rare, we must remember that we have only a handful of literary documents from that period,
and that the second generation of Christians was not a race of scholars and scribes and critics, but
of humble, illiterate confessors and martyrs, who still breathed the bracing air of the living teaching,
and personal reminiscences of the apostles and evangelists.
But the Synoptical Gospels bear the strongest internal marks of having been composed
before the destruction of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), which is therein prophesied by Christ as a future event
and as the sign of the fast approaching judgment of the world, in a manner that is consistent only
with such early composition. The Epistle to the Hebrews, likewise, was written when the Temple
was still standing, and sacrifices were offered from day to day. Yet, as this early date is not conceded
by all, we will leave the Epistle out of view. The Apocalypse of John is very confidently assigned
to the year 68 or 69 by Baur, Renan, and others, who would put the Gospels down to a much later
date. They also concede the Pauline authorship of the great anti-Judaic Epistles to the Galatians,
Romans, and Corinthians, and make them the very basis of their assaults upon the minor Pauline
Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, on the ground of exaggerated or purely imaginary differences.
Those Epistles of Paul were written twelve or fourteen years before the destruction of Jerusalem.A.D. 1-100.