1. _Absolute reality cannot be comprehended by men, and can only be apprehended as God, or in God, by Faith._
2. _Among objects of sensation, those are (relatively) real which present similar sensations in similar circumstances._
Now if you try to regard the manifestation of the risen Christ under the second head, as an “object of sensation,” you must pronounce it “unreal,” inasmuch as it would not “present similar sensations in similar circumstances;” by which I mean that, with similar opportunities of observation, different persons (believers, for example, and unbelievers) would not have derived similar sensations from it. But your conclusion would be false because you started from a false premise: these manifestations cannot be classed “among objects of sensation.”
The movements of the risen Saviour appear to me to have been the movements of God; His manifestations to the faith of the Apostles were divine acts, passing direct from God to the souls of men. Since therefore these manifestations belonged to the class of things which “can only be apprehended as God, or in God, by faith,” I call them “absolute realities”—as much more real than flesh and blood, as God Himself is more real than the paper on which I am now writing.
Mark xvi. 7; Matthew xxviii. 7: “He goeth before you _into Galilee_.”
Luke xxiv. 6: “Remember how he spake unto you _while he was yet in Galilee_.”
See _Definitions_ at the end of the book.
I am not surprised to hear that you consider the theory above described of Christ’s resurrection, “vague, shadowy, and unsatisfying.” But as in the very same letter you say that you are quite convinced of the unhistorical nature of the account of the resurrection of Christ’s material body, I think you ought not to dismiss the subject without giving more attention than you have given as yet to it. As a student of history and as a young man bent on attaining such knowledge as can be attained concerning the certainties or probabilities that have the most important bearing on the life and conduct of myriads of your fellow-creatures, you ought at least to ask yourself what better explanation you have to offer of the marvellous phenomena of the Christian Church and in particular of St. Paul’s part in spreading Christianity.