His so-called "circumstantial account of the testimony upon which the
belief in the Resurrection rested" consists merely of vague and
undetailed hearsay, differing, so far as it can be compared, from the
statements in the Gospels, and without other attestation than the bare
fact that it is repeated by Paul, who doubtless believed it, although he
had not himself been a witness of any of the supposed appearances of the
risen Jesus which he so briefly catalogues. Paul's own personal
testimony to the Resurrection is limited to a vision of Jesus, of which
we have no authentic details, seen many years after the alleged miracle.
Considering the peculiar and highly nervous temperament of Paul, of
which he himself supplies abundant evidence, there can be no hesitation
in deciding that this vision was purely subjective, as were likewise, in
all probability, the appearances to the excited disciples of Jesus. The
testimony of Paul himself, before his imagination was stimulated to
ecstatic fervour by the beauty of a spiritualised religion, was an
earnest denial of the great Christian dogma, emphasised by the active
persecution of those who affirmed it; and a vision, especially in the
case of one so constituted, supposed to be seen many years after the
fact of the Resurrection had ceased to be capable of verification, is
not an argument of convincing force.
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