The Appearances of Our Lord after the Passion. By Henry
Barclay Swete, D.D. (Macmillan and Co. 2s. 6d. net.)—This " Study in the Earliest Christian Tradition" has all the characteristics of thoroughness, moderation, and candour which befit the authorita- tive position of the writer. Professor Swete does not attempt to minimise the differences, we may say the discrepancies, in the Gospel narratives. These are but what might be expected in the circumstances. An occurrence that was going to change the world's thought could hardly be observed with a philosophic composure which would notice every detail. "But to dis- credit the narrative altogether because it betrays imperfections is unreasonable ; they are, on the whole, signs of veracity, for they are just the flaws which we might expect to find." Each narrative is carefully examined ; they are compared, but no attempt is made forcibly to harmonise. These attempts, often highly disingenuous, have done far more harm than good. We may quote as a specimen part of what is said about the appearance to Thomas. First we have an instructive comment on the form of the Lord's final injunction to the doubter : "Become not—A yfrov- faithless, but believing." He was on the way to become unbelieving. Pride and obstinacy might turn his scepticism into wilfulmabelief. To keep him from that the amazing condescension of the palpable proof had been given. Later on we have a significant passage which those who are carried away by a not unnatural revolt against the supernatural would do well to weigh :—" How such properties as to be tangible, to bear the imprints of a nail or a spear wound, to be able to partake of food, can be reconciled with the power of becoming invisible at will, or with any conception that can be formed of a spiritual body, we do not know. But the limitations of our knowledge ought to be no hindrance to belief, if we bear in mind that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is, ex hypothesi, a fact unique in human experience, and that the border land of flesh and spirit, to which the risen body of the Lord seems to have belonged during the forty days, is an unex- plored territory of which no man can speak with confidence on this side the grave."
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