XXIII
My dear ——,
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.
I sympathize with the "sense of bathos," as you call it, which comes over you when you hear that the phenomena of the Resurrection of Christ are to be explained by a study of the growth and development of the revelation given to mankind through the Imagination. I sympathize with you; but I sympathize with you as I should with a child who might be standing by Elijah's side at the time when the prophet saw his never-to-be-forgotten vision. That child would feel, no doubt, "a sense of bathos" because the Lord was not in the fire, nor in the whirlwind, nor in the earthquake, but in the still small voice.
