persecuted Jesus was the Messiah. At that same moment the Messiah Himself (who during these last months and weeks of spiritual conflict had been bending down closer and closer to the predestined Apostle from His throne in heaven) now burst upon the convert's sight on earth.
But I think I hear you saying, "All this sounds well; but he has repeatedly described these visions of the risen Saviour as subjective: how then can he call them real? What is real?" Let me refer you to the paper of Definitions which I enclosed in a previous letter.[1]
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 premiss: 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.
- ↑ See Definitions at the end of the book.
