The number is certainly smaller who will tell it for absolutely
nothing; still smaller who would combine to tell it. A still
smaller number — very few indeed — would endure any con-
siderable sacrifice for the sake of telling it; while it is incbn-
ceivable that any one would die a death by torture rather
than quit telling it. But here we have at least ten men whose
names we know who, with other conspirators, make a lie
apparently without any rational motive; they tell it under all
the solemnities of courts of justice. They endure hardships



WERE THE APOSTLES IMPOSTORS? 297

and privations and impose on themselves labors and sacrifices
for the sake of being able to tell it. Undismayed by the
threats of their enemies, they persist in telling it; and finally
separated from each other, in different countries, at different
times, each of the ten, so far as known, dies a violent death
rather than quit teUing a story which he knew to be a lie! And
these ten were all found in one group. All that and more the
man who asserts that the Apostles of Jesus perpetrated a
fraud must be prepared to beheve. We must think that these
witnesses beUeved the story which they told. Christians
to-day are sometimes accused of credulity. We submit that
the credulous people are not all found in the Christian church.
The church has had some credulous people. It has also had
its "doubting Thomases," and its intellectually "stubborn
Sauls." But the unbeheving world is more credulous than we.
The man who can accept the logical consequences of
the contention that the Apostles of Jesus were impostors will
break the record for the ability to believe strange things with-
out evidence.
