Having now given the three versions in extenso. I
should like to add a few words in support of my
allegation (in the Note at the commencement of the
volume) that each version is in conformity with the
canons of positive science.
The second, which may be called the sombre
ending, needs no defence as far as natural science is
concerned. Jesus simply dies; and is probably
thrust hurriedly into the ground on, or near, the spot
where he was executed.
The third may be called the apparitional ending,
and in reference to the bearing of modern science
upon this, a few remarks must be made.—The fact
of apparitions as such seems to be scientifically
established. But the method of physical procedure
—if one may so express oneself—in these cases, we
have, with our present amount of knowledge, no means
of accurately ascertaining. I see no reason, however,
why we should identify Jesus with the Messiah, etc.,
even if he “rose from the dead,” when rising from
the dead, in the sense of apparitional appearance
after death, is, as Messrs. Myers' and Gurney's recent
work
upon the subject exhaustively proves, so
common as to become positively annoying.
It is difficult to see how a book like Westcott's
“Gospel of the Resurrection,” based as its whole
argument is upon the assumption that the resurrection
of Jesus was an entirely unique and exceptional
fact in history, retains the slightest force when it is
shown—and this “Phantasms of the Living” seems
conclusively to show—that the dead are constantly
in the habit of re-appearing; or, to speak more
correctly, that apparitional appearance at or near the
moment of a death, whatever this may indicate (and
as to this point we are as yet completely in the dark),
is of almost daily occurrence.
In fact, as in nearly all that relates to religion, the
old method of thought is being rapidly reversed. The
resurrection of Jesus no longer, as was originally
held, implies and involves the resurrection of the
whole human race. The greater includes the less:
it is the resurrection of the whole human race—uninterruptedly
proceeding, by strict physical and
psychical law, it may be—which involves and implies
that of Jesus.
We now come to the ending given in the text;
which may be called the resuscitational ending. As
I have already remarked, I selected this for the
body of the work, principally for dramatic and
poetical reasons. It enables an author to develop
in fuller detail the character of Mary; and, if the
play should some day be acted, it would give special
scope and opportunity to an actress of genius.
Apart from this, however, it is by no means
impossible that the resuscitational ending may, after
all, be the nearest to historic fact. There have
always been thinkers and critics who have believed
that Jesus did not actually die upon the cross; that,
during the unusually short time that he remained
there, his body merely underwent a temporary
suspension of animation; that he was taken down
and restored to life in some such way as that
suggested in the text of my play; and that from
subsequent occasional appearances of the actual living
Jesus the legend of the resurrection arose.
The following passage (the italics in which are
my own) from William Rathbone Greg's “Creed of
Christendom,” has great interest, as bearing upon
this point:—“Three different suppositions may be
adopted, each of which has found favour in the eyes
of some writers. We may either imagine that Jesus
was not really and entirely dead when taken down
from the cross, a supposition which Paulus and others
show to be far from destitute of probability (Strauss,
iii. 288): or we may imagine that the apparition of
Jesus to his disciples belongs to that class of appearances
of departed spirits for which so much staggering
and bewildering evidence is on record (see
Bush's Anastasis, 156); or, lastly, we may believe
that the minds of the disciples, excited by the
disappearance of the body, and the announcement by
the women of his resurrection, mistook some passing
individual for their crucified Lord, and that from
such an origin multiplied rumours of his re-appearance
arose and spread. We do not, ourselves, definitively
adopt any of these hypotheses: we wish simply to
call attention to the circumstance that we have no
clear, consistent, credible account of the resurrection;
that the only elements of the narrative which are retained
and remain uniform in all its forms,—viz., the disappearance
of the body, and the appearance of some one in
white at the tomb, are simple and probable, and in no way
necessitate, or clearly point to, the surmise of a bodily
resurrection at all.”—
Greg's “Creed of Christendom” (1883), Vol. II.,
pp. 153, 154.
It is worth while to add that, on a careful study
and comparison of the eleven accounts of post-mortem
appearances of Jesus given in the Gospels, the
reader cannot fail to be struck by their curious
vagueness, and by the fact that many of them
harmonise almost equally well either with the apparitional
or with the resuscitational theory of the
resurrection.
