or in its dependant territory, when, as Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful to say "seems "), the government, and consequently the law, which ruled in that territory and defined civil right and wrong was Gentile and not Judaic? But perhaps Mr. Gladstone is prepared to maintain that the Gentile "local civil government" of a city of the Decapolis administered Jewish Law; and showed their respect for it, more particularly, by stamping their coinage with effigies of the Emperors.

In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone has given away his case.

PROP. 4. He fatally confounds the question of political party with those of nationality and of religion, and assumes that those who took the side of Rome in the factions that prevailed could not be subject to the Mosaic Law.

It would seem that I have a feline tenacity of life; once more, a "fatal error." But Mr. Gladstone has forgotten an excellent rule of controversy; say what is true, of course, but mind that it is decently probable. Now it is not decently probable, hardly indeed conceivable, that any one who has read Josephus, or any other historian of the Jewish war, should be unaware that there were Jews (of whom Josephus himself was one) who "Romanised" and, more or less openly, opposed the war party. But, however that may be, I assert that Mr. Gladstone neither has produced, nor can produce, a passage of my writing which affords the slightest

foundation for this particular article of his indict

ment.

PROP. 5. His examination of the text of Josephus is alike one-sided, inadequate, and erroneous.

Easy to say, hard to prove. So long as the authorities whom I have cited are on my side, I do not know why this singularly temperate and convincing dictum should trouble me. I have yet to become acquainted with Mr. Gladstone's claims to speak with an authority equal to that of scholars of the rank of Schürer, whose obviously just and necessary emendations he so unceremoniously pooh-poohs.

PROP. 6. Finally, he sets aside, on grounds not critical or historical, but partly subjective, the primary historical testimony on the subject, namely, that of the three Synoptic Evangelists, who write as contemporaries and deal directly with the subject, neither of which is done by any other authority.

Really this is too much! The fact is, as anybody can see who will turn to my article of February 1889, out of which all this discussion has arisen, that the arguments upon which I rest the strength of my case touching the swine-miracle, are exactly "historical and "critical." Expressly, and in words that cannot be misunderstood, I refuse to rest on what Mr. Gladstone calls "subjective" evidence. subjective" evidence. I abstain from denying the possibility of the Gadarene occurrence, and I even go so far as to speak of some physical analogies to possession. In fact, my quondam opponent, Dr. Wace, shrewdly, but quite fairly, made the most of these admissions, and stated that I had

removed the only "consideration which would have been a serious obstacle" in the way of his belief in the Gadarene story.1

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So far from setting aside the authority of the synoptics on subjective" grounds, I have taken a great deal of trouble to show that my non-belief in the story is based upon what appears to me to be evident; firstly, that the accounts of the three synoptic Gospels are not independent, but are founded upon a common source; secondly, that, even if the story of the common tradition proceeded from a contemporary, it would still be worthy of very little credit, seeing the manner in which the legends about mediæval miracles have been propounded by contemporaries. And in illustration of this position I wrote a special essay about the miracles reported by Eginhard.2

In truth, one need go no further than Mr. Gladstone's sixth proposition to be convinced that contemporary testimony, even of well-known and distinguished persons, may be but a very frail reed for the support of the historian, when theological prepossession blinds the witness.3

1 Nineteenth Century, March 1889 (p. 362).

2 "The Value of Witness to the Miraculous." Nineteenth Century, March 1889.

8 I cannot ask the Editor of this Review to reprint pages of an old article, but the following passages sufficiently illustrate the extent and the character of the discrepancy between the facts of the case and Mr. Gladstone's account of them :

"Now, in the Gadarene affair, I do not think I am unreasonably sceptical if I say that the existence of demons who can be transferred from a man to a pig does thus contravene probability. Let me be

PROP. 7. And he treats the entire question, in the narrowed form in which it arises upon secular testimony, as if it were capable of a solution so clear and summary as to warrant the use of the extremest weapons of controversy against those who presume to differ from him.

The six heretical propositions which have gone before are enunciated with sufficient clearness to enable me to prove without any difficulty that, whosesoever they are, they are not mine. But number seven, I confess, is too hard for me. I cannot undertake to contradict that which I do not understand.

a

What is the "entire question" which "arises" in "narrowed form" upon "secular testimony"? After much guessing, I am fain to give up the conundrum. The "question" may be the ownership of the pigs; or the ethnological character of the

perfectly candid.

I admit I have no à priori objection to offer.

I declare, as plainly as I can, that I am unable to show cause why these transferable devils should not exist." . . . ("Agnosticism," Nineteenth Century, 1889, p. 177).

"What then do we know about the originator, or originators, of this groundwork—of that threefold tradition which all three witnesses (in Paley's phrase) agree upon-that we should allow their mere statements to outweigh the counter arguments of humanity, of common sense, of exact science, and to imperil the respect which all would be glad to be able to render to their Master?" (ibid. p. 175).

I then go on through a couple of pages to discuss the value of the evidence of the synoptics on critical and historical grounds. Mr. Gladstone cites the essay from which these passages are taken, whence I suppose he has read it; though it may be that he shares the impatience of Cardinal Manning where my writings are concerned. Such impatience will account for, though it will not excuse, his sixth proposition.

Gadarenes; or the propriety of meddling with other people's property without legal warrant. And each of these questions might be so "narrowed" when it arose on "secular testimony" that I should not know where I was. So I am silent on this part of the proposition.

But I do dimly discern in the latter moiety of this mysterious paragraph a reproof of that use of "the extremest weapons of controversy" which is attributed to me. Upon which I have to observe that I guide myself in such matters very much by the maxim of a great statesman, "Do ut des." If Mr. Gladstone objects to the employment of such weapons in defence, he would do well to abstain from them in attack. He should not frame charges which he has, afterwards, to admit are erroneous, in language of carefully calculated offensiveness (Impregnable Rock, pp. 269-70); he should not assume that persons with whom he disagrees are so recklessly unconscientious as to evade the trouble of inquiring what has been said or known about a grave question (Impregnable Rock, p. 273); he should not qualify the results of careful thought as "hand-over-head reasoning" (Impregnable Rock, p. 274); he should not, as in the extraordinary propositions which I have just analysed, make assertions respecting his opponent's position and arguments which are contradicted by the plainest facts.

Persons who, like myself, having spent their lives outside the political world, yet take a mild and philosophical concern in what goes on in it, often find