PREFACE

"For close upon forty years I have been writing with one purpose; from

time to time, I have fought for that which seemed to me the truth,

perhaps still more, against that which I have thought error; and, in

this way, I have reached, indeed over-stepped, the threshold of old

age. There, every earnest man has to listen to the voice within: 'Give

an account of thy stewardship, for thou mayest be no longer steward.'

"That I have been an unjust steward my conscience does not bear

witness. At times blundering, at times negligent, Heaven knows: but,

on the whole, I have done that which I felt able and called upon to

do; and I have done it without looking to the right or to the left;

seeking no man's favor, fearing no man's disfavor.

"But what is it that I have been doing? In the end one's conceptions

should form a whole, though only parts may have found utterance, as

occasion arose; now do these exhibit harmony and mutual connexion? In

one's zeal much of the old gets broken to pieces; but has one made

ready something new, fit to be set in the place of the old?

"That they merely destroy without reconstructing, is the especial

charge, with which those who work in this direction are constantly

reproached. In a certain sense I do not defend myself against the

charge; but I deny that any reproach is deserved.

"I have never proposed to myself to begin outward construction;

because I do not believe that the time has come for it. Our present

business is with inward preparation, especially the preparation of

those who have ceased to be content with the old, and find no

satisfaction in half measures. I have wished, and I still wish, to

disturb no man's peace of mind, no man's beliefs; but only to point

out to those in whom they are already shattered, the direction in

which, in my conviction, firmer ground lies."[1]

So wrote one of the protagonists of the New Reformation--and a

well-abused man if ever there was one--a score of years since, in the

remarkable book in which he discusses the negative and the positive

results of the rigorous application of scientific method to the

investigation of the higher problems of human life.

Recent experience leads me to imagine that there may be a good many

countrymen of my own, even at this time, to whom it may be profitable

to read, mark and inwardly digest, the weighty words of the author of

that "Leben Jesu," which, half a century ago, stirred the religious

world so seriously that it has never settled down again quite on the

old foundations; indeed, some think it never will. I have a personal

interest in the carrying out of the recommendation I venture to make.

It may enable many worthy persons, in whose estimation I should really

be glad to stand higher than I do, to become aware of the possibility

that my motives in writing the essays, contained in this and the

preceding volume, were not exactly those that they ascribe to me.

I too have reached the term at which the still, small voice, more

audible than any other to the dulled ear of age, makes its demand; and

I have found that it is of no sort of use to try to cook the accounts

rendered. Nevertheless, I distinctly decline to admit some of the

items charged; more particularly that of having "gone out of my way"

to attack the Bible; and I as steadfastly deny that "hatred of

Christianity" is a feeling with which I have any acquaintance. There

are very few things which I find it permissible to hate; and though,

it may be, that some of the organisations, which arrogate to

themselves the Christian name, have richly earned a place in the

category of hateful things, that ought to have nothing to do with

one's estimation of the religion, which they have perverted and

disfigured out of all likeness to the original.

The simple fact is that, as I have already more than once hinted, my

story is that of the wolf and the lamb over again. I have never "gone

out of my way" to attack the Bible, or anything else: it was the

dominant ecclesiasticism of my early days, which, as I believe,

without any warrant from the Bible itself, thrust the book in my way.

I had set out on a journey, with no other purpose than that of

exploring a certain province of natural knowledge; I strayed no hair's

breadth from the course which it was my right and my duty to pursue;

and yet I found that, whatever route I took, before long, I came to a

tall and formidable-looking fence. Confident as I might be in the

existence of an ancient and indefeasible right of way, before me stood

the thorny barrier with its comminatory notice-board--"No

Thoroughfare. By order. Moses." There seemed no way over; nor did the

prospect of creeping round, as I saw some do, attract me. True there

was no longer any cause to fear the spring guns and man-traps set by

former lords of the manor; but one is apt to get very dirty going on

all-fours. The only alternatives were either to give up my

journey--which I was not minded to do--or to break the fence down and

go through it.

Now I was and am, by nature, a law-abiding person, ready and willing

to submit to all legitimate authority. But I also had and have a

rooted conviction, that reasonable assurance of the legitimacy should

precede the submission; so I made it my business to look up the

manorial title-deeds. The pretensions of the ecclesiastical "Moses" to

exercise a control over the operations of the reasoning faculty in the

search after truth, thirty centuries after his age, might be

justifiable; but, assuredly, the credentials produced in justification

of claims so large required careful scrutiny.

Singular discoveries rewarded my industry. The ecclesiastical "Moses"

proved to be a mere traditional mask, behind which, no doubt, lay the

features of the historical Moses--just as many a mediæval fresco has

been hidden by the whitewash of Georgian churchwardens. And as the

æsthetic rector too often scrapes away the defacement, only to find

blurred, parti-coloured patches, in which the original design is no

longer to be traced; so, when the successive layers of Jewish and

Christian traditional pigment, laid on, at intervals, for near three

thousand years, had been removed, by even the tenderest critical

operations, there was not much to be discerned of the leader of the

Exodus.

Only one point became perfectly clear to me, namely, that Moses is not

responsible for nine-tenths of the Pentateuch; certainly not for the

legends which had been made the bugbears of science. In fact, the

fence turned out to be a mere heap of dry sticks and brushwood, and

one might walk through it with impunity: the which I did. But I was

still young, when I thus ventured to assert my liberty; and young

people are apt to be filled with a kind of _sæva indignatio_, when

they discover the wide discrepancies between things as they seem and

things as they are. It hurts their vanity to feel that they have

prepared themselves for a mighty struggle to climb over, or break

their way through, a rampart, which turns out, on close approach, to

be a mere heap of ruins; venerable, indeed, and archæologically

interesting, but of no other moment. And some fragment of the

superfluous energy accumulated is apt to find vent in strong language.

Such, I suppose, was my case, when I wrote some passages which occur

in an essay reprinted among "Darwiniana."[2] But when, not long ago

"the voice" put it to me, whether I had better not expunge, or modify,

these passages; whether, really, they were not a little too strong; I

had to reply, with all deference, that while, from a merely literary

point of view, I might admit them to be rather crude, I must stand by

the substance of these items of my expenditure. I further ventured to

express the conviction that scientific criticism of the Old Testament,

since 1860, has justified every word of the estimate of the authority

of the ecclesiastical "Moses" written at that time. And, carried away

by the heat of self-justification, I even ventured to add, that the

desperate attempt now set afoot to force biblical and post-biblical

mythology into elementary instruction, renders it useful and necessary

to go on making a considerable outlay in the same direction. Not yet,

has "the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew" ceased to be the

"incubus of the philosopher, and the opprobrium of the orthodox;" not

yet, has "the zeal of the Bibliolater" ceased from troubling; not yet,

are the weaker sort, even of the instructed, at rest from their

fruitless toil "to harmonise impossibilities," and "to force the

generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism."

But I am aware that the head and front of my offending lies not now

where it formerly lay. Thirty years ago, criticism of "Moses" was held

by most respectable people to be deadly sin; now it has sunk to the

rank of a mere peccadillo; at least, if it stops short of the history

of Abraham. Destroy the foundation of most forms of dogmatic

Christianity contained in the second chapter of Genesis, if you will;

the new ecclesiasticism undertakes to underpin the superstructure and

make it, at any rate to the eye, as firm as ever: but let him be

anathema who applies exactly the same canons of criticism to the

opening chapters of "Matthew" or of "Luke." School-children may be

told that the world was by no means made in six days, and that

implicit belief in the story of Noah's Ark is permissible only, as a

matter of business, to their toy-makers; but they are to hold for the

certainest of truths, to be doubted only at peril of their salvation,

that their Galilean fellow-child Jesus, nineteen centuries ago, had no

human father.

* * * * *

Well, we will pass the item of 1860, said "the voice." But why all

this more recent coil about the Gadarene swine and the like? Do you

pretend that these poor animals got in your way, years and years after

the "Mosaic" fences were down, at any rate so far as you are

concerned?

Got in my way? Why, my good "voice," they were driven in my way. I had

happened to make a statement, than which, so far as I have ever been

able to see, nothing can be more modest or inoffensive; to wit, that I

am convinced of my own utter ignorance about a great number of things,

respecting which the great majority of my neighbours (not only those

of adult years, but children repeating their catechisms) affirm

themselves to possess full information. I ask any candid and impartial

judge, Is that attacking anybody or anything?

Yet, if I had made the most wanton and arrogant onslaught on the

honest convictions of other people, I could not have been more hardly

dealt with. The pentecostal charism, I believe, exhausted itself

amongst the earliest disciples. Yet any one who has had to attend, as

I have done, to copious objurgations, strewn with such appellations as

"infidel" and "coward," must be a hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts

the existence of a "gift of tongues" in the Churches of our time;

unless, indeed, it should occur to him that some of these outpourings

may have taken place after "the third hour of the day." I am far from

thinking that it is worth while to give much attention to these

inevitable incidents of all controversies, in which one party has

acquired the mental peculiarities which are generated by the habit of

much talking, with immunity from criticism. But as a rule, they are

the sauce of dishes of misrepresentations and inaccuracies which it

may be a duty, nay, even an innocent pleasure, to expose. In the

particular case of which I am thinking, I felt, as Strauss says, "able

and called upon" to undertake the business: and it is no

responsibility of mine, if I found the Gospels, with their miraculous

stories, of which the Gadarene is a typical example, blocking my way,

as heretofore, the Pentateuch had done.

I was challenged to question the authority for the theory of "the

spiritual world," and the practical consequences deducible from human

relations to it, contained in these documents.

In my judgment, the actuality of this spiritual world--the value of

the evidence for its objective existence and its influence upon the

course of things--are matters, which lie as much within the province

of science, as any other question about the existence and powers of

the varied forms of living and conscious activity.

It really is my strong conviction that a man has no more right to say

he believes this world is haunted by swarms of evil spirits, without

being able to produce satisfactory evidence of the fact, than he has a

right to say, without adducing adequate proof, that the circumpolar

antarctic ice swarms with sea-serpents. I should not like to assert

positively that it does not. I imagine that no cautious biologist

would say as much; but while quite open to conviction, he might

properly decline to waste time upon the consideration of talk, no

better accredited than forecastle "yarns," about such monsters of the

deep. And if the interests of ordinary veracity dictate this course,

in relation to a matter of so little consequence as this, what must be

our obligations in respect of the treatment of a question which is

fundamental alike for science and for ethics? For not only does our

general theory of the universe and of the nature of the order which

pervades it, hang upon the answer; but the rules of practical life

must be deeply affected by it.

The belief in a demonic world is inculcated throughout the Gospels and

the rest of the books of the New Testament; it pervades the whole

patristic literature; it colours the theory and the practice of every

Christian church down to modern times. Indeed, I doubt if, even now,

there is any church which, officially, departs from such a fundamental

doctrine of primitive Christianity as the existence, in addition to

the Cosmos with which natural knowledge is conversant, of a world of

spirits; that is to say, of intelligent agents, not subject to the

physical or mental limitations of humanity, but nevertheless competent

to interfere, to an undefined extent, with the ordinary course of both

physical and mental phenomena.

More especially is this conception fundamental for the authors of the

Gospels. Without the belief that the present world, and particularly

that part of it which is constituted by human society, has been given

over, since the Fall, to the influence of wicked and malignant

spiritual beings, governed and directed by a supreme devil--the moral

antithesis and enemy of the supreme God--their theory of salvation by

the Messiah falls to pieces. "To this end was the Son of God

manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil."[3]

The half-hearted religiosity of latter-day Christianity may choose to

ignore the fact; but it remains none the less true, that he who

refuses to accept the demonology of the Gospels rejects the revelation

of a spiritual world, made in them, as much as if he denied the

existence of such a person as Jesus of Nazareth; and deserves, as much

as any one can do, to be ear-marked "infidel" by our gentle shepherds.

* * * * *

Now that which I thought it desirable to make perfectly clear, on my

own account, and for the sake of those who find their capacity of

belief in the Gospel theory of the universe failing them, is the fact,

that, in my judgment, the demonology of primitive Christianity is

totally devoid of foundation; and that no man, who is guided by the

rules of investigation which are found to lead to the discovery of

truth in other matters, not merely of science, but in the everyday

affairs of life, will arrive at any other conclusion. To those who

profess to be otherwise guided, I have nothing to say; but to beg them

to go their own way and leave me to mine.

I think it may be as well to repeat what I have said, over and over

again, elsewhere, that _a priori_ notions, about the possibility, or

the impossibility, of the existence of a world of spirits, such as

that presupposed by genuine Christianity, have no influence on my

mind. The question for me is purely one of evidence: is the evidence

adequate to bear out the theory, or is it not? In my judgment it is

not only inadequate, but quite absurdly insufficient. And on that

ground, I should feel compelled to reject the theory; even if there

were no positive grounds for adopting a totally different conception

of the Cosmos.

For most people, the question of the evidence of the existence of a

demonic world, in the long run, resolves itself into that of the

trustworthiness of the Gospels; first, as to the objective truth of

that which they narrate on this topic; second, as to the accuracy of

the interpretation which their authors put upon these objective facts.

For example, with respect to the Gadarene miracle, it is one question

whether, at a certain time and place, a raving madman became sane, and

a herd of swine rushed into the lake of Tiberias; and quite another,

whether the cause of these occurrences was the transmigration of

certain devils from the man into the pigs. And again, it is one

question whether Jesus made a long oration on a certain occasion,

mentioned in the first Gospel; altogether another, whether more or

fewer of the propositions contained in the "Sermon on the Mount" were

uttered on that occasion. One may give an affirmative answer to one of

each of these pairs of questions and a negative to the other: one may

affirm all, or deny all.

In considering the historical value of any four documents, proof when

they were written and who wrote them is, no doubt, highly important.

For if proof exists, that A B C and D wrote them, and that they were

intelligent persons, writing independently and without prejudice,

about facts within their own knowledge--their statements must needs be

worthy of the most attentive consideration.[4] But, even

ecclesiastical tradition does not assert that either "Mark" or "Luke"

wrote from his own knowledge--indeed "Luke" expressly asserts he did

not. I cannot discover that any competent authority now maintains that

the apostle Matthew wrote the Gospel which passes under his name. And

whether the apostle John had, or had not, anything to do with the

fourth Gospel; and if he had, what his share amounted to; are, as

everybody who has attended to these matters knows, questions still

hotly disputed, and with regard to which the extant evidence can

hardly carry an impartial judge beyond the admission of a possibility

this way or that.

Thus, nothing but a balancing of very dubious probabilities is to be

attained by approaching the question from this side. It is otherwise

if we make the documents tell their own story: if we study them, as we

study fossils, to discover internal evidence, of when they arose, and

how they have come to be. That really fruitful line of inquiry has led

to the statement and the discussion of what is known as the _Synoptic

Problem_.

In the Essays (VII.--XI.) which deal with the consequences of the

application of the agnostic principle to Christian Evidences,

contained in this volume, there are several references to the results

of the attempts which have been made, during the last hundred years,

to solve this problem. And, though it has been clearly stated and

discussed, in works accessible to, and intelligible by, every English

reader,[5] it may be well that I should here set forth a very brief

exposition of the matters of fact out of which the problem has arisen;

and of some consequences, which, as I conceive, must be admitted if

the facts are accepted.

These undisputed and, apparently, indisputable data may be thus

stated:

I. The three books of which an ancient, but very questionable,

ecclesiastical tradition asserts Matthew, Mark, and Luke to be the

authors, agree, not only in presenting the same general view, or

_Synopsis_, of the nature and the order of the events narrated; but,

to a remarkable extent, the very words which they employ coincide.

II. Nevertheless, there are many equally marked, and some

irreconcilable, differences between them. Narratives, verbally

identical in some portions, diverge more or less in others. The order

in which they occur in one, or in two, Gospels may be changed in

another. In "Matthew" and in "Luke" events of great importance make

their appearance, where the story of "Mark" seems to leave no place

for them; and, at the beginning and the end of the two former Gospels,

there is a great amount of matter of which there is no trace in

"Mark."

III. Obvious and highly important differences, in style and substance,

separate the three "Synoptics," taken together, from the fourth

Gospel, connected, by ecclesiastical tradition, with the name of the

apostle John. In its philosophical proemium; in the conspicuous

absence of exorcistic miracles; in the self-assertive theosophy of the

long and diffuse monologues, which are so utterly unlike the brief

and pregnant utterances of Jesus recorded in the Synoptics; in the

assertion that the crucifixion took place before the Passover, which

involves the denial, by implication, of the truth of the Synoptic

story--to mention only a few particulars--the "Johannine" Gospel

presents a wide divergence from the other three.

IV. If the mutual resemblances and differences of the Synoptic Gospels

are closely considered, a curious result comes out; namely, that each

may be analyzed into four components. The _first_ of these consists of

passages, to a greater or less extent verbally identical, which occur

in all three Gospels. If this triple tradition is separated from the

rest it will be found to comprise:

_a_. A narrative, of a somewhat broken and anecdotic aspect, which

covers the period from the appearance of John the Baptist to the

discovery of the emptiness of the tomb, on the first day of the week,

some six-and-thirty hours after the crucifixion.

_b_. An apocalyptic address.

_c_. Parables and brief discourses, or rather, centos of religious and

ethical exhortations and injunctions.

The _second_ and the _third_ set of components of each Gospel present

equally close resemblances to passages, which are found in only one of

the other Gospels; therefore it may be said that, for them, the

tradition is double. The _fourth_ component is peculiar to each

Gospel; it is a single tradition and has no representative in the

others.

To put the facts in another way: each Gospel is composed of a

_threefold tradition_, two _twofold traditions_, and one _peculiar

tradition_. If the Gospels were the work of totally independent

writers, it would follow that there are three witnesses for the

statements in the first tradition; two for each of those in the

second, and only one for those in the third.

V. If the reader will now take up that extremely instructive little

book, Abbott and Rushbrooke's "Common Tradition" he will easily

satisfy himself that "Mark" has the remarkable structure just

described. Almost the whole of this Gospel consists of the first

component; namely, the _threefold tradition_. But in chap. i. 23-28 he

will discover an exorcistic story, not to be found in "Matthew," but

repeated, often word for word, in "Luke." This, therefore, belongs to

one of the _twofold traditions_. In chap. viii. 1-10, on the other

hand, there is a detailed account of the miracle of feeding the four

thousand; which is closely repeated in "Matthew" xv. 32-39, but is not

to be found in "Luke." This is an example of the other _twofold

tradition_, possible in "Mark." Finally, the story of the blind man of

Bethsaida, "Mark" viii. 22-26, is _peculiar_ to "Mark."

VI. Suppose that, A standing for the _threefold tradition_, or the

matter common to all three Gospels; we call the matter common to

"Mark" and "Matthew" only--B; that common to "Mark" and "Luke"

only--C; that common to "Matthew" and "Luke" only--D; while the

peculiar components of "Mark," "Matthew," and "Luke" are severally

indicated by E, F, G; then the structure of the Gospels may be

represented thus:

Components of "Mark" = A + B + C + E.

" "Matthew" = A + B + D + F.

" "Luke" = A + C + D + G.

VII. The analysis of the Synoptic documents need be carried no further

than this point, in order to suggest one extremely important, and,

apparently unavoidable conclusion; and that is, that their authors

were neither three independent witnesses of the things narrated; nor,

for the parts of the narrative about which all agree, that is to say,

the _threefold tradition_, did they employ independent sources of

information. It is simply incredible that each of three independent

witnesses of any series of occurrences should tell a story so similar,

not only in arrangement and in small details, but in words, to that of

each of the others.

Hence it follows, either that the Synoptic writers have, mediately or

immediately, copied one from the other: or that the three have drawn

from a common source; that is to say, from one arrangement of similar

traditions (whether oral or written); though that arrangement may have

been extant in three or more, somewhat different versions.

VIII. The suppositions (_a_) that "Mark" had "Matthew" and "Luke"

before him; and (_b_) that either of the two latter was acquainted

with the work of the other, would seem to involve some singular

consequences.

_a_. The second Gospel is saturated with the lowest supernaturalism.

Jesus is exhibited as a wonder-worker and exorcist of the first rank.

The earliest public recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus comes from

an "unclean spirit"; he himself is made to testify to the occurrence

of the miraculous feeding twice over.

The purpose with which "Mark" sets out is to show forth Jesus as the

Son of God, and it is suggested, if not distinctly stated, that he

acquired this character at his baptism by John. The absence of any

reference to the miraculous events of the infancy, detailed by

"Matthew" and "Luke;" or to the appearances after the discovery of the

emptiness of the tomb; is unintelligible, if "Mark" knew anything

about them, or believed in the miraculous conception. The second

Gospel is no summary: "Mark" can find room for the detailed story,

irrelevant to his main purpose, of the beheading of John the Baptist,

and his miraculous narrations are crowded with minute particulars. Is

it to be imagined that, with the supposed apostolic authority of

Matthew before him, he could leave out the miraculous conception of

Jesus and the ascension? Further, ecclesiastical tradition would have

us believe that Mark wrote down his recollections of what Peter

taught. Did Peter then omit to mention these matters? Did the fact

testified by the oldest authority extant, that the first appearance of

the risen Jesus was to himself seem not worth mentioning? Did he

really fail to speak of the great position in the Church solemnly

assigned to him by Jesus? The alternative would seem to be the

impeachment either of Mark's memory, or of his judgment. But Mark's

memory, is so good that he can recollect how, on the occasion of the

stilling of the waves, Jesus was asleep "on the cushion," he remembers

that the woman with the issue had "spent all she had" on her

physicians; that there was not room "even about the door" on a certain

occasion at Capernaum. And it is surely hard to believe that "Mark"

should have failed to recollect occurrences of infinitely greater

moment, or that he should have deliberately left them out, as things

not worthy of mention.

_b_. The supposition that "Matthew" was acquainted with "Luke," or

"Luke" with "Matthew" has equally grave implications. If that be so,

the one who used the other could have had but a poor opinion of his

predecessor's historical veracity. If, as most experts agree, "Luke"

is later than "Matthew," it is clear that he does not credit

"Matthew's" account of the infancy; does not believe the "Sermon on

the Mount" as given by Matthew was preached; does not believe in the

two feeding miracles, to which Jesus himself is made to refer; wholly

discredits "Matthew's" account of the events after the crucifixion;

and thinks it not worth while to notice "Matthew's" grave admission

that "some doubted."

IX. None of these troublesome consequences pursue the hypothesis that

the _threefold tradition_, in one, or more, Greek versions, was extant

before either of the canonical Synoptic Gospels; and that it furnished

the fundamental framework of their several narratives. Where and when

the threefold narrative arose, there is no positive evidence; though

it is obviously probable that the traditions it embodies, and perhaps

many others, took their rise in Palestine and spread thence to Asia

Minor, Greece, Egypt and Italy, in the track of the early

missionaries. Nor is it less likely that they formed part of the

"didaskalia" of the primitive Nazarene and Christian communities.[6]

X. The interest which attaches to "Mark" arises from the fact that it

seems to present this early, probably earliest, Greek Gospel

narrative, with least addition, or modification. If, as appears likely

from some internal evidences, it was compiled for the use of the

Christian sodalities in Rome; and that it was accepted by them as an

adequate account of the life and work of Jesus, it is evidence of the

most valuable kind respecting their beliefs and the limits of dogma,

as conceived by them.

In such case, a good Roman Christian of that epoch might know nothing

of the doctrine of the incarnation, as taught by "Matthew" and "Luke";

still less of the "logos" doctrine of "John"; neither need he have

believed anything more than the simple fact of the resurrection. It

was open to him to believe it either corporeal or spiritual. He would

never have heard of the power of the keys bestowed upon Peter; nor

have had brought to his mind so much as a suggestion of trinitarian

doctrine. He might be a rigidly monotheistic Judæo-Christian, and

consider himself bound by the law: he might be a Gentile Pauline

convert, neither knowing of nor caring for such restrictions. In

neither case would he find in "Mark" any serious stumbling-block. In

fact, persons of all the categories admitted to salvation by Justin,

in the middle of the second century,[7] could accept "Mark" from

beginning to end. It may well be, that, in this wide adaptability,

backed by the authority of the metropolitan church, there lies the

reason for the fact of the preservation of "Mark," notwithstanding its

limited and dogmatically colourless character, as compared with the

Gospels of "Luke" and "Matthew."

XI. "Mark," as we have seen, contains a relatively small body of

ethical and religious instruction and only a few parables. Were these

all that existed in the primitive threefold tradition? Were none

others current in the Roman communities, at the time "Mark" wrote,

supposing he wrote in Rome? Or, on the other hand, was there extant,

as early as the time at which "Mark" composed his Greek edition of the

primitive Evangel, one or more collections of parables and teachings,

such as those which form the bulk of the twofold tradition, common

exclusively to "Matthew" and "Luke," and are also found in their

single traditions? Many have assumed this, or these, collections to be

identical with, or at any rate based upon, the "logia," of which

ecclesiastical tradition says, that they were written in Aramaic by

Matthew, and that everybody translated them as he could.

Here is the old difficulty again. If such materials were known to

"Mark," what imaginable reason could he have for not using them?

Surely displacement of the long episode of John the Baptist--even

perhaps of the story of the Gadarene swine--by portions of the Sermon

on the Mount or by one or two of the beautiful parables in the twofold

and single traditions would have been great improvements; and might

have been effected, even though "Mark" was as much pressed for space

as some have imagined. But there is no ground for that imagination;

Mark has actually found room for four or five parables; why should he

not have given the best, if he had known of them? Admitting he was the

mere _pedissequus et breviator_ of Matthew, that even Augustine

supposed him to be, what could induce him to omit the Lord's Prayer?

Whether more or less of the materials of the twofold tradition D, and

of the peculiar traditions F and G, were or were not current in some

of the communities, as early as, or perhaps earlier than, the triple

tradition, it is not necessary for me to discuss; nor to consider

those solutions of the Synoptic problem which assume that it existed

earlier, and was already combined with more or less narrative. Those

who are working out the final solution of the Synoptic problem are

taking into account, more than hitherto, the possibility that the

widely separated Christian communities of Palestine, Asia Minor,

Egypt, and Italy, especially after the Jewish war of A.D. 66-70, may

have found themselves in possession of very different traditional

materials. Many circumstances tend to the conclusion that, in Asia

Minor, even the narrative part of the threefold tradition had a

formidable rival; and that, around this second narrative, teaching

traditions of a totally different order from those in the Synoptics,

grouped themselves; and, under the influence of converts imbued more

or less with the philosophical speculations of the time, eventually

took shape in the fourth Gospel and its associated literature.

XII. But it is unnecessary, and it would be out of place, for me to

attempt to do more than indicate the existence of these complex and

difficult questions. My purpose has been to make it clear that the

Synoptic problem must force itself upon every one who studies the

Gospels with attention; that the broad facts of the case, and some of

the consequences deducible from these facts, are just as plain to the

simple English reader as they are to the profoundest scholar.

One of these consequences is that the threefold tradition presents us

with a narrative believed to be historically true, in all its

particulars, by the major part, if not the whole, of the Christian

communities. That narrative is penetrated, from beginning to end, by

the demonological beliefs of which the Gadarene story is a specimen;

and, if the fourth Gospel indicates the existence of another and, in

some respects, irreconcilably divergent narrative, in which the

demonology retires into the background, it is none the less there.

Therefore, the demonology is an integral and inseparable component of

primitive Christianity. The farther back the origin of the gospels is

dated, the stronger does the certainty of this conclusion grow; and

the more difficult it becomes to suppose that Jesus himself may not

have shared the superstitious beliefs of his disciples.

It further follows that those who accept devils, possession, and

exorcism as essential elements of their conception of the spiritual

world may consistently consider the testimony of the Gospels to be

unimpeachable in respect of the information they give us respecting

other matters which appertain to that world.

Those who reject the gospel demonology, on the other hand, would seem

to be as completely barred, as I feel myself to be, from professing to

take the accuracy of that information for granted. If the threefold

tradition is wrong about one fundamental topic, it may be wrong about

another, while the authority of the single traditions, often mutually

contradictory as they are, becomes a vanishing quantity.

It really is unreasonable to ask any rejector of the demonology to say

more with respect to those other matters, than that the statements

regarding them may be true, or may be false; and that the ultimate

decision, if it is to be favourable, must depend on the production of

testimony of a very different character from that of the writers of

the four gospels. Until such evidence is brought forward, that

refusal of assent, with willingness to re-open the question, on cause

shown, which is what I mean by Agnosticism, is, for me, the only

course open.

* * * * *

A verdict of "not proven" is undoubtedly unsatisfactory and

essentially provisional, so far forth as the subject of the trial is

capable of being dealt with by due process of reason.

Those who are of opinion that the historical realities at the root of

Christianity, lie beyond the jurisdiction of science, need not be

considered. Those who are convinced that the evidence is, and must

always remain, insufficient to support any definite conclusion, are

justified in ignoring the subject. They must be content to put up with

that reproach of being mere destroyers, of which Strauss speaks. They

may say that there are so many problems which are and must remain

insoluble, that the "burden of the mystery" "of all this

unintelligible world" is not appreciably affected by one more or less.

For myself, I must confess that the problem of the origin of such very

remarkable historical phenomena as the doctrines, and the social

organization, which in their broad features certainly existed, and

were in a state of rapid development, within a hundred years of the

crucifixion of Jesus; and which have steadily prevailed against all

rivals, among the most intelligent and civilized nations in the world

ever since, is, and always has been, profoundly interesting; and,

considering how recent the really scientific study of that problem,

and how great the progress made during the last half century in

supplying the conditions for a positive solution of the problem, I

cannot doubt that the attainment of such a solution is a mere question

of time.

I am well aware that it has lain far beyond my powers to take any

share in this great undertaking. All that I can hope is to have done

somewhat towards "the preparation of those who have ceased to be

contented with the old and find no satisfaction in half measures":

perhaps, also, something towards the lessening of that great

proportion of my countrymen, whose eminent characteristic it is that

they find "full satisfaction in half measures."

T.H.H.

HODESLEA, EASTBOURNE,

_December 4th, 1893_.