among "types" and allegories. A certain passion for clearness forces me to
ask, bluntly, whether the writer means to say that Jesus did not believe
the stories in question, or that he did? When Jesus spoke, as of a matter
of fact, that "the Flood came and destroyed them all," did he believe that
the Deluge really took place, or not? It seems to me that, as the narrative
mentions Noah's wife, and his sons' wives, there is good scriptural
warranty for the statement that the antediluvians married and were given in
marriage; and I should have thought that their eating and drinking might be
assumed by the firmest believer in the literal truth of the story.
Moreover, I venture to ask what sort of value, as an illustration of God's
methods of dealing with sin, has an account of an event that never
happened? If no Flood swept the careless people away, how is the warning of
more worth than the cry of "Wolf" when there is no wolf? If Jonah's three
days' residence in the whale is not an "admitted reality," how could it
"warrant belief" in the "coming resurrection?" If Lot's wife was not turned
into a pillar of salt, the bidding those who turn back from the narrow path
to "remember" it is, morally, about on a level with telling a naughty child
that a bogy is {530} coming to fetch it away. Suppose that a Conservative
orator warns his hearers to beware of great political and social changes,
lest they end, as in France, in the domination of a Robespierre; what
becomes, not only of his argument, but of his veracity, if he, personally,
does not believe that Robespierre existed and did the deeds attributed to
him?
Like all other attempts to reconcile the results of
scientifically-conducted investigation with the demands of the outworn
creeds of ecclesiasticism, the essay on Inspiration is just such a failure
as must await mediation, when the mediator is unable properly to appreciate
the weight of the evidence for the case of one of the two parties. The
question of "Inspiration" really possesses no interest for those who have
cast ecclesiasticism and all its works aside, and have no faith in any
source of truth save that which is reached by the patient application of
scientific methods. Theories of inspiration are speculations as to the
means by which the authors of statements, in the Bible or elsewhere, have
been led to say what they have said--and it assumes that natural agencies
are insufficient for the purpose. I prefer to stop short of this problem,
finding it more profitable to undertake the inquiry which naturally
precedes it--namely, Are these statements true or false? If they are true,
it may be worth while to go into the question of their supernatural
generation; if they are false, it certainly is not worth mine.
Now, not only do I hold it to be proven that the story of the Deluge is a
pure fiction; but I have no {531} hesitation in affirming the same thing of
the story of the Creation.[153] Between these two lies the story of the
creation of man and woman and their fall from primitive innocence, which is
even more monstrously improbable than either of the other two, though, from
the nature of the case, it is not so easily capable of direct refutation.
It can be demonstrated that the earth took longer than six days in the
making, and that the Deluge, as described, is a physical impossibility; but
there is no proving, especially to those who are perfect in the art of
closing their ears to that which they do not wish to hear, that a snake did
not speak, or that Eve was not made out of one of Adam's ribs.
The compiler of Genesis, in its present form, evidently had a definite plan
in his mind. His countrymen, like all other men, were doubtless curious to
know how the world began; how men, and especially wicked men, came into
being, and how existing nations and races arose among the descendants of
one stock; and, finally, what was the history of their own particular
tribe. They, like ourselves, desired to solve the four great problems of
cosmogeny, anthropogeny, ethnogeny, and geneogeny. The Pentateuch {532}
furnishes the solutions which appeared satisfactory to its author. One of
these, as we have seen, was borrowed from a Babylonian fable; and I know of
no reason to suspect any different origin for the rest. Now, I would ask,
is the story of the fabrication of Eve to be regarded as one of those
pre-Abrahamic narratives, the historical truth of which is an open
question, in face of the reference to it in a speech unhappily famous for
the legal oppression to which it has been wrongfully forced to lend itself?
Have ye not read, that he which made them from the beginning made them
male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave his father
and mother, and cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become one
flesh? (Matt. xix. 5).
If divine authority is not here claimed for the twenty-fourth verse of the
second chapter of Genesis, what is the value of language? And again, I ask,
if one may play fast and loose with the story of the Fall as a "type" or
"allegory," what becomes of the foundation of Pauline theology?--
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the
dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive
(1 Corinthians xv. 21, 22).
If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than Prometheus, and if
the story of the Fall is merely an instructive "type," comparable to the
profound Promethean mythus, what value has Paul's dialectic?
While, therefore, every right-minded man must sympathise with the efforts
of those theologians, who {533} have not been able altogether to close
their ears to the still, small voice of reason, to escape from the fetters
which ecclesiasticism has forged, the melancholy fact remains, that the
position they have taken up is hopelessly untenable. It is raked alike by
the old-fashioned artillery of the Churches and by the fatal weapons of
precision with which the _enfants perdus_ of the advancing forces of
science are armed. They must surrender, or fall back into a more sheltered
position. And it is possible that they may long find safety in such
retreat.
It is, indeed, probable that the proportional number of those who will
distinctly profess their belief in the transubstantiation of Lot's wife,
and the anticipatory experience of submarine navigation by Jonah; in water
standing fathoms deep on the side of a declivity without anything to hold
it up; and in devils who enter swine--will not increase. But neither is
there ground for much hope that the proportion of those who cast aside
these fictions and adopt the consequence of that repudiation, are, for some
generations, likely to constitute a majority. Our age is a day of
compromises. The present and the near future seem given over to those
happily, if curiously, constituted people who see as little difficulty in
throwing aside any amount of post-Abrahamic Scriptural narrative, as the
authors of _Lux Mundi_ see in sacrificing the pre-Abrahamic stories; and,
having distilled away every inconvenient matter of fact in Christian
history, continue to pay divine honours to the residue. There really seems
to be no reason why the next generation {534} should not listen to a
Bampton Lecture modelled upon that addressed to the last:--
Time was--and that not very long ago--when all the relations of
Biblical authors concerning the old world were received with a ready
belief; and an unreasoning and uncritical faith accepted with equal
satisfaction the narrative of the Captivity and the doings of Moses at
the court of Pharaoh, the account of the Apostolic meeting in the
Epistle to the Galatians, and that of the fabrication of Eve. We can
most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of the
Exodus, and even the legend of Jonah, were seriously placed before boys
as history, and discoursed of in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of
Agincourt or the history of the Norman Conquest.
But all this is now changed. The last century has seen the growth of
scientific criticism to its full strength. The whole world of history
has been revolutionised and the mythology which embarrassed earnest
Christians has vanished as an evil mist, the lifting of which has only
more fully revealed the lineaments of infallible Truth. No longer in
contact with fact of any kind, Faith stands now and for ever proudly
inaccessible to the attacks of the infidel.
So far the apologist of the future. Why not? _Cantabit vacuus._
* * * * *
{535}
XIV
THE KEEPERS OF THE HERD OF SWINE
I had fondly hoped that Mr. Gladstone and I had come to an end of
disputation, and that the hatchet of war was finally superseded by the
calumet, which, as Mr. Gladstone, I believe, objects to tobacco, I was
quite willing to smoke for both. But I have had, once again, to discover
that the adage that whoso seeks peace will ensue it, is a somewhat hasty
generalisation. The renowned warrior with whom it is my misfortune to be
opposed in most things has dug up the axe and is on the war-path once more.
The weapon has been wielded with all the dexterity which long practice has
conferred on a past master in craft, whether of wood or state. And I have
reason to believe that the simpler sort of the great tribe which he heads
imagine that my scalp is already on its way to adorn their big chief's
wigwam. I am glad therefore to be able to relieve any anxieties which my
friends may entertain without delay. I assure them that my skull retains
its normal covering, and that though, naturally, I may have felt alarmed,
nothing serious has happened. My doughty {536} adversary has merely
performed a war dance, and his blows have for the most part cut the air. I
regret to add, however, that by misadventure, and I am afraid I must say
carelessness, he has inflicted one or two severe contusions on himself.
When the noise of approaching battle roused me from the dreams of peace
which occupy my retirement, I was glad to observe (since I must fight) that
the campaign was to be opened upon a new field. When the contest raged over
the Pentateuchal myth of the creation, Mr. Gladstone's manifest want of
acquaintance with the facts and principles involved in the discussion, no
less than with the best literature on his own side of the subject, gave me
the uncomfortable feeling that I had my adversary at a disadvantage. The
sun of science, at my back, was in his eyes. But, on the present occasion,
we are happily on an equality. History and Biblical criticism are as much,
or as little, my vocation as they are that of Mr. Gladstone; the blinding
from too much light, or the blindness from too little, may be presumed to
be equally shared by both of us.
Mr. Gladstone takes up his new position in the country of the Gadarenes.
His strategic sense justly leads him to see that the authority of the
teachings of the synoptic Gospels, touching the nature of the spiritual
world, turns upon the acceptance or the rejection of the Gadarene and other
like stories. As we accept or repudiate such histories as that of the
possessed pigs, so shall we {537} accept or reject the witness of the
synoptics to such miraculous interventions.
It is exactly because these stories constitute the key-stone of the
orthodox arch, that I originally drew attention to them; and, in spite of
my longing for peace, I am truly obliged to Mr. Gladstone for compelling me
to place my case before the public once more. It may be thought that this
is a work of supererogation by those who are aware that my essay is the
subject of attack in a work so largely circulated as the _Impregnable Rock
of Holy Scripture_; and who may possibly, in their simplicity, assume that
it must be truthfully set forth in that work. But the warmest admirers of
Mr. Gladstone will hardly be prepared to maintain that mathematical
accuracy in stating the opinions of an opponent is the most prominent
feature of his controversial method. And what follows will show that, in
the present case, the desire to be fair and accurate, the existence of
which I am bound to assume, has not borne as much fruit as might have been
expected.
In referring to the statement of the narrators that the herd of swine
perished in consequence of the entrance into them of the demons by the
permission, or order, of Jesus of Nazareth, I said:
"Everything that I know of law and justice convinces me that the wanton
destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil example"
(_Nineteenth Century_, February 1889, p. 172).
Mr. Gladstone has not found it convenient to cite this passage; and, in
view of various considerations, {538} I dare not assume that he would
assent to it, without sundry subtle modifications which, for me, might
possibly rob it of its argumentative value. But, until the proposition is
seriously controverted, I shall assume it to be true, and content myself
with warning the reader that neither he nor I have any grounds for assuming
Mr. Gladstone's concurrence. With this caution, I proceed to remark that I
think it may be granted that the people whose herd of 2000 swine (more or
fewer) was suddenly destroyed suffered great loss and damage. And it is
quite certain that the narrators of the Gadarene story do not, in any way,
refer to the point of morality and legality thus raised; as I said, they
show no inkling of the moral and legal difficulties which arise.
Such being the facts of the case, I submit that for those who admit the
principle laid down, the conclusion which I have drawn necessarily follows;
though I repeat that, since Mr. Gladstone does not explicitly admit the
principle, I am far from suggesting that he is bound by its logical
consequences. However, I distinctly repeat the opinion that any one who
acted in the way described in the story would, in my judgment, be guilty of
"a misdemeanour of evil example." About that point I desire to leave no
ambiguity whatever; and it follows that, if I believed the story, I should
have no hesitation in applying this judgment to the chief actor in it.
But if any one will do me the favour to turn to the paper in which these
passages occur, he will find that a considerable part of it is devoted to
the {539} exposure of the familiar trick of the "counsel for creeds," who,
when they wish to profit by the easily stirred _odium theologicum_, are
careful to confuse disbelief in a narrative of a man's act, or disapproval
of the acts as narrated, with disbelieving and vilipending the man himself.
If I say that "according to paragraphs in several newspapers, my valued
Separatist friend A. B. has houghed a lot of cattle which he considered to
be unlawfully in the possession of an Irish land-grabber; that in my
opinion any such act is a misdemeanour of evil example; but that I utterly
disbelieve the whole story and have no doubt that it is a mere
fabrication:" it really appears to me that, if any one charges me with
calling A. B. an immoral misdemeanant, I should be justified in using very
strong language respecting either his sanity or his veracity. And, if an
analogous charge has been brought in reference to the Gadarene story, there
is certainly no excuse producible on account of any lack of plain speech on
my part. Surely no language can be more explicit than that which follows:
"I can discern no escape from this dilemma; either Jesus said what he is
reported to have said, or he did not. In the former case, it is inevitable
that his authority on matters connected with the 'unseen world' should be
roughly shaken; in the latter, the blow falls upon the authority of the
synoptic Gospels" (p. 173). "The choice then lies between discrediting
those who compiled the gospel biographies and disbelieving the Master, whom
{540} they, simple souls, thought to honour by preserving such traditions
of the exercise of his authority over Satan's invisible world" (p. 174).
And I leave no shadow of doubt as to my own choice: "After what has been
said, I do not think that any sensible man, unless he happen to be angry,
will accuse me of 'contradicting the Lord and his Apostles' if I reiterate
my total disbelief in the whole Gadarene story" (p. 178).
I am afraid, therefore, that Mr. Gladstone must have been exceedingly angry
when he committed himself to such a statement as follows:
So, then, after eighteen centuries of worship offered to our Lord by
the most cultivated, the most developed, and the most progressive
portion of the human race, it has been reserved to a scientific
inquirer to discover that He was no better than a law-breaker and an
evil-doer.... How, in such a matter, came the honours of originality to
be reserved to our time and to Professor Huxley? (pp. 269, 270.)
Truly, the hatchet is hardly a weapon of precision, but would seem to have
rather more the character of the boomerang, which returns to damage the
reckless thrower. Doubtless such incidents are somewhat ludicrous. But they
have a very serious side; and, if I rated the opinion of those who blindly
follow Mr. Gladstone's leading, but not light, in these matters, much
higher than the great Duke of Wellington's famous standard of minimum
value, I think I might fairly beg them to reflect upon the general bearings
of this particular example of his controversial method. I imagine it can
hardly commend itself to their cool judgment. {541}
After this tragi-comical ending to what an old historian calls a
"robustious and rough coming on"; and after some praises of the provisions
of the Mosaic law in the matter of not eating pork--in which, as pork
disagrees with me and for some other reasons, I am much disposed to concur,
though I do not see what they have to do with the matter in hand--comes the
serious onslaught.
Mr. Huxley, exercising his rapid judgment on the text, does not appear
to have encumbered himself with the labour of inquiring what anybody
else had known or said about it. He has thus missed a point which might
have been set up in support of his accusation against our Lord (p.
273).
Unhappily for my comfort, I have been much exercised in controversy during
the past thirty years; and the only compensation for the loss of time and
the trials of temper which it has inflicted upon me, is that I have come to
regard it as a branch of the fine arts, and to take an impartial and
aesthetic interest in the way it is conducted, even by those whose efforts
are directed against myself. Now, from the purely artistic point of view
(which, as we are all being told, has nothing to do with morals), I
consider it an axiom, that one should never appear to doubt that the other
side has performed the elementary duty of acquiring proper elementary
information, unless there is demonstrative evidence to the contrary. And I
think, though I admit that this may be a purely subjective appreciation,
that (unless you are quite certain) there is a "want of finish," as a great
{542} master of disputation once put it, about the suggestion that your
opponent has missed a point on his own side. Because it may happen that he
has not missed it at all, but only thought it unworthy of serious notice.
And if he proves that, the suggestion looks foolish.
Merely noting the careful repetition of a charge, the absurdity of which
has been sufficiently exposed above, I now ask my readers to accompany me
on a little voyage of discovery in search of the side on which the rapid
judgment and the ignorance of the literature of the subject lie. I think I
may promise them very little trouble, and a good deal of entertainment.
Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that the Gadarene swinefolk were "Hebrews bound
by the Mosaic law" (p. 274), and he conceives that it has not occurred to
me to learn what may be said in favour of and against this view. He tells
us that
Some commentators have alleged the authority of Josephus for stating
that Gadara was a city of Greeks rather than of Jews, from whence it
might be inferred that to keep swine was innocent and lawful (p. 273).
Mr. Gladstone then goes on to inform his readers that in his painstaking
search after truth he has submitted to the labour of personally examining
the writings of Josephus. Moreover, in a note, he positively exhibits an
acquaintance, in addition, with the works of Bishop Wordsworth and of
Archbishop Trench; and even shows that he has read Hudson's commentary on
Josephus. And yet people say that {543} our Biblical critics do not equal
the Germans in research! But Mr. Gladstone's citation of Cuvier and Sir
John Herschel about the Creation myth, and his ignorance of all the best
modern writings on his own side, produced a great impression on my mind. I
have had the audacity to suspect that his acquaintance with what has been
done in biblical history might stand at no higher level than his
information about the natural sciences. However unwillingly, I have felt
bound to consider the possibility that Mr. Gladstone's labours in this
matter may have carried him no further than Josephus and the worthy, but
somewhat antique, episcopal and other authorities to whom he refers; that
even his reading of Josephus may have been of the most cursory nature,
directed not to the understanding of his author, but to the discovery of
useful controversial matter; and that, in view of the not inconsiderable
misrepresentation of my statements to which I have drawn attention, it
might be that Mr. Gladstone's exposition of the evidence of Josephus was
not more trustworthy. I proceed to show that my previsions have been fully
justified. I doubt if controversial literature contains anything more
_piquant_ than the story I have to unfold.
That I should be reproved for rapidity of judgment is very just: however
quaint the situation of Mr. Gladstone, as the reprover, may seem to people
blessed with a sense of humour. But it is a quality, the defects of which
have been painfully obvious to me all my life; and I try to keep my
Pegasus--at {544} best a poor Shetland variety of that species of
quadruped--at a respectable jog-trot, by loading him heavily with bales of
reading. Those who took the trouble to study my paper in good faith, and
not for mere controversial purposes, have a right to know, that something
more than a hasty glimpse of two or three passages of Josephus (even with
as many episcopal works thrown in) lay at the back of the few paragraphs I
devoted to the Gadarene story. I proceed to set forth, as briefly as I can,
some results of that preparatory work. My artistic principles do not permit
me, at present, to express a doubt that Mr. Gladstone was acquainted with
the facts I am about to mention when he undertook to write. But, if he did
know them, then both what he has said and what he has not said, his
assertions and his omissions alike, will require a paragraph to themselves.
The common consent of the synoptic Gospels affirms that the miraculous
transference of devils from a man, or men, to sundry pigs took place
somewhere on the eastern shore of the Lake of Tiberias; "on the other side
of the sea over against Galilee," the western shore being, without doubt,
included in the latter province. But there is no such concord when we come
to the name of the part of the eastern shore on which, according to the
story, Jesus and his disciples landed. In the revised version Matthew calls
it the "country of the Gadarenes:" Luke and Mark have "Gerasenes." In
sundry very ancient manuscripts "Gergesenes" occurs. {545}