602 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



delivered, thus shatter themselves against the rock of natural 

 knowledge, in respect of the two most important of all events, the 

 origin of things and the palingenesis of terrestrial life, what his- 

 torical credit dare any serious thinker attach to the narratives of 

 the fabrication of Eve, of the Fall, of the commerce between the 

 Bene Elohim and the daughters of men, which lie between the 

 creational and the diluvial legends ? And, if these are to lose all 

 historical worth, what becomes of the infallibility of those who, 

 according to the later Scriptures, have accepted them, argued from 

 them, and staked far-reaching dogmatic conclusions upon their 

 historical accuracy ? 



It is the merest ostrich policy for contemporary ecclesiasticism 

 to try to hide its Hexateuchal head in the hope that the insepa- 

 rable connection of its body with pre-Abrahamic legends may be 

 overlooked. The question will still be asked, If the first nine 

 chapters of the Pentateuch are unhistoricaL how is the historical 

 accuracy of the remainder to be guaranteed ? What more in- 

 trinsic claim has the story of the Exodus, than that of the Del- 

 uge, to belief ? If God did not walk in the garden of Eden, how 

 can we be assured that he spoke from Sinai ? 



In some other of the following essays (IX, X, XI, XII, XIV, 

 XV) I have endeavored to show that sober and well-founded 

 physical and literary criticism plays no less havoc with the doc- 

 trine that the canonical Scriptures of the New Testament " declare 

 incontrovertibly the actual historical truth in all records." We 

 are told that the Gospels contain a true revelation of the spiritual 

 world a proposition which, in one sense of the word " spiritual," 

 I should not think it necessary to dispute. But, when it is taken 

 to signify that everything we are told about the world of spirits 

 in these books is infallibly true ; that we are bound to accept the 

 demonology which constitutes an inseparable part of their teach- 

 ing ; and to profess belief in a supernaturalism as gross as that of 

 any primitive people it is at any rate permissible to ask why ? 

 Science may be unable to define the limits of possibility, but it 

 can not escape from the moral obligation to weigh the evidence in 

 favor of any alleged wonderful occurrence ; and I have endeav- 

 ored to show that the evidence for the Gadarene miracle is alto- 

 gether worthless. We have simply three, partially discrepant, 

 versions of a story, about the primitive form, the origin, and the 

 authority for which we know absolutely nothing. But the evi- 

 dence in favor of the Gadarene miracle is as good as that for any 

 other. 



Elsewhere I have pointed out that it is utterly beside the 

 mark to declaim against these conclusions on the ground of their 

 asserted tendency to deprive mankind of the consolations of the 



