5 02 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Third. These deformations are all beautiful to those who 

 practice them. Is it not evident that in all of them the idea 

 and the ideal of beauty are subsequent not antecedent and 

 original ? 







PROFESSOR HUXLEY AND THE SWINE-MIRACLE. 



By W. E. GLADSTONE. 



THE controversy, in which this paper has to take its place, 

 arose out of a statement, indeed a boast, as I understood it, 

 by Prof. Huxley,* that the adepts in natural science were assail- 

 ing the churches with weapons of precision, and that their op- 

 ponents had only antiquated and worthless implements to em- 

 ploy in the business of defense. I took upon me to impeach at 

 certain points the precision of the Professor's own weapons, f 

 Upon one of those points, the miracle of the swine, as recorded in 

 the Gospels, he had given us assumption instead of proof upon 

 what he thinks the vital question, whether the keeping of the 

 swine was an innocent and lawful occupation. He has now offered 

 an elaborate attempt at proof that such was its character. The 

 smallest indication of such an attempt in the original article 

 would have sufficed entirely to alter the form of my observation, 

 which would then have been what it will now be ; not that he 

 offers no argument, but that his argument is unsound from the 

 beginning to the end. 



Of that considerable portion of his article which is devoted to 

 sneers, imputations, and lectures against myself, I shall take no 

 notice whatever. The question of my guilt or innocence is too 

 insignificant, and even the question whether Mr. Huxley does or 

 does not always use weapons of precision might hardly warrant 

 a prolongation of the warfare. But the personal action of our 

 Lord is the basis of the Christian revelation, and to impugn it 

 successfully in any point is to pierce the innermost heart of every 

 Christian. No inquiry, therefore, can be too painstaking which 

 helps to carry such a question to a conclusive issue. 



I must, however, in passing, make the confession that I did 

 not state with accuracy, as I ought to have done, the precise form 

 of the accusation. I treated it as an imputation on the action of 

 our Lord : he replies that it is an imputation on the narrative of 

 three Evangelists respecting Him. The difference from his point 

 of view is probably material, and I therefore regret that I over- 

 looked it. From the standing ground of those who receive the 



* Nineteenth Century, July, 1890, p. 22. [Popular Science Monthly, September, 1890, 

 p. 649.] 



f Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture, p. 260. 



