PROF. HUXLEY AND THE SWINE-MIRACLE. 503 



Scriptures, it is not so considerable. That Christ, who is not only 

 the object of imitation, love, and worship, but the very food and 

 life of Christians, is the Christ of the Gospels. In a sense rela- 

 tive yet not untrue, they may almost be called " the brightness of 

 His glory and the express image of His person." * If the Gos- 

 pels are put on their trial as literary documents, and if a legiti- 

 mate though mordant criticism can successfully impugn any por- 

 tion of them, we can not complain, and must take our chance. 

 But when their contents are summarily condemned and rejected 

 on a charge of intrinsic unworthiness and immorality, upon no 

 higher authority than that of the private judgment of this or that 

 individual, then, and so long as we are dealing with a portion of 

 the attested portraiture, an arraignment of them becomes, at least 

 in my view, more hard to distinguish from an arraignment of 

 Him whom they portray. Told, and told in detail, by all the 

 three Synoptics, the miracle of the demoniac and the swine does 

 not well bear severance from the staple of the biography. Nor, 

 indeed, is it so severed by Mr. Huxley,f who frankly treats it 

 as involving at large the authority of the Synoptic Gospels. In 

 ' itself, it is undoubtedly of the utmost significance, on account of 

 the questions which it raises. One of these is the large subject 

 of demoniacal possession, on which I do not presume to enter. 

 Another is whether our Saviour in answering the prayer of the 

 evil spirits by " saying unto them, Go," became a co-operator in 

 the destruction of the swine. This has been contested, but I pass 

 by the contest, and for argument's sake at least admit the affirm- 

 ative. Then there remains the further question ; whether the be- 

 neficent ministry of our Lord on earth included in this instance 

 the infliction of heavy injury upon certain individuals, the own- 

 ers, or keepers and owners, of the swine, by the destruction of 

 their property lawfully and innocently held ? 



Mr. Huxley observes that the Evangelists do not betray any 

 consciousness of the moral and legal difficulties involved in the 

 question. But if the Evangelists believed that our Lord was 

 dealing in this case with Hebrews, or with persons bound by the 

 law of Moses, then for them, believers in the Messiah, there were 

 no legal or moral difficulties at all. 



There are, indeed, those who have been content to rest the case 

 on the absolute right of the Deity to deal at will with the prop- 

 erty of the creatures whom he has made. " Of thine own have 

 we given Thee ! " Commentators are far from uniform. J But, as 

 it appears to me, the question does not come before us quite in 

 this shape. Apart from any such contention, it is no trivial in- 



* Heb. i, 3. f Nineteenth Century, December 1890, p. 968. 



\ Consult Cornelius a Lapide, and his references to others, on Matt, viii, 28-34. 

 Thomas Scott's commentary is worthy of notice. 



