5 20 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



historical credit, must feel how improbable it is that our Lord 

 should have carried His ministry into a really Greek or Gentile 

 district on the only one occasion when He thought fit to run 

 counter to the public sentiment, and to give to His action the 

 character of a serious interference with the rights of property. 

 How could He have ventured thus to associate Himself with the 

 destruction of a great herd of swine, if the country was Gentile, 

 and if those swine belonged to persons not bound by the prohibi- 

 tion of the Mosaic law ? Might they not, and would they not, 

 have resorted to the use of force against this unarmed as well as 

 unauthorized intruder ? But what happens is that the swine- 

 herds fly ; according to all the three Evangelists, they fly ; to the 

 city, according to St. Matthew and St. Mark,* which was the seat 

 of authority ; and they tell what had happened. Why, then, if 

 this was a land of Gentile rule, and if the swineherds were Gen- 

 tiles, why was not our Saviour since His agency was recognized 

 either assailed by popular violence, or called regularly to 

 account by the law of the land ; by that " Hellenic Gadarene 

 law," f with the supposed existence of which Mr. Huxley pastures 

 his imagination ? Instead of this, without the slightest idea of an 

 accusation against our Lord, the population, streaming forth, 

 simply consult for their own temporal interests, and beseech Him 

 to depart out of their coasts. % 



The supply of swine testifies indeed to the existence of a 

 demand. It may probably testify also to the existence of a 

 Gentile class or element in the country. The question, indeed, 

 which relates to the use of pork as an article of diet has by no 

 means that uniformity of color, outside the Mosaic law, which 

 Prof. Huxley assigns to it. But it would be tedious by entering 

 upon it to lengthen a paper already too long, for we may safely 

 allow that among the Syrian Gentiles this diet may have been 

 known, and may not have entailed any legal penalty. 



Mr. Huxley concludes the argumentative portion of his article 

 by insisting that the " party of Galilseans " # were foreigners in 

 the Decapolis, and could have no title, as private individuals, even 

 to vindicate the law. I will not argue the point, which is wholly 

 immaterial to my purpose ; and it may not be easy to draw with 

 exactness the line up to which the private person may go of his 

 own motion in supporting established law. I confine myself to 

 the following propositions : 



1. Both from antecedent likelihoods, and from history, there 

 is the strongest reason to believe that the Mosaic law was the 

 public law of Gadaris. 



* Matt, viii, 34; Mark v, 13. \ Matt, viii, 34; Mark v, IV; Luke viii, 37. 



f Nineteenth Century, p. 976. * Nineteenth Century, p. 978. 



