PREFACE XI 



offending lies not now where it formerly lay. Thirty 

 years ago, criticism of " Moses " was held by most 

 respectable people to be deadly sin; now it has 

 sunk to the rank of a mere peccadillo ; at least, if 

 it stops short of the history of Abraham. Destroy 

 the foundation of most forms of dogmatic Christi- 

 anity contained in the second chapter of Genesis, if 

 you will; the new ecclesiasticism undertakes to 

 underpin the superstructure and make it,atany rate 

 to the eye, as firm as ever: but let him be anathema 

 who applies exactly the same canons of criticism 

 to the opening chapters of "Matthew" or of 

 "Luke." School-children may be told that the 

 world was by no means made in six days, and that 

 implicit belief in the story of Noah's Ark is per- 

 missible only, as a matter of business, to their 

 toy-makers ; but they are to hold for the certainest 

 of truths, to be doubted only at peril of their 

 salvation, that their Galilean fellow-child Jesus, 

 nineteen centuries ago, had no human father. 



Well, we will pass the item of 1860, said "the 

 voice." But why all this more recent coil about 

 the Gadarene swine and the like ? Do you pre- 

 tend that these poor animals got in your way, 

 years and years after the " Mosaic ;> fences we**e 

 down, at any rate so far as you are concerned ? 



Got in my way ? Why, my good " voice/' they 

 were driven in my way. I had happened to 

 make a statement, than which, so far as I have 



