220 AGNOSTICISM VII 



relations to it becomes totally different from what 

 it would be on the contrary hypothesis. 



The theory of life of an average mediaeval 

 Christian was as different from that of an average 

 nineteenth-century Englishman as that of a West 

 African negro is now, in these respects. The 

 modern world is slowly, but surely, shaking off 

 these and other monstrous survivals of savage 

 delusions ; and, whatever happens, it will not re- 

 turn to that wallowing in the mire. Until the 

 contrary is proved, I venture to doubt whether, at 

 this present moment, any Protestant theologian, 

 who has a reputation to lose, will say that he 

 believes the Gadarene story. 



The choice then lies between discrediting those 

 who compiled the Gospel biographies and dis- 

 believing the Master, whom they, simple souls, 

 thought to honour by preserving such traditions 

 of the exercise of his authority over Satan's 

 invisible world. This is the dilemma. No deep 

 scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the 

 revised version (on which it is to be supposed 

 all that mere scholarship can do has been done), 

 with the application thereto of the commonest 

 canons of common sense, is needful to enable us 

 to make a choice between its alternatives. It is 

 hardly doubtful that the story, as told in the first 

 Gospel, is merely a version of that told in the 

 second and third. Nevertheless, the discrepancies 

 are serious and irreconcilable ; and, on this ground 



