THE CONTROVERSIALIST 217 



Turning briefly to Mr. Gladstone's intervention in 

 the controversy, his chief concern was about Hux- 

 ley's charge against Jesus as wantonly destroying other 

 people's property. He was sceptical as to the pigs 

 numbering two thousand, and in a foot-note to the 

 concluding chapter of the Impregnable Rock of Holy 

 Scripture suggests that "so large a number may be 

 due to the error of a copyist, or very possibly a 

 marginal gloss, which afterwards crept into the text." 

 But as the existence of demons was accepted by Mr. 

 Gladstone as a matter of course, the statistics as to 

 the pigs are of minor importance, except as they may 

 affect the question of an inspired text. What he 

 sought to prove was that the keepers of the swine 

 were Jews, and that therefore they were justly pun- 

 ished for their breach of the Mosaic law. Josephus 

 is quoted as evidence. But Huxley showed con- 

 clusively that Mr. Gladstone had misread Josephus, 

 and he established beyond question that Gadara was a 

 Gentile, and not a Jewish city. All in vain. Mr. 

 Gladstone stuck to his statements, and as edition after 

 edition of the Impregnable Rock was issued without 

 modification, there can be little wonder that while in 

 publicly criticising these methods Huxley called them 

 " peculiar," in private correspondence he spoke of the 

 man who practised them as a " copious shuffler," 1 



1 II. 122. In a letter to Colonel Ingersoll, written in March, 



