7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



he says, " As Reuss appears to me to be one of the most learned, 

 acute, and fair-minded of those whose works I have studied, I 

 have made most use of the commentary and dissertations in his 

 splendid French edition of the Bible." What, then, is the opin- 

 ion of the critic for whom Prof. Huxley has this regard ? In the 

 volume of his work which treats of the first three Gospels, Reuss 

 says at page 191-192, " If anywhere the tradition which has pre- 

 served to us the reminiscences of the life of Jesus upon earth car- 

 ries with it certainty and the evidence of its fidelity, it is here " ; 

 and again : " In short, it must be acknowledged that the redactor, 

 in thus concentrating the substance of the moral teaching of the 

 Lord, has rendered a real service to the religious study of this 

 portion of the tradition, and the reserves which historical criti- 

 cism has a right to make with respect to the form will in no way 

 diminish this advantage." It will be observed that Prof. Reuss 

 thinks, as many good critics have thought, that the Sermon on 

 the Mount combines various distinct utterances of our Lord, but 

 he none the less recognizes that it embodies an unquestionable 

 account of the substance of our Lord's teaching. 



But it is surely superfluous to argue either this particular 

 point, or the main conclusion which I have founded on it. Can 

 there be any doubt whatever, in the mind of any reasonable man, 

 that Jesus Christ had beliefs respecting God which an agnostic 

 alleges there is no sufficient ground for ? We know something at 

 all events of what his disciples taught ; we have authentic origi- 

 nal documents, unquestioned by any of Prof. Huxley's authori- 

 ties, as to what St. Paul taught and believed, and of what he 

 taught and believed respecting his Master's teaching; and the 

 central point of this teaching is a direct assertion of knowledge 

 and revelation as against the very agnosticism from which Prof. 

 Huxley manufactured that designation. " As I passed by," said 

 St. Paul at Athens, "I found an altar with this inscription: 

 ' To the unknown God.' Whom therefore ye ignorantly — or in 

 agnosticism — worship, Him I declare unto you." An agnostic 

 withholds his assent from this primary article of the Chris- 

 tian creed ; and though Prof. Huxley, in spite of the lack of in- 

 formation he alleges respecting early Christian teaching, knows 

 enough on the subject to have a firm belief " that the Nazarenes, 

 say of the year 40," headed by James, would have stoned any one 

 who propounded the Nicene Creed to them, he will hardly con- 

 tend that they denied that article, or doubted that Jesus Christ 

 believed it. Let us again listen to the authority to whom Prof. 

 Huxley himself refers. Reuss says at page 4 of the work already 

 quoted : 



Historical literature in the primitive church attaches itself in the most imme- 

 diate manner to the reminiscences collected by the apostles and their friends, 



