AGNOSTICISM. 75 



bad evidence, it does not follow that it is proper to act on such 

 evidence when the pressure is absent." Certainly not ; but it is 

 strange ignorance of human nature for Prof. Huxley to imagine 

 that there is no " pressure " in this matter. It was a voice which 

 understood the human heart better which said, " Come unto me, 

 all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you 

 rest " ; and the attraction of that voice outweighs many a crit- 

 ical difficulty under the pressure of the burdens and the sins 

 of life. 



Prof. Huxley, indeed, admits, in one sentence of his article, the 

 force of this influence on individuals. 



If (he says) a man can find a friend, the hypostasis of all his hopes, the mirror 

 of his ethical ideal, in the pages of any, or of all, of the Gospels, let him live by 

 faith in that ideal. Who shall, or can, forbid him? But let him not delude him- 

 self with the notion that his faith is evidence of the objective reality of that in 

 which he trusts. Such evidence is to be obtained only by the use of the methods 

 of science, as applied to history and to literature, and it amounts at present to 

 very little. 



"Well, a single man's belief in an ideal may be very little evi- 

 dence of its objective reality. But the conviction of millions of 

 men, generation after generation, of the veracity of the four evan- 

 gelical witnesses, and of the human and divine reality of the fig- 

 ure they describe, has at least something of the weight of the ver- 

 dict of a jury. Securus judicat orbis terrarum. Practically the 

 figure of Christ lives. The Gospels have created it ; and it sub- 

 sists as a personal fact in life, alike among believers and unbeliev- 

 ers. . Prof. Huxley himself, in spite of all his skepticism, appears 

 to have his own type of this character. The apologue of the 

 woman taken in adultery might, he says, " if internal evidence 

 were an infallible guide, well be affirmed to be a typical example 

 of the teachings of Jesus." Internal evidence may not be an infal- 

 lible guide ; but it certainly carries great weight, and no one has 

 relied more upon it in these questions than the critics whom Prof. 

 Huxley quotes. 



But as I should be sorry to imitate Prof. Huxley, on so mo- 

 mentous a subject, by evading the arguments and facts he alleges, 

 I will consider the question of external evidence on which he 

 dwells. I must repeat that the argument of my paper is independ- 

 ent of this controversy. The fact that our Lord taught and be- 

 lieved what agnostics ignore is not dependent on the criticism of 

 the four Gospels. In addition to the general evidence to which I 

 have alluded, there is a further consideration which Prof. Huxley 

 feels it necessary to mention, but which he evades by an extraor- 

 dinary inconsequence. He alleges that the story of the Gadarene 

 swine involves fabulous matter, and that this discredits the trust- 

 worthiness of the whole Gospel record. But he says : 



