CHRISTIANITY AND AGNOSTICISM. 329 



my turn content myself with pointing out that, if my quotations 

 from Renan and Reuss had been incorrect, he could not only have 

 said so, but could have produced the correct quotations. But he 

 does not deny, as of course he can not, that Reuss, for example, 

 really states, as the mature result of his investigations, what I 

 quoted from him respecting St. Luke's Gospel, namely, that it 

 was written by St. Luke and has reached us in its primitive form, 

 and, further, that St. Luke used a book written by St. Mark, the 

 disciple of St. Peter, and that this book in all probability com- 

 prised in its primitive form what we read in the present day from 

 Mark i, 21, to xiii, 37. These are the results of modern criticism 

 as stated by a biblical critic in whom Prof. Huxley expressed spe- 

 cial confidence. It was not therefore my statements of the results 

 of biblical criticism with which Prof. Huxley was confronted, but 

 Reuss's statements ; and, unless he can show that my quotation 

 was a false one, he ought to have had the candor to acknowledge 

 that Reuss, at least, is on these vital points dead against him. 

 Instead of any such frank admission, he endeavors to explain 

 away the force of his reference to Reuss. It may, he says, be well 

 for him 



to observe that approbation of the mariner in which a great biblical scholar — for 

 instance, Reuss — does his work does not commit me to the adoption of all, or in- 

 deed of any, of his views ; and, further, that the disagreements of a series of inves- 

 tigators do not in any way interfere with the fact that each of them has made 

 important contributions to the body of truth ultimately established. 



But I beg to observe that Prof. Huxley did not appeal to 

 Reuss's methods, but to Reuss's results. He said that no retracta- 

 tion by M. Renan would sensibly affect " the main results of bibli- 

 cal criticism as they are set forth in the works of Strauss, Baur, 

 Reuss, and Volkmar." I have given him the results as set forth 

 by Reuss in Reuss's own words, and all he has to offer in reply is 

 an ipse dixit in a foot-note and an evasion in the text of his 

 article. 



But, as I said, this general discussion respecting the authen- 

 ticity and credibility of the Gospels was an evasion of my argu- 

 ment, which rested upon the specific testimony of the Sermon on 

 the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, and the narrative of the Passion ; 

 and, accordingly, in his present rejoinder Prof. Huxley, with 

 much protestation that he made no evasion, addressed himself to 

 these three points. And what is his answer ? I feel obliged to 

 characterize it as another evasion, and in one particular an eva- 

 sion of a flagrant kind. The main point of his argument is that 

 1 from various circumstances, which I will presently notice more 

 particularly, there is much reason to doubt whether the Sermon 

 on the Mount was ever actually delivered in the form in which it 



