CHRISTIANITY AND AGNOSTICISM. 341 



respect to even the elementary truths of religion without reject- 

 ing the example and authority of Jesus Christ ; and Prof. Hux- 

 ley, though he still endeavors to avoid facing the fact, has estab- 

 lished it by a roundabout method of his own. 



I suppose I must also reply to Prof. Huxley's further challenge 

 respecting my belief in the story of the Gadarene swine, though 

 the difficulty of which he makes so much seems to me too trivial 

 to deserve serious notice. He says " there are two stories, one in 

 ' Mark ' and ' Luke,' and the other in ' Matthew.' In the former 

 there is one possessed man, in the latter there are two," and he 

 asks me which I believe ? My answer is that I believe both, and 

 that the supposition of there being any inconsistency between 

 them can only arise on that mechanical view of inspiration from 

 which Prof. Huxley seems unable to shake himself free. Cer- 

 tainly " the most unabashed of reconcilers can not well say that 

 one man is the same as two, or two as one " ; but no one need be 

 abashed to say that the greater number includes the less, and that 

 if two men met our Lord, one certainly did. If I go into the oper- 

 ating theatre of King's College Hospital, and see an eminent sur- 

 geon perform a new or rare operation on one or two patients, and 

 if I tell a friend afterward that I saw the surgeon perform such 

 and such an operation on a patient, will he feel in any perplexity 

 if he meets another spectator half an hour afterward who says he 

 saw the operation performed on two patients ? All that I should 

 have been thinking of was the nature of the operation, which is 

 as well described by reference to one patient as to half a dozen ; 

 and similarly St. Mark and St. Luke may have thought that the 

 only important point was the nature of the miracle itself, and not 

 the number of possessed men who were the subjects of it. It is 

 quite unnecessary, therefore, for me to consider all the elaborate 

 dilemmas in which Prof. Huxley would entangle me respecting 

 the relative authority of the first three Gospels. As two includes 

 one, and as both witnesses are in my judgment equally to be 

 trusted, I adopt the supposition which includes the statements of 

 both. It is a pure assumption that inspiration requires verbal 

 accuracy in the reporting of every detail, and an assumption quite 

 inconsistent with our usual tests of truth. Just as no miracle has 

 saved the texts of the Scriptures from corruption in secondary 

 points, so no miracle has been wrought to exclude the ordinary 

 variations of truthful reporters in the Gospel narratives. But a 

 miracle, in my belief, has been wrought in inspiring four men to 

 give, within the compass of their brief narratives, such a picture 

 of the life and work and teaching, of the death and resurrection, 

 of the Son of man as to illuminate all human existence for the 

 future, and to enable men " to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and 

 believing to have life through his name." 



