AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 473 



of certain declarations as to the state of biblical criticism was 

 needless ; or that my anxiety as to the sense of the word " prac- 

 tical" was superfluous, let him compare the statement that M. 

 Renan has made a "practical surrender of the adverse case" with 

 the facts just set forth. For what is the adverse case ? The ques- 

 tion, as Dr. Wace puts it, is, " It may be asked how far can we rely 

 on the accounts we possess of our Lord's teaching on these sub- 

 jects." It will be obvious, that M. Renan's statements amount to 

 an adverse answer — to a " practical " denial that any great reliance 

 can be placed on these accounts. He does not believe that Mat- 

 thew, the apostle, wrote the first Gospel ; he does not profess to 

 know who is responsible for the collection of " logia," or how many 

 of them are authentic ; though he calls the second Gospel the most 

 historical, he points out that it is written with credulity, and may 

 have been interpolated and retouched ; and, as to the author "quel 

 qu'il soit" of the third Gospel, who is to "rely on the accounts" of 

 a writer who deserves the cavalier treatment which " Luke " meets 

 with at M. Renan's hands ? 



I repeat what I have already more than once said, that the 

 question of the age and the authorship of the Gospels has not, in 

 my judgment, the importance which is so commonly assigned to 

 it ; for the simple reason that the reports, even of eye-witnesses, 

 would not suffice to justify belief in a large and essential part of 

 their contents ; on the contrary, these reports would discredit the 

 witnesses. The Gadarene miracle, for example, is so extremely 

 improbable, that the fact of its being reported by three, even inde- 

 pendent, authorities could not justify belief in it unless we had 

 the clearest evidence as to their capacity as observers and as inter- 

 preters of their observations. But it is evident that the three 

 authorities are not independent ; that they have simply adopted 

 a legend, of which there were two versions ; and instead of their 

 proving its truth, it suggests their superstitious credulity ; so that, 

 if " Matthew," " Mark," and " Luke " are really responsible for the 

 Gospels, it is not the better for the Gadarene story, but the worse 

 for them. 



A wonderful amount of controversial capital has been made 

 out of my assertion in the note to which I have referred, as an 

 obiter dictum of no consequence to my argument, that, if Renan's 

 work * were non-extant, the main results of biblical criticism as 

 set forth in the works of Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar, for 

 example, would not be sensibly affected. I thought I had ex- 

 plained it satisfactorily already, but it seems that my explanation 



I has only exhibited still more of my native perversity, so I ask for 



1 one more chance. 



* I trust it may not be supposed that I undervalue M. Renan's labors or intended to 

 speak slightingly of them. 



