hysical and mental
disorders are caused by demons, Gregory of Tours and his contemporaries
rightly considered that relics and exorcists were more useful than
doctors; the gravest questions arise as to the legal and moral
responsibilities of persons inspired by demoniacal impulses; and our
whole conception of the universe and of our relations to it becomes
totally different from what it would be on the contrary hypothesis.

The theory of life of an average mediaeval Christian was as different
from that of an average nineteenth-century Englishman as that of a West
African negro is now, in these respects. The modern world is slowly, but
surely, shaking off these and other monstrous survivals of savage
delusions; and, whatever happens, it will not return to that wallowing
in the mire. Until the contrary is proved, I venture to doubt whether,
at this present moment, any Protestant theologian, who has a reputation
to lose, will say that he believes the Gadarene story.

The choice then lies between discrediting those who compiled the Gospel
biographies and disbelieving the Master, whom they, simple souls,
thought to honour by preserving such traditions of the exercise of his
authority over Satan's invisible world. This is the dilemma. No deep
scholarship, nothing but a knowledge of the revised version (on which it
is to be supposed all that mere scholarship can do has been done), with
the application thereto of the commonest canons of common sense, is
needful to enable us to make a choice between its alternatives. It is
hardly doubtful that the story, as told in the first Gospel, is merely a
version of that told in the second and third. Nevertheless, the
discrepancies are serious and irreconcilable; and, on this ground alone,
a suspension of judgment at the least, is called for. But there is a
great deal more to be said. From the dawn of scientific biblical
criticism until the present day, the evidence against the long-cherished
notion that the three synoptic Gospels are the works of three
independent authors, each prompted by Divine inspiration, has steadily
accumulated, until at the present time there is no visible escape from
the conclusion that each of the three is a compilation consisting of a
groundwork common to all three--the threefold tradition; and of a
superstructure, consisting, firstly, of matter common to it with one of
the others, and, secondly, of matter special to each. The use of the
terms "groundwork" and "