spirits: and there is
abundant ground for believing that they may be produced in other ways.
Therefore, the utmost that can be reasonably asked for, on the evidence
as it stands, is suspension of judgment. And, on the necessity for even
that suspension, reasonable men may differ, according to their views of
probability.]

[Footnote 37: Yet I must somehow have laid hold of the pith of the
matter, for, many years afterwards, when Dean Mansel's Bampton Lectures
were published, it seemed to me I already knew all that this eminently
agnostic thinker had to tell me.]

[Footnote 38: _Kritik der reinen Vernunft._ Edit. Hartenstein p. 256.]

[Footnote 39: _Report of the Church Congress_, Manchester, 1888, p.
252.]

[Footnote 40: I suppose this is what Dr. Wace is thinking about when he
says that I allege that there "is no visible escape" from the
supposition of an _Ur-Marcus_ (p. 367). That a "theologian of repute
should confound an indisputable fact with one of the modes of explaining
that fact is not so singular as those who are unaccustomed to the ways
of theologians might imagine.]

[Footnote 41: Any examiner whose duty it has been to examine into a case
of "copying" will be particularly well prepared to appreciate the force
of the case stated in that most excellent little book, _The Common
Tradition of the Synoptic Gospels,_ by Dr. Abbott and Mr. Rushbrooke
(Macmillan, 1884). To those who have not passed through such painful
experiences I may recommend the brief discussion of the genuineness of
the "Casket Letters" in my friend Mr. Skelton's interesting book,
_Maitland of Lethington_. The second edition of Holtzmann's _Lehrbuch_,
published in 1886, gives a remarkably fair and full account of the
present results of criticism. At p. 366 he writes that the present
burning question is whether the "relatively primitive narrative and the
root of the other synoptic texts is contained in Matthew or in Mark. It
is only on this point that properly-informed (_sachkundige_) critics
differ," and he decides in favour of Mark.]

[Footnote 42: Holtzmann (_Die synoptischen Evangelien_ 1863, p. 75),
following Ewald, argues that the "Source A" (= the threefold tradition,
more or less) contained something that answered to the "Sermon on the
Plain" immediately after the words of our present "Mark," "And he cometh
into a house" (iii 19). But what conceivable motive could "Mark" have
for omitting it? Holtzmann has no doubt, however, that t