(by no means for all) of our witnesses for the truth of demonology,
ancient and modern, I conceive their evidence on this particular
matter to be ridiculously insufficient to warrant their
conclusion.[59]

After what has been said I do not think that any sensible man, unless
he happen to be angry, will accuse me of "contradicting the Lord and
His Apostles" if I reiterate my total disbelief in the whole Gadarene
story. But, if that story is discredited, all the other stories of
demoniac possession fall under suspicion. And if the belief in demons
and demoniac possession, which forms the sombre background of the
whole picture of primitive Christianity, presented to us in the New
Testament, is shaken, what is to be said, in any case, of the
uncorroborated testimony of the Gospels with respect to "the unseen
world"?

I am not aware that I have been influenced by any more bias in regard
to the Gadarene story than I have been in dealing with other cases of
like kind the investigation of which has interested me. I was brought
up in the strictest school of evangelical orthodoxy; and when I was
old enough to think for myself, I started upon my journey of inquiry
with little doubt about the general truth of what I had been taught;
and with that feeling of the unpleasantness of being called an
"infidel" which, we are told, is so right and proper. Near my
journey's end, I find myself in a condition of something more than
mere doubt about these matters.

In the course of other inquiries, I have had to do with fossil remains
which looked quite plain at a distance, and became more and more
indistinct as I tried to define their outline by close inspection.
There was something there--something which, if I could win assurance
about it, might mark a new epoch in the history of the earth; but,
study as long as I might, certainty eluded my grasp. So had it been
with me in my efforts to define the grand figure of Jesus as it lies
in the primary strata of Christian literature. Is he the kindly,
peaceful Christ depicted in the Catacombs? Or is he the stern Judge
who frowns upon the altar of SS. Cosmas and Damianus? Or can he be
rightly represented by the bleeding ascetic, broken down by physical
pain, of too many mediaeval pictures? Are we to accept the Jesus of the
second, or the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, as the true Jesus? What did
he really say and do; and how much that is attributed to him, in
speech and action, is the embroidery of