azarenus und die erste
christliche Zeit_ (1882). Whether we agree with the
conclusions of these writers or not, the method of
critical investigation which, they adopt is
unimpeachable.

[58] Notwithstanding the hard words shot at me from behind
the hedge of anonymity by a writer in a recent number
of the _Quarterly Review_, I repeat, without the
slightest fear of refutation, that the four Gospels, as
they have come to us, are the work of unknown writers.

[59] Their arguments, in the long run, are always reducible
to one form. Otherwise trustworthy witnesses affirm
that such and such events took place. These events are
inexplicable, except the agency of "spirits" is
admitted. Therefore "spirits" were the cause of the
phenomena.

And the heads of the reply are always the same.
Remember Goethe's aphorism: "Alles factische ist schon
Theorie." Trustworthy witnesses are constantly
deceived, or deceive themselves, in their
interpretation of sensible phenomena. No one can prove
that the sensible phenomena, in these cases, could be
caused only by the agency of 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.

[60] 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.

[61] _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_. Edit. Hartenstein, p. 256.

[62] _Report of the Church Congress_, Manchester, 1888, p. 252.

[63] _Fortnightly Review_, Jan. 1889.

VIII: AGNOSTICISM: A REJOINDER

[1889]

Those who passed from Dr. Wace's article in the last number of the
"Nineteenth Century" to the anticipatory confutation of it which
followed in "The New Reformation," must have enjoyed the pleasure of a
dramatic surprise--just as when the fifth act of a new play proves
unexp