t simply in justice to those agnostics who may
attach greater value that I do to any sort of pneumatological
speculations; and not because I wish to escape the responsibility of
declaring that, whether Jesus sanctioned the demonological part of
Christianity or not, I unhesitatingly reject it. The first answer, on
the other hand, opens up the whole question of the claim of the
biblical and other sources, from which hypotheses concerning the
spiritual world are derived, to be regarded as unimpeachable
historical evidence as to matters of fact.

Now, in respect of the trustworthiness of the Gospel narratives, I was
anxious to get rid of the common assumption that the determination of
the authorship and of the dates of these works is a matter of
fundamental importance. That assumption is based upon the notion that
what contemporary witnesses say must be true, or, at least, has always
a _prima facie_ claim to be so regarded; so that if the writers of any
of the Gospels were contemporaries of the events (and still more if
they were in the position of eye-witnesses) the miracles they narrate
must be historically true, and, consequently, the demonology which
they involve must be accepted. But the story of the "Translation of
the blessed martyrs Marcellinus and Petrus," and the other
considerations (to which endless additions might have been made from
the Fathers and the mediaeval writers) set forth in a preceding essay,
yield, in my judgment, satisfactory proof that, where the miraculous
is concerned, neither considerable intellectual ability, nor undoubted
honesty, nor knowledge of the world, nor proved faithfulness as civil
historians, nor profound piety, on the part of eye-witnesses and
contemporaries, affords any guarantee of the objective truth of their
statements, when we know that a firm belief in the miraculous was
ingrained in their minds, and was the pre-supposition of their
observations and reasonings.

Therefore, although it be, as I believe, demonstrable that we have no
real knowledge of the authorship, or of the date of composition of the
Gospels, as they have come down to us, and that nothing better than
more or less probable guesses can be arrived at on that subject, I
have not cared to expend any space on the question. It will be
admitted, I suppose; that the authors of the works attributed to
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, whoever they may be, are personages
whose capacity and judgment in the narration of or