us is extremely uncertain; so that what
ecclesiastics are pleased to call a denial of them may be nothing of
the kind. And, in the second place, if Jesus taught the demonological
system involved in the Gadarene story--if a belief in that system
formed a part of the spiritual convictions in which he lived and
died--then I, for my part, unhesitatingly refuse belief in that
teaching, and deny the reality of those spiritual convictions. And I
go further and add, that, exactly in so far as it can be proved that
Jesus sanctioned the essentially pagan demonological theories current
among the Jews of his age, exactly in so far, for me, will his
authority in any matter touching the spiritual world be weakened.

With respect to the first half of my answer, I have pointed out that
the Sermon on the Mount, as given in the first Gospel, is, in the
opinion of the best critics, a "mosaic work" of materials derived from
different sources, and I do not understand that this statement is
challenged. The only other Gospel--the third--which contains something
like it, makes, not only the discourse, but the circumstances under
which it was delivered, very different. Now, it is one thing to say
that there was something real at the bottom of the two discourses--which
is quite possible; and another to affirm that we have any right to
say what that something was, or to fix upon any particular phrase and
declare it to be a genuine utterance. Those who pursue theology as a
science, and bring to the study an adequate knowledge of the ways of
ancient historians, will find no difficulty in providing illustrations
of my meaning. I may supply one which has come within range of my own
limited vision.

In Josephus's "History of the Wars of the Jews" (chap, xix.), that
writer reports a speech which he says Herod made at the opening of a
war with the Arabians. It is in the first person, and would naturally
be supposed by the reader to be intended for a true version of what
Herod said. In the "Antiquities," written some seventeen years later,
the same writer gives another report, also in the first person, of
Herod's speech on the same occasion. This second oration is twice as
long as the first and, though the general tenor of the two speeches is
pretty much the same, there is hardly any verbal identity, and a good
deal of matter is introduced into the one, which is absent from the
other. Josephus prides himself on his accuracy; people whose fathers
might