unts we
possess of our Lord's teaching on these subjects." It will be obvious
that M. Renan's statements amount to an adverse answer--to a
"practical" denial that any great reliance can be placed on these
accounts. He does not believe that Matthew, the apostle, wrote the
first Gospel; he does not profess to know who is responsible for the
collection of "logia," or how many of them are authentic; though he
calls the second Gospel the most historical, he points out that it is
written with credulity, and may have been interpolated and retouched;
and, as to the author, "quel qu'il soit," of the third Gospel, who is
to "rely on the accounts" of a writer, who deserves the cavalier
treatment which "Luke" meets with at M. Renan's hands.

I repeat what I have already more than once said, that the question of
the age and the authorship of the Gospels has not, in my judgment, the
importance which is so commonly assigned to it; for the simple reason
that the reports, even of eye-witnesses, would not suffice to justify
belief in a large and essential part of their contents; on the
contrary, these reports would discredit the witnesses. The Gadarene
miracle, for example, is so extremely improbable, that the fact of its
being reported by three, even independent, authorities could not
justify belief in it, unless we had the clearest evidence as to their
capacity as observers and as interpreters of their observations. But
it is evident that the three authorities are not independent; that
they have simply adopted a legend, of which there were two versions;
and instead of their proving its truth, it suggests their
superstitious credulity: so that if "Matthew," "Mark," and "Luke" are
really responsible for the Gospels, it is not the better for the
Gadarene story, but the worse for them.

A wonderful amount of controversial capital has been made out of my
assertion in the note to which I have referred, as an _obiter dictum_
of no consequence to my argument, that if Renan's work[99] were
non-extant, the main results of biblical criticism, as set forth in
the works of Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar, for example, would not
be sensibly affected. I thought I had explained it satisfactorily
already, but it seems that my explanation has only exhibited still
more of my native perversity, so I ask for one more chance.

In the course of the historical development of any branch of science,
what is universally observed is this: that the men who ma