I reiterate my total
disbelief in the whole Gadarene story" (p. 178).

I am afraid, therefore, that Mr. Gladstone must have been exceedingly
angry when he committed himself to such a statement as follows:

So, then, after eighteen centuries of worship offered to our
Lord by the most cultivated, the most developed, and the
most progressive portion of the human race, it has been
reserved to a scientific inquirer to discover that He was no
better than a law-breaker and an evil-doer.... How, in such
a matter, came the honours of originality to be reserved to
our time and to Professor Huxley? (Pp. 269, 270.)

Truly, the hatchet is hardly a weapon of precision, but would seem to
have rather more the character of the boomerang, which returns to
damage the reckless thrower. Doubtless such incidents are somewhat
ludicrous. But they have a very serious side; and, if I rated the
opinion of those who blindly follow Mr. Gladstone's leading, but not
light, in these matters, much higher than the great Duke of
Wellington's famous standard of minimum value, I think I might fairly
beg them to reflect upon the general bearings of this particular
example of his controversial method. I imagine it can hardly commend
itself to their cool judgment.

After this tragi-comical ending to what an old historian calls a
"robustious and rough coming on"; and after some praises of the
provisions of the Mosaic law in the matter of not eating pork--in
which, as pork disagrees with me and for some other reasons, I am much
disposed to concur, though I do not see what they have to do with the
matter in hand--comes the serious onslaught.

Mr. Huxley, exercising his rapid judgment on the text, does
not appear to have encumbered himself with the labour of
inquiring what anybody else had known or said about it. He
has thus missed a point which might have been set up in
support of his accusation against our Lord. (P. 273.)

Unhappily for my conduct, I have been much exercised in controversy
during the past thirty years; and the only compensation for the loss
of time and the trials of temper which it has inflicted upon me, is
that I have come to regard it as a branch of the fine arts, and to
take an impartial and aesthetic interest in the way in which it is
conducted, even by those whose efforts are directed against myself.
Now, from the purely artistic point of view (which, as we are all
being t