his character and a declaration that
he was "no better than a law-breaker, and an evil-doer." At any rate,
so far as I can see, this is what Mr. Gladstone wished to be believed
when he wrote the following passage:--

I must, however, in passing, make the confession that I did
not state with accuracy, as I ought to have done, the
precise form of the accusation. I treated it as an
imputation on the action of our Lord; he replies that it is
only an imputation on the narrative of three evangelists
respecting Him. The difference, from his point of view, is
probably material, and I therefore regret that I overlooked
it.[107]

Considering the gravity of the error which is here admitted, the
fashion of the withdrawal appears more singular than admirable. From
my "point of view"--not from Mr. Gladstone's apparently--the little
discrepancy between the facts and Mr. Gladstone's carefully offensive
travesty of them is "probably" (only "probably") material. However, as
Mr. Gladstone concludes with an official expression of regret for his
error, it is my business to return an equally official expression of
gratitude for the attenuated reparation with which I am favoured.

Having cleared this specimen of Mr. Gladstone's controversial method
out of the way, I may proceed to the next assault, that on a passage
in an article on Agnosticism ("Nineteenth Century," February 1889),
published two years ago. I there said, in referring to the Gadarene
story, "Everything I know of law and justice convinces me that the
wanton destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of
evil example." On this, Mr. Gladstone, continuing his candid and
urbane observations, remarks ("Impregnable Rock," p. 273) that,
"Exercising his rapid judgment on the text," and "not inquiring what
anybody else had known or said about it," I had missed a point in
support of that "accusation against our Lord" which he has now been
constrained to admit I never made.

The "point" in question is that "Gadara was a city of Greeks rather
than of Jews, from whence it might be inferred that to keep swine was
innocent and lawful." I conceive that I have abundantly proved that
Gadara answered exactly to the description here given of it; and I
shall show, by and by, that Mr. Gladstone has used language which, to
my mind, involves the admission that the authorities of the city were
not Jews. But I have also taken a good deal of pain