ladstone,
who is so much shocked that I attach no overwhelming weight to the
assertions contained in the synoptic Gospels, even when all three
concur. These Gospels agree in stating, in the most express, and to
some extent verbally identical, terms, that the devils entered the
pigs at their own request,[112] and the third Gospel (viii. 31) tells
us what the motive of the demons was in asking the singular boon:
"They intreated him that he would not command them to depart into the
abyss." From this, it would seem that the devils thought to exchange
the heavy punishment of transportation to the abyss for the lighter
penalty of imprisonment in swine. And some commentators, more
ingenious than respectful to the supposed chief actor in this
extraordinary fable, have dwelt, with satisfaction, upon the very
unpleasant quarter of an hour which the evil spirits must have had,
when the headlong rush of their maddened tenements convinced them how
completely they were taken in. In the whole story, there is not one
solitary hint that the destruction of the pigs was intended as a
punishment of their owners, or of the swineherds. On the contrary, the
concurrent testimony of the three narratives is to the effect that
the catastrophe was the consequence of diabolic suggestion. And,
indeed, no source could be more appropriate for an act of such
manifest injustice and illegality.

I can but marvel that modern defenders of the faith should not be glad
of any reasonable excuse for getting rid of a story which, if it had
been invented by Voltaire, would have justly let loose floods of
orthodox indignation.

* * * * *

Thus, the hypothesis, to which Mr. Gladstone so fondly clings, finds
no support in the provisions of the "Law of Moses" as that law is
defined in the Pentateuch; while it is wholly inconsistent with the
concurrent testimony of the synoptic Gospels, to which Mr. Gladstone
attaches so much weight. In my judgment, it is directly contrary to
everything which profane history tells us about the constitution and
the population of the city of Gadara; and it commits those who accept
it to a story which, if it were true, would implicate the founder of
Christianity in an illegal and inequitable act.

Such being the case, I consider myself excused from following Mr.
Gladstone through all the meanderings of his late attempt to extricate
himself from the maze of historical and exegetical difficulties in
wh