ind this problem, there lies
another--how far do these ancient records give a sure foundation to
the prodigious fabric of Christian dogma, which has been built upon
them by the continuous labours of speculative theologians, during
eighteen centuries?

I submit that there are few questions before the men of the rising
generation, on the answer to which the future hangs more fatally, than
this. We are at the parting of the ways. Whether the twentieth century
shall see a recrudescence of the superstitions of mediaeval papistry,
or whether it shall witness the severance of the living body of the
ethical ideal of prophetic Israel from the carcase, foul with savage
superstitions and cankered with false philosophy, to which the
theologians have bound it, turns upon their final judgment of the
Gadarene tale.

The gravity of the problems ultimately involved in the discussion of
the legend of Gadara will, I hope, excuse a persistence in returning
to the subject, to which I should not have been moved by merely
personal considerations.

With respect to the diluvial invective which overflowed thirty-three
pages of the "Nineteenth Century" last January, I doubt not that it
has a catastrophic importance in the estimation of its author. I, on
the other hand, may be permitted to regard it as a mere spate; noisy
and threatening while it lasted, but forgotten almost as soon as it
was over. Without my help, it will be judged by every instructed and
clear-headed reader; and that is fortunate, because, were aid
necessary, I have cogent reasons for withholding it.

In an article characterised by the same qualities of thought and
diction, entitled "A Great Lesson," which appeared in the "Nineteenth
Century" for September 1887, the Duke of Argyll, firstly, charged the
whole body of men of science, interested in the question, with having
conspired to ignore certain criticisms of Mr. Darwin's theory of the
origin of coral reefs; and, secondly, he asserted that some person
unnamed had "actually induced" Mr. John Murray to delay the
publication of his views on that subject "for two years."

It was easy for me and for others to prove that the first statement
was not only, to use the Duke of Argyll's favourite expression,
"contrary to fact," but that it was without any foundation whatever.
The second statement rested on the Duke of Argyll's personal
authority. All I could do was to demand the production of the evidence
for it. Up to the presen