Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/519

Rh Scriptures, it is not so considerable. That Christ, who is not only the object of imitation, love, and worship, but the very food and life of Christians, is the Christ of the Gospels. In a sense relative yet not untrue, they may almost be called "the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person." If the Gospels are put on their trial as literary documents, and if a legitimate though mordant criticism can successfully impugn any portion of them, we can not complain, and must take our chance. But when their contents are summarily condemned and rejected on a charge of intrinsic unworthiness and immorality, upon no higher authority than that of the private judgment of this or that individual, then, and so long as we are dealing with a portion of the attested portraiture, an arraignment of them becomes, at least in my view, more hard to distinguish from an arraignment of Him whom they portray. Told, and told in detail, by all the three Synoptics, the miracle of the demoniac and the swine does not well bear severance from the staple of the biography. Nor, indeed, is it so severed by Mr. Huxley, who frankly treats it as involving at large the authority of the Synoptic Gospels. In ' itself, it is undoubtedly of the utmost significance, on account of the questions which it raises. One of these is the large subject of demoniacal possession, on which I do not presume to enter. Another is whether our Saviour in answering the prayer of the evil spirits by "saying unto them, Go," became a co-operator in the destruction of the swine. This has been contested, but I pass by the contest, and for argument's sake at least admit the affirmative. Then there remains the further question; whether the beneficent ministry of our Lord on earth included in this instance the infliction of heavy injury upon certain individuals, the owners, or keepers and owners, of the swine, by the destruction of their property lawfully and innocently held?

Mr. Huxley observes that the Evangelists do not betray any consciousness of the moral and legal difficulties involved in the question. But if the Evangelists believed that our Lord was dealing in this case with Hebrews, or with persons bound by the law of Moses, then for them, believers in the Messiah, there were no legal or moral difficulties at all.

There are, indeed, those who have been content to rest the case on the absolute right of the Deity to deal at will with the property of the creatures whom he has made. "Of thine own have we given Thee!" Commentators are far from uniform. But, as it appears to me, the question does not come before us quite in this shape. Apart from any such contention, it is no trivial