Now, the question as to what Jesus really said and did is strictly a scientific problem, which is capable of solution by no other methods than those practised by the historian and the literary critic.  It is a problem of immense difficulty, which has occupied some of the best heads in Europe for the last century; and it is only of late years that their investigations have begun to converge towards one conclusion.[53]

That kind of faith which Dr. Wace describes and lauds is of no use here.  Indeed, he himself takes pains to destroy its evidential value.

“What made the Mahommedan world?  Trust and faith in the declarations and assurances of Mahommed.  And what made the Christian world?  Trust and faith in the declarations and assurances of Jesus Christ and His Apostles” (l.c. p. 253).  The triumphant tone of this imaginary catechism leads me to suspect that its author has hardly appreciated its full import.  Presumably, Dr. Wace regards Mahommed as an unbeliever, or, to use the term which he prefers, infidel; and considers that his assurances have given rise to a vast delusion which has led, and is leading, millions of men straight to everlasting punishment.  And this being so, the “Trust and faith” which have “made the Mahommedan world,” in just the same sense as they have “made the Christian world,” must be trust and faith in falsehoods.  No man who has studied history, or even attended to the occurrences of everyday life, can doubt the enormous practical value of trust and faith; but as little will he be inclined to deny that this practical value has not the least relation to the reality of the objects of that trust and faith.  In examples of patient constancy of faith and of unswerving trust, the “Acta Martyrum” do not excel the annals of Babism.[54]

* * * * *

The discussion upon which we have now entered goes so thoroughly to the root of the whole matter; the question of the day is so completely, as the author of “Robert Elsmere” says, the value of testimony, that I shall offer no apology for following it out somewhat in detail; and, by way of giving substance to the argument, I shall base what I have to say upon a case, the consideration of which lies strictly within the province of natural science, and of that particular part of it known as the physiology and pathology of the nervous system.

I find, in the second Gospel (chap. v.), a statement, to all appearance intended to have the same evidential value as any other contained in that history.  It is the well-known story of the devils who were cast out of a man, and ordered, or permitted, to enter into a herd of swine, to the great loss and damage of the innocent Gerasene, or Gadarene, pig owners.  There can be no doubt that the narrator intends to convey to his readers his own conviction that this casting out and entering in were effected by the agency of Jesus of Nazareth; that, by speech and action, Jesus enforced this conviction; nor does any inkling of the legal and moral difficulties of the case manifest itself.