they not, and would they not, have resorted to the use of force against this unarmed, as well as unauthorised intruder ? But what happens is that the swineherds fly; according to all the three Evangelists, they fly; to the city, according to St. Matthew and St. Mark,* which was the seat of authority; and they tell what had happened. Why, then, if this was a land of Gentile rule, and if the swineherds were Gentiles, why was not our Saviour, since His agency was recognised, either assailed by popular violence, or called regularly to account by the law of the land; by that "Hellenic Gadarene law," † with the supposed dominion of which Mr. Huxley pastures his imagination? Instead of this, without the slightest idea of an accusation against our Lord, the population, streaming forth, simply consult for their own temporal interests, and beseech Him to depart out of their coasts.

The supply of swine testifies indeed to the existence of a demand. It may probably testify also to the existence of a Gentile class or element in the country. The question, indeed, which relates to the use of pork as an article of diet has by no means that uniformity of colour, outside the Mosaic law, which Professor Huxley assigns to it. But it would be tedious by entering upon it to lengthen a paper already too long, for we may safely allow that among the Syrian Gentiles this diet may have been known, and may not have entailed any legal penalty.

Mr. Huxley concludes the argumentative portion of

*Matt. viii. 34; Mark v. 13.

+ Nineteenth Century, p. 976.

Matt. viii. 34; Mark v. 17; Luke viii, 37,

his article by insisting that the "party of Galilæans" * were foreigners in the Decapolis, and could have no title, as private individuals, even to vindicate the law. I will not argue the point, which is wholly immaterial to my purpose; and it may not be easy to draw with exactness the line up to which the private person may go of his own motion in supporting established law. I confine myself to the following propositions :

1. Both from antecedent likelihoods, and from history, there is the strongest reason to believe that the Mosaic law was the public law of Gadaris.

2. Even if it had been relaxed as public law (which it plainly had not), yet those traditionally bound to it would not have been released from the moral obligation of obedience, and all the particulars go to show that the keepers of the swine were thus bound.

3. In the enforcement of a law which bound the conscience, our Lord would have had an authority such as does not belong to the private individual.

4. That the Gadarenes should have deprecated any recurrence of this interference with unlawful gains, is no more wonderful than that the population of the maritime counties of Great Britain should, in the days of our protective tariff, have been favourable to smuggling, and should even have resented, as they did, the interference of conscientious clergymen whose duty it was to denounce the practice.

5. That they should have done no more than ask for our Saviour's departure, affords of itself the strongest presumption that the action in which He co operated, and which was certainly detrimental, was not illegal.

*Nineteenth Century, p. 978.

I submit these observations upon an historical subject, complicated by several difficulties, with all respect to those who differ from me. I do not deny that the population of Decapolis was in some sense a mixed population, partially resembling that of Samaria.* But to suppose the swineherds to have been punished by Christ for pursuing a calling which to them was an innocent one, is to run counter to every law of reasonable historic interpretation. I will not assume that I have even now exhausted the subject, though I have not knowingly omitted anything material. But Professor Huxley is so well pleased with his own contentions, that he thinks the occasion one suitable for pointing out the intellectual superiority to which he has been led up by scientific training. I believe that I have overthrown every one of these contentions: but I do not think the achievement such as would warrant my concluding by paying myself a compliment.

*Bell. Jud.' iii. 3, 2.

IX.

THE PLACE OF HERESY AND SCHISM IN THE MODERN CHRISTIAN CHURCH.*

1894.

IF Christ our Lord founded the Church as a visible and organised society, by a commission from Himself; if He did this in the most definite and pointed way by a charge, not to the mass of believers promiscuously, but to the Apostles, whom He had chosen, and whom in many significant ways He designated as His successors in carrying forward the great work of the Incarnation ; and, again, if this charge, far from being limited to the brief term of their personal careers upon earth, was expressly extended by a promise of His superintending presence with them (which could only mean with them and their successors) until the end of the world; if, finally, this Church was to be the great standing witness in the world for Him and for the recovery of lost mankind; it follows that a most serious question arose hereupon, which may be described in such terms as these. It relates to the condition of any who, acknowledging His authority, yet should rebel against the jurisdiction then solemnly constituted, should sever themselves, in

Reprinted from the Nineteenth Century.

doctrine or in communion, from His servants, and should presume in this way to impair their witness and to frustrate thereby His work, so far as in them lay.

This question did not escape the forethought of our Saviour, and it was dealt with by Him in the simplest and most decisive manner. "If he neglect to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican." With this stringent law the language of the Apostles coincides, and, most markedly perhaps among them all, the language of St. John, who was especially the Apostle of love. The work of heretics and schismatics was a work of the flesh, and, like other works of the flesh, it excluded from salvation. Thus, in the face of all hostile powers, and under the pressure of its hostility, the unity of the Church was maintained, and she patiently pursued her office through the gloom of this world to the glory of the next.

This I think is a fair account of heresy and schism, according to the view of our Lord and the Apostles. But now there have passed away well nigh two thousand years, and enormous changes have been brought about.

The Church, whose light in Apostolic days was still, so far as regarded the world at large, hidden under a bushel, by degrees became mistress of the social and moral forces which determined the course of human society, and assumed a conspicuous and triumphant position. That cruel overweening world, of which Scripture speaks, waned by degrees and dwindled in her presence, and finally throughout Christendom became absorbed in the mass of baptised believers. But the internal change, though it was great, was not co-extensive

*St. Matt. xviii. 17.