When the noise of approaching battle roused me from the dreams of peace which occupy my retirement, I was glad to observe (since I must fight) that the campaign was to be opened upon a new field. When the contest raged over the Pentateuchal myth of the creation, Mr. Gladstone's manifest want of acquaintance with the facts and principles involved in the discussion, no less than with the best literature on his own side of the subject, gave me the uncomfortable feeling that I had my adversary at a disadvantage. The sun of science, at my back, was in his eyes. But, on the present occasion, we are happily on an equality. History and Biblical criticism are as much, or as little, my vocation as they are that of Mr. Gladstone; the blinding from too much light, or the blindness from too little, may be presumed to be equally shared by both of us. Mr. Gladstone takes up his new position in the country of the Gadarenes. His strategic sense justly leads him to see that the authority of the teachings of the synoptic Gospels, touching the nature of the spiritual world, turns upon the acceptance, or the rejection, of the Gadarene and other like stories. As we accept, or repudiate, such histories as that of the possessed pigs, so shall we accept, or reject, the witness of the synoptics to such miraculous interventions. It is exactly because these stories constitute the key-stone of the orthodox arch, that I originally drew attention to them; and, in spite of my longing for peace, I am truly obliged to Mr. Gladstone for compelling me to place my case before the public once more. It may be thought that this is a work of supererogation by those who are aware that my essay is the subject of attack in a work so largely circulated as the "Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture"; and who may possibly, in their simplicity, assume that it must be truthfully set forth in that work. But the warmest admirers of Mr. Gladstone will hardly be prepared to maintain that mathematical accuracy in stating the opinions of an opponent is the most prominent feature of his controversial method. And what follows will show that, in the present case, the desire to be fair and accurate, the existence of which I am bound to assume, has not borne as much fruit as might have been expected. In referring to the statement of the narrators, that the herd of swine perished in consequence of the entrance into them of the demons by the permission, or order, of Jesus of Nazareth, I said: "Everything that I know of law and justice convinces me that the wanton destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanour of evil example" ("Nineteenth Century," February, 1889, p. 172).