my turn content myself with pointing ont that, if my quotations from Renan and Reuss had been incorrect, he could not only have said so, but could have produced the correct quotations. But he does not deny, as of course he can not, that Reuss, for example, really states, as the mature result of his investigations, what I quoted from him respecting St. Luke's Gospel, namely, that it was written by St. Luke and has reached us in its primitive form, and, further, that St. Luke used a book written by St. Mark, the disciple of St. Peter, and that this book in all probability comprised in its primitive form what we read in the present day from Mark i, 21, to xiii, 37. These are the results of modern criticism as stated by a biblical critic in whom Prof, Huxley expressed special confidence. It was not therefore my statements of the results of biblical criticism with which Prof. Huxley was confronted, but Reuss's statements; and, unless he can show that my quotation was a false one, he ought to have had the candor to acknowledge that Reuss, at least, is on these vital points dead against him. Instead of any such frank admission, he endeavors to explain away the force of his reference to Reuss. It may, he says, be well for him
But I beg to observe that Prof. Huxley did not appeal to Reuss's methods, but to Reuss's results. He said that no retractation by M. Renan would sensibly affect "the main results of biblical criticism as they are set forth in the works of Strauss, Baur, Reuss, and Volkmar." I have given him the results as set forth by Reuss in Reuss's own words, and all he has to offer in reply is an ipse dixit in a foot-note and an evasion in the text of his article.
But, as I said, this general discussion respecting the authenticity and credibility of the Gospels was an evasion of my argument, which rested upon the specific testimony of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord's Prayer, and the narrative of the Passion; and, accordingly, in his present rejoinder Prof. Huxley, with much protestation that he made no evasion, addressed himself to these three points. And what is his answer? I feel obliged to characterize it as another evasion, and in one particular an evasion of a flagrant kind. The main point of his argument is that from various circumstances, which I will presently notice more particularly, there is much reason to doubt whether the Sermon on the Mount was ever actually delivered in the form in which it
