latter knew that he was the Messiah, and he had to forbid them to speak, for they sometimes cried out, "You are the Son of God!

What are we to think of this story? It need hardly be said that we cannot accept it as it stands. We utterly disbelieve in actual devils living in men; it is absurd to suppose that these spirits recognized and proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, when we know that he himself had no such idea as yet; and we cannot believe that all the inhabitants of the city brought out their sick, and that Jesus played the part of a medicine-man! But, on the other hand, it would be going too far utterly to reject the whole story. It is quite possible that Jesus preached in the synagogue at Capernaum, and indeed, even if it were not expressly stated, we should almost take for granted that he made himself heard in the house of prayer before he had been settled long in the city; nor would there be any more suitable or probable place in which he could utter his first exhortation. Again, the amazement he is said to have caused, and the deep impression he created, are only what we should expect.

66

We may go still further. It would be a mistake to deny that Jesus ever healed those "possessed by devils." We must remember that in those days, and especially among the Jews, this "possession" was a kind of epidemic. Josephus makes repeated mention of it. The causes of its prevalence cannot be fixed with certainty; but we may well believe that the state of nervous tension caused by the depressing circumstances of the times, together with the feverish expectation of deliverance, and the consequent religious revival,1 was a powerful ally of the prevalent superstition, and these morbid spiritual phenomena are very infectious. 'Possession" was at bottom a nervous derangement, which showed itself sometimes in temporary or permanent insanity, sometimes in fits of deep depression, sometimes in convulsive attacks at regularly recurring intervals, and sometimes even in loss of control over the members, resulting in temporary deafness, blindness, or paralysis. Now it was customary in ancient times to ascribe both madness and epilepsy to the immediate influence or actual presence in the body of the patient of some deity or spirit. It was for this reason that epilepsy was called the morbus sacer, or "sacred disease." A similar belief prevailed among the Israelites; for during the early centuries of their renewed national existence they had borrowed an

1 See pp. 4, 6, 96-99, 105, 108.

elaborate belief in angels and demons from the Persians, and had worked it out more or less independently themselves. The Jews, then, definitely believed that evil spirits, subject to Satan, dwelt in the bodies of the "possessed," and tortured them; and to their influence they ascribed all the phenomena above referred to, and in general all diseases that seemed strange or mysterious, including perhaps the ague, which is still a riddle to the medical men of our own times. Thus Luke can say of Jesus, as he stood by the bed of Simon's mother-in-law, that he rebuked the ague as if it had had a personal existence, as if it were a demon and had to be

expelled.

It is true that, above four centuries earlier than the time of which we are speaking, the great Hippocrates of Cos had laid the firm foundations of medical science among the Greeks, and had combated this very superstition in his work "On the Sacred Disease." But the Jews were much behind their age in this matter. They fled to the general refuge of ignorance, therefore, and ascribed a supernatural origin to most diseases. The necessary consequence was that they neglected natural remedies in favor of magical incantations or elixirs, and other such devices. And so there were a number of exorcists (or expellers of devils) in the country, and some of them, of course, were more successful than others. The Essenes appear to have paid especial attention to the art of exorcism. Josephus tells us that Solomon had received power over the demons from God, so that he could heal the sick, and that he had collected and handed down the magic formulæ of exorcism. 66 This art," continues he, "still flourishes among us greatly." The Talmud and later authorities also attribute to Solomon a book on this branch of the healing art, though really the idea of possession was not so much as dreamed of in his time. Josephus tells us that in the neighborhood of Macharus a root called baäras is to be found; that it is like a flame of fire in color; that it throws out shining rays by night; that any one who gathers it, without certain fanciful and grotesque precautions which he rehearses, is sure to lose his life, but that it is an infallible means of expelling the evil spirits which have taken possession of human beings.

We must not be too hard on the superstitious contemporaries of Jesus; for we must remember that, however absurd we may think the belief in the immediate connection between unclean spirits and human beings, and the influence of evil

powers upon human life, these beliefs maintained themselves for centuries in the Christian Church. In remote country districts, and the neglected quarters of our great cities, people still believe in witches and wizards, and attribute the diseases of children or animals to magic. But not so very long ago the belief was universal. Almost two centuries after the Reformation, Balthazar Bekker, a pastor of Amsterdam, published his celebrated work, "The Enchanted World" (1691–94), in Holland, at that time the centre of enlightenment and science. The purpose of the book was to root out the superstitious belief in witches, enchantment, and all such things, to which so many innocent lives were yearly sacrificed; and the result was that Bekker was denounced as an infidel and a blasphemer by almost every one, including his fellow-pastors and even the professors of the day, while the ecclesiastical authorities dismissed him from his post.

1

Now when we examine the stories of "possession" contained in the Gospels, we find that the symptoms they describe agree very well with what may still be observed in the case of persons suffering from similar nervous affections. So far, then, we need not scruple to accept them as historical. But we must be discriminating; for in the most detailed accounts of exorcisms certain features may be traced which warn us clearly enough to adopt a figurative rather than a literal interpretation, features on which the history of Jesus throws no light, and which unmistakably betray the age of the Apostles. The consideration of these stories we shall defer to Book II. It would, however, be quite equally rash and uncritical to apply the symbolical interpretation indiscriminately to all the Gospel accounts of demoniacal possession and its cure. There is certainly some historical foundation for them. We have no sufficient reason and therefore no right entirely to reject them. If Jesus really did restore some of these sufferers to themselves, to their friends, and to social life, we can readily understand how misconceptions, exaggerations, and unconscious inventions would gather round the fact, and crowd our Gospels with accounts of miraculous healings. Again, such events would be quite enough to account for the general attention almost immediately fixed on Jesus, and for the great excitement produced by his appearance. Though he never adopted any peculiarity in his outer mode of life, as John did, yet these cures, effected as they were without any of the superstitious posturing of the professional exorcists, would be enough to E.g. Mark ix. 17, 18 (Matthew xvii. 15; Luke ix. 39).

spread his fame far and wide. Finally, such healings are not inexplicable, still less impossible. Nervous affections are still amenable, in many cases, to control by moral power, by the ascendancy of any one respected by the patient for instance, or any thing that rouses his own dormant energy of self-control. How much more must this have been the case when the disease was regarded as the effect of "possession," and certain men were firmly believed to have secret means of cure, or to be specially favored by God with power of casting out the devil! We must remember that these beliefs were shared by the sufferers themselves, and would act as a strong ally to that sense of moral power and "authority" which the commanding presence of Jesus inspired. We can well believe that though Jesus used no magic form of words, the fame that he had acquired, the glance of his eye, and his commanding "come forth," were often successful in producing the desired result.

It is much more doubtful whether Jesus ever cured a fever, as he is said to have done in this story. But even this we cannot pronounce impossible. There are many instances on record of fevers having been cured, even in modern times, by the bare word of one who had perfect reliance on himself, and in whose power the patient thoroughly believed. How much more likely would it be in ancient times for such a result to follow the word of a prophet, who was supposed to stand in some special relation to God! But there is nothing to confirm this special cure of Simon's mother-in-law.

Was

We cannot tell whether Jesus ever failed in his attempts, which were probably far from frequent, to cure demoniacs,1 nor whether any of those whom he had restored afterwards relapsed. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in either supposition. Again, it has often been asked what the opinion of Jesus himself concerning the sufferers really was. he so far a child of the times as to attribute their sufferings to evil spirits dwelling in them? Or did he address the supposed demons in accordance with the needs of the patients, since that was the only means by which he could help them? The former supposition is by far the more probable in itself. Indeed, in the other case, there would have been a want of reality in his position which would have gone far to rob him of the confidence so essential to success.

It must not be forgotten that we have only defended the

1 Compare Matthew xvii. 16, 19 (Mark ix. 18, 28; Luke ix 40); Acts xix. 13-16; and Mark vi 5

2 Compare Matthew xii. 43-45 (Luke xi. 24–26).

healing of demoniacs in general as worthy of belief, and have by no means affirmed that the special cure said to have been effected on that particular Sabbath at Capernaum is certainly historical. We can only say that it is not incredible in itself; for, after all, it is quite possible that the story was originally attached to the account of this first preaching as a simple type of the moral power exercised by Jesus on the minds of men. When he spoke as one "having authority," the consciences of his hearers were aroused, and all impurity of heart and disposition - every evil spirit - must give way. There is all the more reason to question the historical accuracy of the story, because it contains, or is immediately followed by, certain unhistorical touches to which we have already called attention. In the first place, there is the monstrous exaggeration of the statement that the people brought all who were sick of any disease to Jesus, and that he healed them. These short and comprehensive general assertions constantly recur,1 and are never to be trusted. If all these statements were literally true, there would soon have been no sick people left in Galilee or in Jerusalem; but the Gospels always bring them upon the scene again, and so contradict themselves. Then again, the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah by the demoniac in the temple is a fiction which sprang from the belief that Jesus had come forward as the Messiah from the first, and that the demons dwelling in the sufferers had more than human knowledge. On the same supposition the Jews ascribed to these spirits their own belief that, when the Messianic kingdom was established, Satan and all his subordinates would be hurled into the fire of Gehenna, to be punished everlastingly. Thus when the demons see Jesus they cry out, Are you going to torture us now, before the time, before the the last day?" 2

66

The account of the commencement of the ministry of Jesus at Capernaum ends with his sudden departure from the place. When the evening closed, the multitudes went home to rest; and early in the morning, when all around him slept, Jesus rose from his bed, left the house without rousing any of its inmates, and went out of the city to a solitary spot- a desert place as the Evangelists express it - to pray. As soon as it

1 Matthew iv. 23, 24, viii. 16, ix. 35, xii. 15, xiv. 14, 36, xv. 30, xix. 2, xxi. 14; Mark i. 32-34, 39, iii. 10, 11, vi. 55, 56; Luke iv. 40, 41. v. 15, 17, vi. 17-19 vii. 21, ix. 11.

2 Matthew viii. 29.