AGNOSTICISM. 



753 



I find, in the second Gospel (chap, v), a statement, to all appear- 

 ance intended to have the same evidential value as any other con- 

 tained 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 diffi- 

 culties of the case manifest itself. 



On the other hand, everything that I know of physiological 

 and pathological science leads me to entertain a very strong con- 

 viction that the phenomena ascribed to possession are as purely 

 natural as those which constitute small-pox^; everything that I 

 know of anthropology leads me to think that the belief in demons 

 and demoniacal possession is a mere survival of a once universal 

 superstition, and that its persistence at the present time is pretty 

 much in the inverse ratio of the general instruction, intelligence, 

 and sound judgment of the population among whom it prevails. 

 Everything that I know of law and justice convinces me that the 

 wanton destruction of other people's property is a misdemeanor 

 of evil example. Again, the study of history, and especially of 

 that of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, leaves 

 no shadow of doubt on my mind that the belief in the reality of 

 possession and of witchcraft, justly based, alike by Catholics and 

 Protestants, upon this and innumerable other passages in both 

 the Old and New Testaments, gave rise, through the special influ- 

 ence of Christian ecclesiastics, to the most horrible persecutions 

 and judicial murders of thousands upon thousands of innocent 

 men, women, and children. And when I reflect that the record 

 of a plain and simple declaration upon such an occasion as this, 

 that the belief in witchcraft and possession is wicked nonsense, 

 would have rendered the long agony of mediaeval humanity im- 

 possible, I am prompted to reject, as dishonoring, the supposition 

 that such declaration was withheld out of condescension to popu- 

 lar error. 



" Come forth, thou unclean spirit, out of the man'' (Mark v, 8),* 

 are the words attributed to Jesus. If I declare, as I have no hesi- 

 tation in doing, that I utterly disbelieve in the existence of 

 " unclean spirits," and, consequently, in the possibility of their 

 " coming forth " out of a man, I suppose that Dr. Wace will tell me 

 I am disregarding the "testimony of our Lord" (Zoc. cit, p. 255). 

 For if these words were really used, the most resourceful of recon- 

 cilers can hardly venture to affirm that they are compatible with 



* Here, as always, the revised version is cited. 



VOL. XXXIT. — 48 



