754 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



a disbelief in " these things." As the learned and fair-minded, as 

 well as orthodox, Dr. Alexander remarks, in an editorial note 

 to the article " Demoniacs," in the " Biblical Cyclopaedia " (vol. i, 

 p. 6G4, note) : 



.... On the lowest grounds on which our Lord and his apostles can be 

 placed, they mnst, at least, be regarded as honest men. Now, though honest 

 speech does not require that words should be used always and only in their 

 etymological sense, it does require that they should not be used so as to affirm 

 what the speaker knows to be false. While, therefore, our Lord and his apostles 

 might use the word SaiixoviCfo-dai, or the phrase 8aifi6viov ex^'") ^^ * popular descrip- 

 tion of certain diseases, without giving in to the belief which lay at the source of 

 such a mode of expression, they could not speak of demons entering into a man, 

 or being cast out of him, without pledging themselves to the belief of an actual 

 possession of the man by the demons (Campbell, " Prel. Diss.," vi, 1, 10). If, con- 

 sequently, they did not hold this belief, tijey spoke not as honest men. 



The story which we are considering does not rest on the au- 

 thority of the second Gospel alone. The third confirms the 

 second, especially in the matter of commanding the unclean spirit 

 to come out of the man (Luke viii, 29) ; and, although the first 

 Gospel either gives a different version of the same story, or tells 

 another of like kind, the essential point remains : " If thou cast us 

 out, send us away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, 

 Go ! " (Matthew viii, 31, 32). 



If the concurrent testimony of the three synoptics, then, is 

 really sufficient to do away with all rational doubt as to a matter 

 of fact of the utmost practical and speculative importance — belief 

 or disbelief in which may affect, and has affected, men's lives and 

 their conduct toward other men in the most serious way — then I 

 am bound to believe that Jesus implicitly affirmed himself to pos- 

 sess a " knowledge of the unseen world," which afforded full con- 

 firmation to the belief in demons and possession current among 

 his contemporaries. If the story is true, the mediaeval theory of 

 the invisible world may be, and probably is, quite correct ; and 

 the witch-finders, from Sprenger to Hopkins and Mather, are 

 much-maligned men. 



On the other hand, humanity, noting the frightful consequences 

 of this belief ; common sense, observing the futility of the evidence 

 on which it is based, in all cases that have been properly investi- 

 gated ; science, more and more seeing its way to inclose all the 

 phenomena of so-called ''possession" within the domain of pa- 

 thology, so far as they are not to be relegated to that of the police 

 — all these powerful influences concur in warning us, at our peril, 

 against accepting the belief without the most careful scrutiny of 

 the authority on which it rests. 



I can discern no escape from this dilemma : either Jesus said 

 what he is reported to have said, or he did not. In the former 



