456 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and his subjection to exorcistic formulas and rites. Jesus is made 

 to say that the devil " was a murderer from the beginning " (John 

 viii, 44) by the same authority as that upon which we depend for 

 his asserted declaration that " God is a spirit " (John iv, 24). 



To those who admit the authority of the famous Vincentian 

 dictum that the doctrine which has been held " always, every- 

 where, and by all " is to be received as authoritative, the demon- 

 ology must possess a higher sanction than any other Christian 

 dogma, except, perhaps, those of the resurrection and of the Mes- 

 siahship of Jesus ; for it would be difficult to name any other 

 points of doctrine on which the Nazarene does not differ from the 

 Christian, and the different historical stages and contemporary 

 subdivisions of Christianity from one another. And, if the demon- 

 ology is accepted, there can be no reason for rejecting all those 

 miracles in which demons play a part. The Gadarene story fits 

 into the general scheme of Christianity, and the evidence for 

 " Legion " and their doings is just as good as any other in the 

 New Testament for the doctrine which the story illustrates. 



It was with the purpose of bringing this great fact into promi- 

 nence, of getting people to open both their eyes when they look at 

 ecclesiasticism, that I devoted so much space to that miraculous 

 story which happens to be one of the best types of its class. And 

 I could not wish for a better justification of the course I have 

 adopted than the fact that my heroically consistent adversary has 

 declared his implicit belief in the Gadarene story and (by neces- 

 sary consequence) in the Christian demonology as a whole. It 

 must be obvious, by this time, that, if the account of the spiritual 

 world given in the New Testament, professedly on the authority 

 of Jesus, is true, then the demonological half of that account 

 must be just as true as the other half. And, therefore, those who 

 question the demonology, or try to explain it away, deny the truth 

 of what Jesus said, and are, in ecclesiastical terminology, " infi- 

 dels " just as much as those who deny the spirituality of God. 

 This is as plain as anything can well be, and the dilemma for my 

 opponent was either to assert that the Gadarene pig-bedevilment 

 actually occurred, or to write himself down an " infidel." As was 

 to be expected, he chose the former alternative; and I may ex- 

 press my great satisfaction at finding that there is one spot of 

 common ground on which both he and I stand. So far as I can 

 judge, we are agreed to state one of the broad issues between the 

 consequences of agnostic principles (as I draw them), and the 

 consequences of ecclesiastical dogmatism (as he accepts it), as 

 follows : 



Ecclesiasticism says: The demonology of the Gospels is an 

 essential part of that account of that spiritual world, the truth of 

 which it declares to be certified by Jesus. 



