(7) Recognition of the Christ. The demo niacs knew Jesus to be the Son of God (Matt.
viii :29 ; Mark i :24 ; v :7), and the Christ (Luke iv :41).
(8) Jesus Calls Them Demons. Jesus ad dresses the demons (Matt. viii :32; Mark v ; ix :25 ; Luke iv :35); so does Paul (Acts xvi :18). Jesus bids them be silent (Mark i :25) ; to depart and enter no more into the person (Mark ix :25).
(9) Called Demons by the Seventy. In Luke x the Seventy are related to have returned to Jesus, saying: 'Lord, even the demons are subject to us through thy name ; and Jesus replies (verse 18) : 'I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven.' (10) No Discord Among Demons. When Jesus was accused by the Pharisees of casting out demons by Beelzebub, the prince of the demons, he argued that there could be no discord among demoniacal beings (Matt. xii :25, etc.).
(11) Natural History. Jesus makes certain gratuitous observations respecting demons (see Matt. xii :43, 44), which seem like facts in their natural history. In regard to the demon cast out of the youth, which the disciples could not cast out, he says : 'This kind (i. e., of demons) goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.' Can these worth be understood otherwise than as revealing a real and particular fact respecting the nature of demons (Matt. xvii :21) ? (12) Bound by Satan. The woman which had a spirit of infirmity, and was bowed together (Luke xiii :11) is, by our Lord himself, said to have been bound by Satan (v :16). In the same way St. Peter speaks of all the persons who were healed by Jesus, as being 'oppressed of the devil' (Acts x :38).
(13) Casting Out of Devils. It is further pleaded that it sinks the importance and dignity of our Saviour's miracles to suppose that when he is said to have cast out devils all that is meant is that he healed diseases.
2. Theories of Opponents. To these argu ments the opponents of the theory of real de moniacal possessions reply generally that there can be no doubt that it was the general belief of the Jewish nation, with the exception of the Sadducees, and of most other nations, that the spirits of dead men, especially of those who had lived evil lives, and died violent deaths, were permitted to enter the bodies of men, and to pro duce the effects ascribed to them in the popular creed ; but the fact and real state of the case was that those who were considered to be pos sessed were afflicted with some peculiar diseases of mind or body, which, their true causes not being generally understood, were, as is usual in such cases, ascribed to supernatural powers, and that Jesus and his apostles, wishing, of course, to be understood by their contemporaries, and owing to other reasons which can be pointed out, were under the necessity of expressing themselves in popular language, and of seeming to admit, or at least of not denying, its correctness. They fur
ther plead that the fact, admitted on all hands, that the demon so actuated the possessed as that whatever they did was not to be distinguished from his agency, reduces the question, so far as fihenontena are concerned, to one simple inquiry, namely, whether these phenomena arc such as can be accounted for without resorting to supernat ural agency. They assert that the symptoms pred icated of demoniacs correspond with the ordi nary symptoms of disease, and especially of hypo chontlria, insanity and epilepsy; that the sacred writers themselves give intimations, as plain as could be expected under the circumstances, that they employed popular language; that consequently they arc not to be considered as teaching doc trines or asserting facts when they use such lan guage, and that the doctrine of the agency of de parted spirits on the bodies of men is inconsistent with certain peculiar and express doctrines of Christ and his apostles.
(1) Symptoms Cured. With regard to the symptoms related of the demoniacs, it is urged that such persons as were called demoniacs in other c.Juntries, and who seem to have labored under precisely the same symptoms, arc recorded to have been cured by the use of medicine. Jo seplms and the Jewish physicians speak of medi cines composed of stones, roots and herbs being useful to demoniacs (Gittei, f. 67). The cure of diseases by such methods is intelligible, but is it rational to believe that the spirits of dead men were dislodged from human bodies by medical prescriptions? Maimonides (in Sabot. ii:5) says: 'All kinds of diseases which arc called melancholy they call an evil spirit' (Comp. Matt. xi:18; John vii :20 : X :20).