deception for the sake of popularity might be intelligible in an ordinary case, but when referred to the central personage of a Divine Revelation, who is said to be God incarnate, it is perfectly astounding. The Archbishop, however, rightly deems that if Jesus knew that the Jewish belief in demoniacal possession was baseless, and that Satan did not exercise such power over the bodies or spirits of men, there would be in such language "that absence of agreement between thoughts and words in which the essence of a lie consists." It is difficult to say whether the dilemma of the Dean or of the Archbishop is the greater,-the one obliged to sacrifice the moral character of Jesus, in order to escape the admission for Christianity of untenable superstition, the other obliged to adopt the superstition in order to support the veracity of the language. At least the course of the Archbishop is consistent and worthy of respect. The attempt to eliminate the superstitious diagnosis of the disease, and yet to preserve intact the miraculous cure, is quite ineffectual.

Dr. Trench anticipates the natural question, why there are no demoniacs now, if there were so many in those days, and he is logically compelled to maintain that there may still be persons possessed. "It may well be a question, moreover," he says, "if an apostle or one with apostolic discernment of spirits were to enter into a mad-house now, how many of the sufferers there he might not recognize as possessed?" 3 There can scarcely be a question upon the point at all, for such a person issuing direct

3 Ib., p. 165. In a note the Archbishop says that "he understands that Esquirol recognizes demoniacs now, and that there could not be a higher authority."

from that period, without subsequent scientific enlightenment, would most certainly pronounce them all, "possessed." It did not, however, require an apostle, nor even one with apostolic discernment of spirits, to recognize the possessed in that time. All those who are represented as being brought to Jesus to be healed are described by their friends as having a devil or being possessed, and there was no form of disease more general or more commonly recognized by the Jews. For what reason has the recognition of, and belief in, demoniacal possession passed away with the ignorance and superstition which were then prevalent?

It is important to remember that the theory of demoniacal possession, and its supposed cure by means of exorcism and invocations, was most common among the Jews long before the commencement of the Christian era. As casting out devils was the most common type of Christian miracles, so it was the commonest belief and practice of the Jewish nation. Christianity merely shared the national superstition, and changed nothing but the form of exorcism. Christianity did not through a "clearer perception of spirits," therefore, originate the belief in demoniacal possession, nor first recognize its victims; nor did such superior enlightenment accompany the superior morality of Christianity as to detect the ignorant fallacy. In the Old Testament we find the most serious evidence of the belief in demonology and witchcraft. The laws against them set the example of that unrelenting severity with which sorcery was treated for so many centuries. We read in Exodus xxii. 18: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Levit. xix. 31: Regard not them which have familiar spirits, neither

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seek after wizards, to be defiled by them." Levit. xx. 6: "And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards to go a-whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and cut him off from among his people;" and verse 27: "A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death; they shall stone them with stones; their blood shall be upon them." Deut. xviii. 10: "There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or an enchanter, or a witch; 11. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer; 12. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord," &c. The passages which assert the reality of demonology and witchcraft, however, are much too numerous to permit their citation here. But not only did Christianity thus inherit the longprevalent superstition, but it transmitted it intact to succeeding ages; and there can be no doubt that this demonology, with its consequent and inevitable belief in witchcraft, sorcery, and magic, continued so long to prevail throughout Christendom, as much through the authority of the sacred writings and the teaching of the Church as through the superstitious ignorance of Europe.

It would be impossible to select for illustration any type of the Gospel miracles, whose fundamental principle,-belief in the reality, malignant action, and power of demons, and in the power of man to control them,has received fuller or more permanent living acceptance from posterity, down to very recent times, than the cure of disease ascribed to demoniacal influence. The writings of the Fathers are full of the belief; the social

history of Europe teems with it. The more pious the people, the more firm was their conviction of its reality. From times antecedent to Christianity, until medical science slowly came into existence and displaced miracle cures by the relics of saints, every form of disease was ascribed to demons. Madness, idiotcy, epilepsy, and every shape of hysteria were the commonest forms of their malignity; and the blind, the dumb, and the deformed were regarded as unquestionable victims of their malice. Every domestic calamity, from the convulsions of a child to the death of a cow, was unhesitatingly attributed to their agency. The more ignorant the community, the greater the number of its possessed. Belief in the power of sorcery, witchcraft, and magic was inherent in the superstition, and the universal prevalence shows how catholic was the belief in demoniacal influence. The practice of these arts is solemnly denounced as sin in the New Testament and throughout Patristic literature, and the church has in all ages fulminated against it. No accusation was more common than that of practising sorcery, and no class escaped from the fatal suspicion. Popes were charged with the crime, and bishops were found guilty of it. St. Cyprian was said to have been a magician before he became a Christian and a Father of the Church. Athanasius was accused of sorcery before the Synod of Tyre.2 Not only the illiterate but even the learned, in the estimation of their age, believed in it. No heresy was ever persecuted with more unrelenting hatred. Popes have issued bulls vehemently anathematising witches and sorcerers, councils have proscribed them, ecclesiastical 1 Greg. Nazianz., Orat. xviii.

2 Theodoret, H. E., i. 30; cf. Milman, Hist. of Christianity, ii. p. 378.

courts have consigned tens of thousands of persons suspected of being such to the stake, monarchs have written treatises against them and invented tortures for their conviction, and every nation in Europe and almost every generation have passed the most stringent laws against them. Upon no point has there ever been greater unanimity of belief. Church and State have vied with each other for the suppression of the abominable crime. Every phenomenon of nature, every unwelcome occurrence of social life, as well as every natural disease, has been ascribed to magic and demons. The historical records of Europe are filled with the deliberate trial and conviction, upon what was deemed evidence, of thousands of sorcerers and witches. Hundreds have been found guilty of exercising demoniacal influence over the elements, from Sopater the philosopher, executed under Constantine for preventing, by adverse winds, the arrival of corn ships at Constantinople, to Dr. Fian and other witches horribly tortured and burnt for causing a stormy passage on the return of James I. from Denmark.' Thousands of men and tens of thousands of women have been done to death by every conceivable torment for causing sickness or calamity by sorcery, or for flying through the air to attend the witches' sabbath. When scepticism as to the reality of the demoniacal powers of sorcery tardily began to arise, it was fiercely reprobated by the Church as infidelity. Even so late as the 17th century, a man like Sir Thomas Browne not only did not include the belief amongst the vulgar errors which he endeavoured to expose, but on the contrary wrote: "For my part, I have ever believed, and do now know that there are 1 Pitcairn's Criminal Trials of Scotland, i. pp. 213, 223.