ttle will he be inclined to
deny that this practical value has not the least relation to the reality
of the objects of that trust and faith. In examples of patient constancy
of faith and of unswerving trust, the "Acta Martyrum" do not excel the
annals of Babism.[31]

The discussion upon which we have entered goes so thoroughly to the root
of the whole matter; the question of the day is so completely, as the
author of "Robert Elsmere" says, the value of testimony, that I shall
offer no apology for following it out somewhat in detail; and, by way
of giving substance to the argument, I shall base what I have to say
upon a case, the consideration of which lies strictly within the
province of natural science, and of that particular part of it known as
the physiology and pathology of the nervous system.

I find, in the second Gospel (chap. v.), a statement, to all appearance
intended to have the same evidential value as any other contained 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 difficulties 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 conviction that
the phenomena ascribed to possession are as purely natural as those
which constitute smallpox; 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 misdemeanour 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
Catho