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!" (Matt. viii. 31, 32).

If the concurrent testimony of the three synoptics, then, is really
sufficient to do away with all rational doubt as to the 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
towards other men, in the most serious way--then I am bound to believe
that Jesus implicitly affirmed himself to possess a "knowledge of the
unseen world," which afforded full confirmation of 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 investigated; science,
more and more seeing its way to inclose all the phenomena of so-called
"possession" within the domain of pathology, 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 case, it is
inevitable that his authority on matters connected with the "unseen
world" should be roughly shaken; in the latter, the blow falls upon the
authority of the synoptic Gospels. If their report on a matter of such
stupendous and far-reaching practical import as this is untrustworthy,
how can we be sure of its trustworthiness in other cases? The favourite
"earth" in which the hard-pressed reconciler takes refuge, that the
Bible does not profess to teach science,[33] is stopped in this
instance. For the question of the existence of demon: and of possession
by them, though it lies strictly within the province of science is also
of the deepest moral and religious significance. If p