tcry, often accompanied with a recognition of him
as God's Holy One.

143. The record of such maladies and their cure is not confined to the New
Testament. The evil spirit which came upon King Saul is a similar case,
and Josephus tells of Jewish exorcists who cured possessed persons by the
use of incantations handed down from King Solomon. The early Christian
fathers frequently argued the truth of Christianity from the way in which
demons departed at the command of Christian exorcists, while in the middle
ages and down to modern times belief in demoniac possession has been
common, particularly among some of the more superstitious of the peasantry
in Europe. Moreover, from missionaries in China and other eastern lands it
is learned that diseases closely resembling the cases of possession
recorded in the New Testament are frequently met with, and are often cured
by native Christian ministers.

144. The similarity of the symptoms of so-called possession to recognized
mental and physical derangements such as insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria,
suggests the conclusion that possession should be classed with other
ailments due to ill adjustment of the relations of the mental and physical
life. If this conclusion is valid, the idea of actual possession by evil
spirits becomes only an ancient effort to interpret the mysterious
symptoms in accordance with wide-spread primitive beliefs. This
explanation would doubtless be generally adopted were it not that it seems
to compromise either the integrity or the knowledge of Jesus. The gospels
plainly represent him as treating the supposed demoniac influence as real,
addressing in his cures not the invalid, but the invading demon. If he did
this knowing that the whole view was a superstition, was he true to his
mission to release mankind from its bondage to evil and sin? If he shared
the superstition of his time, had he the complete knowledge necessary to
make him the deliverer he claimed to be? These questions are serious and
difficult, but they form a part of the general problem of the extent of
Jesus' knowledge, and can be more intelligently discussed in connection
with that whole problem (sects. 249-251). It is reasonable to demand,
however, that any conclusion reached concerning the nature of possession
in the time of Jesus must be considered valid for similar manifestations
of disease in our own day.

145. What astonished people in Jesus' cures was not so much that he healed
the s