te to account for the fact that in some quarters similar maladies
have been similarly explained from the earliest times until the present
day. If, however, he knew his people to be in error in ascribing these
afflictions to diabolical influence, he need have felt no call to correct
it. If the disease had been the direct effect of such a delusion, Jesus
would have encouraged the error by accommodating himself to the popular
notion. The idea of possession, however, was only an attempt to explain
very real distress. Jesus desired to cure, not to inform his patients. The
notion in no way interfered with his turning the thought of those he
healed towards God, the centre of help and of health. He is not open,
therefore, to the charge of having failed to free men from the thraldom of
superstition if he accommodated himself to their belief concerning
demoniac possession. His cure, and his infusion of true thoughts of God
into the heart, furnished an antidote to superstition more efficacious
than any amount of discussion of the truth or falseness of the current
explanation of the disease. On the other hand, if we are not ready to
conclude that the action of Jesus has demonstrated the validity of the
ancient explanation, we may acknowledge that it would do no violence to
his power, or dignity, or integrity, if it should be held that he did not
concern himself with an inquiry into the cause of the disease which
presented itself to him for help, but adopted unquestioningly the
explanation held by all his contemporaries, even as he used their
language, dress, manner of life, and in one particular, at least, their
representation of the life after death (Luke xvi. 22--Abraham's bosom).
His own confession of ignorance of a large item of religious knowledge
(Mark xiii. 32) leaves open the possibility that in so minor a matter as
the explanation of a common disease he simply shared the ideas of his
time. In this case, when one so afflicted came under his treatment, he
applied his supernatural power, even as in cases of leprosy or fever, and
cured the trouble, needing no scientific knowledge of its cause. If
accommodation or ignorance led Jesus to treat these sick folk as
possessed, it does not challenge his integrity nor his trustworthiness in
all the matters which belong properly to his own peculiar work.

250. There is one incident in the gospels which favors the conclusion that
Jesus definitely adopted the current idea,--the permission