rth" out of a man, I suppose that Dr. Wace will tell me I am
disregarding the testimony "of our Lord." For, if these words were
really used, the most resourceful of reconcilers can hardly venture to
affirm that they are compatible with a disbelief "in these things." As
the learned and fair-minded, as well as orthodox, Dr. Alexander
remarks, in an editorial note to the article "Demoniacs," in the
"Biblical Cyclopaedia" (vol. i. p. 664, note):--

... On the lowest grounds on which our Lord and His Apostles
can be placed they must, at least, be regarded as _honest_
men. Now, though honest speech does not require that words
should be used always and only in their etymological sense,
it does require that they should not be used so as to affirm
what the speaker knows to be false. Whilst, therefore, our
Lord and His Apostles might use the word [Greek: daimonizesthai],
or the phrase, [Greek: daimonion echein] as a popular
description of certain diseases, without giving in to the
belief which lay at the source of such a mode of expression,
they could not speak of demons entering into a man, or being
cast out of him, without pledging themselves to the belief of
an actual possession of the man by the demons. (Campbell,
_Prel. Diss._ vi. 1, 10.) If, consequently, they did not hold
this belief, they spoke not as honest men.

The story which we are considering does not rest on the authority of
the second Gospel alone. The third confirms the second, 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 a 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