ion by the human intellect!

The mere remembrance of some traditional event in the life of our Lord
has been accounted of value in popular leech-craft, as in the following
charm against ague, taken from a diary of the year 1751, and still used
in Lincolnshire within recent times: "When Jesus came near Pilate, he
trembled like a leaf, and the judge asked Him if He had the ague. He
answered that He neither had the ague nor was He afraid; and whosoever
bears these words in mind shall never fear the ague or anything
else."[35:1]

Eusebius of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastical History,[35:2] gives the text
of two letters alleged to have formed a correspondence between our Lord
and Abgar, King of Edessa. They were said to have been originally
written in Aramaic or Syro-Chaldaic characters, and were discovered
beneath a stone some eighty miles from Iconium, the modern Konieh, in
Asia Minor, in the year 97, and afterwards lost. Regarded as authentic
by some learned authorities, they were nevertheless rejected as
apocryphal by a church council at Rome, during the pontificate of
Gelasius I, in the year 494. According to Eusebius, King Abgar, who was
afflicted with a grievous sickness, learning of the wonderful cures
wrought by our Lord, wrote Him a letter begging Him to come to Edessa.
And the Master, although not acceding to this request, wrote a reply to
the king, promising to send one of His disciples to heal him. And in
fulfilment of that promise, after His resurrection, Thomas the Apostle,
by divine command, sent Thaddeus, one of the seventy disciples, to
Abgar. Such is the popular tradition. Full particulars of the visit of
Thaddeus, together with copies of the letters taken from a Book of
Records preserved at Edessa, may be found in a work entitled, "Ancient
Syriac Documents," edited by W. Cureton, D.D. Copies of these letters
were used as charms by the early Christians, and for this purpose were
placed upon their door-lintels; they were still to be seen within recent
years in many a cottage of Shropshire and Devon, where they are valued
as preservatives from fever.[36:1] In the opinion of not a few scholars
they are ingenious literary forgeries; but strong evidence in favor of
their authenticity is afforded by the discovery, announced by Professor
Bohrmann to the archaeological congress at Rome, April 30, 1900, of
copies of the same letters, inscribed in Doric Greek, in the stone-work
above the gateway of the Palace of the