t
appeal to the gods for favors and portents, were both effects and
causes of this sense for the miraculous which we find so widespread in
the past. Sometimes monsters were born; sometimes the wind blew from
one direction for an extraordinary length of time; sometimes the sun
was darkened at midday. Stories were constantly afloat about wonderful
cures imputed to gods or magicians. Credulity awoke at the least
encouragement. Priests, prophets, magicians, kings, gods, all were
regarded as {127} the authors of cures. Only the common man was unable
to do these wonderful things. The idea that the king's touch had
wonderful curative power lingered on into the nineteenth century.

We have pointed out, more than once, that the best way to explain an
idea away is to explain how it arose. Add to this a clear statement of
how the older view conflicts with the new outlook which has been born
of tested knowledge, and the disproof is as complete as may be. Let us
apply this method to the stories told of Jesus in the New Testament.
Jesus was reputed to have the gifts of an exorcist. That Jesus, if he
did actually live, believed in demons cannot be doubted. In Mark, the
crowd exclaims: "With authority he commands even the unclean spirits,
and they obey him." Again, the scribes from Jerusalem say: "He hath
Beelzebub. By the prince of the devils he casteth out the devils."
Wherever Jesus went, crowds of sick people flocked to him to be healed
of their various complaints. But they undoubtedly did the same to
every prophet or medicine-man who came along. A man could not be a
prophet if he did not have a special _mana_, or power, either in his
own right or as the representative of his deity. And we must not think
of these healers as charlatans or impostors. Everybody believed that
disease was a matter for religion. Why? Because they did not know
anything about toxins and bacteria and amoebic infection. The
demon-theory of disease was everywhere dominant outside, perhaps,
certain circles in Greece. "It is beyond a doubt," writes F. C.
Conybeare, "that Jesus regarded fever, epilepsy, madness, deafness,
blindness, rheumatism, and all the other weaknesses to which flesh is
heir, as the distinct work of evil {128} spirits. The storm-wind which
churned the sea or inland lake into fury is equally an evil spirit in
the Gospel story. In the Vedic poems it is the same; and, indeed, we
have here a commonplace of all folklore."